Microsoft Adventure

The Good
Microsoft Adventure implements the most popular version of the Colossal Cave Adventure: the one from 1977 with Woods' expansions to Crowther's original material. The programmer, Gordon Letwin, clearly tried to recreate the original as closely as possible, right down to the crude parser.

The only distinctive feature is the possibility to save the state to one of two slots on the diskette at any time during the game. It adds quite some comfort to the game play, especially if you're used to playing games that are a bit newer than this one.

If you're looking to experience the original game, Microsoft Adventure is a good choice. It doesn't leave anything out, and content-wise it doesn't add anything of its own.

The Bad
This might not be the right thing for you if you're not up for the real oldschool. In case you want to have a look at the original Adventure, but would like to have an improved interface and better mechanics than the original mainframe versions, there are a number of colourful clicky-button remakes with graphics and whatnot out there. But then I don't really see why you should be playing Adventure at all. Today, the game is mostly interesting for historical reasons because of all the concepts it introduced, and for that matter, an authentic implementation like Microsoft Adventure is better suited.

The Bottom Line
A good opportunity for home-computer players to experience the original mainframe Colossal Cave, much like it would have been to play the original one. An interesting history lesson, but probably too simple if you're not specifically interested in the topic.