Graphic Adventure Game - History - Point-and-click Adventure

Point-and-click Adventure

A new kind of graphic adventure emerged following the introduction of the point-and-click interface. The earliest example is the little known Planet Mephius, authored by Eiji Yokoyama and published by T&E Soft only in Japan for the FM-7 computer in July 1983; alongside a command menu system, it introduced a point-and-click interface, utilizing a cursor to interact with objects displayed on the screen. A similar point-and-click cursor interface was later used in the adventure game Wingman, another title released only in Japan, for the NEC PC-8801 in 1984.

From 1984, mouse-controlled graphic adventures began emerging following the launch of the Apple Macintosh, with its mouse-controlled point-and-click interface. The first adventure game to take advantage of the Mac's point-and-click interface was the innovative but relatively unknown Enchanted Scepters released the same year, followed in 1985 with the ICOM Simulations game Deja Vu that completely banished the text parser for a point-and-click interface. That same year, the NES version of Chunsoft's Portopia Serial Murder Case worked around the console's lack of keyboard by taking advantage of its D-pad to replace the text parser of the original 1983 PC-6001 version with a cursor interface for the NES version. The following year, Square's Suishō no Dragon on the NES took it a step further with its introduction of visual icons and animated scenes.

In 1987, ICOM's second follow-up Shadowgate was released, and LucasArts also entered the field with Maniac Mansion, a point-and-click adventure that gained a strong following. A prime example of LucasArts' work is the Monkey Island series. In 1988, popular adventure game publisher Sierra Online created Manhunter: New York. It marked a major shift for Sierra, having used a text parser for their adventure games akin to text adventures. Another famous point-and-click graphic adventure game was Hideo Kojima's Policenauts (1994). Point-and-click was used in survival horror games such as Human Entertainment's Clock Tower series, which quickly became popular following its first release in 1995; it later branched off into a sequel and a spin-off.

Graphic adventure games were quick to take advantage of the storage possibilities of the CD-ROM medium and the power of the Macromedia Director multimedia-production software. Games such as Alice (1990), Spaceship Warlock (1991), The Journeyman Project (1993), and Iron Helix (1993) incorporated pre-rendered 3D elements and live-action video.

In 1993, Day of the Tentacle, a sequel to Maniac Mansion, was released. It featured the original game as an Easter egg. Its success allows lead game designer Tim Schafer to produce the 1995 hit Full Throttle, featuring the voice talent of Roy Conrad and Mark Hamill.

Space Quest IV became the first in the popular series to feature a point-and-click interface. King's Quest V was the first for its series. Eventually, the first games in both series would be remade in the point-and-click format with VGA graphics.

Other notable point-and-click adventure games include Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992), Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist (1993), Sam & Max Hit the Road (1993), Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (1993), Beneath a Steel Sky (1994), The Dig (1995), Full Throttle (1995), Torin's Passage (1995), Phantasmagoria (1995), Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars (1996) and Blade Runner (1997).