Zork

Categories: Infocom | Zork | Interactive fiction | 1977 computer and video games | Amiga games | Apple II games | Atari 8-bit family games | Atari ST games | Commodore 64 games | DOS games

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Zork can run on modern Z-machine interpreters, as well as the older models it was made for originally.
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Zork was one of the first interactive fiction computer games and an early descendent of ADVENTURE (also known as Colossal Cave). The first version of Zork was written in 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling, and implemented in the MDL programming language. All four were members of the MIT Dynamic Modelling Group.

"Zork" was originally MIT hacker jargon for an unfinished program. The implementors named the completed game Dungeon, but by that time the name Zork had already stuck.

Three of the original Zork programmers joined with others to found Infocom in 1979. That company adapted the PDP-10 Zork into Zork I-III, a trilogy of games for most popular computers of the era, including the Apple II, the Commodore 64, the Atari 8-bit family, the TRS-80, CP/M systems and the IBM PC. Zork I was published on 5¼" and 8" floppy disk. Joel Berez and Marc Blank developed a specialized virtual machine to run Zork I, called the Z-machine. The trilogy was written in ZIL, which stands for "Zork Implementation Language". Personal Software published what would become the first part of the trilogy under the name Zork when it was first released in 1980, but Infocom later handled the distribution of that game and their subsequent games. Part of the reason for splitting Zork into three different games was that, unlike the PDP systems the original ran on, micros did not have enough memory and disk storage to fit the entirety of the original game. In the process, more content was added to Zork to make each game stand on its own.

Zork is set in a sprawling underground labyrinth which occupies a portion of the "Great Underground Empire". The player is a nameless adventurer whose goal is to find the treasures hidden in the caves and return alive with them. The dungeons are stocked with many novel creatures and objects, among them grues and zorkmids. The Zork universe and timeline has been extended by several of Infocom's other works of interactive fiction.

Zork and its relatives are works of interactive fiction. Zork distinguished itself in its genre as an especially rich game, in terms of both the quality of the storytelling and the sophistication of its text parser, which was not limited to simple verb-noun commands ("hit grue"), but understood full sentences ("hit the grue with the Elvish sword").

The original Zork Trilogy:

  • Zork I: The Great Underground Empire (1980, Infocom)
  • Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz (1981, Infocom)
  • Zork III: The Dungeon Master (1982, Infocom)

Later additions to the series (all are text-only unless otherwise noted):

It should be noted that the Enchanter trilogy and Wishbringer occupy somewhat unusual positions within the Zork universe. Enchanter was originally developed as Zork IV; Infocom decided to instead release it separately, however, and it became the basis of a new trilogy. (In each trilogy, there is a sense of assumed continuity; that is, the player's character in Zork III is assumed to have experienced the events of Zork I and Zork II. Similarly, events from Enchanter are referenced in Sorcerer and Spellbreaker; but the Enchanter character is not assumed to be the same one from the Zork trilogy. In fact, in Enchanter the player's character encounters the Adventurer from Zork, who helps the player's character solve a puzzle in the game.) Although Wishbringer was never officially linked to the Zork series, the game is generally agreed to be "Zorkian" due to its use of magic and several terms and names from established Zork games.

Among the games bundled in The Lost Treasures of Infocom, published in 1991 by Activision under the Infocom brand, were the original Zork trilogy, the Enchanter trilogy, Beyond Zork and Zork Zero. A second bundle published in 1992, The Lost Treasures of Infocom II, contained Wishbringer and ten other non-Zork-related games.

Activision briefly offered free downloads of Zork I as part of the promotion of Zork: Nemesis, and Zork II and Zork III as part of the promotion for Zork Grand Inquisitor, as well as a new adventure: Zork: The Undiscovered Underground. This led many to believe that the games had been released as freeware, even though the included license explicitly prohibited redistribution. Activision's legal department has recently stated that the promotion relating to those games has ended and that it is not legal to distribute the games or make them available for download.

A series of original novels based upon the Zork universe were also published in the mid-1980s, most notably George Alec Effinger's Zork Chronicles.

A parody series known as 'Pork' was released also starting in 1988.

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Dungeon Fortran version

While the authors of Zork were at MIT, a programmer from DEC broke into MIT's computer systems and stole the MDL source code to the original Dungeon. (Dungeon was at the time playable over ARPANET, but its source code was not made available.) This programmer translated the MDL into Fortran, and distributed it. Infocom later agreed that if an Infocom copyright notice was put on it, noncommercial distribution would be allowed. This FORTRAN version, and C translations thereof, have been included in several Linux distributions.

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See also

  • The Zork timeline lists events in the fictional world of Zork
  • The Zork calendar lists months, days of the week, holidays, and years in the Zork timeframe
  • Zork magic lists spells, potions, and other means of magic in the Zork series
  • Encyclopedia Frobozzica, referred to in several games as an invaluable compendium of knowledge in the Zorkian universe
  • 69,105, a number that became somewhat of an in-joke in several Infocom games
  • Double Fanucci, a fictional card game with extremely complicated rules
  • The white house is where Zork I begins, and also appears in several other games
  • The Lurking Horror, another Infocom IF, that refrences Zork.
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External links

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