While video-game systems are used only for games, gaming is only one of the many uses for computers. In computer games, players can use a keyboard to type in commands, a mouse to move a cursor around the screen, or both. Many computer games also allow the use of a joystick or game controller.
In 1972, Gregory Yob of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst created the first text-based computer game, called Hunt the Wumpus. In this game, players followed a narrative containing clues about the location of a creature in a series of caverns. Using clues in the text, the players’ purpose was to locate the beast and shoot it.
In 1975, a programmer named Will Crowther created Adventure (also known as Advent and Colossal Cave). In this game, players used one- and two-word commands to respond to situations in a story. For example, in a room with a treasure chest and a staircase, a player might type “open chest”, then “down stairs”. Wrong answers often resulted in an interactive death.
During the 1970s and into the early 1980s, text-based adventure games such as this – another popular one was called Zork – dominated the field of computer games.
After playing Adventure on her husband’s computer, Roberta Williams persuaded her husband, Ken, to help her make games. Wanting to go beyond text-based technology, Roberta created simple illustrations that Ken encoded into the game. Their game, Mystery House, released in 1980, was the first computer adventure game to combine text and graphics.