Silicon Beach Software released Enchanted Scepters, the first point-and-click adventure game, in 1984, with drop-down menus for selecting player actions and a text description displayed in a separate window from the static graphics.

An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story, driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media, such as literature and film, encompassing a wide variety of genres.

Adventure is a video game developed by Warren Robinett for the Atari Video Computer System (later renamed Atari 2600) and released in 1980 by Atari, Inc.

The earliest action adventure video game to offer players an open-ended 3D gameworld was Mercenary, published in 1986. The aim of the game is to escape from the planet Targ, and the player is allowed to choose the best way to achieve this goal.