The 5 to 15 minutes you take beating adventure, will be spent mostly swearing at a giant chicken.
Adventure for the Atari 2600 is considered a classic by many. But I am definitely not one of those people.
You start out in front of a large yellow castle, as a square dot. Unless you have the instruction manual, you have NO clues what to do. Trust me people, either have the manual, or look it up online, or you're going to spend a large amount of time trying to figure out how this game works.
When you exit the first screen, you'll be in a large, open area. You can go down or left. Should you go down, you will be greeted by a giant chicken. Apparently, these are supposed to be dragons. I can only tell because there're dragons on the case. These giant chickens are the only enemies, so they in fact MUST be dragons.
I know I'm complaing about graphics on an Atari, but they could have made a better dragon design, by far. Even on Atari. 2% of the cartridge was used to include something interesting- the first Easter egg. If you set the difficulty to hard as it can go, travel to the third castle, and go through the bottom of it for a while, you'll see "Programmed by" and the name of the programmer (forgot who.) Atari was mad, but they only found this after release, and decided it wasn't worth it to recall the product, or even fix this problem. Every copy of adventure today has this egg. They could have taken it out and improved the dragon graphics, but I actually prefer having the Easter egg in. It is a part of gaming history, and Easter eggs might never had become popular without it. Kudos to adventure for that!
Even with the limited space, revising the "dragon" design to a more traditional one could have worked. But instead, they kept the giant chicken one. A traditional Japanese dragon will always be on all 4s- this one stands on 2, and looks like big bird, from sesame street.
Anyway, if the chicken/dragon reaches you, it will try to eat you. If your close enough to its beak, it will succeed, and you will be stuck in its stomach. What's so bad about that? There's no way out. Yes, NO way out. You have to reset the game. Thankfully, all the items will stay in their position, but all the dragons you may have slain will be alive again.
To slay a dragon, you must find some arrow, and touch the dragon with it. The dragon (chicken) will just bow its head, and stop moving completely.
So why not just carry the arrow at all times? Because you can only carry one item at a time. And you need keys, which unlock castles.
As you approach the second castle, another chicken comes for you. Except this one's green. So if you haven't killed the first one yet, you'll have two on your tail. Good luck, since these dragon chickens can break all the rules. As you walk a set path, they'll go wherever they want, and screen jump. So you drop your key, and go for the arrow, but get devoured on the way. Now what? Many of the screens are REALLY narrow, so when you respawn, it's basically impossible to get back your key or arrow, and you have to just give up. Other times, when you're eaten, your items will fall off the mandatory path. The only way to fetch these is by using a bridge you can pick up (which is essential to beating the game, by the way), but good luck dropping it in the right position with those dragon chickens breaking all the rules. They'll get you, and you'll lose the bridge off the path too.
Once you unlock the final castle, there will be a trophy in there. You need to pick this up, and bring it back to your castle. Now there's one thing between you and victory- giant chickens. Should you make it back to the front door of your castle with the trophy, the screen will flash seizure inducingly (probably having killed many people) and you win.
If your eaten on the way, you'll have to reset. If you left the bridge or trophy on the wrong side of the chasm (walkway?), there will be no way to get it, and it's impossible for you to win. Other times, the chickens will be right at the screen's entrance, and there will be no way to get past them, and grab your trophy. (Assuming you also lost the arrow and bridge.) So even after all that stupid frustration, if you're missing a few key items, it's over. Otherwise, if you do win, you're treated to knowing you beat the game, and a full length seizure.
Adventure is probably better left as a thing of the past. Thanks for reading.