Anyone remember Zork?
 

Anyone ever played this great text based RPG? Its 20 years old, but its a classic.

Beyond Zork was my favorite. Any thoughts??


If any of you are out there, try to find Beyond Zork for the PC, download it, and give it a shot. I love it because you have to use your imagination while exploring. no there are no pictures, just a very basic map. But its got everything else a good RPG needs, fun story, fighting, weapons, magic, monsters and best of all PUZZLES. This game is an awesome classic.

I never played the original zork, but I remember when in elementary school, I would visit the computer room every day after school to play a game called Zork, and it was a side-scrolling RPG with the main character looking kinda like Link from Legend of Zelda.

I have a 'z-lanugage' interpreter for my Palm handheld. It is great to play the old text adventures while standing in line. And there's still a community of people making new text adventures.

On the Apple II, 20-odd years ago. In the early '80s, I bought a Apple II+ setup off a 18-year-old computer salesman who was moving on to the PC world. It came with a load of software and games, including Zork. I was probably 27 at the time and had a job, but I remember staying up until 4 in the morning hypnotized by that damn game. Had to call a halt to it, or quit my job!

About 6 years ago when I found a compilation CD that had all the early Zorks on it, along with Planetfall. If you can find it (I see it in Bargin Bins occasionally) its a great nostalgia buy. Text based adventures are great because its like reading, no matter how good an artist portrays a scene from text, its never as great as what you can see in you imagination.

If you're into text adventures (ahem, Interactive Fiction), check out:

http://www.brasslantern.org/ - Lots of info, good beginners' guide
http://www.ifcomp.org/ - Annual competition for new works
http://www.ifarchive.org/ - Massive archive of most non-commercial works
http://wurb.com/if/ - Guide to the archive, reviews, listings

Also, if you read newsgroups, check out rec.games.int-fiction and rec.arts.int-fiction

EDIT: Also, the Zork games were released to the public domain by Activision when they bought the remains of Infocom several years ago. You can download them from: http://www.infocom-if.org/downloads/downloads.html, among other places.

Damn grue kept killing me, but I solved it once. Hitchhikers guide and planetfall were awesome.

Infocom games ruled. Don't know if it is still up but if you have AIM, send an instant message to infocombot. You can play quite a few of these games via instant message.