Colossal Cave Adventure is a text-based adventure game, released in 1976 by developer Will Crowther for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. It was expanded upon in 1977 by Don Woods. In the game, the player explores a cave system rumored to be filled with treasure and gold. The game is composed of dozens of locations, and the player moves between these locations and interacts with objects in them by typing one- or two-word commands which are interpreted by the game's natural language input system. The program acts as a narrator, describing the player's location and the results of the player's attempted actions. It is the first well-known example of interactive fiction, as well as the first well-known adventure game, for which it was also the namesake.
Colossal Cave Adventure running on a PDP-11/34 with a monitor, showing the point system
William Crowther in 2012
Teleprinter computer terminal
Unix version of the game on an Osborne 1 computer circa 1982
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)'s PDP-10, later marketed as the DECsystem-10, is a mainframe computer family manufactured beginning in 1966 and discontinued in 1983. 1970s models and beyond were marketed under the DECsystem-10 name, especially as the TOPS-10 operating system became widely used.
Working DEC KI-10 System at Living Computers: Museum + Labs
Flip Chip from a DEC KA10, containing 9 transistors, 1971
Quick Latch Memory Bus Terminator, used on KI10, 1973
KL10 Wire-Wrap CPU Backplane