I’d no idea that the cave in Adventure was based on a real cave, nor that it was discovered by others because the mainframe it was on became an IMP.
It must have been strange for Pat. By the time she encountered Adventure firsthand, at a Cave Research Foundation meeting in Boston sometime in 1976 or 1977, she was Patricia Wilcox, having married the leader of the 1972 expedition. Will’s computer game proved a delightful oddity for the experienced cavers in their circle, and indeed for anyone who knew Mammoth well. In Boston, the foundation spent much of their meeting playing Adventure. Because they played the more popular version supplemented by Don Woods, who had embellished sections of the game, Patricia didn’t immediately recognize the cave it described. She told a researcher in 2002 that it was “completely different from the real cave.”
Except it wasn’t: Mammoth cavers who tried Adventure found they needed no maps. It was so accurate they could navigate it from memory.