Career
Born in Miami, Florida and currently living in Platteville, Wisconsin, Adams was the first person known to create an adventure-style game for personal computers, in 1978 on a 16KB Radio Shack Travel Related Services-80 Model I, written in the BASIC programming language. Colossal Cave was written two years earlier by Will Crowther, but on a minicomputer (the PDP-10). These early text adventure games use a minimal parser, recognizing 2-word commands of the form VERB NOUN. Adams"s work was very influential on the adventure-gaming industry.
In 1990 Computer Gaming World reported a statement by a "respected designer" that it was impossible to design new and more difficult adventure puzzles, because Adams had already created them all in his early games.
The games from his company, Adventure International, were subsequently released on most of the major home Personal Computer platforms of the day, including Travel Related Services-80, Apple II series, Atari 8-bit series and Commodore Positron Emission Tomography. Versions of the games were also made for later platforms such as Vic-20 and some also had versions produced with rudimentary graphics. Since the late 1980s Scott Adams has worked as a senior programmer for AVISTA in Platteville.
In 2013, Scott Adams released the Bible-based The Inheritance, his first game in over ten years. As in most of his other games, the player is the protagonist of a novel-like story, and helps events unfold in a text adventure setting.
However, this new game also includes sound.
Adventureland (1978)
Pirate Adventure (1978–1979)
Secret Mission (1979) (see also: Mission: Impossible)
The Count (1979)
Strange Odyssey (1979)
Mystery Fun House (1979)
Pyramid of Doom (In collaboration with Alvin Files) (1979)
Ghost Town (1981)
Savage Island, Participant I (1982)
Savage Island, Participant II (In collaboration with Russian Wetmore) (1982)
Golden Voyage (In collaboration with William Demas) (1982)
Sorcerer of Claymorgue Castle (1982)
Return to Pirate"s Isle (Exclusively for TI-99/4A systems) (1983)
Questprobe series:
Questprobe #1: The Hulk (1984)
Questprobe #2: Spider-Manitoba (1984)
Questprobe #3: The Fantastic Four (1984)
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (in collaboration with Phillip Case) (1984)
Return to Pirate"s Island 2 (August 2000)
The Inheritance (February 14, 2013).