I pulled something off the shelf the other day that I haven’t looked at in a while. It’s an old cartridge from the Atari 2600. The game: Adventure.
You don’t need to be into games to follow this; it’s more about the connection than anything else.
I was about ten when the Atari 2600 came out. I didn’t get one right away, but the next year I did. That Atari 2600 box sat on the floor by the TV as if it belonged there. No setup, no learning curve. Push the cartridge in, flip the power switch, and you’re playing games.
Adventure
Most people remember Combat because it came with the system. It was a great game too. You’d play tanks or planes… quick rounds, done.
But Adventure was the one that stuck with me.
The Gold Castle in Adventure
If you saw it now, you’d probably shrug. You control a square moving through a handful of rooms. There are keys, castles, and enemies that are supposed to be dragons. That’s the whole thing. But it didn’t feel small.
What made it work for me was that it didn’t explain itself. You start moving and see what happens. Try something, fail. Try something else. You slowly figure out how things connect. There’s no push from the game. It just sits there and lets you work it out.
That part stuck with me more than anything.
And then there’s the hidden room. No real hint it’s there. You either stumble into it or you don’t. When you do, you find the name of the person who made it, Warren Robinett, tucked inside the game itself.
At the time, that wasn’t normal. Software developers didn’t get credited. So Warren put his name in anyway, quietly. As a kid, that felt like discovering something you weren’t supposed to see.
Signed Cartridge
Fast forward to now. I was able to get a copy of Adventure that Warren Robinett signed.
Then I actually reached out to him. Sent an email with pictures of the cartridge, and asked if he could confirm it.
He wrote back.
Not only did he confirm it, but he wrote a nice note. It wasn’t just a quick “yes, that’s mine.” There was a sense that he appreciated it still being out there, still meaning something to someone who played it all those years ago.
That hit me more than I expected. Because for me, that game wasn’t just another cartridge. It was the game. The one I kept going back to. The one I figured out piece by piece. The one that stuck.
And here’s the person who made it, decades later, still connected to it, still willing to respond, still interested.
Now, when I look at that cartridge, it’s not just an old piece of plastic with a signature on it. It’s a straight line from sitting on the floor as a kid, trying to figure out where a key goes, to getting an email from the guy who built that whole world.
It is a nice feeling.
The game itself is simple. Still is. But it leaves room for you to think, to try things, to get stuck and work your way out of it. That’s probably why it stuck around in my head all this time.
And now there’s this added layer to it. Not just nostalgia, but a real connection back to the person behind it.
Anyway, I figured you’d appreciate that part of it, even if the game itself isn’t your thing.
Still kind of wild to me that he signed it… and that he cared enough to confirm it.
William W. Winter is the creator of Apple II Adventure Studio, where you can try your hand at making text adventures with a modern web-based design tool. You can try it out and make your own text adventures for free at: https://textadventurestudio.com
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