The adventure game genre is very iconic to DOS. The rise and fall of adventure games happens roughly in the same timeframe as the rise and fall of DOS games themselves. There have been ports of adventure games to other platforms, but on the PC they feel right at home.
The game that really kicked off the golden age of the genre was King’s Quest, released by Sierra On-Line in 1984. Many other adventure games followed the template laid down by King’s Quest, such as Police Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry and many more. I don’t think any company made as many adventure games as Sierra did.
Of course other companies started making adventure games as well. One notable studio delivering quality adventure games was Lucasfilm Games, later renamed LucasArts. Maniac Mansion (1987) was a ground-breaking game by them, which featured a point & click UI and non-linear gameplay using multiple protagonists. LucasFilm was responsible for many great games, such as Indiana Jones, Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max, Full Throttle and lots of other ones.
Even though Sierra and LucasFilm dominated the scene, there were many other studios making great adventure games as well. Legend Entertainment made some very good ones, including Spellcasting (1990), Gateway (1992) and the hilarious Eric the Unready (1993).
Some other notable adventure games from various developers are Simon the Sorcerer (1993), Beneath a Steel Sky (1994), Flight of the Amazon Queen (1995) and I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1995).
I don’t think DOS Game Club would be complete without playing some of these awesome games. Question is… which one? Let us know!
Admin Edit: We covered Quest for Glory in August 2017. Go discuss it in its dedicated forum.
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