Zork

[Goochman]

Some I can across an old link I had to a website which had walk throughs to alot of old text adventures:

http://www.textfiles.com/adventure/

 

I remember playing Zork I with some friends and we never got that far - seemed that Dam always caused problems.

 

Anyhow,

With a walk through in hand I figured Ive give it a go.

 

Holy Moly - How the heck did anyone ever figure out half of the puzzles you needed to complete in that game...........there were times where you needed to have just the right items in in your limited inventory to get past certain areas. The room descriptions really gave you almost nothing to go by...........even following step by step instructions it took me about an hour to finish................

 

A very well done game but now I can see why I never got even half way through it.

 

How did others stumble across solving this back in the day?

[doctorclu]

Zork was my Harry Potter back in the day and the gateway drug to decades of D&D gaming and Live Action Role Play that followed.

 

That said, I basically heard from friends and over the BBSs how to get past problems.

[morelenmir]

I loved Zork so much back when I first played it - although it was not the first Infocom game I did play. That was enchanter.

 

I honestly did all the puzzles except the very last on my own. I won't spoiler it for others but the... One at the waterfall lets say. THAT I have no idea how anyone 'got'.

[Goochman]

Just went through Zork II - not as imaginative as I IMHO but the same or even worse amount of crazy puzzles. I can only assume the guide that came with the game helped with some of the puzzles?

[Tempest]

I figured out most of the puzzles on my own when I was a kid (some I needed a hint book for). Most were just trial and error and a lot of free time.

[+therealbountybob]

I had another bash at Zork recently - had a map from Atari User mag which helped but I did get stuck again. There are several issues with double page maps of adventure games in these magazines (on atarimania). I find if I dig these games out once in a while with my notes/maps I can make some progress. I have got the original disk/box so after reviewing the commands list I have a few ideas for the next time!

 

Page 6 mag has the adventurers companion disk (#34) with full solutions to several games.

 

Still not seem the Level 9 adventure hint sheets anywhere? - they are pretty funny as they have lots of red herrings. I have the one for the (fantastic) Price of Magic somewhere. This game was beatable apart from the sytax error as you could only use "TAKE wheel and not "GET wheel" which was annoying. Use to play it with a friend and HHGTTG so you could both try everything then get fed up and try all the expletives and doing stupid things

 

For the Payoff I had to use the solution in the end but I got pretty close. I think it's only some of the Scott Adams ones I have beaten without any hints. One day I will beat The Golden Baton (Brian Howarth) found this link http://www.ataricave.com/G/TheGoldenBaton.htm

[Tempest]

I'd be amazed if someone beat HHGTTG without a hint or two, the game is insanely hard. My vote for toughest Infocom game has to be Spellbreaker, that game is insanely tough and full of ways to permanently screw yourself over. The jump in difficulty from Enchanter and Sorcerer is huge. Zork III is another tough one, but it's harder to get into a walking dead type situation (other than the earthquake).

[_The Doctor__]

I was obsessed with Zork back in the day, when I was smarter, quicker, sharper, and strong. Going to the public library to sign it out of the course of months until I got a copy of my own! It was a year into it when I took all my notes and called my roleplaying friends to come for a weekend of fun. I made it to the end with the my friends at the time working in a group effort, it took us Friday Saturday and most of Sunday.

Trying every silly combination ever. Screaming for the hex editor but never using it. The disk hanging high above as a joke and motivation!

David B, Eric P, Kevin G. and Kevin S. Wherever you are thanks for a heck of a weekend. Pizza, Soda, food, movies, playing games and storming the castle by the library! Those were the days!

[morelenmir]

I recall playing THHGTTG a couple of months after Zork. I only made it past the babel-fish dispensing machine puzzle. I did that one, had a look at what followed and then gave up!

[_The Doctor__]

omg hitch hikers guide to the galaxy! Loved it but really I cheated by referring to Douglas Adams actual book when I couldn't remember something and needed an Idea on what to do. That helped big time. Loved the book, enjoyed the text adventure.

[morelenmir]

I was such a colossal Tolkien fan at that point - and still am, despite Peter Jackson's best efforts - that I greatly appreciated all the nods and in-jokes that Zork made to the Tolkien-aware player as well.

[almightytodd]

At one time I had a Z80/CP/M emulator that included Zork! in the distribution of included software. In a way, some of the early Z80-based computers of the 1970's seemed more like "real" computers to me - as opposed to machines that hooked up to your TV set - which seemed more like "video game machines with a keyboard" (...I'm talking about PET and TRS-80 mostly). I remember when the Commodore 128 was announced, part of the appeal to me was that it could be hooked up to a "real" 80-column monitor and run CP/M. (...I've only recently made the connection between the 80-column text monitor format and the 80-columns found on IBM punch cards since the early 1930s...).

 

I've also only recently noticed how the IMSAI 8080 looked so similar to the PDP mini-computers of the time (...the 8 and 11 in particular). Text-based games on these machines also seemed to be more in the spirit of "portable code" that didn't require specific video hardware the way that video game playing on an Atari computer would be a wildly different experience compared to say, a TI-99/4A.

 

I remain nostalgic and interested in all of this... ...but it has the same problem for me that modern gaming does - it requires a level of investment in time that is beyond what I want to devote to this.

[morelenmir]

I know what you mean almightytodd! Sometimes I enjoy the really 'bare metal' feel that using DOS or command-line Linux gives. It feels a lot more like 'real' computing to me. I would say though that the A8's were a pretty nice bridge between some degree of user-friendliness and a totally exposed kernel and operating system.

 

When I think about an 800XL now and programming it in ASM it is so... simple, or maybe more so 'obvious' perhaps, 'straightforward'. I am always shocked by how little there is inside the case. You move values around in memory and they have direct effects - you can see that starkness mirrored in the very lean hardware. Nowadays even programming with a medium-level language like C you are massively removed from the computer and this has just got worse and worse. The CLI/CLR and the attempts MS have made to totally obfuscate the hardware from the software means you are always programming through a layer. Maybe it makes things 'safer', maybe it is also faster to throw an application together. But you are not really learning how to programme the computer, you are not even programming the API any more as that has gone as well. Now you are learning how to manipulate the language runtime. All of this is hidden behind terms like 'managed code'. They have already made it impossible for the end-user hobbyist to write device drivers that can be distributed with the requirement for all such to be signed. How long before, in the name of 'safety' and 'combating piracy' all code has to be signed to even execute on 'Windows 11', or whatever thin-client cloud-bollocks they try to feed to us by then?

 

Nope. I like 'Zork' and the computing ecosystem that created it.

[ricortes]

I'd be amazed if someone beat HHGTTG without a hint or two, the game is insanely hard. My vote for toughest Infocom game has to be Spellbreaker, that game is insanely tough and full of ways to permanently screw yourself over. The jump in difficulty from Enchanter and Sorcerer is huge. Zork III is another tough one, but it's harder to get into a walking dead type situation (other than the earthquake).

 

I think I gave up on Spellbreaker before I left the shop. I had heard its reputation so I bought the hint book the same day. It was one of the official hint books with that 'yellow highlighter' type pens that revealed the answers when you ran it over the right area of the hint book. I think I went through about five rounds of stop playing, use highlighter, back to game, before I just gave up and did the whole hint book. I think I managed to make unrecoverable errors several times even with the hint book and needed to start over.

[The Usotsuki]

InvisiClues.

 

A few of the games exist in Z5 versions with the InvisiClues hints built in.

[Tempest]

 

I think I gave up on Spellbreaker before I left the shop. I had heard its reputation so I bought the hint book the same day. It was one of the official hint books with that 'yellow highlighter' type pens that revealed the answers when you ran it over the right area of the hint book. I think I went through about five rounds of stop playing, use highlighter, back to game, before I just gave up and did the whole hint book. I think I managed to make unrecoverable errors several times even with the hint book and needed to start over.

The game has potential, but in the end it's too hard and that makes it not a lot of fun to play.

 

 

InvisiClues.

 

A few of the games exist in Z5 versions with the InvisiClues hints built in.

 

The Solid Gold releases? Leather Goddesses of Phobos and HHGTTG are the two I can think of although I'm sure there are more. The later games always had the clues built in (which is how I beat Zork Zero back in the day).

[DanBoris]

I remember going to my local book store and sneaking a peak in this book, although I never actually bought it.

 

[The Usotsuki]

The Solid Gold releases? Leather Goddesses of Phobos and HHGTTG are the two I can think of although I'm sure there are more. The later games always had the clues built in (which is how I beat Zork Zero back in the day).

I think there's one of Zork 1 too.

[Jinks]

I remember in in early 90's I bought a pack of games called the infocom collection or something it has zork 1,2,3 and beyond zork or something like that. The only one I played was the one with the map in the upper right with the blue screen.

This was all on a tandy 1000sl/2.

I found it boring cause there was no graphics and I did not know wth I was buying..

[Shannon]

My cousin and I played through a good many of the infocom games and barely used (if at all) any hints. Back then it was the invisi clues.

 

But we finished..

 

Zork I thru III. Enchanter, Sorcerer and Spellbreaker. I always remembered having difficulty with sorcerer for some reason.

Planetfall and Stationfall.

HHGTTG.

 

We finished them all! Even Hitch Hikers. It is possible that having read the book may have helped.

[The Usotsuki]

Map in the top right, that's Beyond Zork.

[Tempest]

I always remembered having difficulty with sorcerer for some reason.

Sorcerer has a lot of potential, but everything in that game is trying to kill you which doesn't make it too fun (don't stand in the field too long, don't walk by the river bank, don't stay in the pit too long, etc.). I always felt rushed to get the hell out of a place before something random got me. Compare that to Zork where you can pretty much hang out anywhere for as long as you like and you'll be safe.

[+slx]

I dim(wit)ly remember finishing Zork I and LGOP on my own. I read the HHGTTG books first but still I am not sure if I needed Invisiclues or 'the book' for it. Zork II - my first Infocom - was quite hard, too, and I didn't get the maze in Zork III.

 

Now there's enough free IF around to last a lifetime of playing.

[Shannon]

The maze in Zork III was tough. It took me a few tries to figure it out.

[Tempest]

Maze? You mean the Shadow Lands? The maze maze was in Zork I.