Venture is a conversion of Exidy‘s 1981 arcade game of the same name, and was a launch title on the ColecoVision in 1982.

You play as “Winky“, a smiley face with a bow and arrows, and must explore various rooms, shooting monsters and collecting treasures.

The game begins in a main hallway with four rooms – each with one or two entry doors. Patrolling this room are green “Hallmonsters” that move around and chase the player (represented as a red dot) and must be avoided at all costs (if they touch you you’ll instantly lose a life). Once inside a room the scene zooms in and you must then avoid or shoot the monsters inside and try to collect the treasure. Which is easier said than done because the meanies judder around like crazy to avoid your arrows.

There are four stages in total and as they increase the number of entry doors in each room decreases. And – as you complete each room – the Hallmonsters speed up their chase in the main hallways. Once you’ve completed all four stages they repeat and cycle through again (although I did notice that the rooms on stage four seem like repeats of those in stage one, so maybe there are only really three stages in this version).

Venture is a very simple game, but is quite challenging. This port plays pretty much the same as the arcade original, although it’s not quite as difficult as its arcade parent on the easier of the four available skill levels.

Venture is okay for a game released in 1982. It’s nothing special, but is reasonable fun for a while. It was also released for the Atari 2600 and Mattel Intellivision.

More: Venture on Wikipedia