Open world
There is no consensus on what the earliest open world game is, due to differing definitions of how large or open a world needs to be. Ars Technica traces the concept back to the free-roaming exploration of 1976 text adventure game "Colossal Cave Adventure", which inspired the free-roaming exploration of "Adventure" (1980), but notes that it wasn't until 1984 that what "we now know as open-world gaming" took on a "definite shape" with 1984 space simulator "Elite", considered a pioneer of the open world; Gamasutra argues that its open-ended sandbox style is rooted in flight simulators, such as SubLOGIC's "Flight Simulator" (1979/1980), noting most flight sims "offer a 'free flight' mode that allows players to simply pilot the aircraft and explore the virtual world". Others trace the concept back to 1981 CRPG "", which had a free-roaming overworld map inspired by tabletop RPG "Dungeons & Dragons". The overworld maps of the first five "Ultima" games, released up to 1988, lacked a single, unified scale, with towns and other places represented as icons; this style was adopted by the first three "Dragon Quest" games, released from 1986 to 1988 in Japan.
LucasArts adventure games
In 1995, after a year-long hiatus from adventure games, LucasArts released "Full Throttle". "Full Throttle" was designed by Tim Schafer, and follows the story of Ben, a biker in a dystopian future who has been framed for murder. It was the first LucasArts adventure game to be released for Windows, although support for DOS was still retained. The game was the tenth to use the SCUMM engine, which had undergone further enhancements. The game kept a modified version of the streamlined interface used in "Sam & Max Hit the Road", but introduced a contextual pie menu that dictated how players interacted with the game. "Full Throttle" featured technology called INSANE (Interactive Streaming Animation Engine) to assist with cut scene animation and the game's action sequences. The game's musical score was produced by Peter McConnell, and incorporated a title theme by The Gone Jackals. "Full Throttle" was the first LucasArts adventure game to be distributed only on CD-ROM.
Later in 1995, "The Dig" was published. Production had started in 1989, however "The Dig" was plagued with development problems. The final version of the game was overseen by Sean Clark, although two previous versions had involved Noah Falstein, Brian Moriarty and Dave Grossman. The game's story itself was envisioned by Steven Spielberg, who had concluded that a film version would be prohibitively expensive. Spielberg's story focused on a group of astronauts becoming stranded on an alien world while on a mission to stop an asteroid hitting Earth. "The Dig" used the SCUMM engine and the INSANE technology. In addition, fellow Lucasfilm company Industrial Light & Magic was involved in the game's special effects. Michael Land composed the game's music, which included excerpts, many as short as one or two chords, from Richard Wagner's work.