Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Zork Retrospective


As a kid, I loved Infocom games.  For me, like many, the Zork trilogy was my introduction to interactive computer fiction.  I first played Zork II:  The Wizard of Frobozz at the California University of Pennsylvania computer lab in February1982.  I was there for a boy scout banquet and I started talking to one of the lab techs.  It turned out that he was a Dungeons & Dragons player like myself, and he asked me if I'd ever played any of the Zork games.  I said, "No", so he loaded Zork II on an Apple IIe to show me. I was hooked.  I bought all three for my Commodore 64 and had hours and hours of fun.  No graphics, just my imagination.  I fought the wiley thief.  I died flying in the balloon.  I travelled in time.  And of course, I got eaten by a Grue many, many times.  I played almost every game Infocom published.  Fun times.  Now, I can write my own Interactive fiction using Inform.  I need to get moving on that.

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