Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media, literature and film, encompassing a wide variety of literary genres. Many adventure games (text and graphic) are designed for a single player, since this emphasis on story and character makes multi-player design difficult. "Colossal Cave Adventure" is identified as the first such adventure game, first released in 1976, while other notable adventure game series include "Zork", "King's Quest", "The Secret of Monkey Island", and "Myst".
Video gaming in Japan
Sega's black and white boxing game "Heavyweight Champ" was released in 1976 as the first video game to feature fist fighting. The first stealth games were Hiroshi Suzuki's "Manbiki Shounen" (1979) and "Manbiki Shoujo" (1980), Taito's "Lupin III" (1980), and Sega's "005" (1981).
Eventually, the 1978 arcade release of "Space Invaders" would mark the first major mainstream breakthrough for video games in Japan. Created by Nishikado at Japan's Taito Corporation, "Space Invaders" pitted the player against multiple enemies descending from the top of the screen at a constantly increasing rate of speed. "Space Invaders" pitted the player against multiple enemies descending from the top of the screen at a constantly increasing rate of speed. The game used alien creatures inspired by "The War of the Worlds" (by H. G. Wells) because the developers were unable to render the movement of aircraft; in turn, the aliens replaced human enemies because of moral concerns (regarding the portrayal of killing humans) on the part of Taito Corporation. As with subsequent shoot 'em ups of the time, the game was set in space as the available technology only permitted a black background. The game also introduced the idea of giving the player a number of "lives". It popularised a more interactive style of gameplay with the enemies responding to the player-controlled cannon's movement, and it was the first video game to popularise the concept of achieving a high score, being the first to save the player's score. The aliens of "Space Invaders" return fire at the protagonist, making them the first arcade game targets to do so. It set the template for the shoot 'em up genre, and has influenced most shooting games released since then.
Taito's "Space Invaders", in 1978, proved to be the first blockbuster arcade video game. Its success marked the beginning of the golden age of arcade video games. Video game arcades sprang up in shopping malls, and small "corner arcades" appeared in restaurants, grocery stores, bars and movie theaters all over Japan and other countries during the late 1970s and early 1980s. "Space Invaders" (1978), "Galaxian" (1979), "Pac-Man" (1980) and "Bosconian" (1981) were especially popular. By 1981, the arcade video game industry was worth $8 billion ($ in ). Some games of this era were so popular that they entered popular culture. The first to do so was "Space Invaders". The game was so popular upon its release in 1978 that an urban legend blamed it for a national shortage of 100 yen coins in Japan, leading to a production increase of coins to meet demand for the game (although 100 yen coin production was lower in 1978 and 1979 than in previous or subsequent years, and the claim does not withstand logical scrutiny: arcade operators would have emptied out their machines and taken the money to the bank, thus keeping the coins in circulation). Japanese arcade games during the golden age also had hardware unit sales at least in the tens of thousands, including "Ms. Pac-Man" with over 115,000 units, "Donkey Kong" with over 60,000, "Galaxian" with 40,000, "Donkey Kong Junior" with 35,000, "Mr. Do!" with 30,000,