Zork was one of the first interactive fiction computer games and an early descendant of Colossal Cave Adventure. The first version of Zork was written in 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling, and implemented in the MDL programming language. All four were members of the MIT Dynamic Modelling Group. Zork may mean: Zork an interactive computer game. ... Zork I is one of the first interactive fiction games, as well as being one of the first commercially sold. ... A computer game is a game composed of a computer-controlled virtual universe that players interact with in order to achieve a defined goal or set of goals. ... Colossal Cave Adventure (also known as ADVENT, Colossal Cave, or Adventure) (Crowther & Woods, 1976) was the first computer adventure game. ... Also: 1977 (album) by Ash. ... Also: 1979 by Smashing Pumpkins. ... The PDP-10 was a computer manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from the late 1960s on; the name stands for Programmed Data Processor model 10. It was the machine that made time-sharing common; it looms large in hacker folklore because of its adoption in the 1970s by many... Tim Anderson helped create Zork; one of the first works of interactive fiction (a form of adventure game), was an early descendant of ADVENT (also known as Colossal Cave). ... Marc Blank is an American computer game designer and game programmer. ... Dave Lebling, ca 1985 Dave Lebling (born 1949) was an interactive fiction game designer, or implementor, at Infocom. ... MDL (the MIT Design Language) is a descendent of the Lisp programming language. ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private, coeducational research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ...

Zork can run on modern Z-machine interpreters, as well as the older models it was made for originally.

"Zork" was originally MIT hacker jargon for an unfinished program. The implementors named the completed game Dungeon, but by that time the name Zork had already stuck. Zork has also been adapted to a widely panned book series. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... The Z machine at Sandia National Laboratory. ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private, coeducational research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... For other uses, see Hacker (disambiguation). ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Zork universe Zork games Zork Anthology Zork trilogy Zork I   Zork II   Zork III Beyond Zork   Zork Zero   Planetfall Enchanter trilogy Enchanter   Sorcerer   Spellbreaker Other games Wishbringer   Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis   Zork Grand Inquisitor Zork: The Undiscovered Underground Topics in Zork Encyclopedia Frobozzica Characters   Kings   Creatures Timeline   Magic   Calendar...

Three of the original Zork programmers joined with others to found Infocom in 1979. That company adapted the PDP-10 Zork into Zork I-III, a trilogy of games for most popular small computers of the era, including the Apple II, the Commodore 64, the Atari 8-bit family, the TRS-80, CP/M systems and the IBM PC. Zork I was published on 5¼" and 8" floppy disks. Joel Berez and Marc Blank developed a specialized virtual machine to run Zork I, called the Z-machine. The first "Z-machine Interpreter Program" ZIP for a small computer was written by Scott Cutler for the TRS-80. The trilogy was written in ZIL, which stands for "Zork Implementation Language", a language similar to LISP. Personal Software published what would become the first part of the trilogy under the name Zork when it was first released in 1980, but Infocom later handled the distribution of that game and their subsequent games. Part of the reason for splitting Zork into three different games was that, unlike the PDP systems the original ran on, micros did not have enough memory and disk storage to handle the entirety of the original game. In the process, more content was added to Zork to make each game stand on its own. Zork universe Zork games Zork Anthology Zork trilogy Zork I   Zork II   Zork III Beyond Zork   Zork Zero Enchanter trilogy Enchanter   Sorcerer   Spellbreaker Other games Wishbringer   Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis   Zork Grand Inquisitor Zork: The Undiscovered Underground Topics in Zork Encyclopedia Frobozzica Characters   Kings   Creatures Timeline   Magic   Calendar Zorkmid... The 1977 Apple II, complete with integrated keyboard, color graphics, sound, a plastic case and eight expansion slots. ... The Commodore 64 is the best-selling single personal computer model of all time. ... An Atari 800XL, one of the most popular machines in the series. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... CP/M was an operating system originally created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. ... IBM PC (IBM 5150) with keyboard and green screen monochrome monitor (IBM 5151), running MS-DOS 5. ... Zork I: The Great Underground Empire is an interactive fiction computer game written by Marc Blank, Dave Lebling, Bruce Daniels and Tim Anderson and published by Infocom in 1980. ... A floppy disk is a data storage device that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible (floppy) magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic shell. ... In computer science, a virtual machine is software that creates a virtualized environment between the computer platform and its operating system, so that the end user can operate software on an abstract machine. ... The Z machine at Sandia National Laboratory. ... For the programming language, see Lisp (programming language). ... VisiCorp was an early personal computer software publisher. ... Year 1980 (MCMLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link displays the 1980 Gregorian calendar). ...

Zork is set in a sprawling underground labyrinth which occupies a portion of the "Great Underground Empire". The player is a nameless adventurer whose goal is to find the treasures hidden in the caves and return alive with them. The dungeons are stocked with many novel creatures and objects, among them grues and zorkmids. The Zork universe and timeline has been extended by several of Infocom's other works of interactive fiction. Zork universe Zork games Zork Anthology Zork trilogy Zork I   Zork II   Zork III Beyond Zork   Zork Zero   Planetfall Enchanter trilogy Enchanter   Sorcerer   Spellbreaker Other games Wishbringer   Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis   Zork Grand Inquisitor Zork: The Undiscovered Underground Topics in Zork Encyclopedia Frobozzica Characters   Kings   Creatures Timeline   Magic   Calendar... Zork universe Zork games Zork Anthology Zork trilogy Zork I   Zork II   Zork III Beyond Zork   Zork Zero Enchanter trilogy Enchanter   Sorcerer   Spellbreaker Other games Wishbringer   Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis   Zork Grand Inquisitor Zork: The Undiscovered Underground Topics in Zork Encyclopedia Frobozzica Characters   Kings   Creatures Timeline   Magic   Calendar Zorkmid... Zork universe Zork games Zork Anthology Zork trilogy Zork I   Zork II   Zork III Beyond Zork   Zork Zero   Planetfall Enchanter trilogy Enchanter   Sorcerer   Spellbreaker Other games Wishbringer   Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis   Zork Grand Inquisitor Zork: The Undiscovered Underground Topics in Zork Encyclopedia Frobozzica Characters   Kings   Creatures Timeline   Magic   Calendar... Zork I is one of the first interactive fiction games, as well as being one of the first commercially sold. ...

Zork and its relatives are works of interactive fiction. Zork distinguished itself in its genre as an especially rich game, in terms of both the quality of the storytelling and the sophistication of its text parser, which was not limited to simple verb-noun commands ("hit grue"), but understood full sentences ("hit the grue with the Elvish sword"). A parser is a computer program or a component of a program that analyses the grammatical structure of an input, with respect to a given formal grammar, a process known as parsing. ...

Zork series

The original Zork Trilogy

• Zork I: The Great Underground Empire (1980, Infocom)
• Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz (1981, Infocom)
• Zork III: The Dungeon Master (1982, Infocom)

Zork I: The Great Underground Empire is an interactive fiction computer game written by Marc Blank, Dave Lebling, Bruce Daniels and Tim Anderson and published by Infocom in 1980. ... Year 1980 (MCMLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link displays the 1980 Gregorian calendar). ... Zork universe Zork games Zork trilogy Zork I Zork II Zork III Enchanter trilogy Enchanter Sorcerer Spellbreaker Wishbringer Beyond Zork Zork Zero Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis Zork Grand Inquisitor Encyclopedia Encyclopedia Frobozzica Miscellaneous Timeline   Calendar   Magic Double Fanucci Companies Infocom   Activision Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz is an... Year 1981 (MCMLXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link displays the 1981 Gregorian calendar). ... Zork III: The Dungeon Master is an interactive fiction computer game written by Marc Blank, Dave Lebling, Bruce Daniels and Tim Anderson and published by Infocom in 1982. ... Year 1982 (MCMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Friday (link displays the 1982 Gregorian calendar). ...

Later additions to the series

All these are text-only unless otherwise noted.

• The Enchanter trilogy:
  • Enchanter (1983, Infocom)
  • Sorcerer (1984, Infocom)
  • Spellbreaker (1985, Infocom)

• Games that take place somewhere in the Zork universe:
  • Wishbringer (1985, Infocom)

• The Zork Quest series:
  • Zork Quest: Assault on Egreth Castle (1988, Infocom)
  • Zork Quest: The Crystal of Doom (1989, Infocom)

• The Zork Anthology comprises the original Zork Trilogy plus:

• • Beyond Zork (1987, Infocom)
  • Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz (1988, Infocom, text with some graphics)

After a six year hiatus, the following games were produced: Enchanter is a 1983 interactive fiction computer game written by Marc Blank and Dave Lebling and published by Infocom. ... Year 1983 (MCMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays the 1983 Gregorian calendar). ... Zork universe Zork games Zork trilogy Zork I Zork II Zork III Enchanter trilogy Enchanter Sorcerer Spellbreaker Wishbringer Beyond Zork Zork Zero Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis Zork Grand Inquisitor Encyclopedia Encyclopedia Frobozzica Miscellaneous Timeline   Calendar   Magic Double Fanucci Companies Infocom   Activision This article is about the computer game. ... Year 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link displays the 1984 Gregorian calendar). ... Zork universe Zork games Zork Anthology Zork trilogy Zork I   Zork II   Zork III Beyond Zork   Zork Zero   Planetfall Enchanter trilogy Enchanter   Sorcerer   Spellbreaker Other games Wishbringer   Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis   Zork Grand Inquisitor Zork: The Undiscovered Underground Topics in Zork Encyclopedia Frobozzica Characters   Kings   Creatures Timeline   Magic   Calendar... Year 1985 (MCMLXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link displays 1985 Gregorian calendar). ... Zork universe Zork games Zork trilogy Zork I Zork II Zork III Enchanter trilogy Enchanter Sorcerer Spellbreaker Wishbringer Beyond Zork Zork Zero Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis Zork Grand Inquisitor Encyclopedia Encyclopedia Frobozzica Miscellaneous Timeline   Calendar   Magic Double Fanucci Companies Infocom   Activision Wishbringer: The Magick Stone of Dreams is an... Image File history File links Zorkanthology. ... Zork universe Zork games Zork Anthology Zork trilogy Zork I   Zork II   Zork III Beyond Zork   Zork Zero   Planetfall Enchanter trilogy Enchanter   Sorcerer   Spellbreaker Other games Wishbringer   Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis   Zork Grand Inquisitor Zork: The Undiscovered Underground Topics in Zork Encyclopedia Frobozzica Characters   Kings   Creatures Timeline   Magic   Calendar... Year 1987 (MCMLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link displays 1987 Gregorian calendar). ... Zork universe Zork games Zork Anthology Zork trilogy Zork I   Zork II   Zork III Beyond Zork   Zork Zero   Planetfall Enchanter trilogy Enchanter   Sorcerer   Spellbreaker Other games Wishbringer   Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis   Zork Grand Inquisitor Zork: The Undiscovered Underground Topics in Zork Encyclopedia Frobozzica Characters   Kings   Creatures Timeline   Magic   Calendar... Year 1988 (MCMLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Friday (link displays 1988 Gregorian calendar). ...

• Return to Zork (1993, Infocom/Activision, graphical)
• Zork: Nemesis (1996, Activision, graphical)
• Zork Grand Inquisitor (1997, Activision, graphical)
• Zork: The Undiscovered Underground (1997, written by Michael Berlyn and Marc Blank (original Infocom implementors) and released by Activision to promote the release of Zork Grand Inquisitor)

The Enchanter trilogy and Wishbringer occupy somewhat unusual positions within the Zork universe. Enchanter was originally developed as Zork IV; Infocom decided to instead release it separately, however, and it became the basis of a new trilogy. (In each trilogy, there is a sense of assumed continuity; that is, the player's character in Zork III is assumed to have experienced the events of Zork I and Zork II. Similarly, events from Enchanter are referenced in Sorcerer and Spellbreaker; but the Enchanter character is not assumed to be the same one from the Zork trilogy. In fact, in Enchanter the player's character encounters the Adventurer from Zork, who helps the player's character solve a puzzle in the game.) Although Wishbringer was never officially linked to the Zork series, the game is generally agreed to be "Zorkian" due to its use of magic and several terms and names from established Zork games. Return to Zork is a 1993 adventure game in the Zork series for the PC and Apple Macintosh. ... Year 1993 (MCMXCIII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1993 Gregorian calendar). ... Activision, Inc. ... Zork: Nemesis is a 1996 graphical adventure game developed by Activision. ... Year 1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full 1996 Gregorian calendar). ... Zork universe Zork games Zork Anthology Zork trilogy Zork I   Zork II   Zork III Beyond Zork   Zork Zero   Planetfall Enchanter trilogy Enchanter   Sorcerer   Spellbreaker Other games Wishbringer   Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis   Zork Grand Inquisitor Zork: The Undiscovered Underground Topics in Zork Encyclopedia Frobozzica Characters   Kings   Creatures Timeline   Magic   Calendar... 1997 (MCMXCVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Michael Berlyn is an American computer game designer and writer. ...

Later compilations and current availability

Among the games bundled in The Lost Treasures of Infocom, published in 1991 by Activision under the Infocom brand, were the original Zork trilogy, the Enchanter trilogy, Beyond Zork and Zork Zero. A second bundle published in 1992, The Lost Treasures of Infocom II, contained Wishbringer and ten other non-Zork-related games. The Lost Treasures of Infocom is a collection of 20 computer games from interactive fiction pioneer Infocom, released in 1991. ... Year 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the 1991 Gregorian calendar). ... Year 1992 (MCMXCII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display full 1992 Gregorian calendar). ...

Activision's 1996 compilation, Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces of Infocom, includes all the text-based Zork games; the Zork and Enchanter trilogies, Wishbringer, Beyond Zork and Zork Zero. Year 1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display full 1996 Gregorian calendar). ... Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces of Infocom is a collection of 33 computer games from interactive fiction pioneer Infocom, and the top 6 winners of the 1995 Interactive Fiction Competition, released in 1996. ...

Activision briefly offered free downloads of Zork I as part of the promotion of Zork: Nemesis, and Zork II and Zork III as part of the promotion for Zork Grand Inquisitor, as well as a new adventure: Zork: The Undiscovered Underground. This led many to believe that the games had been released as freeware, even though the included license explicitly prohibited redistribution. Activision's legal department has recently stated that the promotion relating to those games has ended and that it is not legal to distribute the games or make them available for download.

Of six novels published as "Infocom Books" by Avon Books between 1989-1991, two were directly based on Zork: The Zork Chronicles by George Alec Effinger (1990) and The Lost City of Zork by Robin W. Bailey (1991). Two further novels in the same series are based on the same universe: Wishbringer by Craig Shaw Gardner and Enchanter, also by Bailey. Avon is a paperback imprint of HarperCollins. ... George Alec Effinger (January 10, 1947–April 27, 2002) was an American science fiction author, born in Cleveland, Ohio. ... Craig Shaw Gardner (b. ...

A parody series known as 'Pork' was released also starting in 1988. Uncyclopedia also has a small wiki-based game called Game:Zork, which is almost impossible to win, and losing tends to consist of being eaten by a grue. Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia, is a satirical parody of Wikipedia. ... Zork universe Zork games Zork Anthology Zork trilogy Zork I   Zork II   Zork III Beyond Zork   Zork Zero Enchanter trilogy Enchanter   Sorcerer   Spellbreaker Other games Wishbringer   Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis   Zork Grand Inquisitor Zork: The Undiscovered Underground Topics in Zork Encyclopedia Frobozzica Characters   Kings   Creatures Timeline   Magic   Calendar Zorkmid...

As of 2006 an over-the-phone version of Zork entitled Zasterisk entered beta testing. Programmed by Simon Ditner using Asterisk and the Festival Speech Synthesis System, players can call in and play Zork over the phone by speaking voice commands. The results are read back by the automated text-to-voice synthesis system. It is now known as Zoip, a reference to VoIP.^[1] Asterisk is a free software / open-source software implementation of a telephone private branch exchange (PBX). ... Festival is a general multi-lingual speech synthesis system developed at Centre for Speech Technology Research (CSTR) at the University of Edinburgh. ... IP Telephony, also called Internet telephony, is the technology that makes it possible to have a telephone conversation over the Internet or a dedicated Internet Protocol (IP) network instead of dedicated voice transmission lines. ...

Commands

In the Zork games, the player is not limited to verb-noun commands, such as "take lamp", "open mailbox", and so forth. Instead, the parser supports more sophisticated sentences such as "put the lamp and sword in the case", "look under the rug", and "drop all except lantern". The game understands a good number of common verbs, including "take", "drop", "examine", "attack", "climb", "open", "close", "count", and many more. The games also support commands to the game (rather than in the game) such as "save" and "restore", "script" and "unscript" (which begin and end a text transcript of the game text), "restart", and "quit".

In all of the Zork text adventures, the following commands apply:

> n, s, e, w

Short for "go north", "go south", etc.

> nw, ne, sw, se

Short for "go northwest", "go southwest", etc.

> u and d

Short for "go up" and "go down"

> i

Reveals a player's inventory

> verbose

Gives full descriptions after each command (rather than omitting details already given to the player)

> score

Displays the player's current score, number of moves, and ranking

Fortran version of Dungeon

While the authors of Dungeon (as it was then known) were at MIT, a programmer from Digital Equipment Corporation translated part of Dungeon from MDL to Fortran and crammed it into a 56KB PDP-11. (Dungeon was at the time playable on PDP-10's but not on smaller systems.) The game's authors were surprised that such a small system could run the game and provided sources for a more complete translation. When Dungeon became the commercial product Zork at Infocom, Infocom agreed that if an Infocom copyright notice was put on the Fortran version, noncommercial distribution would be allowed. This Fortran version, and C translations thereof, have been included in several Linux distributions. The DEC logo Digital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering American company in the computer industry. ...

The Fortran version of Dungeon was widely available on DEC VAXes, being one of the most popular items distributed by DECUS. It went through multiple modifications both to incorporate more features from the original and to track changes in the MDL version. In the late 1980s, the Fortran version was extensively rewritten for VAX Fortran and became fully compatible with the last MDL release. It had one extra joke: an apparent entrance to the Mill (a reference to DEC's headquarters) that was, in fact, impassable. VAX is a 32-bit computing architecture that supports an orthogonal instruction set (machine language) and virtual addressing (i. ... DECUS was the Digital Equipment Computer User Society, founded in 1961. ...

It also had a gdt command (game debugging technique, a reference to the DDT debugger) which enabled the player to move any object (including the player) to any room. Use of gdt required answering a random question requiring deep knowledge of the game. The game's response to a wrong answer (“A booming voice says ‘Wrong, cretin!’ and you notice that you have turned into a pile of dust”) appears in many "fortune cookie" databases. Dynamic Debugging Technique, or DDT, was the name of several debugger programs originally developed for DEC hardware, originally known as DEC Debugging Tape because it was distributed on paper tape. ... fortune is a simple program that displays a random message from a database of quotes. ...

See also

• 69105, a number that became somewhat of an in-joke in several Infocom games
• The white house is where Zork I begins, and also appears in several other games
• The Lurking Horror, another Infocom IF, that references Zork.
• Gnome of Zürich, a character from Zork II who appears in the Bank of Zork if the character becomes trapped. Certain early releases had a bug that gave the surreal response to unintelligible commands: "I can't see the Gnome of Zürich anywhere," in situations that had nothing to do with the Gnome.
• Grue, the famous Zork monster
• The Meteor, The Stone, And A Long Glass Of Sherbet, a 1996 amateur text adventure game set in the Zork universe, winner of the 1996 Interactive Fiction Competition

The number 69,105 was used as an in-joke at the United States computer game manufacturer Infocom. ... An in joke is a joke whose humour is clear only to those people who are in a group that has some prior knowledge (not known by the whole population) that makes the joke humorous. ... The white house as depicted in Zork Grand Inquisitor. ... The Lurking Horror is an interactive fiction computer game released by Infocom in 1987. ... Gnomes of Zürich is a disparaging term for Swiss bankers. ... Zork universe Zork games Zork Anthology Zork trilogy Zork I   Zork II   Zork III Beyond Zork   Zork Zero Enchanter trilogy Enchanter   Sorcerer   Spellbreaker Other games Wishbringer   Return to Zork Zork: Nemesis   Zork Grand Inquisitor Zork: The Undiscovered Underground Topics in Zork Encyclopedia Frobozzica Characters   Kings   Creatures Timeline   Magic   Calendar Zorkmid... The Meteor, The Stone, And A Long Glass Of Sherbet is a 1996 work of interactive fiction by Graham Nelson, distributed in z-code format as freeware. ... The Interactive Fiction Competition is an annual competition for works of interactive fiction that has been held since 1995. ...

Notes

Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... May 5 is the 125th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (126th in leap years). ...

References

• Montfort, Nick. Twisty Little Passages. MIT Press. 2003. ISBN 0-262-13436-5.

External links

• The Zork Library (All things Zork since 1998.)
• Play Zork online at THCNET's interactive 404 error page.
• Zork I, II, III and The Undiscovered Underground Download Zorks I, II and III for Win, DOS or Mac (no Z-interpreter needed), and The Undiscovered Underground (Z-machine interpreters included). Includes "The New Zork Times"
• Infocom-IF.org, Infocom history, authors, etc; often updated with any news from Activision
• Zork series at MobyGames
• Zork sites at the Open Directory Project
• Article at The Dot Eaters, featuring an extensive history of the Zork games and Infocom
• Rezork - Play Zork adventures online; open source java Zork emulator
• Article about ZoIP - Zork Returns! Thanks to Open Source Asterisk PBX
• ZoIP home page (voice command over the phone Zork)
• The Zork Birthday Page - A homage to Zork celebrating it's 30th birthday.
• The History Of Zork - Article
• History of Zork Now Available on Gamasutra: Read Full Interviews Here! - Interviews with Dave Lebling and Marc Blank, implementors for the Zork series.