Venture

Also known as: N/A

Developer: Exidy

I've always liked the concept of Venture, and mildly enjoyed the game as a whole…however, I was surprised to find that the Intellivision version was my personal favorite of the bunch. If feels like the best overall package - the graphics aren't bad, the game controls and plays well, and the game has multiple difficulty settings, allowing you to ease into playing the game or jumping right into the deep waters, if you're already a veteran. And, well, if you don't really know what Venture is, I suppose I can cover that here, too. Basically, in Venture, you control a smiley face named Winky. Winky's goal is to enter various rooms on each stage and avoid/destroy the monsters waiting in each room so he can grab the treasure inside and leave. The game starts out in a hallway area, where your only option is to run from monsters and duck into a room. Once in a room, then you're able to fight back with arrows…but, remember, just like in other versions of the game, if you happen to kill a monster, wait for their corpse to disappear and/or maneuver around the corpse…if you touch it, you'll lose a life. The only real frustration I had with this version of Venture that I didn't happen to see when playing any other version is that when leaving a room and entering the hallway, I had a few instances where I instantly died. A hall monster happened to appear right at the doorway, so as the screen transitioned from room to hall, Winky instantly died. It feels cheap when that happens, but fortunately, everything else in this game is done well enough that it didn't prevent me from wanting to continue to play. In fact, this Invellivision version is the last variation of Venture that I've played and I've probably put more time into this one than any of the others. In the other versions, I sometimes felt frustrated while lining up my shots and trying not to touch enemies to get killed…but for whatever reason, I had zero issues with any of that in this version. Aside from the occasional "door deaths" as I called them, this was a pretty frustration-free experience. If the concept of Venture sounds neat to you, this is the variation that I, personally, would recommend.

Review added: 04/28/2026