You are standing in an open
field, west of a white house.

<nostalgia>

The
first computer game I ever bought was Zork for CP/M.
CP/M was the first standard operating system for personal computers.
It predated Apple, Commodore, Atari and IBM, but it ran on most of
the hardware which was available back then.

There were no standards
back then and Zork had no way of knowing just what
hardware you were using. So Infocom required the user to finish writing
the program themselves. They included the source code (in assembler)
for the cursor control program. The user had to fill in the blanks
with whatever ASCII characters their machine used to move the cursor
up, down, left, right, erase, highlight, etc. The user could then
assemble, link and finally run the game.

Talk
about having to walk ten miles to school, through the snow, uphill,
both ways!

It is hard to overestimate
the impact Zork had on computer gaming. It single
handedly launched, defined and for several years ruled the computer
gaming industry. How could a boring text adventure do this?

Up
through the ’70’s, computers were large, room filling beasts costing
millions of dollars which only ran in batch mode – the programmer
submitted requests via a deck of cards and later (hours, days,…)
they would be given a printout of the result. So-called “mini-computers”
were just coming out. Costing about $100K and only taking up the space
of a filing cabinet, each department could afford their own.

Minicomputers used ASCII
terminals, still no graphics, and were actually interactive –
you could type in a command and the computer would respond immediately.
It wasn’t long before programmers were writing little games of tic-tac-toe
and Hunt-the-Wumpus
to play over lunchtime. And then a new game appeared.

Adventure
(aka Colossal Cave Adventure) started to appear in user group libraries,
free for the taking. It was a new kind of game which took place in
a huge underground world. You just told the computer what you wanted
to do and the computer would tell you what happened.

You are in the forest.
> go west
You are in the forest.
In front of you is a building – the well house for a small spring.
> enter house
You are in the Well House.
There is a well here with steps leading down.
There is an old lantern here.
There is a coil of rope here.
> take lantern
Taken.

Lunchtimes
are no longer available as you spent them all exploring the vast underground
cave system, collecting treasure and solving devious puzzles. Then
one day it hit you – I’m having a rational dialog with a machine.
And the world changes. Robots are no longer the stuff of science fiction,
you are practically talking to one now. We just need to extend its
capabilities a bit. Why, anything is possible!

This was an exciting moment
in many people’s lives. But for all of that, Adventure
was quite limited – it could only parse a verb and direct object.

go north
take lantern
attack troll

But it did inspire a group
of geeks at MIT to improve upon it. They developed a more advanced
parser which could understand verbs, direct objects and indirect objects.

open chest with screwdriver
attack troll with sword

They
also created NPC characters which moved about and acted on their own.
Stir in large amounts of sophomoric humor and Zork
was born.

The MIT geeks graduated
and formed their own company, Infocom,
just as the Microcomputers were coming out. Their first product was

Zork, but split into three pieces to fit on these
new, small machines. It seemed that anyone who bought a computer had
to buy a copy of Zork to go with it. Zork
became the first game to sell over a million copies and was still
the industry’s best-selling computer game until Myst
was released in 1993 (Myst remained the best-selling
pc game until the release of The Sims in 2002 – RandyJA).

Zork
spawned many sequels and parallel story lines. Some of the later titles
had simple graphics. The last Zork title developed by Infocom in 1987,
Beyond
Zork, was an RPG set in the Zork universe. Then the market
for adventure games began to shrink as machine speed and graphics
matured to the point where action games were possible. Infocom was
bought out by Activision.

Activision dissolved the
Infocom group and tried to make some easy money selling collections.
They also wrote a couple of Zork adventures in the modern graphical
style – Zork
Nemesis and Zork
Grand Inquisitor. But that was it. Dust began to collect
in the Great Underground Empire (GUE).

Until now.

</nostalgia>

Activision
has launched a series of web based computer games under the name of
Jolt Computing. One of these games is Legends
of Zork.

Legends of Zork
is an RPG/Adventure which takes place in the Zork Universe. Your old
familiar locations and characters can be found there right along with
the off-beat humor which marked the original series. You play as a
former member of the FrobozzCo International sales force who has lost
his job. But there’s plenty of opportunities out there for an aspiring
adventurer. So, along with a camp of fellow treasure hunters all intent
on plundering loot from the monstrous creatures that have invaded
the land since the fall of the Great Underground Empire, you’ve pitched
your tent in a field near a white house with a boarded front door.

The RPG play is very much
like the old Bard’s
Tale – the computer compares your stats with the
monster’s, rolls the dice and then tells you the outcome. You fight
monsters to collect money and experience. Money lets you buy better
stuff and experience lets you improve your stats. You might also find
the occasional playing card from a deck of Double
Fanucci. These can be stacked in such a way so as to improve your
stats as well.

A
world map provides easy access to other locations each of which has
a base where you can sell any loot you have gathered, purchase weapons,
armors or spells, battle other players in the Arena, stack your Fanucci
cards, join a clan or go on a Quest.

The game currently has
five Quests available, each of which can only be completed by solving
puzzles related to the Zork universe. The Great Unveiling –
available once you reach level 50 – is actually comprised of
thirteen mini-quests with puzzles that would make the original Zork
developers proud.

So what does the game have
going for it?
-) It’s free.
-) It might bring back some old memories.
-) It is addictive.
-) It is well designed in its own right.
-) It allows for multi-player gaming
-) It’s funny.
-) Did I mention that it was free?

So what are the down sides?
-) It’s not an epic, like WoW.
-) There is no eye candy to impress.
-) The plot line is as thin as the Naught of Scythes.
-) You can only play 30 rounds of combat (Action Points) per day.

(Actually, once your
character reaches level 30, you can acquire a sidekick. Some sidekicks,
such as The Kid, have the ability to add extra APs (Action Points)
to your daily minimum – RandyJA)

So how does Activision
make any money off of this?
-) The advertising banners on the site.
-) Selling coconuts.

And
not just any coconuts, these are replicas of the original Coconut
of Quendor and can be used to buy all kinds of stuff, including
more playing time.

(Coconuts can be purchased
through a Paypal account or using a credit card. They are relatively
cheap and are a must if you want to acquire charms and potions to
enhance gameplay. There is also an option to purchase coconuts through
Gambit which
we highly discourage! – RandyJA).

Again,
this is not an epic tale, but it is obvious that the authors are fans
of the original game and had fun making this addition to the franchise.
Legends of Zork is not a cheap knock off and deserves
a solid “B”.

(To the developer’s
credit, they do seem to respond to the fanbase and are constantly
modifying the game. Unfortunately, once you reach level 50 and have
collected all of the Fanucci cards, there seems to be little impetus
to continue playing other than improving your ranking – RandyJA.)

Recommended System Requirements:
Firefox [3+], Safari [3+] or Internet Explorer 7

RandyJA is currently
a level 60 adventurer ranked in the top 80 players. If you would like
to join his Just Adventure clan and go on an adventure, just send
him a request through the Legend of Zork website.