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- Zork I -
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This is probably one of the most wellknown textadventures ever along with the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. Both games are from infocom who in the 80's created tons of similar games all of which have been released as freeware now. Zork 1, or Zork: the great underground empire as it was known before the sequels came out, takes place in another world. You are an aventurer and you have heard stories about the legendary realm of Quendor a.k.a. the great underground empire. The empire has fallen a few decades ago but there are plenty of tales about the treasures that still lie there. You go to the place which is rumored to hold the last known entrance to the empire and this is where the game begins.
The game starts with you standing in front of a house without any of the story I told before and you are now on your own. You can type in any commands that you want to perform like get item and open door but often used commands are abbreviated like n for (move) north. The command parser that Infocom created can understand far more than most similar games of that time and you can type in entire sentences as well but be precise because it does not understand if you make a mistake while typing. This is also one of the reasons why adventure games are difficult because even if you know what to do you still have to tell the parser in a way that it understands. This is recognized by many people as one of the most advanced command parsers for a textadventures so it should be ok.
The actual objective of the game is to find 19 treasures and put them in
a throphy case which will win you the game. Along the way are mazes (yech!),
monsters and puzzles to solve and it will take you a while if you are to
complete the game. There are plenty of ways to die and sometimes death comes
without warning so save often and use your common sense to figure a way
past the obstacles. This game has no graphics whatsoever but just like a
book it gives you descriptions of everything and you can imagine yourself
what it looks like. Zork has probably been ported to almost every machine
that has a keyboard. I've even seen a pocket PC version of the game and
it goes to show how a good game doesn't need fancy graphics and surround
sound for someone to enjoy it. Textadventures are still made today, mostly
by enthousiast, but along with the original adventure this game has to rank
as one of the most influential games of it's time. Ohyeah the manual contains
tons of information even going into tax expenditures of different kings
that ruled the kingdom, you won't find that kind of background information
in games these days.
Overal rating: 8/10
Erde Kaiser
This game was released for many different systems here are some notes:
| Apple |
Released
in 1980.
Game has been tested but not completed with the ActiveGSapp R4.
This is a very early version, release nr 15. The game was first released
on the apple platform. |
| Amiga |
Released
in 1983.
Game has been tested but not completed with winUAE v0.9.91.
Release nr 88. |
| Amstrad
CPC |
Released
in 1983.
Game has been tested but not completed with winAPE v2.0 A6.
Release nr 88. Uses a high resolution screen which is hard to see
in the emulator. |
| Atari
ST |
Released
in 1983.
Game has been tested but not completed with Steem v3.2.
Release nr 88. |
| C64 |
Released
in 1982.
Game has been tested but not completed with CCS64 v2.0 win.
Release nr 30. Has to load from disk with almost every move so gameplay
can be annoying. |
| DOS |
Released
in 1983.
Game has been tested but not completed on a win2k PC.
Release nr 88. I think this is the rereleased version. |
| Others |
Other
systems.
Zork and most other Infocom games have been ported to plenty of other
systems like pocket pc, psion and pretty much anything that has a
keyboard can probably run the game these days. |
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Date added |
Jan-16-2005 15:21 |
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Name |
Zork I |
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Developer |
Infocom
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Publisher |
Infocom
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First released |
1980 |
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Genre |
Interactive Fiction
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Sponsored links |
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Download |
Amstrad CPC, filesize: 75 Kb
Apple, filesize: 62 Kb
Atari ST, filesize: 73 Kb
Commodore 64, filesize: 61 Kb
Commodore Amiga, filesize: 93 Kb
MS-DOS, filesize: 71 Kb
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Links |
The infocom documentation
project - a site dedicate to preserving infocom manuals / documents
Infocom homepage
- the (official?) hompage for old infocom games, lots of info and downloads |
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Manual |
Download manual
, filesize: 2891 Kb
The zip contains the manual in PDF format. (this was not made by me) |
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Solve / Docs |
Get solve here
Get maze map in gif format here
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Sitestats
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25-Sep-2017
Games: 428
Utils: 30
Manuals: 213
Solves: 92
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