I was born in the early 1990s, and i was born into a family that adored games and films,

Are you familiar with the Broken Sword series of games? I'm not too deep into the genre but I was listening to the ListenUp podcast while looking around the GB forums and they mentioned the series.  I thought I'd mention it in case you weren't aware of the series.  Look it up here on GB or Google to see what it's all about.

They never died: they changed.

I think the terminology of "Adventure games" was wrong at it's inception. What you miss are "Adventure Puzzle" games, which have admittedly not received the mainstream attention as the newest blockbuster FPS or RPG. Adventure games, the process of exploring a new world with a high focus on story, meshed with action on consoles thus the terminology of "Action-Adventure". Like all games though, simple absolute genre constrictions do not apply entirely, for example Tim Shaffer'sPsychonauts could be considered an "Action-Adventure" with "Platforming" elements.

While "Adventure Puzzle" games might have had a falling out after the Myst clone goldrush of the mid-90's, they have been coming back quite recently. Syberia 3 has been announced, and I do reccomened Still Life which is another game made by the same creator.

I also recommened just about EVERYTHING TellTale is doing right now. Go order the second season of Sam And Max and I assure you your concern for this sub-genre will be mostly put to rest.

If you want to check out some adventure games nowadays, I suggest owning a DS. There, you can find Hotel Dusk, the Phoenix Wright series, and, my personal favorite, Professor Layton. Those are some of the best, pure adventure titles to come out in recent memory.

Are you familiar with all open world RPGs ever?  Well then there you go

1. yes, i played broken sword 1and 2, good, not fantastic
2. not in the sense I'm referring to it in
3. Yes, you are correct sir. I would be wiser to use "adventure puzzle" instead of adventure game, because of it's wide nature. I have played my fair share of action adventure games and i enjoy when developers try to bring some of the features into the game that resembles the classic "adventure-puzzle games" to make "action-adventure-puzzle games".
 and i thought  that syberia 3 was an April fools, and I din't like the atmosphere in still life. loved sam and max: ep's though.
4. I do own a DS, but i would not define Pr. Layton as an puzzle adventure game in the classical way, though i loved it
5.yes, there i go. still the FF-series does not cut it, no sir!

There's plenty of adventure games around today.  Look on portable game systems. 

"5.yes, there i go. still the FF-series does not cut it, no sir! "

The Sam & Max episodes are pretty old school.

"tiwi said:

"5.yes, there i go. still the FF-series does not cut it, no sir! "

I think he was referring to things like Fallout and Oblivion. Final Fantasy is hardly an "open world RPG"."

"If you want to check out some adventure games nowadays, I suggest owning a DS. There, you can find Hotel Dusk, the Phoenix Wright series, and, my personal favorite, Professor Layton. Those are some of the best, pure adventure titles to come out in recent memory."

I'll check it out. it seemed like something i would like. THxXx

Truth is non of the adventure games now a days can measure up to the ones in the 90s.   Games like Monkey Island, Day of the Tentical, and Grim Fandango set the bar so high for funny adventure games that one would be hard pressed to make better.

By the way if you have not played any of the games i mentioned you owe it to yourself, as a adventure fan, to play them. 

If your looking for new adventure games, now a days you have, A Vampyre Story, Rhiannon: Curse of the Four Branches, Strong Bad, Murder in the Abbey, Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, Sam and Max, Broken sword.

You seek adventure / puzzles?  If you have never played anything in the King's Quest series then you owe it to yourself if you call yourself an adventure fan!

Collection is less than 20 bucks on Amazon and you will get more than your money's worth from this series.  It is classic. 

Actually, it is less than 17 on Amazon.  You get 7 games.

If you still want "Adventure Puzzle" check out Zack and Wiki.

I think the basic problem of the adventure game was replayability. Some games, in particular Fate of Atlantis, experimented with multiple paths and alternative solutions, but nothing could really overcome the fact that buying and playing a Lucasarts or Sierra style adventure game was like buying a short and shallow book with pretty pictures, and unless you really, really found things in there to love (characters, settings, whatever), long term appeal was going to be very limited.

The action-adventure paradigm shift was simply adding an element of chaos and unpredictability; dynamic combat, physics puzzles, or simply VARIABLES in general.

I personally miss adventure games greatly, but i also realize they are sort of a relic now in terms of the gameplay. It sucks to see use A with B go down the drain for the sake of bop A repeatedly on head with B, but there you have it. Characters and story is what i really thought classic adventures brought to the table, and we haven't really lost that, though we certainly have more violent solutions to problems now (which is a bit sad for a genre that used to be able to entertain for hours without a single casualty). I'm pretty sure adventures aren't "dead" so much as they were forced to embrace TIME as a factor into their mechanics. Before, we were okay with worlds that waited for you to make a move. Gamers today expect situations to evolve dynamically, and it's really bloody hard to do mechanics like that in terms of dialog and character interaction.

I thought Penumbra was a great compromise; exploration, physics puzzles, limited combat and thick atmosphere. I also thought Call of cthulhu Dark corners of the earth was a very good adventure in terms of the amount of time spent NOT shooting dudes and rather getting past environmental obstructions. There are developers playing with the format all the time, and i'm pretty sure we'll eventually get a good amalgam of hands-on storytelling and non-violent problem solving.

That said, i don't think you could do Grim Fandango in any other way than the one they did in the first place, and it's incredibly sad to think of that world as a place we'll likely never see anything like again.

You didn't mention Monkey Island :[

Sunjammer, great post.