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".
Nonviolent video game
Discussion of the impact of violence in video games came as early as 1976's "Death Race" arcade game (a game with black and white graphics which involved running over screaming zombies). In the 1980s titles such as Exidy's "Chiller" (1986), Namco's "Splatterhouse" (1987) and Midway's "NARC" (1988) raised concerns about video game violence in the arcade. Home games such as Palace's "Barbarian" (1987) featured the ability to decapitate opponents. It was not until graphic capabilities increased and a wave of new ultra-violent titles were released in the early 1990s that the mainstream news began to pay significant attention to the phenomenon. In 1992, with Midway's release of the first "Mortal Kombat" video game, and then in 1993 with id's "Doom", genuine controversy was first ignited as the wide and growing popularity of violent video games came into direct conflict with the moral and religious ethics of concerned citizens. Protests and game-bannings followed the publicizing of these conflicts, and controversies would erupt periodically throughout the 1990s with the releases of such games as "Dreamweb" (1992), "Wolfenstein 3D" (1992), "Mortal Kombat II" (1993), "Phantasmagoria" (1995), "Duke Nukem 3D" (1996), "Blood" (1997), "Grand Theft Auto" (1997), "Carmageddon" (1997), "Postal" (1997), "Mortal Kombat 3" (1997), "" (1998), "" (1998), "Grand Theft Auto 2" (1999), and "" (1999) among others.
In April 1999, the fears of the media and violence-watch groups were legitimated in their eyes as investigations into the lives of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the shooters in the Columbine High School massacre, revealed that they had been fans of the video game, "Doom", and had even created levels for it today dubbed "the Harris levels". A great deal of discussion of violence in video games followed this event with strong arguments made on both sides, and research into the phenomenon which had begun during the 1980s received renewed support and interest.