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.
Laura's Happy Adventures
Laura's Happy Adventures is an adventure game developed by Ubi Soft Montreal and published by Ubi Soft, and released as part of the Playmobil Interactive series of products. The game was originally released in 1998 becoming the first adventure video game to be produced primarily for young girls as a target audience. The setting was based on Playmobil's Victorian dollhouse line. The game's storyline revolved around a good-natured young girl named Laura as she solved the mystery of a magic diamond by helping the people around her, both within her family and the outside villagers, blending real-world everyday life with fantasy elements. A Game Boy Color-exclusive version, simply re-titled "Laura", was produced and released in 2000.