
The Enduring Legacy of Zork - tellarin
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608670/the-enduring-legacy-of-zork/
======
zellyn
If you like this, you might also like the excellent “Eaten by a Grue” podcast
([http://monsterfeet.com/grue/](http://monsterfeet.com/grue/)) where Kevin
Savetz and Carrington Vanston are playing through and discussing all Infocom
games.

If you want to know even more -- much, much, much more -- about these and
other 8-bit computer games, I can recommend all of the Digital Antiquarian
blog (mentioned by sohkamyung), which has been collected into _ten_ ebooks.
They really are fantastic.

------
stevoski
My obsession with Zork and other Infocom games introduced me to computing
concepts such as virtual machines, platform-independent intermediate language,
variable length text encoding, and natural language processing.

I recall finding old Byte magazines in the university library that revealed
the internals of Infocom's games. I felt like I had uncovered hidden gold.

I even think the first time I encountered the word "database" was in an
explanation of how you could code a simple text adventure game.

~~~
fsiefken
Do you know from which year they were?

~~~
ghaff
He might have been thinking of this issue: [https://archive.org/details/byte-
magazine-1980-12](https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1980-12)

There's an article by David Liebling who worked for Infocom. There's also an
article by Scott Adams in the issue.

~~~
rrauenza
On page 7 is an add for Shugart! Later renamed to Seagate!

~~~
ghaff
The ads in there are great. That issue actually predates the IBM PC by a year
(and my own exposure to microcomputers to any great degree by about the same
length of time). So this is serious blast from the past before things
standardized in any but very broad-brush ways.

------
sclangdon
If you're interested in Zork and functional programming, you might be
interested in Eric Lippert's series about writing a Z-machine (a virtual
machine used by Infocom for some of it's text adventure games, including Zork)
in OCaml.

[https://ericlippert.com/category/zmachine/](https://ericlippert.com/category/zmachine/)

~~~
pmoriarty
Also see "Lists and Lists"[1], which is a Scheme tutorial in a z-machine,
written by Andrew Plotkin.[2]

[1] -
[http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=zj3ie12ewi1mrj1t](http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=zj3ie12ewi1mrj1t)

[2] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Plotkin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Plotkin)

------
throwaway7645
I really love Zork. If anyone misses these games, there are many excellent and
free modern titles in the IF (interactive fiction) community. I like Emily
Short's games. Andrew Plotkin is another popular name. With the inform7
platform it is much easier for a single person to write a compelling game than
in the Infocom days.

~~~
plastroltech
Totally agree. Modern IF is amazing. Check out the annual Interactive Fiction
Competition for good games: [https://ifcomp.org/](https://ifcomp.org/).

Also, Inform is a fascinating "English language" programming experience! For
example here's an actual Inform program:

` "Prototype" by Josh

The Lookout Point is a room. An old man is here.

The Outskirts is south from the Lookout Point. A campaign poster is here.

The Village is east from the Outskirts.

The Scumm Bar is inside from The Village. `

------
nsxwolf
I loved text adventures as a kid. I thought it was some kind of magic. I had
no idea how a computer could figure out what I had just typed and answer me in
a way that made sense.

But I can't think of a single one I ever completed besides Scott Adams'
"Adventureland". Almost all these games seemed to eventually get to a "maze"
portion, and that's where I'd just give up.

Some games had puzzles that seemed literally impossible to solve, and would
allow many opportunities for game-breaking actions (with no indication you had
done so).

Later on, I really loved Sierra adventure games. But really, they suffered
from all the same ridiculous puzzles and game-breaking crap. I couldn't finish
most of them without the clue books.

------
mgkimsal
Obligatory links to a great documentary on text adventures and infocom:

[http://www.getlamp.com](http://www.getlamp.com)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRhbcDzbGSU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRhbcDzbGSU)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Lamp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Lamp)

------
sohkamyung
Jimmy Maher has a fascinating series of article on the entire Zork series.

This tag link [1] should give you all the articles, but in reverse
chronological order, so start at the bottom and work your way backwards to
newer posts.

[1]
[http://www.filfre.net/tag/zork/page/4/](http://www.filfre.net/tag/zork/page/4/)

------
DonHopkins
“The MIT machines were a nerd magnet for kids who had access to the ARPANET,”

Zork is how and why I got on the ARPANET as a nerdy kid. And I wasn't even a
Russian Spy! [1]

Connecting to the ARPANET and getting an account on DM was an adventure in
itself, almost like the beginning of the game itself.

At the time there were no passwords or anything but security through obscurity
on the ARPANET TIPs. And the MIT-AI Lab was kind enough to hand out free
after-work-hours "TURIST Accounts" [2] to anyone who asked nicely with the
right magic words.

Some dude named Bruce who had a BBS (Bruce's NorthStar Horizon in Northern
Virginia) told me how to do it step by step:

1) After 8PM EST, dial up the NBS TIP at (301) 948 3850 [3] at 300 baud, typed
"E" to get the banner, then "@L 134" to connect to AI. (NCP host ids were only
8 bits, before TCP/IP's vast 32 bit address space!)

2) Make up an account name (I chose A2DEH).

3) Try to log in with that name, like ":LOGIN A2DEH".

4) If it asks for a password, somebody already has that account. In that case,
think of another name and try again. (RMS's password was famously "RMS", after
they forced everyone to use a password over his objections).

5) If it doesn't recognize your user name, it asks "Do you want to apply for
an account?" Answer YES. When it asks "Why do you want to use the MIT-AI Lab's
PDP-10?" answer "Learning LISP." (Which, as it turns out, is a long
incremental process pursued over a lifetime, since there are so many
implementations of LISP on the inside with names like MDL and JavaScript on
the outside.)

6) When the account is approved, now all ITS systems know about you (ITS had
network file and account sharing long before NFS and YP), and although you
still can't log into DM directly, you could log into AI to learn LISP (and
EMACS).

7) The MIT-AI Lab staff would kindly and patiently go out of their way to help
you learn LISP and EMACS. (Many thanks to KMP for writing TEACH-LISP and
answering my clueless tasteless questions like "how to you set the value of a
variable?").

8) To play Zork, dial up the TIP after 8PM and connect to DM with "@L 70".

9) Log in as "URANUS" with password "RINGS".

10) So as not to look suspicious (3 kids from all over the country [4] logged
in as URANUS, URANU0, URANU1 at the same time all playing Zork or watching
each other play), change your user name to your own with ":CHUNAME A2DEH".

11) Only two people could play ZORK at once, so hang out chatting with other
people waiting to play ZORK, or spying (in a socially acceptable manner) on
whoever's playing ZORK via ":OS PDL" (for "Output Spy Paul David Lebling"), or
snooping around trying to find the Zork source code [5], which was well
hidden.

12) There was no file security, so you could snoop around Marvin Minsky's home
directory and hurt your brain trying to understand what appears to be line
noise, but is actually the Universal Turing Machine he implemented in TECO.
[6]

13) When somebody from USER-ACCOUNTS sends you a "nice private message"
telling your they know what you're up to with ZORK, and that you should really
learn LISP like you said you would because it's such a great language, instead
of demanding you commit "seppuku" and "dumping you off the net and be done
with it", you simply start learning LISP instead of acting like an entitled
dick [7] by whining about how the people who gave you a free account that you
bragged about in BYTE magazine are a bunch of communists and threatening to
get some Proxmire type to start inquiring into its operations by seeing if
your "Pentagon friends can upset them. Or perhaps some reporter friends. Or
both., Or even the House Armed Services Committee."

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVth6T3gMa0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVth6T3gMa0)

[2] [http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/tourist-
policy.html](http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/tourist-policy.html)

[3]
[https://www.saildart.org/TIPS[P,DOC]3](https://www.saildart.org/TIPS\[P,DOC\]3)

[4] [https://archive.org/details/getlamp-
rgriffiths](https://archive.org/details/getlamp-rgriffiths)

[5] [https://github.com/itafroma/zork-mdl](https://github.com/itafroma/zork-
mdl)

[6]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13514918](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13514918)

[7]
[http://www.stormtiger.org/bob/humor/pournell/story.html](http://www.stormtiger.org/bob/humor/pournell/story.html)

~~~
kabdib
Oh, _you_ are A2DEH. "Hi" from 1979 or 1980, from ZEMON. I saw you online a
lot, playing Zork on MIT-AI, and I probably :os'd a few of your sessions.

I too was using the NBS TIP. Later, I actually worked at NBS and became
"legal". I first learned Emacs at 300 baud; I'll spare you the whole story,
but it involves a lot of assembly language and some soldering...

~~~
DonHopkins
Of course I remember your cool UNAME standing out in all those :WHOJ's! ;)

Do you remember Rob Griffiths, aka ROBG? I really enjoyed his full interview
from Get Lamp -- he really nailed what it was like at that time, making a
pilgrimage to 545 Tech Square as a 15-year-old kid!

[https://archive.org/details/getlamp-
rgriffiths](https://archive.org/details/getlamp-rgriffiths)

He and you are a couple of the people who I was thinking of when I described
kids from all over the country hanging out chatting and spying and waiting to
play Zork!

~~~
kabdib
My best friend in high school went to MIT and I ... didn't (it's okay, the
state college I wound up going to was about my academic speed, and I would
have been toast in a couple of semesters at MIT).

I also did a pilgrimage to MIT and saw the DEC-10s. Printed out a school
project on the LGP, played around with a Lisp Machine for a few hours.

MIT's friendly, unparanoid attitude towards people using their systems and
basically just digging their technology was very formative in my career. Zork
was the hook. I came to play adventure games, I stayed to learn Emacs and a
bit about networking and PDP-10s, and LISP. I don't use PDP-10s anymore, but I
work in the games industry, use Emacs every hour of my working day, and wish I
could write more production LISP (though if you squint at Javascript just
right...)

------
stuartmalcolm
Interesting article. I had not realised that Zork Implementation Language
(ZIL) was Lisp!

~~~
DonHopkins
Zork was implemented in a dialect of LISP called "MDL" aka "MIT Design
Language" aka "Muddle" [1], which ZIL was based on.

Here's the original MDL source code, that people should study in school, which
reads like an epic poem about heroic adventures such as Beowulf! [2]

I'd love for some academic egghead literary critic type to deconstruct [3] the
Zork MDL source code, like Chaim Gingold deconstructed SimCity for their PhD
thesis. [4]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDL_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDL_\(programming_language\))

[2] [https://github.com/itafroma/zork-mdl](https://github.com/itafroma/zork-
mdl)

[3]
[http://www.fudco.com/chip/deconstr.html](http://www.fudco.com/chip/deconstr.html)

[4]
[https://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/1806122688.html?FMT=ABS](https://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/1806122688.html?FMT=ABS)

[http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/1806122688.html?FMT=AI](http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/1806122688.html?FMT=AI)

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DNAvqvKsuLGih8dWz9feEjea...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DNAvqvKsuLGih8dWz9feEjea69aDK3QEL1cnveExgu4/edit?usp=sharing)

------
cyberferret
Loved Zork - right back in the 80's when my dad had and IBM PC/XT that I used
to play it on. Spent a LOT of time trying to kill that dastartdly thief
without much success.

More recently, I got a Z-Machine interpreter for my iPad and been playing a
lot of the old Infocom titles. Now if I can only get an unscratched version of
the 'scratch 'n' sniff' card that came with "Leather Godesses of Phobos"... :D

~~~
ghaff
Heh. It turns out I actually have one. (Nope can't have it. Sorry :-)) Not
sure why it's unscratched as I played the game. I may have had another copy at
one point as a friend wrote Leather Goddesses (and its graphical sequel among
other Infocom games).

------
CGamesPlay
> The MIT mainframe operating system (called ITS) let Zork’s creators remotely
> watch users type in real time, which revealed common mistakes. “If we found
> a lot of people using a word the game didn’t support, we would add it as a
> synonym,” says Daniels.

So aggressive user surveillance was used as far back as 1977. Some things
never change!

------
saw-lau
Obligatory Infocom Cabinet link:

[https://archive.org/details/infocomcabinet](https://archive.org/details/infocomcabinet)

------
palad1n
[https://github.com/devshane/zork](https://github.com/devshane/zork)

------
zufallsheld
For anyone who wants to read about Zork-games, I recommend the play-troughts
from the CRPG-Addict:
[http://crpgaddict.blogspot.de/search?q=zork](http://crpgaddict.blogspot.de/search?q=zork)

Highly entertaining!

------
diggernet
Obligatory ShowHN:
[http://ifiction.org/games/index.php?cat=2](http://ifiction.org/games/index.php?cat=2)

------
StanislavPetrov
An all time-classic game that got many of us hooked on gaming back in the day.
It took me countless hours to figure out the carousel in Zork II, but when I
eventually cracked it, it was tremendously satisfying. This is something
people miss out on today in the age of google and games that are easily
solved.

~~~
mgkimsal
I remember observing - quite seriously - that "the whole game seems to revolve
around the carousel room", and a friend busted out laughing. It took me almost
a minute to catch on to what he was laughing about, and then I felt quite
clever for having been so accidentally funny (I was... probably around 12 at
this time).

------
ctdonath
Anyone have access to the Zork variant/predecessor "Dungeon"?

~~~
rhizome
Wikipedia indicates that it was merely a name change for the same game, is
there more to it?

------
dekhn
I recently needed something "interesting" to run on a simple microcontroller
(ESP8266) so I ported Zork to FreeRTOS. It ran fine. Connect via serial
port...

------
brightball
The basis for the NBC show "Chuck" was solving a Zork based puzzle if I'm not
mistaken. I think that was the first episode.

I wish they'd put it back on Netflix.

~~~
irrational
[http://www.tvids.net/watch56/CHUCK/](http://www.tvids.net/watch56/CHUCK/)

------
m1dnigh7
This is also a fun project to build a virtual machine for. I've been working
on one, but haven't finished it yet. Not too complex, but very educational.

------
mdekkers
Obligatory:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nigRT2KmCE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nigRT2KmCE)

------
erikb
Is there still a way to gain financially from that legend? e.g. by licensing,
or consulting because one of part of the team back then or something?

I ask because usually community-created legends are hosted and develop in
forums/mailing list etc, but when people write professional articles about it,
it's quite likely someone still invests financially in that story.

~~~
duskwuff
> Is there still a way to gain financially from that legend?

No. There is no money in classic (i.e, text-based) interactive fiction. There
is a small community of amateur game developers, but it's almost all
noncommercial. There is certainly no financial investment in the scene.

Sometimes legends are just history.

------
junke
_It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue._

~~~
throwaway7645
You are likely to be eaten by a grue..if that thought seems particularly
cruel...consider whose fault it could be...not a match or a torch in your
inventory.

-some nerdcore rapper (can't remember name)

~~~
drabiega
That was MC Frontalot, I believe.

~~~
throwaway7645
Correct!

