The retro video game that I have chosen to review is Zork: The Great Underground Empire – Part I, also known as Zork I. Zork is a text-based interactive fiction video game that was released in 1980. It was inspired by Colossal Cave Adventure, which is another text based adventure game released in 1976. Zork was created by a group of MIT students, whose main goal was essentially to take Colossal Cave Adventure, and make it better, for example by incorporating more complicated/complete statements, altering “kill troll” to “kill troll with the sword.”
Both Zork I and Colossal Cave Adventure were originally written for the PDP-10, “a room-sized computer mainframe that was popular with universities in the late-1970s”; however, later became available for many more platforms and consoles. Therefore, at first, before personal computers became prevalent, Zork I was not officially “announced to the world” and the only way to actually access the game as through the MIT PDP-10. It was not until home computers became more popular and the game was released by the company Infocom that Zork I became more accessible to the general public. The game was too large for early computers, thus was split into three different games: Zork I: The Great Underground Empire, Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz, and Zork III: The Dungeon Master.
Text-based games were most popular in the mid-1970’s and the 1980’s, and although less popular compared to non-textual graphic video games, are still prevalent today on contemporary devices. With a lack of graphics, displaying only a black screen with white text, this videogame deviates from, at least, my traditional idea of a “videogame”, focusing heavily on the storyline and actions themselves. It emphasizes the literary experience. The story follows the “adventurer” through this great underground empire as you explore this expansive territory, fighting obstacles, reaching barriers, and discovering new items on the way to finding the Twenty Treasures of Zork I. In addition, rather than have any theme music or background noises, the audio resembles that of slow static. With no graphics or audio, Zork I leaves a lot to the imagination of the player or “adventurer”.
Without any prior knowledge about the game nor any experience with text-based video games, I struggled initially to even start the game and figure out how to continue through the storyline. The game mechanics include typing in actions in order to move and interact with the surroundings, such as “go west, go east, open trophy case, take knife.” However, what is limiting is the lack of the ability to backspace, which seems intuitive when typing on a keyboard. Instead, pressing the backspace would function similarly to a space bar. This was frustrating because if you made a mistake, in order to continue through the game would be to re-enter the action.
The main goal of the game is to essentially explore every part of this underground empire, your score on the top right increasing with each new room you find, until you find the “treasure”. It gives the illusion of freedom, as we have the power to type in where we go and what we do; however, the reality is that the game guides and direct us into specific directions. When typing in random words the game directly directs you by saying, “You have to write a verb!” In addition, when you go in certain directions, the game will often prevent you by stating that you simply cannot go that way. However, at the same time the storyline is not very direct as you must go along multiple different paths in different directions in order to explore various parts of the empire.
It is interesting how Zork I includes the components of other more traditional videogames, with a storyline, obstacles, violence, rewards and punishments, but only communicates said components through texts. Zork I seems to utilize extensively detailed descriptions in order to compensate for the lack of visual effects. For example, at one point I went in the wrong direction and died, rather than respawn or try again, Zork I displays detailed text describing my emotions as I take my last breath and am rejected from the eerie gates of hell. Therefore, although a lot more is left for the imagination than other graphic videogames, at the same time the game is essentially described for you.
Works Cited:
Woyke, Elizabeth. “The Enduring Legacy of Zork.” MIT Technology Review, MIT Technology
Review, 14 Nov. 2017, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608670/the-enduring-
legacy-of-zork/.
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