History
In 1983, Marvel Comics searched for a licensee for use of its characters in a home computer game, and approached Adventure International; its founder and CEO Scott Adams was interested in the venture as an avid reader of Marvel since his childhood, and the two parties agreed to a contract on December 1, 1983. Marvel's ten-year license for Adventure's use of its characters was Marvel's first long-term license, as well as Adventure's first use of licensed characters. Adams, given unlimited freedom in creating the games, spent an afternoon coordinating a rough overview of the series with Marvel writer John Byrne, and Bob Budiansky would oversee the entire project. The series title came from Adams's attempt to formulate a title that would indicate the player's involvement in a search. The Hulk was selected as the star of the first installment because of his widespread recognition among general audiences, and the game would be the Hulk's first appearance within the medium. Questprobe featuring The Hulk was initially advertised for release on May 1st, 1984, for the Apple II, Atari 8-bit computers, BBC Micro, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, but was delayed until June 6th with Acorn Electron, Dragon 32 and TRS-80 Color Computer versions added to the platform roster. It was also ported to the Commodore 16 and DOS.
The game's release was accompanied by a comic similarly titled Questprobe, with the first issue centering on the Hulk being tricked into saving a doomed planet. Because wholesalers had no provisions for distributing comics, Adventure International decided to reduce the size of subsequent issues in order to package the comics along with the games.
The company initially announced that it planned to release 12 games for the series. Adams later disclosed plans to release a new game every three to five months, with a projected total of twelve or thirteen games. Subsequent games involving Human Torch and Captain America were planned at the time, as were potential games showcasing Iron Man and a villain character.
The second title, Questprobe featuring Spider-Man, was launched at the Personal Computer World show in London in September 1984 although the game was still in its testing stage where it was revealed that the company were moving from the TRS-80 to the IBM PC for development because of the size of the new full-sentence interpreter.
