Everything Else

See https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/3 ... ture_free/
Just in case someone want to compile it on their system of choice.

I was struggling to fit "Eric Raymond" into the history of Colossal Cave, but after a few moments I realized it is just another instance of his penchant for attaching his name to a nullity and then hyping it relentlessly.

Yep, another ESR "pay attention to meeee!" stunt.

I remember playing Zork on 5.25 inch floppies back around that same time period...

vishnu wrote: I remember playing Zork on 5.25 inch floppies back around that same time period... :)

Sure. The disks for the PC weren't really DOS—they were a non-FAT format to stymie piracy (you could make backup disks but there were no "files"). There were some tools on the BBSs of those days to convert the data on Zork disks into regular files and run them.

robespierre wrote:

vishnu wrote: I remember playing Zork on 5.25 inch floppies back around that same time period...

Sure. The disks for the PC weren't really DOS—they were a non-FAT format to stymie piracy (you could make backup disks but there were no "files"). There were some tools on the BBSs of those days to convert the data on Zork disks into regular files and run them.

I remember buying (what I think was) the final release of Zork, it came on multiple disks but it was so long ago I can't even remember if they were 5.25 floppies, 3.5 floppies or CDs. I bought it but I never played it, I think I was too busy playing Descent 1 at the time...

vishnu wrote: I remember buying (what I think was) the final release of Zork, it came on multiple disks but it was so long ago I can't even remember if they were 5.25 floppies, 3.5 floppies or CDs. I bought it but I never played it, I think I was too busy playing Descent 1 at the time... :P

Infocom was taken over by Activision shortly after the release of Zork Zero, which was the fifth Zork title from them (not including free demos; there was also a brief series of weird "interactive comic books" from Infocom, which are very rare today). Zork Zero runs on an advanced Z-machine with multiple windows, graphics, and mouse support, all used for the incredibly frustrating Double Fanucci minigame. Activision continued making Zork titles, in the manner of FMV point-and-click adventures and not text-driven like the originals. They released "Return to Zork", "Zork Nemesis", and "Zork: Grand Inquisitor", which have some of the flavor of the G.U.E. setting but substitute hammy FMV for the originals' wry wit. There was a sixth Z-machine Zork game released for free by Blank and Lebling as a promotion of sorts for Grand Inquisitor: it's shorter than the original games but still very good.

Zork Zero came on regular DOS floppies with (very sparse) EGA graphics. A couple years later Activision re-packaged almost all of the Z-machine games into boxed sets on floppies or CD-ROMs. They are the easiest way to legitimately own all the games, but the special box designs and "feelies" aren't there, and the manuals and hint booklets are pretty crude photocopies instead of the high quality originals. At least the maps are well-printed as they were originally. These box sets were still available until 1994, I think.

Aha! That was the one I bought but never played, Zork Nemesis! Unless I gave it away I probably still have it lying around here somewhere. I never throw out software or computers, I've still got a crapton of 80's PC games on 5.25 floppies (though they're probably degraded and useless by now, can't remember the last time I fired up my PC-AT), including Windmill Software's "Digger" which I played to distraction 30 years ago. The digger.org clone is nice but the timing is wrong on some of the higher levels so using patterns that worked with the original lead to rapid death, and I'm too lazy now to try to figure out any new ones.

I remember how impressed I was the first time I played the original Zork, I was like "holy shit computers really are going to take over the world!" But now, even with all the fury about AI and the dreaded Singularity I'm back to agreeing with Jay McInerney's assertion from Bright Lights, Big City , "hell they couldn't even take Staten Island on a Sunday Morning..."