Apple II

Zork: The Great Underground Empire

Trivia

The currency in Zork, the zorkmid, is also used in NetHack.

Contributed by Nélio RC (516) on Jun 21, 2008.

Zork was named #13 overall among the “150 Best Games of All Time” by Computer Gaming World Magazine (15th Anniversary Issue--November 1996).

Contributed by PCGamer77 (3025) on May 01, 2008.

The demand for Zork maps, tips and, eventually, memorabilia for game enthusiasts and veterans, led Mike Dornbrook (Infocom's first product tester, hired to debug Zork) to establish a service that provided (in the beginning, personalised, type-written) hints and maps to would-be adventurers of the Great Underground Empire.

In September 1981, the organization was formalised as the Zork User's Group (run out of his parents' Milwaukee basement), and their product line expanded to include buttons, bumper stickers, posters, t-shirts and a Zorkian newsletter... as well as their most permanent contribution to the Infocom legacy, InvisiClues hintbooks. In July 1983 -- by which time their mailing list had grown from 700 to over 14,000 -- it was folded back into Infocom, Dornbrook hired on again by Infocom, this time as Product Manager in the Department of Consumer Marketing.

This paragon of text adventuring has been thoroughly parodied in the anonymous 1988 game Pork 1: The Great Underground Sewer System.

Infocom started to translate this game into German, but found it rather difficult to re-program the parser. Therefore, only a German beta version exists.

The Zork series inspired a fantasy novel that bore the Infocom logo. It was called The Zork Chronicles, and was written by Georg Alec Effinger, a past winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. The book was published by Avon books in July, 1990.

From the back cover:

ZORK LIVES

From the dawn of the age of computer games, one of the greatest challenges has always been Zork. This is the classic, the standard against which all adventure games are measured. Through five best-selling games, the world of Zork has been the source of fantastic quests by intrepid computer heroes.

Now at last, readers can enter the world of Zork without a computer, but with a hero at their side. Mirakles is a hero who can face the challenge of Zork with nothing more than his sword and his faithful companion Glorian.

With Glorian prodding him ever onward, Mirakles descends into the Great Underground Empire, where he encounters Spike the Protector, the Dragon's lair, the Wizard's Workroom, the winged vampire were-unicorn, and of course, the Warm Boot of Frobozz.

A major new adventure—THE ZORK CHRONICLES



"...you people are cheating yourselves if you don't
forgo food and rent to pick up Effinger's work."
—Harlan Ellison

"Wry and black and savage...
there's a knife behind every smile."
—George R.R. Martin



Infocom Inc., is the foremost publisher of interactive fiction software. Since its first release, the best-selling multiple volume ZORK games have sold over a million copies.

One bedroom programmer actually ported the game to the Game Boy of all things, using the basic code of the Sinclair Spectrum version, as both systems were powered the Z80 processor. Inputting words involved cycling the cursor through one letter at a time, similarly to inputting initial for high scores on a joystick. Surely the ultimate case of "right game, wrong format".

The first commercial release of Zork I (for the TRS-80, distributed by Personal Software) was simply called Zork. The game disk was packaged in a plastic bag with a large manual showing an adventurer outfitted in barbarian guard attacking the troll, with the white house in the background. Such early versions are quite difficult to come by and are highly prized by collectors.

In the December 2001 Issue of PC Gamer, Zork I, II, and II were shipped on the CD included with the magazine.

Contributed by Chris Martin (1121) on Oct 15, 2001.

Zork was voted #70 in the Top 100 Games of All Time poll published by Game Informer Magazine (Issue 100, August 2001).

Contributed by PCGamer77 (3025) on Jul 28, 2001.

The trivia by Droog is missing a detail: The actual number of leaves in the pile is 69,105. It's an hex/octal inside joke for programmers.

In the 200th aniversary issue of Computer Gaming World, the readers named it the ninth best game of all time.

As part of the release of Zork Nemesis, Activision released Zork I as freeware on their website. (At present, the links to download the game at activision.com are dead, but the game is available at numerous fan sites.)

This game is a member of Computer Gaming World's Hall of Fame.

Typing in "xyzzy" and "plugh" (magic words from an earlier text adventure game), the game comes back with: "A hollow voice says 'Fool.' "

You can find out how many leaves are in the pile of leaves covering the grate in the clearing by typing "count leaves". Strangely enough, it only takes 1 turn to count all the leaves.

"Hello, Sailor!"

This well-recognized Infocom phrase got its start here. Type it in, and you'll get the response "Nothing happens here."

Type it in almost any room in any Infocom game, and you'll get the same response. This may be one of the oldest Infocom red herrings around.

There is a location in the game called "Aragain Falls."

Spell ARAGAIN backwards, and you'll see something more familiar.

(From The New Zork Times Vol.3 No.2 Spring 1984)

Some statistics about Zork 1:

• Number of rooms: 110
• Number of different ways to die: 28
• Number of words in vocabulary: 698
• Number of takeable objects: 59 (The raft is actually three different takeable objects: inflated, uninflated, and punctured)

Contributed by Belboz (6619) on May 10, 2000.

Zork was born on the mainframes of MIT in 1977, and saw its first commercial release on the TRS-80, under the Personal Software (releasers of VisiCalc) label in 1979. The title was a nonsense word used by the creators to label works in progress. Infocom was founded by these creators, Marc Blank, Dave Lebling, Tim Anderson and Bruce Daniels, to create Zork II. Infocom created 35 other games for a variety of computer platforms.