Adventure is such a broad genre, it takes in many game styles and really any subject could be turned to an adventure. Typically an adventure is very story driven with characters and locales that are consistant within the game world.

The first adventure games to appear were text adventures, which typically use a verb-noun parser to interact with the user. These were the first things to appear on mainframe computers after [Space War]?, evolving from early titles like Hunt the Wumpus and Adventure ([Will Crowther]?, c1975; expanded by [Don Woods]? 1976) to the widely popular Zork series (1979-) which made its way onto the new Apple II as well as most of the other types of personal computers.

Adventure games blend very much into RPGs. Some companies that were important in bringing out text adventures were Adventure International, Infocom, [Level 9]?, and [Melbourne House]?.

Graphical adventure games were introduced by a new company called On-line systems, which later changed its name to [Sierra On-line]?. After the rudimentary [Mystery House]? (1980) they established themselves with the full adventure [King's Quest]? (1984), appearing on various systems, succeeded with a variety of strong titles. In 1987 a second major developer entered the field, Lucasarts?, with the release of Maniac Mansion that replaced the text-based parser with a point-and-click interface.

Another variety of adventure game is the action adventure, which as far as I can tell was introduced by Nintendo with the very nice title The Legend of Zelda (1985). In these, the player controls the character directly, but still gathers items and solves puzzles. Again, these are very close to RPGs.

Text adventures (also called interactive fiction)

• Zork series (1979-)
• [Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy]? (1984)

Sierra adventures

• [Kings Quest]? series (1984-)
• Space Quest series (1986-)
• Quest for Glory series (?-)
• [Police Quest]? series (1987-)
• Leisure Suit Larry series (1987-)
• [Gabriel Knight]? series (1993-)

Lucasarts adventures

• Maniac Mansion (1987)
• Monkey Island series
• [Sam and Max Hit the Road]?
• Day of the Tentacle
• [Zak McCracken and the Alien Mindbenders]?
• [The Dig]?
• [Grim Fandango]?

Unclassified so far

• [Beneath a Steel Sky]?
• [Blade Runner]?
• [Broken Sword]? series
• Diskworld? series
• [Little Big Adventure]? series
• Outcast?
• [Tex Murphy]? series
• [The Longest Journey]?
• Tomb Raider series

More information about adventure games can be found in Adventureland, http://www.iflegends.org/~adventure/.

See also : Video game