Adventure
Adventures are one of the oldest of the genres. The adventure novel itself is also one of the earliest genres of novels. Adventure stories feature relatively flat characters who undergo risk and danger.
The most common format will have the hero meet a girl (or a boy, in more modern incarnations) after enduring several trials, be torn apart, and then reunited after more adventures. Morality is often very black and white, plots very linear. The Heroes are generally not formally involved in law enforcement but often find themselves battling evil and/or criminals while Walking the Earth. Vigilantes are common.
Perhaps the most famous adventure novelist is Jules Verne, whose novels are alternately treasured and butchered by Hollywood.
In visual media, it is similar to the Action Series but with less emphasis on violence, fighting and car chases and more on exotic locations, exploration and puzzle solving. See also Adventure Game. Often overlaps with just about every single other genre out there.
Subgenres
Not to be confused with the Atari 2600 game.
Anime and Manga
- One Piece.
- Rave Master qualifies.
- Pokémon
Film
- The National Treasure series
- If adventure has a name... it must be Indiana Jones. By the same token, Romancing the Stone, The Mummy 1999 and any number of other imitators of Indiana Jones count too.
- The Princess Bride
- Star Wars, overlapping with Space Opera.
Literature
- Doc Savage was a series of books published during the pulp era, featuring a Science Hero (and Genius Bruiser) who traveled the world seeking adventure and righting wrongs. He also carried a commission from the NYPD enabling him to act with official police authority.
- Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth and Around the World in Eighty Days by the aforementioned Jules Verne, overlapping with Speculative Fiction.
- The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.
- King Solomons Mines and sequels by H. Rider Haggard.
- Treasure Island and Kidnapped by Stevenson.
- The Headless Horseman by Thomas Mayne Reid, overlapping with Horror.
- The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien, overlapping with Fantasy.
- Robert E Howard's Conan stories, which like Tolkien also overlaps with fantasy, though his brand of fantasy is more Heroic Low Fantasy, or sword and sorcery.
- The Princess Bride
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; Dorothy meets not one, but three grown men who become her sidekicks while going through a myriad of adventures in order to get what they want most in their lives.
Live Action TV
- The Adventures of Sinbad
- Bring Em Back Alive
- Hercules: The Legendary Journeys
- MacGyver
- Sea Quest DSV
- Sliders
- Xena: Warrior Princess
- Young Indiana Jones
- Unnatural History
Webcomics
- The 18th - century parts of The Dreamer.