I would love to get your various viewpoints on when you consider the penultimate time period for playing adventure games was. Defining an adventure game in that other thread by Jackal was easy enough, something Specs from the Soda Poppers could probably manage in his sleep. But even Specs would balk at something this daunting, so I’ll get the ball rolling on this one.

Focusing solely on commercial adventure games, I would posit that it began in 1990 and ended in 1998. The catalyst was The Secret of Monkey Island. The 1993 release of Day of Tentacle firmly cemented this as a golden age, technology was no longer a barrier to offering a multi-faceted experience encompassing animation and voice acting, which in turn further enhanced the most crucial element at the heart of all adventure games: story.

Humongous Entertainment would ramp up the production value already observed in Day of the Tentacle to an even higher echelon. In 1994 they released Freddi Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds. An edutainment point & click adventure game featuring television-quality animation, nine different voice actors, an extensive soundtrack nearly to CD-quality standards by George Sanger despite the compression. All of which was spooled directly off the disc drive onto the computer screen. The forward momentum had been achieved for Humongous and they continued this for many years.

Side note - there were numerous companies doing wonderful things during this golden age for adventure fans, to name a few of those: Adventure Soft creating the first couple of Simon the Sorcerer games. Westwood Studios with the Legend of Kyrandia trilogy. Presto Studios crafting The Journeyman Project series. Great direction by all of those talented visionaries.

However, it was definitely Revolution Software, Humongous Entertainment and LucasArts that invested in the ideal style of 2D hand-drawn animation to still stay relevant, even well and truly into the 21st century. Visual distinctiveness balanced with immersive storytelling and harnessed by innovate technology. They clearly had the competitive edge in the adventure game market during the 90’s.

The selection of creative releases from Sierra and LucasArts was fading out by the turn of the new millennium. With those prominent developers gone, it begs the question what caused that to happen? My opinion is that awkward 3D technology contributed to the downward trend of the adventure game industry. Working within a new 3D engine framework would have caused workflow issues for the game designers. Plus the consumers weren’t used to the changeover from pixels to polygons.

It’s also worth mentioning that full motion video from this time period still looks quite nice. Dark Side of the Moon by SouthPeak Interactive is a decent example. Not to mention, the final two Tex Murphy games developed in the 90’s by Access Software.

1999 to 2005 represents the dormant years of adventure games being commercially viable. Even Humongous Entertainment was fizzling out by this point under the guidance of Infogrames/Atari. They would still release a few more superb adventures, but nothing was left of value by the time 2002 rolled around.

Simon the Sorcerer 3D. Broken Sword 3. Please don’t make me list anymore disappointing examples from this desolate hellscape era. There is a saying that 2D artwork ages like a fine wine, whereas 3D graphics age like milk. That aforementioned Simon game lends immense credence to this. 3D was a huge boon to console gamers, but not so much for PC gamers seeking narrative-driven gameplay rather than button mashing.

Every cloud has a silver lining, even in the middle of those bleak times. Her Interactive was able to capitalize on the lack of rival game developers focusing on adventure games. Conveniently they already had a solid game engine developed from when they released The Vampire Diaries back in 1996. Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill was placed onto store shelves in 1998, a clunky mishmash of 2D characters transposed onto 3D backgrounds. Not a brilliant start, but an okay beginning nonetheless. Their next game Stay Tuned for Danger was more refined graphics-wise.

They finally hit their stride with Message in a Haunted Mansion (2000). The golden age of consistently high-quality Nancy Drew games started with their 7th game release in 2002: Nancy Drew – Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake, and ended with their 13th mystery in 2005: Nancy Drew – Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon. Though it may sound paradoxical, a miniature golden age (at least for Nancy Drew fans) did exist within the darkest timeline of 1999 to 2005.

Speaking of timelines, the freeware point & click adventure community may have well been part of a different dimension altogether, because it was absolutely booming during the early 2000’s unlike the commercial scene. Games made with Adventure Game Studio and the Sludge engine were readily available online and heaps of fun to play. Tim Furnish of Hungry Software released Out Of Order in 2003 and it was a particular favourite of mine. Re-releases of Lure of the Temptress and Beneath A Steel Sky also solidified 2003 as an excellent year for freeware. The AGS community continued to expand over time culminating in some great games. A Tale of Two Kingdoms by Crystal Shard feels like a proper spiritual successor to the King’s Quest series. Alongside LucasArts homages such as Indiana Jones and the Fountain of Youth demo by Screen 7.

Youth? Sounds like the perfect segue into the last section of my post. What truly rejuvenated the retail market for adventures was irrefutably Telltale Games. Bone: Out from Boneville was the perfect way to test the waters in 2005. A 3D engine with cartoon-esque colouring showcasing familiar comic book characters created by Jeff Smith.

Telltale Games quickly moved onto their main juggernaut series in 2006 with the dynamic duo we all know and adore: Sam & Max Freelance Police! Telltale benefited from two core demographics wanting to buy their games: Older players that had already experienced Hit the Road in 1993, and young people discovering Steve Purcell’s iconic characters for the first time. Selling the games in episodic format kept things manageable for the company to develop things smoothly. The consumer benefited from being able to digest the storyline at their own pace.

The renaissance era for commercial adventure games had officially been ushered in thanks to Telltale.

Now it’s your turn, forum friends. What do you personally consider to be a golden age for adventure games? Be as objective or subjective as you like.

Hmmm... As much as I want to agree with Monkey Island, I think we'll really have to look at King's Quest IV in September 1988. According to Wikipedia, it sold 100k Units in 2 weeks.

That said, I really don't remember much hype about King's Quest in Europe, and I don't think that it was localized to other languages - so an English-only text adventure was very much limited appeal outside of English-speaking countries. LucasArts had amazing German localizations courtesy of Boris Schneider, and most of us that had an Amiga 500 had Monkey Island (one way or another).

So yeah, I don't really have a good argument against Monkey Island, at least when it comes to the Western market. I can't speak much about Japan, where The Portopia Serial Murder Case in June 1983 kicked off the genre in many ways.

(I originally wrote a bunch of stuff here about the end, but forgot some titles. I agree with the assessment of 1998-ish. Actually, I'd put the bookend after Broken Sword II and Riven in late 1997, whereas Grim Fandango sold _okay_ but not spectacularly. I think Grim was really the sign that the Golden Age was over. So "End of 1997" would be my opinion, commercially speaking.)

As for "What happened", the simple answer is definitely "3D", specifically 3D action games. The Playstation launched in the West in 1995, and Tomb Raider released in late 1996. Even though it's an action game, I do think that games like Tomb Raider really caught an audience that e.g., Doom/Quake hadn't reached since it was very adventure-esque. And Metal Gear Solid was a landmark title (alongside Half-Life on the PC) in 1998.

IMO: Golden age is 1986 ---> 1993 ("late 80's - early 90's" if you prefer). Ironically the best adventure game ever (Grim Fandango) put an end to the first era of classic adventures, and was a commercial failure.
Then I have a blind spot where nothing happens (except machinarium) and then BOOM: Thimbleweed Park, which is responsible for various feats: reviving the genre, preserving its legacy and paving the way for new funding means for indie devs.

Stone Age: Before 1990. Games were mostly crude due to technical limitations and primitive design choices (no QOL and dead states).

The Golden Age: 1990-1997. Started with Money Island and the rise of the LucasArts games. The idea of making games that were not fun to play was more widely rejected, and this was replaced with titles that now have legendary status. Even games that still clung to the idea of dead ends did so in a way that you really need to go out of your way to do so (The Legend of Kyrandia: Hand of Fate). This era ended with the massive success of Riven.

The Dark Ages: 1998–2011. Ironically, the death of adventure games started with Grim Fandango. He was the herald of things to come. It had blocky 3D graphics, clunky tank controls, and it was a financial failure. A similar case can be seen with Sierra's King's Quest: Mask of Eternity.
However, there were still some good games, even great ones: The Longest Journey, Syberia, Machinarium, and the early games from Wadjet Eye.

The Renaissance: 2012 onwards. Both Wadjet Eye's Resonance and Primordia were released this year, as was the first Deponia game. For gamers who want more cinematic and relaxed games, there was The Walking Dead. The same year, the Kickstarter campaign for Broken Age showed people that they don't need to rely on soulless corporations or self-funding to make games.

For me adventure games died shortly after 94. I think a lot of adventure games only succeeded in the mid 90s from people marveling over the technology (For example, everyone had to own Myst to really take advantage of their new CD-ROM; and then, how is it possible that a game can come out on 7 CDs, such as it was with phantasmagoria?). But I think it was clear that once the novelty of the technology faded, the adventure game failed to appeal to the ever-broadening audience even prior to the 3D revolution.  It was when modern games needed to be multi-playable that the final nail in the coffin was dealt. 

I might have a bias though, as I felt that mid-90s technology improvements did not translate to an improved adventure game experience. I hated that everything went hyper-cartoon, or soap-opera video.... and waiting for someone to read the text on the screen to me? boring. I went from an adventure game fanatic to a casual gamer in a short time span

If I remember the late 90s correctly: The Dig, Full Throttle and Grim all got mixed reviews.  Sierra had drastically cut their Adventure game production after 1995.  If anything, 1993 was the boom before the fizzle--just about every game company had put their towel in the ring: Microprose, SSI, Tsunami, Interplay, Accolade, EA Games all had adventure games that year

To fully answer this question though, we'd need to define "adventure game". If we are limiting adventure games down to point-and-clicks, the start of the era would obviously be 1990, but text adventure games were immensely popular in the early 80s for those who had the equipment to play them. If we mean to say "graphic adventure", I think it's safe to claim sierra got that rolling prior to 1990. The few people who had a computer in their home in the 80s and who also played games on them were definitely familiar with sierra. Wish we had numbers on the market share of adventure games at around 1988 or so

Excellent summaries from everyone so far, keep them coming.

@ MenhirMike

I was considering having 1997 as the cutoff point with the release of Broken Sword 2. However, I decided against it in order to give more leeway to Humongous Entertainment. Plus I didn’t want the Grim Fandango fans coming at me with their pitchforks.

@ Rubacava

Wow, that blind spot sounds more like a black hole if anything. Did you end up finding solace in freeware adventure games during that time period?

@ Joe

Fantastic write-up. I’m looking forward to exploring this ‘Money Island’ of which you speak. It will be my new vacation home.

Jokes aside, I am quite curious to know why you think the beginning of the renaissance was from 2012 onwards for commercial games. I would personally place it at the mid 2000’s. Frogwares revitalised the market’s desire for compelling adventures with a serious tone, for instance ‘Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened’.

Telltale Games started offering various comedic adventures around this time which also helped re-energise the stagnant market.

@ Phattie

I’ll just quickly preface this by mentioning that ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ is an excellent text adventure. For the most part, the demise of commercial text-based adventures was actually of huge benefit to the interactive fiction community. Financial backing was no longer required, which enabled direct access to many aspiring authors on the internet flaunting their literary creations. Production value was never necessary, so in turn nothing was compromised.

Jokes aside, I am quite curious to know why you think the beginning of the renaissance was from 2012 onwards for commercial games. I would personally place it at the mid 2000’s. Frogwares revitalised the market’s desire for compelling adventures with a serious tone, for instance ‘Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened’.

It's just that this year we had a boom in both quality and quantity (+ the biggest Kickstarter success at the time was p'n'c game). And more and more titles were released from that point onwards.

Of course, there were other games before that, but I would describe them as living on life support rather than being in a full-blown renaissance era.

Phattie, you made a lot of points I had in mind!

I do want to stand up for Grim Fandango, mentioned twice, negatively. As far as I can tell, it recieved positive reviews and even several awards. Several people have recommended the game to me as one of the greatest AGs of all time and it's in the top 10 of many best of lists. Adventuregamers.com had it at #1.

It didn't flop because it wasn't a good AG; it was an AG in a time of other genres.

Tried to keep that short, I want to focus on something different. Why this concept of "The Golden Age"?
Why is it such a big deal to fans of the genre?

It's mostly the way it ended in the early 2000s. I think it has to do with both nostalgia and consumer brain.

Suddenly, the big companies pulled the plug on the genre. Smaller companies just up and left. Many fans felt betrayed. The way Sierra and LucasArts just laid people off, sold out, what have you, to some, it was a shock. The implicit message fans got: thanks for your years of good money, but the thing you love is of no value to us anymore.

Consumers tend to feel their loyalty should mean something. When they're catering to for a while, they tend to feel entitled to it. Their expectations should matter. When you tell them their interest is bad in some way, they take it personal.

The big nostalgia-triggering titles were already 5 to 10 years in the past. Enough time in a modern life to get emotionally intertwined with wanting to escape backwards.

The Golden Age concept was mostly a coping response. Fans were late to discover their genre had become obsolete. First, many fingers were pointed at 3D shooters, big bad corporations and culture becoming less cerebral and more celebratory of dumb violence. It was disappointment turned outward, kind of resentful. But this one dude became the online Grumpy Gamer and he was pointing out all these structural flaws and how AG design should work. Late Gen-X'ers and millenials took notes.

The Renaissance finally channeled that nostalgia in a constructive way. In the freeware indie scene, but also with online content creators like Pushing Up Roses. They had taken on the concept of the Golden Age, but they looked at the phenomenon itself and the games of this era differently. Lovingly, but critically. The blame for the downfall shifted to bad design. Moon logic, guess-a-thon, try-everything-on-everything gameplay. Once this had crystalized far enough, the early commercial indie games were ready to gain enough traction. Wadjet Eye offered something for people nostalgic to the Golden Age that even Tell Tale didn't manage to pull off.

Looking back, most of the games in this wave try to re-create the mid 90s, with some quality of life improvements, using modern audio-visual technology to add a polish that was hard to achieve back then. But it's rooted in the concept of the Golden Age, a very limited outlook on what works and is valuable about adventure games.

Interactive fiction is closer related to the roots of the genre. I agree with Joe about how it started, but then most genres started out in a very basic form, due to technology and lack of game developing experience. IF quickly developed ways to improve, structurally, in gameplay, how the player could communicate their ideas to the prompt and vice versa. It's interactive storytelling. And both were taken in all sorts of directions, providing depth and immersion in ways other games could not pull off. Acclaimed writers provided stories, puzzles gained depth and variety. They were able to appeal to the imagination and the creative possiblities of language.

I'm not saying IF is inherently better than graphic point & click adventure games, or that sales don't matter, graphics and sounds are only window dressing, etc. I think the merits of the genre are different than what the appeals to nostalgia have to offer. And we're caught in this nostalgia trap because we think in terms of The Golden Age and The Renaissance.

edit: The Renaissance did something impressive in recognizing a potential market and making it happen. And I do think highly of several games in the Golden Age and Renaissance canon. But I think the concepts lack a varied understanding of adventure games and their properties and fixate on a limiting and idealized view of the past.

BobVP, that's a tremendous response, you've clearly given this a lot of thought.

In the best case scenario, concepts such as golden ages, tier lists, top 10 rankings, etc. Serve the purpose of saving time for people seeking out the supposed 'cream of the crop' from certain eras. In the worst case scenario, it ends up being very subjective, usually blinded by nostalgia. Nothing beats playing the game for yourself.

Genres are also mechanical and arbitrary to a certain extent. A short-hand for gauging whether you will actually resonate with a game. In my opinion, themes act as a far more powerful motivator. Do you want to play Monkey Island because it features 'pirates' or because it is a 'point & click adventure'?

I've played various adventure games across multiple decades, and I don't have any brand-loyalty whatsoever. I always judge games on their own individual merit.

Thank you for posting such a detailed reply. I will put in a good word for you with the Grand Inquisitor. No need to be totemized today!

Phew!

I'm trying to find some balance between being appreciative and critical, but I'm also sorting these thoughts at the same time. At some point I want to put my thoughts into the world, but looking back I often think: I could've been more conchise here, more nuanced there. On a few lucky occassions I manage to capture something without sounding like a layperson giving a lecture. I don't think this is one of those cases, but I do stand by what I wrote. I'm working through/towards something, I'm curious about other people's thoughts.

Making these distinctions and categories is also just a fun activity, I don't want to dissuade people from doing it. These concepts exist, defining them helps - even if you take my view and run with it.