Information AboutZork I |
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| zork | |
''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 . It was the first game in the immensely popular Zork trilogy and was released for a wide range of computer systems, followed by '' Zork II '' and '' Zork III ''. PLOT The entire game takes place in the year 948 GUE although the passage of time is not notable in gameplay. The player steps into the deliberately vague role of an "adventurer". The game begins with no preface near a White House in a small, self-contained area. Although the player is given little instruction, the house provides an obvious point of interest. When the player enters the house, it yields a number of intriguing objects: an ancient brass lantern, an empty trophy case, and an intricately engraved sword. Beneath a rug, a trap door set into the floor leads down to a dark . The ultimate goal of ''Zork I'' is to collect the Twenty Treasures of Zork and return them to the trophy case in the White House . The Twenty Treasures are:
Finding the treasures requires solving a variety of puzzles, including navigating a brutal maze of identical rooms, an Exorcism , and the successful manipulation of Flood Control Dam #3 without going over Aragain Falls. Once the first nineteen treasures are added to the case, the Ancient map appears in the case with the other treasures, giving the adventurer instructions for finding the Barrow, the path to Zork II . FEELIES Infocom did not begin their tradition of including Feelies , or extra items related to a game, until the 1982 release '' Deadline ''. Later re-releases of the game, however, were packaged with:
NOTES ]] The opening text of ''Zork I'' is among the most famous descriptions in computer games: :West of House :You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. :There is a small mailbox here. This is quite simplistic when compared to Infocom's later games, many of which started with screenfuls of introductory text. Several of the game's situations and descriptions have become iconic within the field of interactive fiction, such as the brass lantern and the "Elvish sword of great antiquity". ''Zork I'' also introduced the famous Grue , a "sinister, lurking presence" who enjoys eating adventurers who go exploring in the dark. Grues appeared (or, at least, were mentioned) in many subsequent Infocom adventures, right up to the 1997 graphic adventure '' Zork Grand Inquisitor '', published by Activision . The original version of ''Zork I'' was published by Personal Software and simply called ''Zork''. It was distributed in clear plastic bags containing only the game disk and a 36-page booklet. Infocom's first "self-published" version of ''Zork I'' was in the so-called "Folio" format which included a single piece of paper describing how to run the game. The feelies noted above were only introduced when ''Zork I'' was re-released in the "Grey box" format. Although the back of the ''Zork I'' "Grey box" depicted a Zorkmid coin included with the other feelies, production difficulties led to the coins' omission from the packages. Zorkmid coins were not included as feelies until the release of the Zork Trilogy boxed set. The name of Aragain Falls was created by spelling the word Niagara backwards. EXTERNAL LINKS
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