I don't know when, exactly, it happened, but at some point in 1982, I lost interest in the Atari 2600, and consequently I drifted away from video games in general. Then I proceeded to ignore them for what seemed like years.
I remember this period well because of what it represented: the only time in my life when video games were basically nonexistent and none of my relationships or interests had any connection to them. It was the "gameless void," as I call it. It was the phase that separated the points in which (a) I lost interest in games once their novelty wore off and (b) I rediscovered games in a big way when I began frequenting arcades with my brother, James, and the Commodore 64 came into my life.
The game that I most closely associate with the end of that phase and the start of the new era is Venture. It was the first game that I really got into when I returned to the scene. It was the most appealing of the many new games that had accumulated in my brother's magic box (inexplicably, as usual) during the time that I was away.
I was immediately interested in playing Venture because I was certain that it was related to 1979's Adventure, which had always been one of my favorite 2600 games. It had to be a sequel to Adventure, I thought, because the word venture was contained within the word adventure, and that was surely a sign that the two games were intrinsically linked (basically I didn't know what the word venture meant, and in looking for an answer, I turned to "logic," which told me that any morphological component that sounded similar to the word it helped to form was surely a synonym for said word)!
Venture wasn't exactly a new game (its cartridge's label displayed the date "1982"), so I was surprised that I missed it originally. Really, I couldn't believe that they made a sequel to one of my favorite games without me knowing about it!
I couldn't wait to see what it was!
"If this is in fact a sequel to Adventure," "I conjectured, "then it must be the case that this miniaturized maze represents only the surface and that much larger spaces are hiding somewhere between the cracks!"
In truth, though, I really didn't know what, exactly, I was looking at. Everything going on in this opening screen was jarringly strange. To start, I was in control of the tiniest video-game protagonist I'd ever seen. He (the avatar for sword-wielding guy depicted on the game's label) was nothing more than a dot--a mere speck of dust in a world dominated by giant incongruously shaped structures--and I didn't know how to feel about that. So I spent the first 20-30 seconds bemusedly observing the near-microscopic hero and wondering if what I was seeing was actually real (for a moment, I thought that maybe James had somehow gotten a hold of an "early, unfinished" version of the game--one that was using a dot as a placeholder for a soon-to-be-developed hero).
Also, the opening screen's visuals and activity didn't at all give the impression that Venture was an "adventure" game. Rather, with its mazelike layout and crowd of stalking ghosts, it looked more like an open-space version of Pac-Man. Though, it couldn't have been like Pac-Man because there were no chompable pellets!
"So what the hell is this?" I wondered.
As I entered the room, the camera, surprisingly, switched to a zoomed-in view and gave me a much closer look at the action, and this perspective change helped to give Venture's gameplay some important context. It told me a lot about what was going on. It revealed that the hero was not a dot but rather a moderately sized floating red happy face (which, while not an ideal form, was better than being a tiny spec) and that Venture's action was actually a lot like Berzerk's.
So by now it was obvious to me that Venture wasn't a sequel to Adventure or even spiritually related to it, no. It was something different. It was a straight action game. But while I was disappointed to learn that it wasn't the Adventure sequel I was hoping to play, I was still interested in exploring it further. I loved Berzerk, after all, and was very much down to play a game that was inspired by it.
And Venture closely followed the blueprint. Its hero could move about freely and fire lasers in all eight directions, and it challenged you to navigate your way through series of uniquely designed rooms, each of which was being patrolled by a group of stalking guardians. The goal, similarly, was to escape from rooms as quickly as possible, though Venture put a little twist on the action: To truly clear out one of its rooms, you had to procure the item that was present within it--the item that the was being protected by the guardians. And that little twist went a long way toward helping Venture to differentiate itself.
But, still, what dominated my thoughts, more than anything, was the game's camera- and style-shifting, which I found to be mind-blowing. In a snap, Venture's action could switch from "unconstrained Pac-Man" to "wacky Berzerk clone" and vice versa, and all I could think while witnessing such occurrences was, "This is like having two games in one!"
I was also fascinated by Venture's "advanced" mode of scaling. When you entered into one of the map's geometrical structures, you'd find yourself standing in a magnified version of it--a magnified version that was faithfully proportioned! This fascinated me because I was convinced that the game was actually doing some hard math and blowing up the shapes in real time. "That's amazing!" I thought. I couldn't even think of an arcade game that was able to do something that advanced! (Of course, my thoughts on the matter were rather silly because the game wasn't really doing any "advanced math," no. Rather, it was simply drawing larger shapes. Also, Venture was originally an arcade game, so obviously something this "advanced" had already been done in that space.)
For me, the worst part was the sound that would play whenever the skull head was present. It was a highly unpleasant rumble whose blaring would cause a tension overload and send me into a panic mode. I was so anxious about the appearance of that skull head that I'd start counting in my head the moment I entered a room. If I hadn't procured the treasure by the time I counted to ten, I'd turn around and hightail it out of there. Remaining in a room for a longer period was simply too risky, I felt--particularly when you were far away from its exit points.
Honestly, I was never a big fan of the "invincible menace appears after a set amount of time and chases you out of the room" mechanic that was used in so many games from that era. I couldn't stand it when a game sought to hurry me along and thus deprive me of the ability to traverse its environments at a deliberate pace and explore them at my leisure. I was fine with arcade games doing this because I understood that games of their type were designed to provide players quick bites of action and therein force them to remain in constant motion, but I didn't care to see similarly pushy mechanics in console games because I expected such games to relax the rules and provide me more freedom.
Unfortunately, Evil Otto and his ilk didn't care what I thought.
Sadly, though, the changes were only cosmetic. There were no new gameplay additions. And disappointingly, this map's rooms had less variety of obstacle than the first. They contained only normally functioning guardians. There were no moving barriers or anything as distinct. None of this changed my opinion that I'd discovered a little gem of a game, no, but still I couldn't help but be bummed that Venture had run out of surprises so soon.
And that's really all there was to Venture: After you cleared the second map, you looped back to the first. The only thing that was different about each successive loop was that its enemies' speed increased. That was it. Venture was a short and simple arcade-style action game.
So, expectedly, the goal was to endure as long as you could and attempt to set a new high score. As usual, though, I ignored the scoring aspect entirely and focused all of my energy on trying to clear as many loops as possible. Because as far as I was concerned, true success was measured not in how many points you scored but in how far you advanced!
And, well, I was never really able to advance very far. I could only make it to the fourth loop. At that point, the map-patrolling ghosts grew to be so ridiculously speedy that they were able to track me down and kill me before I could reach any of the room entrances. I remember how I'd fruitlessly attempt to evade them and do so while thinking, "Where's Adventure's grabby little bat when I need him?"
Obviously he was too busy taking a giant duck on a world tour.
Venture had some shortcomings and annoying quirks, sure. Its hitboxes were unfavorable, the hero would become stuck on walls and corners if you weren't precise in your movements, and, strangely, you could die from making contact with enemies' mangled corpses (of all things). But still it was a very solid arcade-style action game. It played well, and its action was both fun and engaging. And that's why I considered it to be one of the 2600's best offerings.
More than anything, Venture was a great welcome-back present. It made me happy to be playing games again. It made happy to be home again--back on the 2600, where it all started. Very quickly, it reminded me why I loved the 2600 and simple games that invited me to apply my imagination and interpret their characters, worlds and gameplay elements in whichever way I desired to. And thus, importantly, it convinced me that the 2600 wasn't done quite yet; it was old, sure, but far from obsolete, and it deserved to have a place in my life going forward.
It was a new era in my life--one in which I was gaining a whole new appreciation for video games. I was on the path to becoming an enthusiast. And Venture was one of the games that put me on that path. It was the face of that new era.
And that's why I'll always look back on it with great fondness.
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