Colossal cave adventure magic words code#

Here you have to release a bird you captured earlier to get past a dangerous snake. Woods would later go on to make an expanded version of the game with extra features like a scoring system, an irate dragon and perhaps most brilliantly an underground vending machine which sold fresh batteries for the player’s lamp.Īdventure forces you to think outside the box.

Colossal cave adventure magic words code#

When Stanford student and Don Woods & his friend John Gilbert discovered the game, they spent all night playing it, making hand drawn maps and cracking open Adventure’s source code to try and get extra points. On his return he found it was all over the early Internet. Shortly afterwards, Crowther placed the game’s code on the BBN mainframe and went away for a month’s vacation. Initially Crowther just showed off the game to some of his D&D buddies, who began playing it for hours on end, as well as suggested ways to improve the code. The 2010 documentary Get Lamp, which covers the history of text adventure games was named in its honour. In the game, one of the very first essential items you need to pick up is a lamp. The early text adventure games had a crude AI which could also respond to basic commands such as TAKE KEYS. you can move from room to room with commands like NORTH, SOUTH, EAST and WEST. If you’ve played any IF before, you’ll know that movement is non-linear i.e.

The nearby Bedquilt cave system served as the inspiration for the layout of ‘Adventure’.Īs you may have guessed from the presence of the dwarf, Crowther was also a huge fan of Dungeons & Dragons, so also drew on elements of this for the play. Tourists at the Mammoth Cave National Park. Some of the items available for pickup in the game, such as an axe wielded by an angry dwarf were also inspired by finds he’d made during his time spelunking. Still, Crowther used his knowledge of caving to map the game out on very similar lines to the real-life Bedquilt cave system in Kentucky.

That honour belongs to 1973’s Hunt the Wumpus. It wasn’t the first IF adventure, or even the first one to be set in a cave system. Originally started as a pet project so he’d have something to do with his daughters, Colossal Cave Adventure or ‘ Adventure’ as it was known contained a number of original quirks. After he and his wife divorced, Crowther stopped caving altogether and began development on the text game that would cement his status in video game legend. This teleprinter was connected to a BBN PDP-10 mainframe.

They put their programming knowledge to good use, employing an early teleprinter in their home to map out their caving network. When he wasn’t busy giving the web to the world, Crowther and his wife Pat used to enjoy ‘spelunking’ or ‘caving’ as it’s more commonly known. Teleport to the 70’s to learn about the original cheat code.Īlthough most of us learn that the magic words are “please” and “thank you” from a young age, pioneer programmer and MIT student William Crowther had other ideas.ĭespite being best known for creating one of the very first interactive fiction (IF) games Colossal Cave Adventure in 1975, Crowther actually has a much more important claim to fame: whilst working for research firm BBN (Bolt Beranek and Newman) he was one of the original developers of ARPANet, a precursor to the modern day Internet.