Zork (Series)
History[edit | edit source]
In 1968, William Crowther[1] programmed his "Mammoth Cave", which was later renamed "The Cave"[2]. You could move around in it by text input and even pick up objects. He placed it on the ARPAnet, an Internet predecessor in the USA. Don Woods discovered it there in 1976 and expanded it into "The Colossal Cave", in which you had to explore this maze of caves and return to the starting point with as many treasures as possible. The locations were based on an expedition that Don Woods and his wife had undertaken in the "Mammoth Cave System"[3] in Kentucky. The original parser of the game was very simple (2-word input), but the descriptions were very complex.
At the same time, Don Woods also programmed the game "Adventure (1976)"[4][5], which contained parts of The Colossal Cave and was based on it and eventually became a commercial version. It eventually gave its name to the computer game genre.
Many students and other people played this game on huge mainframes at the time. Dave Lebling, Marc Blank, Tim Anderson and Bruce Daniels were also fond of this game and programmed their own adventure game from 1977 to 1979, called "ZORK"[6] .
The name was a term from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) hacker slang and actually stood for an unfinished programme that they used to describe the somewhat chaotic programming work. Zork, also known as ‘Dungeon’ at the time, ran on a huge mainframe computer called the PDP-10 from Digital Equipment. The game featured the so-called "Grue (monster)"[7], a creature living in dark dwellings borrowed from Jack Vance. Once again, it was distributed via the ARPAnet and the developers used the many suggestions from players to make improvements.
A short time later, they founded the legendary games company Infocom, which split the Zork game into three separate parts because the amount of data was simply too large for home computers at the time and published them individually.
Stephan Slabihoud writes on his homepage "The Dot Eaters / The Number Crunchers - The History of Video Games & Home Computers":
"They designed a special language that would run on an emulator on any home computer. The "Z-Machine" was conceived as a virtual processor running the new compressed ‘Zork Implementation Language’ (ZIL). Each home computer ran its own Z-Machine Interpreter Programme (ZIP), which interpreted the Z-Machine code to run the games. But Zork was still too big to fit into the small memory of only 16 KB. A large part was removed from the programme and became Zork 1."
In 1980, Bruce Daniels adapted the final code for Apple and Apple II. 6,000 copies of Zork 1 were sold in eight months. That was a huge success at the time, at the birth of computer games. Infocom would go on to publish over 30 more text adventures and become one of the most successful game manufacturers of the time (1983-1988).
Cover[edit | edit source]
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Zork 1 - Front Cover | Zork 1 - Back Cover | Zork 2 - Front Cover | Zork 2 - Back Cover | Zork 3 - Front Cover | Zork 3 - Back Cover |
Plot[edit | edit source]
- The first part "Zork I - The Great Underground Empire" of this series introduces you to the mysterious underworld. In the subterranean ruins of a former civilisation, you have to find 20 treasures and escape from the ‘Underground Empire’ again. A thief becomes an indispensable ally, the hero can drag coffins around but cannot harm the villains, cakes explode and if found treasures are not stored safely they are stolen again.
- "Zork II - The Wizard of Frobozz" takes you even further into the depths of this labyrinth. Here you must again find 10 treasures and explore the secrets of sorcery. A wizard who can teleport will appear at random and try to hinder you by using appropriate spells. Your task is to become the best wizard at the end. On your way you have to complete various tasks such as solving a puzzle room and killing a dragon.
- "Zork III - The Dungeon Master" is the last part of the story and also the most difficult. No treasures are collected here, but your courage and character traits are tested. You should be fearless but also gentle towards all the creatures you encounter here. You will have to go through many adventures before you meet the ‘Dungeon Master’ and find the treasure chamber.
Links[edit | edit source]
|
Wikipedia: Zork |
- Zork I - The Great Underground Empire
- Zork II - The Wizard of Frobozz
- Zork III - The Dungeon Master
- Test Report No. 1297 on Kultboy.com
- ZZap64 test report
- "PDP10 Originalversion von Zork für den C64 konvertiert" Forum64
- "Deutsche Beta-Version von Zork I (z5-Datei für Frotz)" Forum64
- Zork Trilogy bei Eli's Software Encyclopedia
