Adventuremania (1983)

As a child I was obsessed with making stuff, it started with cardboard boxes and moved on to wood by the age of 5. By 10 I was constantly visiting rubbish dumps to find broken electrical stuff I could use to build what ever my imagination could imagine. Space ships, cars, satellite dishes to search for aliens – Of course all of this failed. — Martin Webb, writing in a 2020 forum post Tenterden, in Kent. For all the games we’ve seen so far by teenagers, even when commercialization has happened, parents have either been standing by the sidelines or supportive. Software Innovations, founded by four 16-year olds, included “$100 investment donations from parents”. Greg Hassett, who wrote his work between the ages of 12 and 14, had his initial publisher contact (Mad Hatter Software) through the Boston Computer Society (founder, 13-year-old Johnathan Rotenberg). Alex Kreis’s parents sold their family upright piano to get him a computer and his initial publishing was through direct personal…