Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

A Brief History of Zork

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 8, 2012

I think many readers will already be familiar with this story, but there are some interesting details to be found therein:

Eaten By a Grue: A Brief History of Zork.

I’m glad it wasn’t called “Dungeon,” though I think the legal threat by TSR over the name is extremely lame.

I still can’t figure out why I don’t have the patience for text adventures anymore. They’re perfect for casual play – you can leave them up and running in a window somewhere and poke around with them during a lull or compile or something. And to hear it, some of the IF titles out now could probably give the Infocom greats a run for their money at the very least. But I just haven’t gotten back into ’em.

But dang if reading about them doesn’t fill me with nostalgia.


Filed Under: Adventure Games - Comments: 2 Comments to Read



  • Felix PleČ™oianu said,

    Dunno, I stopped playing IF almost completely a while ago. And that’s after years of involvement with the community, writing my own and so on. Guess the mood will return someday. Until then, there’s so much else to do.

  • Groboclown said,

    @Felix I’m in the same position. I used to play many of the fan games, and wrote a few (well, okay, half wrote several but never finished them).

    Although, to me the IF games actually require much more involvement then modern games. They required map making, note taking for clues, and a level of understanding the game world that makes it hard for me to take the small bites of game play that casual games allow for.

top