By Collin Pierce
Zork is considered to be one of the great milestones in computer gaming, and the
classic example of a genre known as the Text Adventure (or Interactive Fiction,
as it's sometimes called, take your pick). It also has quite a history. The series
has dabbled in RPG format, made the jump to CD, gone Myst-style (but keeping the idea
of having an actual story), tried being serious at the same time, and gone back to
comedy again, all in the process of the last 30 years.
Table of Contents
Page 1: History of Zork, Zork Trilogy
A Sorta-Kinda Brief History of Zork
The seeds of Zork were sown by another game, the grandfather of the Text Adventure,
Adventure (AKA Colossal Cave). Created in 1976 by programmer William Crowther, the game
was loosely based on his explorations of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, and featured a few
fantasy elements for fun. The original version, which was feared lost for a long time
until the recent discovery of the original source code, boasted the possibly limitless
idea that you could have the computer describe your location, and you could tell it what
you wanted to do, and (if you were lucky enough that the programmer had the foresight to
think of the same action,) your in-game avatar would do it! You may laugh now, and ask
haughtily, "Why would I EVER want to play a game without graphics?" Back in the
'70s though, this was a revolution in gaming.
Later, a student named Don Woods discovered the game, and asked Crowther if he could add to
it. In '77, Don Woods released the version of Adventure that most people are familiar with.
Additions included new puzzles, locations, and characters, and even a scoring system that
would become a standard in many adventure games to come. The game is not copyrighted, and
fans of the game (including co-creator DOn Woods) continue to make new versions of the game
to this day.
At MIT, Adventure was incredibly popular, but the puzzles were incredibly frustrating, leading some students to crack the source code to find out what to do or how to get that last point. One student enthralled with the game was Dave Lebling, who, along with friends Marc Blank, Michael Berlyn, Tim Anderson, and Bruce Daniels, decided that they should create their own take on Adventure. After a few discarded attempts, they finally created the first section of what was to become Zork on a PDP-10 "Supercomputer."
The word "Zork" was MIT slang for an unfinished program, and it was never meant to be the official title of the game. Certain early mainframe versions of the game were called "Dungeon," but the name was dropped after worries about copyright infringement. The name "Zork" stuck, and no one attempted to change it again.
In the original Adventure, if you walked around the caves in the dark without a lit lantern, you would quickly fall into a deep pit and die. For a while it was the same in Zork, until someone asked why there were bottomless pits in the attic of a house that couldn't be seen from the ground floor, that is. To solve this problem, Lebling created (or stole from fantasy writer Jack Vance, accounts vary) the creature known as the Grue, arguably the most famous creature in the Zork universe. Grues are dark-loving creatures who live in the caves and other dark areas of the World of Quendor. Their diet consists of unwary adventurers who stupidly roam their territory without a source of light. Mysterious as well as dangerous, it was never described what they looked like until Zork: The Undiscovered Underground, a Text Adventure released in 1997 to promote the upcoming Graphical Adventure in the series, Zork: Grand Inquisitor, and even then, the description was quite vague. Many Zork fans love this idea of not knowing what a Grue really looks like, and I agree. Mystery makes an unseen menace even more terrifying.
By 1979, Zork was so huge it could barely fit on the massive computer it ran on, and no more additions could be made. At this time, Lebling, Blank, Anderson, and Daniels were graduating and preparing to start their own computer software company, Infocom. At this time, home computers like the TRS-80 and the Apple II were beginning to take off, and the group debated what product to show off as the launchpad for their new company. They eventually decided on Zork.
But there was a big problem. Zork could barely fit on a huge supercomputer with its program size of nearly a massive for the time 1 Megabyte! (We've certainly come far..._ How on Earth could Infocom squeeze it onto a computer with only 32 Kilobytes? Luckily, a way was found. The game was split into three chunks, each part slightly enhanced, lengthened, and reworked. Blank then created a special program that would read the game code, translated into a special compressed programming language. Blank's code-reading program would then be reprogrammed to run on every computer the game was released for, and the code it read would not need to be changed at all. This way, the game could be ported to every home computer of the time with minimal effort and time required.
Zork I: The Great Underground Empire, was originally released in December, 1980. The other two-thirds of the original game were released soon afterward as Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz, and Zork III: The Dungeon Master. (By the way, that's the SHORT version of the history of Zork. A full account can be found
here.)
The main problem people have getting into Zork besides the interface being admitedly archaic, is that the puzzles can be quite obtuse. For the first time player, it's easy to get stuck right at the beginning of Zork I. The first step is to check under the rug for a trap door, but there's not a single clue to do so. It's easy to assume that it's just a room decoration, along with the trophy case, which is also a key feature of the room. The games can be quite frustrating to those who aren't willing to experiment with anything and everything, make maps, discuss findings with friends, etc. So, why even bother with it today, you ask?
It's still easy to appreciate the games because of way Infocom implemented everything. What they did was think about a lot of different things that players would attempt during the course of playing. The games are filled with secrets and surprises. Infocom knew that players would do a lot of experimenting on their quest to complete the game as well as satisfy curiousity, and they rewarded the players for it, something that a lot of "open world" games today are still trying to perfect. You could do a lot of interesting things
in Zork that, while serving no purpose in helping you to complete the game, or sometimes even hindered you if you did something stupid, would almost always make you laugh. The game would allow you to do a lot of crazy things. Do you want to count the leaves in a pile? Go ahead. Do you want to cuss like a sailor? Zork won't like it, but it'll let you. Everything from opening an iron grate from underneath without moving the pile of leaves hiding it, addressing the game by name, asking about game features and characters, and even commiting suicide, Infocom and its staff of Implementors (their title given to those who create Interactive Fiction) seemed to be one step ahead of you with a witty response. This is the magic of what makes Interactive Fiction interesting! The illusion that the game will let you do just about anything, and you'll at the least get a satisfying response.
One of the more interesting jokes to note is the series' strange psuedo-catchphrase, "Hello sailor." It appears throughout the entire series, and if you type it, you usually get the response, "Nothing happens here." For some bizzare reason, this saying (and its inevitable response) has become one of the great Zork secrets, appearing in almost every game in the series, including the graphical adventures. Pretty good for something that you are only required to type once in the entire series.
One final thing to note are the hintbooks that Infocom released to help people through their games. Infocom realized that the questions themselves could be used as spoilers for what to expect later in the games, and added fake questions with silly answers to throw off cheaters. You can find these booklets in online form. Definitely give them a read after beating the games; they are screamingly funny.
Zork I: The Great Underground Empire - Amiga / Amstrad CPC / Apple II / Apple Macintosh / Atari 8-Bit /
Atari ST / Commodore 64 / Commodore 128 / Commodore Plus/4 / CP/M / IBM PC / TRS-80 / NEC PC-98 /
And those are just the official releases! (1980)
Cover
TRS Cover
None of this is actually covered in game, though. The above info comes from manuals for this and later Zork games. The game itself begins with the following incredibly ambiguous passage of text, one of the most famous in all of adventure gaming:
West of House
-Would you have left a job as a rope salesman to become King of Quendor? List the pros and cons.
-Find Quendor on a modern map. Is it a large area? What natural features of the area would have helped Quendor to conquer all the neighboring lands?
-What would it be like to live underground? If there are any caves near your home, spend a week underground to see what it's like.
-Try to collect 10 zorkmids from everyone on your block, telling them that the money will be used to erect a giant statue of yourself. Use force if necessary. See if the others on your block begin to resent you.
And my personal favorite:
-Collect several horses for yourself and your classmates. Ride through the center of your town, pillaging stores, burning homes and slaughtering young children and old women. Afterwards, ask people around town what it was like to live in a lawless state.
Apparently Quendor had very different ideas about what children's education entails.
As for the game itself, it is incredibly complex, unforgiving and hard. It's one of those games that could take you years to beat without a walkthrough, or map, or both. Still, there are many incredible challenges to see and attempt.
There are few characters in the game, but they are definitely enough to get on your nerves. These are just a few of the nastier ones:
The Thief
The Thief is almost legendary in how aggravating he is. He robs you of your treasures, he kills you without provocation, he even moves stuff you've left around the game just to screw with you! Dueling with him near the end of the game after what seems like a lifetime of being abused by him, and finally killing him, is a payoff in itself. Still, before you do that, he might be useful for something...
The Troll
The first living opponent you'll face, the Troll is pretty much a joke. The battle with him usually only lasts a couple turns and as long as you keep on him, you'll more than likely win. When you throw something at him, he'll eat it. Before the combat system was added to the game, the way to beat him was by throwing him the knife. Gross.
The Cyclops
This guy has no problems with eating you right up. He seems quite hungry, but he is deathly afraid of his old nemesis from classical mythology...
The Vampire Bat
This creature, if you accidentally wander into its territory, will pick you up and whisk you to a random room of the game. Still, it's pretty obvious how to get past him. You'll know it when you see it...
One of the more frustrating elements of the game is definitely the limited inventory space. Your character can only carry so much weight, and you'll often find yourself having to drop items to carry others, PRAYING that the thief doesn't mischiveously run off with one of the things you dropped.
And then, there are the mazes. A large set of interconnected rooms that all have the exact same description, and are there just to piss you off. This is by far the most obnoxious feature of this game. Seriously, though! What is the point of these mazes? They're not fun, they aren't important, they don't having anything to do in them except get lost, they're there to simply pad out the game in the worst way possible.
Now, this would all be fine, except for one problem. The batteries in your lantern can run out. Yes, whenever you are underground, unless you can find another light source somewhere in the vast maze of the game, you are on a time limit. Every turn you do something, your lantern is that much closer to giving out. There is nothing more anger-generating than getting a message that your lantern appears to be dimming, and realizing that you are nowhere close to the end of the game, and will likely have to start over. You might
think, "surely the time limit isn't that strict!" But to be certain, when that lantern's only been on for a couple hundred turns, and it starts to go out, you'll think it's pretty strict. Even in the original Adventure, you could buy new batteries for your lantern with the treasures! Yes, you wouldn't get a perfect score, but who cares? You can try again next time. But in Zork, there are no extra chances. If you run out of light, the grues feed tonight!
There are also many chances to get stuck in a dead end, the bane of the adventure gamer's existance. If you are carrying a sharp object when you get in the inflated boat, it pops and you can't win. If you try to force the jeweled egg open instead of geting the last person on Earth you'd want help from to do it, you break it and can't win. If you eat the garlic for a laugh, you won't be able to get past the vampire bat and guess what? You can't win!
You also can die. When you die, you lose points, all of your possessions are scattered across the map, and you are warped back to either the forest, or Hell if you've visited it, in Zork I, and to the first room of the game if you are playing Zork II or III. But be forwarned, die three times and the game ends! Luckily, Death isn't nearly as rampant and random as it is in a Sierra game; usually you will only die in situations that are obviously dangerous, the exception being if the thief randomly kills you the moment you enter an
otherwise safe room, as happened to me on my first attempt playing the game for this article.
It's definitely a game for patient people. But those who persevere will be rewarded with some awesome moments. It's not quite a masterpiece of the genre like many would lead you to believe. It has many flaws that add up to create frustration, but there is still plenty of fun to be had. It would have been nice if the narrative were a little more focused and obvious. As it is, you basically stumble from puzzle to puzzle until the game abruptly ends.
The game also introduces many famous Zork landmarks and moments. The white house that is your starting point is an iconic location in all of adventure gaming. Flood Control Dam #3 is also memorable, enough so for it to appear in some of the later games. "Hello sailor" makes its debut, although it is quite useless. The grues made their first appearance in this game, as well, as does the first mention of a "Frobozz Magic (Object) Company," a
branch of a company that serves all your magical item needs. It was later learned that all these companies are subsidiaries, of a larger company, which we learn is quite apropriately named: The Frobozz Magic Company Company. Although that is a subsidiary of FrobozzCo International. All of these are now considered important parts of the Zork universe.
Hello sailor! Welcome to a world of adventure, excitement, and low cunning that only
exists in the far reaches of your imagination (literally)!
Page 2: Enchanter Trilogy
Page 3: Beyond Zork, Zork Zero
Page 4: Infocom's Fate, Return to Zork
Page 5: Zork Under Activsion, Zork Nemesis, Zork: The Undiscovered Underground, Zork: Grand Inquisitor, Legends of Zork
Page 6: Spinoffs, Zork's Status, Links
Zork I takes place in 948 GUE, according to official Zork timeline sources. It tells the first part of the story of an unnamed adventurer coming to the location of the ancient kingdom of Quendor, and discovering the many secrets and treasures hidden within the bowels of the Great Underground Empire. To tell it straight, your goal is to find your way into the caves, find all 20 treasures, and put them into the trophy case in the house near your starting point.
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.
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In Japan, Zork I was released on the Japanese home computer, the NEC PC-98, with newly-added graphics as well as text. Strangely, only the first game in the trilogy was given this treatment. However, this version was upgraded and released for the PS1 and Saturn in 1996. These versions looks a lot like other visual novels for the 32-bit systems, like The Silver Case and Baroque Syndrome, with a faded, barely visible background, with bright white text superimposed over it. It's really only graphical in the vaguest sense of the worse, because you can barely make out much of anything. At least the borders change depending on your location. There are four primary commands - Object, Action, Inventory, and Move. You can use manual text entry with the Action command, but this is extremely aggravating without a keyboard, obviously. The Object command will let you highlight a noun in the text, which then brings up a particle menu ("wo", "ni", "de", functioning as "to", "at" and "with" in various circumstances.) This is where the Action command comes in handy - based on the item you've selected, it'll automatically pick all suitable verbs. The Move command allows easy access in any direction, and even shows all available exits. There's an ingame map, as well as a foldout one included in the manual. It's actually not all that hard to play with a bit of Japanese knowledge. Zork didn't exactly have complicated writing in English, and it's still pretty simple in Japanese. As long as you're familiar with the original game and have a kanji dictionary nearby, you should be set. Not that there's really anything else to it besides the novelty. It does have a very nice CD audio soundtrack though, which consists mostly of atmospheric noises and various other electronic music. The music is actually composed by Yuzo Koshiro (along with Motohiro Kawashima, who worked besides Koshiro on other projects.) MP3s Download here Entire Soundtrack
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 Zork (PSOne)
Zork (PSOne)
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Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz - Amiga / Amstrad CPC / Apple II / Apple Macintosh / Atari 8-Bit / Atari ST / Commodore 64 / Commodore 128 / Commodore Plus/4 / CP/M / IBM PC / MSX / TRS-80 / And those are just the official releases! (1981)
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The bonuses for this game are a travel guide and two brochures for places of interest in the Great Underground Empire. Once again, they are quite humorous and worth the read.
Characters of note:
The Wizard of Frobozz
This guy basically replaces the thief as the annoying, reappearing adversary who constantly causes you anguish. Although not quite as bad as the thief (although that is debatable), he can still cause you quite a lot of grief with his more annoying spells...
The Demon
Although assumedly evil, this guy might still be willing to give you a hand, for a price, of course. If you die during the course of the game, pay attention to your surroundings. They are hints on where and how to find the demon.
As far as gameplay goes, you still can only carry a certain amount of weight, and the lantern can still die if you take too long to win, there are still two mazes, but the mazes at least are integrated into the game much better. Still, they're a nasty couple, especially if you aren't a sports fan, but at least they serve a purpose this time around.
But now, on top of mazes, there are a couple rooms in the game that, no matter what direction you go, you end up in a random adjacent room. Luckily, this can be deactivated in the main one. One nice thing is that, even though the puzzles are still quite obtuse, the solutions make much more sense. Well, usually. The Bank of Zork area is absolutely ridiculous. Do the right thing, in the right order, or you're screwed. Or are you? Zork II has a nifty new feature not present in the original. If you get stuck in a certain area and are unable to escape, a gnome will give you a chance to escape at the cost of a treasure. However, this can only be done once, if you wish to beat the game! Of course, there are other ways to screw up and be unable to win, also.
Zork II is one of those games that takes two steps forward, and one step back. It fixes a bunch of problems from the first game, but then goes and adds a few new ones. Still, it's decent, and perhaps a tad better than the first.
Zork II is the second third of the original mainframe game, and is more of the same: more puzzles, more treasures, more strange places, more ridiculously creative thinking. It begins at precisely the moment Zork I left off. After finding all of of the Treasures of Zork (Ha!), defeating the thief, and getting out of the dungeon alive, you find that a mysterious map has appeared in your Trophy Case. Recognizing the location it represented, you notice that it has a path that you never noticed before. Taking it, you find an old tomb. As you enter it, the doors slam shut behind you, leaving you, your lantern (batteries inexplicably recharged), and your elven sword to go on on a new adventure, with tougher puzzles than ever. The nice thing about this game is that your ultimate goal is a little easier to figure out: Defeat the maniacal Wizard of Frobozz. Of course, the game refuses to tell you exactly how to do that, so ultimately, it's another treasure hunt. At least the treasures seem to serve a purpose this time, once you get far enough to learn what it is, anyway.
Zork III: The Dungeon Master - Amiga / Amstrad CPC / Apple II / Apple Macintosh / Atari 8-Bit / Atari ST / Commodore 64 / Commodore 128 / Commodore Plus/4 / CP/M / IBM PC / MSX / TRS-80 / And those are just the official releases! (1982)
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First, it actually has a plot beyond "find the treasures" or "defeat the wizard." (Gasp!) Yes, in this game, things are explained, a goal must be achieved, and this time, you get an ENDING for your troubles, not just "To Be Continued..." like the first two games. I like this. It feels good to know we've gone through all this stuff for a purpose (beyond greed or revenge, that is).
Second, the traditional score system has been ditched. In its place is a score system based on potential to solve a puzzle, not the actual tasks being completed. What this means is, whenever you come across a puzzle, you get a point. This is absolutely ridiculous. The maximum score in the first two games allowed you to judge how far you were in the game based on your current score. With this new system, not only can you only get seven points total, but they don't tell you a thing about how far you've progressed! You could in theory get to the very end of the game without solving a single puzzle, and then have no idea why you can't complete the game. This is crap.
Third, the lamp is useless! The only time you need it is to get past the rooms at the very beginning, and then you can just drop it and never pick it up again. There's no more dark places where the lamp is required. After the gripes about the battery life in the first two games, you might think this would be for the better, but no, now they've gone from "unfair" at one end of the spectrum, to "why bother?" at the other end. You and this lantern have been through so much together that this is quite a cruel anticlimax to put it in
the game just to tease you! All they had to do was make the battery life a little longer! Now, instead of a time limit throughout most of the game, you have a time limit that, while completely unrelated to the lantern, is somehow even more annoying.
A little while into the game, after around a certain number of turns, there is an earthquake that causes some parts of the game to become inaccessable, and others to open up. Of course, this means you have to hurry up and complete certain sections first, and of course they don't warn you about the coming earthquake beforehand; that would be too nice! So now, instead of being warned a few times about the lantern's batteries dying, and then possibly being screwed, a plot device comes out of nowhere, and since you didn't see it coming, are most likely screwed because you didn't do everything in the exact order you had no idea you were supposed to take! And if you didn't know that the earthquake caused this, and didn't know that you were supposed to go to a certain area now blocked by the quake, you'll spend hours wandering the game world, trying every possible thing, to figure out what you've missed, not knowing that the game is now unbeatable! This is a beginner's trap of the
worst kind, and should have never been put into the game. It's cruel, obnoxious, and way too subtle; definitely the worst design flaw in the entire Zork Trilogy.
The story, of course, picks up right where Zork II left off, with the Wizard of Frobozz defeated, and a path found to a lower level of the GUE. Your new mission is to prove to the Dungeon Master, the ruler of all the caves of Zork, that you are worthy to become his heir. To do this, you must retrieve all of the symbols of the Dungeon Master, search him out, and solve his final puzzle, and become the new Dungeon Master by succeeding.
Now, by Zork's present standards, that's not half bad. But some of the most obnoxious puzzles in the whole trilogy somewhat ruin the experience. How you are supposed to know what to do in some instances boggles my mind.
There are many instances where you must wait somewhere for a considerable amount of time, and unless you've played the game before, you'll have no idea why you're doing it, much less know to do it in the first place!
The puzzles are vicious. The one everybody quotes is the pushwall maze known as the Royal Puzzle. It basically is trial and error, experimenting until you get it perfectly right, but at least it makes more sense that the God-forsaken Bank of Zork, even if it is a million times harder. Another crazy moment is the time machine, but this one is fun. there are some funny ways to die if you go to the wrong time period! Unfortunately, this part is marred by a timed puzzle that has a facepalm-worthy solution that is quite out of touch with the rest of the trilogy. Yet another insane puzzle is the mirror box. The moment you enter the box for the first time and see that the description is longer than the screen can show, you know it can't be good. But strangely enough, once you know what you're trying to accomplish, it's actually quite easy.
On top of all these issues, the game just isn't that funny. Unlike the first two games, there was only a handful of moments where one might crack a smile, while the first two games routinely provokes laughes. The main highlight in the game is the moment that "hello sailor" is actually useful. Yes, it finally serves a purpose (and it never will again!)! Unfortunately, it is optional, and hidden WAY too well.
Another problem is that the game just seems to go at a very leisurely pace. There is no thief or wizard causing you stress, and their presence is actually missed! Without a constant threat looming around, the game just feels boring! The game even feels much shorter than the first two!
Character of Interest:
The Dungeon Master
The object of your quest, the Dungeon Master is basically the King of Zork. He has been watching you since your adventure began at the white house, and he is searching for a successor. Will it be YOU?
Zork III has the sad fate of being the worst of the trilogy. The puzzles are cruel, it has several design flaws, and it just feels boring compared to the first two. It is still worth a playthrough, though, as it ties up the story of the trilogy, and it does have a couple fun spots.
Zork III is the final chapter in the original "Zork Trilogy". Being the last segment
of the original mainframe game, the home version broke the mold of the first two in a few ways.
