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Portal was considered one of the videogames of 2007. Reviewers and gamers alike just couldn't get enough of Valve Software's strange take on the FPS genre. Many reviewers called it the most original game of the year. Some said it was the most original game of the decade.

But Killscreen Poetry is here to tell you otherwise: Portal is a massive rip-off. And not just any old rip-off either. We're talking Thailand-scale copyright infringement here.

Let me explain. The game involves a very basic idea. You have a gun. It fires two types of portals. One is blue and the other is orange. You walk through one of these portals and come out the other, like so:


An "original" idea? Never been done before? Well, prepare to be shocked.

After scouring the history of videogames, I stumbled upon a little Atari 2600 gem called Adventure. Released in 1979, Adventure not only features the most original title ever created for a video game, according to Wikipedia it was also "the first action-adventure game" in history.

If that doesn't impress you, this screenshot should:


In case you're wondering, the bright green square towards the left of the screen represents your character. The other brown and grey squares, and that strange black line, represent your "adventure". It is, quite literally, 4096 bytes of pure gaming fun... meaning this highlighted text takes up more hard drive space than the entire game.

Admittedly, on first impressions, it might not seem like Portal and Adventure have much in common, apart from the fact they both feature a colour palette of more than two different colours.

But there is one small aspect of Adventure that seems to have made its way into Valve Software's blockbuster. Examine the following screenshots closely:

Screen 1: As you can see, the hero of Adventure (now a fuzzy blue square) clutches a black key (well, more accurately, a key hovers near him). He needs to get past the blue wall in front of him so he can "adventure". How can he do this?

Screen 2: Easy. The hero, using the strange purple contraption hovering above the blue wall, enters into the wall.

Screen 3: The hero then emerges safe on the other side.

What you have just witnessed is the hero using a portal. That's right: a portal. In Adventure, the portal is a strange and unimaginative purple contraption that doesn't really make sense. In Valve's Portal, it's a gun.

What's the difference? Absolutely nothing.

Valve has completely ripped off the very idea of a "portal" from Adventure. They have copied the "portal", removed the charm of fuzzy squares and unnecessary black lines, and then tried to pass it off as their own idea. Sure, Valve may have added a few "bells and whistles" like an extra one-hundred thousands colours and real world physics, but in the end, it's still a portal.

And what's more, the world fell for it. Including you.

I can only assume that the makers of Adventure are right now considering legal action. This type of gross plagiarism could result in the quality 1979 Atari game becoming unprofitable. Indeed, Adventure could potentially lose its entire market share of portal games, which, until Portal was released, probably stood at 100% of all portal consumers.

Shame on you Valve. Shame.