Zork Wasn't Built In A Day
Gamasutra has teamed up with the IGDA's Preservation SIG to debut to the gaming world the first ten games voted into the Digital Game Canon, which tasks itself with preserving the history of gaming in the same way that the U.S. National Film Registry tends to film culture and history. Games and game franchises such as Tetris, Sim City and Civilization grace the list, as does that most mighty of Infocom's text adventures, Zork.
No light supper, Gamasutra has recruited some of academia's finest to examine Zork and its influence on games and gamers. Dr. Matt Barton, assistant professor of English at St. Cloud State in Minnesota, ponders the plausible:
"It’s quite possible that one day, when enough gamers are at last disillusioned with the latest 128-bit smoke and mirror show, interactive fiction titles will again enjoy the lucrative rewards won by Infocom during the heyday of the Zork trilogy. After all, the treasures of Zork are still there beneath the old white house, awaiting their discovery by new generations of gamers. Zork is not obsolete; merely under appreciated. Perhaps Zork is not the past of gaming, but its future.”
That, I'd love to see. Although with games like Hotel Dusk: Room 215, perhaps I already am? Dr. Barton continues:
“It’s quite likely that no computer game in history has ever inspired as much prose as Zork, even if we omit the billions of commands inputted by legions of over-caffeinated hunt-and-peckers. Zork and other text-based adventure games have long been the darling of academics writing about games, such as Brenda Laurel and Janet Murray.”
Well son of a Grue, I had no idea! Check out the complete six-page feature for all the Zork you can handle.
The History Of Zork [Gamasutra]
tiny dancer
Posted to Video Games on 28 June 2007
· Comments (4)
Other stuff like this: digital game canon, igda, infocom, preservation sig, zork
Of course, it's never been released for any console. And the Game Boy homebrew version was super painful.
Wonder if I could wedge it onto an Odyssey2 somehow.
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It's definitely a series I'd recommend to anyone who wants to even don the title of "hardcore gamer".
I played the original Zork (along with Flight Simulator and Battlezone) on my brother's IBM back in 1981 when I was a wee bairn. It was fun but I never did finish it. My brother bought us an Intellivision console, which then pretty much killed any PC gaming I was doing. LOL!
" Perhaps Zork is not the past of gaming, but its future. "
¬_¬ You tell that to publishers like The Adventure Company that keep putting out mediocre crap after crap every year. I mean, how many fooking bland and cliched Atlantis/Egypt/Templar/Myst-wannabe point-n-clickers can you stomach before you die of ennui?!
Zork was nothing like Myst or any other point-and-click game. What made Zork magical was its incredible (for the time), and incredibly frustrating, storytelling and interaction with the user.
Well, um, maybe it was kinda like Myst after all. But I'd have liked Myst better if I could have typed "north" if I wanted to, instead of clicking. Zork is still the king of cerebral adventure in my book. (For overall adventure it'd be the 3D Zeldas, and for strategic/tactical adventure.... nethack.)