Zork... It Is Pitch Black And You Are Likely To Be Eaten By A Grue

Zork… It Is Pitch Black And You Are Likely To Be Eaten By A Grue

by Amanda Blain
Published: Last Updated on

Ahhh 1980s video games! I’m pretty sure the Zork was one of the first games that I ever played in my life. It’s twisted passages,  jewel encrusted egg, white house and mailbox, water funeling area?… Heck I didn’t even know what half the items in the game were because I was so young… 🙂

But that grue…. boy… it stuck with me… and might be why I play D&D today. 😀

I’m sure if you asked many today if they would play a “text based” adventure game, they would laugh. But to me this is where gaming started. At a time when it took forever to load a basic color CGA few color pattern, “graphic”… Text games were where it was at!

Did you ever play? If not.. you can start right now online, on  the magic of the Internets…. Thanks guys from MIT who made this.. (Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling) I wonder if those guys are on gplus? 🙂

http://www.web-adventures.org/cgi-bin/webfrotz?s=ZorkDungeon

#videogames   #gaming    #zork   #ab   #infocom

 

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Cara Evangelista
Cara Evangelista
10 years ago

YES. Omg that grue.  <3

Sir Charles
Sir Charles
10 years ago

Now this is a blast from the past.

Donagh Reardon
Donagh Reardon
10 years ago

I tried play Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy, but couldn't figure out how to get the Babel fish.

TILAHUN ELIAS
TILAHUN ELIAS
10 years ago

hi amenda

Stewart Rogers
Stewart Rogers
10 years ago

Xyzzy…

Victor Josue Millan Martinez
Victor Josue Millan Martinez
10 years ago

+Donagh Reardon it was a convoluted process for the uninitiated in the arts of the highly respected Douglas Adams

Christopher Aultman
Christopher Aultman
10 years ago

Yup. Muds. Gotta love 'em!
I've moved from those to the fine art of DM'ing.
Currently, I'm about to show my group the world that is Sigil.
It's D&D meets Stargate and they can't wait! ^_^

Raymond Andrews
Raymond Andrews
10 years ago

Hello Sailor

Peter Holloway
Peter Holloway
10 years ago

Another vote for Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy! +Donagh Reardon getting the Babel fish has something to do with collecting the junk mail from the house before you leave – drop it on the floor and hang the dressing gown on the hook on the wall. The fish then hits the gown and misses the hole in the wall, and the junk mail gets scooped up by the cleaning robot, leaving the fish  – it must be 25 years since I played it, so I'm sure I've missed something…

Jim McCloskey
Jim McCloskey
10 years ago

I played all the Infocom games. I miss them, but they're available to play online in a browser if you really want…

Amanda Blain
Amanda Blain
10 years ago

yup +Jim McCloskey maybe in that link i posted there 🙂

Enrique Betancourt Escalona
Enrique Betancourt Escalona
10 years ago

Que juego Más? ingenioso nünca lo había jugado, me gusto, buen dia….!¡

Bob Lai
Bob Lai
10 years ago

I played most of the Infocom titles. Worked on a text-based multiplayer game in the 1990s for Simutronics.

Ezra Allen
Ezra Allen
10 years ago

I've been thinking about making a text based games in Java that will run in browser but have not managed to get my ass into gear yet. I used to like the old books like warlock of fire top mountain .

Leonard Suskin
Leonard Suskin
10 years ago

The Infocom games were, at their best, wonderful. Imaginative, clever, whimsical, and even emotional at times. 

It's an era we're not likely to see again, and one which I miss.

Andrew Konietzky
Andrew Konietzky
10 years ago

I know there are emulators that can do it, but I wish all the Infocom games were in a single package for Android tablets.

Jim McCloskey
Jim McCloskey
10 years ago

+Amanda Blain For some reason, my brain glossed right over the linky at the bottom. I'm a bad internet person.

Donald Suiter
Donald Suiter
10 years ago

Yeah right

Bob Lai
Bob Lai
10 years ago

FYI, Inkle is releasing versions of Steve Jackson's Sorcery pick-your-adventure books. Available on iOS, not sure about Android.

Their website also allows you to use Inklewriter, the engine behind it all.

Raymond Andrews
Raymond Andrews
10 years ago

+Peter Holloway Gown on the hook, towel on the grate, sachel to block the door, and junk mail to confuse the upper robot. (longest week evar)

Andrew Konietzky
Andrew Konietzky
10 years ago

LOL… I recently bought both of Inkles Jackson games…. LOVE THEM. I am hoping they keep converting the Fighting Fantasy books.

Kevin McCormick
Kevin McCormick
10 years ago

I was playing this about a month ago, even got out the graph paper to map it out.

Peter Holloway
Peter Holloway
10 years ago

Spot on +Raymond Andrews , you've a better memory than me! 😉

Nayroz Kabboudi
Nayroz Kabboudi
10 years ago

good!I love vidéo games

Brad Whitehead
Brad Whitehead
10 years ago

I used to play that all night on my Commodore 64

Amanda Blain
Amanda Blain
10 years ago

I adore my c64 🙂

Joseph Compton
Joseph Compton
10 years ago

I had the 1541 disk drive and was ecstatic when we got a 1571.

Brad Whitehead
Brad Whitehead
10 years ago

The big floppy disc when you put it in and it made that distinct noise.  I knew it was ready to go after that.  I wasted some serious time back then

Tim Coon
Tim Coon
10 years ago

What the hell is a grue?

Jeff Hemphill
Jeff Hemphill
10 years ago

+Leonard Suskin
 GOG.com sells them and lots more. I bought lots that I thought were gone forever.

Damian Trasler
Damian Trasler
10 years ago

Zork gets a big shout out in the excellent novel "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline. And I too am a veteran of failing to complete "The Hitchhiker's Guide" game. Later I went on to fail to complete "STarship Titanic"

Mike Kuwik
Mike Kuwik
10 years ago

My brother used to play text based games. I always thought he was crazy. P&P rpgs are all the text based fun I've ever needed 😉

Gregg Sakauye
Gregg Sakauye
10 years ago

Yes!  I played the Zorks on my C64 too.  Good times.

Kwan Lowe
Kwan Lowe
10 years ago

Loved this game.. Played it on an Atari 800XL and spent hours mining the GUE. 

Leonard Suskin
Leonard Suskin
10 years ago

+Jeff Hemphill – yes, but the era in which they were created is over. 

I was a huge fan of Infocomm back in the day; it was the one game company that I really loved. I even subscribed to their (snail mail!) newsletter – The New Zork Times (later renamed The Status Line )

Jeroen Wiert Pluimers
Jeroen Wiert Pluimers
10 years ago

Zork I, II, III, THHGTTG, and other InfoCom adventures. Fun those days, and still! Good to see I'm not the only one having nice memories of that era (:

Hank Greer
Hank Greer
10 years ago

+1000

Peter Mancini
Peter Mancini
10 years ago

The first incarnation of Zork came out in 1977 on a PDP-10 (which would have cost you about $1500 a month in electricity to run!). It was a great leap forward in text parsing and I think a great inspiration for the field of text analytics to follow in later decades.

James Jameson
James Jameson
10 years ago

I had these on my c64 as well. I loved how the retail copies had all of the extra stuff like maps, hints, and all that! I have very fond memories of playing a demo of 'Infidel' to this day. As a young boy who loved both books and video games, these games were magical.

Raymond Andrews
Raymond Andrews
10 years ago

+Peter Mancini RUN ADVENTURE (thank goodness for study hall)

Donagh Reardon
Donagh Reardon
10 years ago

+Peter Holloway thanks.
Thats has ended something I've been wondering about for 20 years.

Roy Hembree
Roy Hembree
10 years ago

I played through both Zork I and II but I needed the help of cheat books. Someone had a copy that got passed around or you could peek into at lunch. After Zork I got Robots of Dawn by Epyx and that was too much for my 12 year old brain to enjoy and concluded my text adventuring. – I moved on to The Bard's Tale.

Howard C. Shaw III
Howard C. Shaw III
10 years ago

It is more than that for me. It was one of my first introductions to programming, typing in printed BASIC code from books and magazines. The first one I did was spaghetti code, every screen was is own page of code, every exit a goto. Modifying it was a nightmare. The second used BASIC DATA statements as a primitive database. Each room had a number and every exit had a room number it went to.

I was instantly hoped on the sheer power of data driven code. Awesome stuff.

Bruce Keller
Bruce Keller
10 years ago

OMG I actually created my own text based adventure game too… I had forgotten about that! BASIC was the sh!t lol.

Gary Schopp
Gary Schopp
10 years ago

Many hours "wasted" playing Zork, et al, rather than studying for some exam or writing some paper in college.

John Enfield
John Enfield
10 years ago

Those games exercised your brain and made you think critically without you even realizing it.

Kyle Alm
Kyle Alm
10 years ago

I miss the bad jokes and simple game play

Mark Swope
Mark Swope
10 years ago

Colossal Cave, Adventure, Zork n…, all great!

Kwan Lowe
Kwan Lowe
10 years ago

Part of the fun was not only the game, but all the little toys that shipped in the box. I remember the HHGttG having a small towel. The Lurking Horror (IIRC) had a coin. 

Chris Rogers
Chris Rogers
10 years ago

Played most of the Infocom titles on an Apple //c.  Zork, Planetfall, Enchanter, LGoP. +Steve Meretzky where are you now????

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