A community for fans, devs, and general aficionados of the adventure game genre. This includes IF/parser games, point-and-click games, puzzle games, walking simulators, and whatever else you want to call these. To us, they're simply adventure games.
Here, I'll start. When I was 8 years old, my parents went to a dinner party and plonked me down in front of the host's computer so I'd stay out of their way. The game they booted up to keep me occupied was Space Quest II. Little did they know what impact that would have on me...
Secret of Monkey Island on a Tandy 1000 SL
Does "Adventure", Atari, 1980 count?
It absolutely does! The OG adventure game!
Well, a graphical port of the OG adventure game. The guy who made Adventure would go on to use the same engine to create Rocky's Boots and Robot Odyssey.
My favorite too!
The first adventure game I bought and played was an Infocom interactive fiction ... I think it was Stationfall. Before I had briefly played Magnetic Scrolls' Fish! at someone else's computer. Fell in love with text adventures and started collecting them, I have a few of the Infocom folios as well (sadly not the Starcross saucer). The first graphic adventure I remember playing was King's Quest IV.
These games, along with later games like Monkey Island, had a huge influence on me, I learned programming to write adventure games myself but spent more time writing adventure game engines (both text and graphic ones) than actual games, and today I'm a software engineer (not in the game business).
@SQHistorian Adventure for the 2600. Probably the worst port, but a compromise for the hardware.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when I was a bit older.
The Secret of Monkey Island is the first one I can remember playing. I also remember watching my dad play Police Quest 3 as a kid.
kings quest 2
Oregon Trail.
...
I'll show myself out.
You have died of dysentery...
I loved that this was required at my gradeschool computer lab class. Good memories!
King Quest II in Atari ST
Those old Infocom games basically taught me how to type. All the Zorks, Hitchhikers, and there was a Lovecraftian one maybe called Lurking Horror.
Sam & Max: Hit the Road!
To this day, it's one of my favorite games of all time. I haven't played it in a while, so thank you for making me remember! I'm definitely going to go for a new playthrough when things settle down here.
Sam & Max taught me more clever multisyllabic words than school ever did.
Leisure Suit Larry 1. Still remember that one like it was yesterday. Someday I even use that password in some way.
After that many more adventures with Larry followed. As well as all Police Quests. A couple of Kings Quest and a couple of Space Quests.
I got to play Zork in 4th grade on the single C64 in the classroom. Was obsessed with that computer. I beat Zork with a couple classmates and help from the hints book. The teacher gave me a physical Zorkmid coin that came with the boxed game, I still have it somewhere. Zork got me so hooked on computers that it was all I wanted to do.
I had a hard home life, my dad was an abusive addict. I lived in fear of his seemingly random behavior, one day he would be overjoyed and another miserable about everything. The computer was predictable, if it didn't work right, it was because I did something wrong. The teacher saw how much that computer meant to me. He taught me what he knew about BASIC programming, he gave me the manual. I'd sit in my room and read it cover to cover, trying to understand everything without having a machine to try it on.
One day near the end of the year, the teacher pulled me aside and told me that the school was getting rid of some computers, and that I could have one. I think they were getting Apple II's, so he put aside a VIC-20 for me. I had to get my mom to drive me to school on a weekend and the teacher met us there. In hindsight, I don't think he had permission or anything.
Sorry for kind of getting off the topic
For me, it was the original King's Quest. Like you, my dad was looking at a way to keep my brother and I busy.
It was King's Quest 1 for me also. Although it was the pcjr version. I think I still have the original plastic box/manual in storage. My memory at the time, me being about 3-4, was of walking around and frequently finding my parents and asking them how to spell certain words I couldn't yet. I never beat the game as a child but I loved exploring the world.
We also had Space Quest 1 after that and it grabbed my imagination even more. I don't think I ever beat that one as a child either but I got a lot farther.
For whatever reason we didn't have any other King's Quest or Space Quests until the series went vga. KQ5 and SQ4 were the next ones we picked up.
Somewhere in there was also Loom (which came with a companion audio cassette. I wish I still had that!) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I'll always wish someone would complete the Loom story.
The first one I played was Les Manley Search For The King. I was around 8 and we got it from a family friend who gave us a box full of floppies. I remember being amazed and thinking "you can do anything in this game".
I later discovered it was a sorta ripoff of Leisure Suit Larry, but in my opinion a better game.
I've yet to play those. I played Rex Nebular, the "Leisure Suit Larry in space," and it was... not good. I have half a mind to do a very scathing video about it at some point.
It's funny to read comments bashing King's Quest 3, because freak show over here (me) got into adventure games because of KQ3.
Before my psychotic parents got rid of it for being occultic, and replaced it with Space Quest 1 (not a bad exchange, I must say) I loved KQ3. I never got far in it, but it was just this open world for me to explore. The fact that wizard guy could just poof in at any time just captivated my imagination and made it feel like someone other than my character was out in the world doing things. It made the world feel much bigger than it was and it captivated my sense of wonder.
King's Quest III: "occultic." Here, have a game that starts out with a bloodbath aboard a spaceship instead. Good priorities. 😂
Same parents that let me play Manhunter: San Francisco. We're clearly dealing with parents of the year, here.
Planet Fall by infocom. I worked backwards to Zork. The mystery was so enticing to me!
It must have been either a copy of Skipper & Skeeto 4 or Voodoo Kid that we had gotten with the old Compaq my mother bought through work. Later I played Pink Panther: Passport to Peril that we had borrowed from the library.
That said, I didn't become aware of Adventure as a genre until I was 13 and the adult at my after-school computer club put The Curse of Monkey Island on a projector and we all played it together. That was my gateway drug, as soon after I played around with a front-end for DOSBOX to play the first two Monkey Islands and Sam & Max at a LAN party.
Having missed out on the golden age of adventure games helped create the drive that is currently fuelling my preservation efforts at The Royal Danish Library.
My sister and I used to play as much as we could from Purple Moon: Secret Paths in the Forest, Rockett's New School, and so on. And look at me, now I'm working towards getting the Rockett games supported in ScummVM, haha. So, if I had to pick one to answer the question, it'd be Rockett's Tricky Decision which got me into adventure games.
Putt-Putt and the various Disney Animated Storybooks were lots of fun, too, I have fond memories of those. (As you can see, I grew up in the era of 1990s CD-ROM edutainment)
But the game that made me realize the true potential of what you could do was Riven. I borrowed my friend's CD-ROM set when I was in 6th grade or something (a box of 3 or 4 discs, that's how big the game is) and I was like, holy crap, this is better and even more immersive than Myst. Riven is how I fell in love with the whole Myst universe.
Technically Leisure Suit Larry was the first adventure game I played when I was 3, but I was just walking back and forth in front of the bar because I didn't know what a text parser was. I think the game that actually got me into the genre was Myst, as divisive as it may be. I loved playing it with my family and exploring that world.
King's Quest 4 was the first game I remember playing. I was 3 years old. On a meta-level, Adventure or Dungeons and Dragons.
Hugo's House of Horrors
I remember getting surprisingly far for an 8yr old. I didn't know what a bung was at the time so that puzzle took a while though.
I think the game that got me hooked on the genre was Simon the Sorcerer on the Amiga 500. Still love that game.
I first got hooked on adventure games with King's Quest VI, and then went back and played one through five. I still fondly remember talking to that rotten tomato.
Aaah I remember this game! I think my cousin played it, but I was still too young. The first adventure game that really got me hooked was King's Quest 7. It had voice over in my language. Sadly, the game is not compatible with modern PCs anymore. And GoG only has the English voices. I would like to play it in German again, for the nostalgia.
Full Throttle!
The first adventure game I played was Lesuire Suite Larry, my bigger brothers had savegames in all the interesting parts and I didn't knew English so I accidentally deleted all the saves trying to load them, needles to say I was banned from the PC for a long time. The one that really hooked me on the genre though was The Curse of Monkey Island.
Holy crap, you sent me down a rabbit hole and a trip down memory lane. I remembered the cover of the first CD game I ever played but couldnt come up with the name, so I just read through all Point n Click adventures wikipedia knows off, looking for a bright green background and a weird clown on top of it.
It was Toonstruck! Never finished it, but it was my first PnC, so I guess that counts.
The first game that got me sold on adventures was Deponia and generally all of the Daedalic games.
Monkey Island 1
Like many on here, Zork was my first adventure game, and King's Quest 1 my first graphical adventure game. Interestingly, growing up I really only played the Infocom and Sierra games, the LucasArts games somehow completely escaped me unfortunately.
@SQHistorian Good ole Leisure Suit Larry.
Still remember "buying" a pirated copy on two white 5.25” inch floppies from a local computer *store* 😂