The original TADS 1 was released by [[High Energy Software]] as [[shareware]] in 1988, and was followed by TADS 2 not long after. From the late 1980s to early 1990s, free development tools such as TADS and [[Inform]] enabled amateur communities to create [[interactive fiction]].<ref>{{cite book |title=Interactive Digital Narrative |date=2015 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-138-78239-6 |page=23 |url=https://wwwbooks.google.com/books/edition/Interactive_Digital_Narrative/3ZsGCAAAQBAJ?hlid=en&gbpv=13ZsGCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA23&printsec=frontcover |access-date=25 April 2020}}</ref> In the mid-1990s, TADS was a top development tool for interactive fiction.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Montfort |first1=Nick |title=Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction |date=2005 |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=978-0-262-63318-5 |page=201 |url=https://wwwbooks.google.com/books/edition/Twisty_Little_Passages/XiJFORKEm0oC?hlid=en&gbpv=1&bsq=TADSXiJFORKEm0oC&dq=TADS&pg=PA201&printsec=frontcover |access-date=25 April 2020 |language=en}}</ref> At the time, it was a more improved tool for [[Text parser|parsing]] and world building than existing systems like AGT ([[Adventure Game Toolkit]]).<ref>{{cite book |last1=Short |first1=Emily |author-link1=Emily Short |editor1-last=Ryan |editor1-first=Marie-Laure |editor2-last=Emerson |editor2-first=Lori |editor3-last=Robertson |editor3-first=Benjamin J. |title=The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media |date=2014 |publisher=JHU Press |isbn=978-1-4214-1223-8 |page=290 |chapter-url=https://wwwbooks.google.com/books/edition/The_Johns_Hopkins_Guide_to_Digital_Media/qC0_AwAAQBAJ?hlid=en&gbpv=1qC0_AwAAQBAJ&dq=TADS%201990%20interactive%20fiction%20AGT&pg=PT304&printsec=frontcover&bsq=TADS%201990%20interactive%20fiction%20AGT |access-date=27 April 2020 |language=en |chapter=Interactive Fiction}}</ref>
TADS 2 syntax is based on [[C (programming language)|C]], with bits of [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]]. TADS 2 has been maintained and updated at regular intervals by its creator, Michael J. Roberts, even after it became freeware in July 1996. Graham Nelson, creator of Inform, describes Inform and TADS as the "only two systems... widely used" in the last half of the 1990s,<ref name="DM4">{{cite web
