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The Death and Rebirth of Genres
Via GameSetWatch, an article at the Manic Pop Blog about the way in which game genres disappear and reappear based on current trends. The post's author discusses the death of the Adventure game genre, and its reincarnation thanks to casual gaming: "A casual game like Azada takes that basic "Seek and Find" formula, adds in some additional bridging puzzles, and you end up with a game with a series of static screens filled with items to discover. You put these items in your inventory and combine them in order to open up additional areas. And some areas require that you solve puzzles to advance. And it's all wrapped up in a storyline, further driving your desire to "finish" the game. In other words, it's an old-school adventure game."
Get off my lawn!
Old school adventures didn't have no fancy static screens. Old school adventures were walls of text! And full of mazes of twisty little passages all alike. You young'ins and your shiny 8-bit graphics will never appreciate navigating a non-euclidean maze while fending off theives and grues. Bah!
xyzzy
... they simply evolved. Take Psychonauts, for example. Scratch the platformer surface and you'll find a detailed, well-written adventure game.
Everything I know about adventure games (and their death) I learned from Old Man Murray.