Description
Zork: The Great Underground Empire is a classic text adventure game. The player begins as an "adventurer" standing near a white house in a nice forest, but soon descends into the Great Underground Empire, where most of the game takes place. The player's quest is to collect the Nineteen Treasures of Zork.
As was typical for adventure games of its era, Zork does not use graphics. Instead, it communicates with the player via text, and the player interacts with the game by typing commands, such as "examine mailbox" or "take torch". For movement, the player types in geographical directions (such as "north" or "east" - or just "n" and "e"), and can check what items are being carried with the "inventory" command (or just "i").
The game was ported over from mainframes in the late 1970s, and is one of the first examples of its genre.
Alternate Titles
- "Zork: The Great Underground Empire - Part I" -- Alternative Apple II media title
- "Zork I: The Great Underground Empire" -- Re-release title
- "Zork I: Le Grand Empire des Ténèbres" -- Canadian (French) title
- "Zork I" -- Renamed title (after second and third Zork games were released)
- "Zork" -- Personal Software published name
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Trivia
The first commercial release of
Zork I (for the TRS-80, distributed by Personal Software) was simply called
Zork. The game disk was packaged in a plastic bag with a large manual showing an adventurer outfitted in barbarian guard attacking the troll, with the white house in the background. Such early versions are quite difficult to come by and are highly prized by collectors.