Zork: The Great Underground Empire

aka: Zork, Zork I, Zork I: Le Grand Empire des Ténèbres, Zork I: The Great Underground Empire, Zork I: The Great Underground Empire , Zork: The Great Underground Empire - Part I
Moby ID: 50

Description official descriptions

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 adapted from a larger mainframe version from the late 1970s, and is one of the first examples of its genre.

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 84% (based on 17 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 173 ratings with 11 reviews)

A great introduction to interactive fiction.

The Good
Great images/descriptions, a huge world to explore, a variety of puzzles ranging from simple to agonizingly difficult, a great text parser, and enough random events to make it replayable.

The Bad
The thief, who had a tendency to steal your items and move things around (even before you could find them, sometimes). Also, the main light source is limited and, unless you plan ahead, you can get yourself irrevocably stuck in the dark. But these are just minor annoyances.

The Bottom Line
Zork I was my first REAL computer game. I originally played it on an old TRS-80 Model III with 4k of RAM. Most of the puzzles were challenging enough to keep my 10-year-old brain busy for hours, and the vivid room descriptions still create detailed images in my mind to this day. This game is truly a timeless classic... it is available as a free download (Infocom officially declared it freeware) from the Unofficial Infocom Homepage (http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/).

DOS · by Mirrorshades2k (274) · 2000

Great game, my favourite text-only, text adventure

The Good
The language of this text adventure is excellent and it really gets the imagination going. It's of course greatly influenced by the Colossal Cave game from the '70s made by Will Crowther, a cave explorer(spelunker). Zork 1 has detailed geographical descriptions of the caves, forests, mountains and other places you explore, which gives the game a slightly educational feel. Much like Colossal Cave, within all the realism is fantasy and mythology, and the game also has a strong sense of humour. One other notable thing is the intelligence of the parser, which will understand quite a bit of input, sadly a lot more than many other text adventure games.

The Bad
While I think the problem solving is more reasonable than in the next two Zork games, the problems are still a bit strange and it could take some people years to figure out how to complete the game. Some of the solutions were satisfying to discover, while others I thought were silly and hurt the game.

The Bottom Line
Well I suppose it's a big ask to expect people to play text adventures today, but if anyone ever wanted to take the challenge of playing a game with no graphics, this, along with Planet Fall, I'd recommend. It'd be very satisfying to see a young gamer somehow get past the natural dismissiveness and see the good in the game.

DOS · by Andrew Fisher (697) · 2017

The most eclectic and interesting of the series

The Good
Zork: The Underground Empire shows its long gestation period on seventies mainframes. Unlike the two immediate sequels, Z:TUG is wildly eclectic and rambling, with very little overall structure. Surprisingly, this is to its advantage. From the famous opening, down into the passages, through some nastily ingenious puzzles to the final confrontation, Z:TUG retains a strange, compressed energy. Completing it is extremely satisfying, and for years being able to say "I finished Zork" was a badge of merit in gaming circles.

The Bad
The problems with Zork are really only those of text adventures as a whole. The puzzles are frustrating, it's possible to be stuck at four or five different points simultaneously, and gamers used to such extravagances as "graphics" and "sound" may find this blast from the past annoying and pointless.

The Bottom Line
Zork is both an excellent introduction to text adventuring and a piece of computer-history royalty in its own right. Despite the myriad other Infocom releases, and the release of two immediate sequels, Zork has a flavour and excitement all its own.

DOS · by Colin Rowsell (43) · 2002

[ View all 11 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Be honest about Zork Brian Shapiro Apr 3, 2023
You are likely to be eaten ... DJP Mom (11333) Sep 16, 2007

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Zork I appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Covermount release

In the December 2001 Issue of PC Gamer, the original Zork trilogy was shipped on the CD included with the magazine.

Development

Zork was born on the mainframes of MIT in 1977, and saw its first commercial release on the TRS-80, under the Personal Software (releasers of VisiCalc) label in 1979. The title was a nonsense word used by the creators to label works in progress. Infocom was founded by these creators, Marc Blank, Dave Lebling, Tim Anderson and Bruce Daniels, to create Zork II.

Freeware release

As part of the release of Zork: Nemesis, Activision released Zork I as freeware on their website. (As of 2001, the links to download the game at activision.com are dead, but the game is available at numerous fan sites.)

Game Boy port

One bedroom programmer actually ported the game to the Game Boy of all things, using the basic code of the Sinclair Spectrum version, as both systems were powered the Z80 processor. Inputting words involved cycling the cursor through one letter at a time, similarly to inputting initial for high scores on a joystick. Surely the ultimate case of "right game, wrong format".

German version

Infocom started to translate this game into German, but found it rather difficult to re-program the parser. Therefore, only a German beta version exists.

Hello, Sailor

The well-recognized Infocom phrase "Hello, Sailor!" got its start here. Type it in, and you'll get the response "Nothing happens here." Type it in almost any room in any Infocom game, and you'll get the same response. This may be one of the oldest Infocom red herrings around.

Leaves

You can find out how many leaves are in the pile of leaves covering the grate in the clearing by typing "count leaves". Strangely enough, it only takes 1 turn to count all the leaves. The actual number of leaves in the pile is 69,105. It's an hex/octal inside joke for programmers.

References

  • There is a location in the game called "Aragain Falls." Spell ARAGAIN backwards, and you'll see something more familiar.
  • Typing in "xyzzy" and "plugh" (magic words from an earlier text adventure game), the game comes back with: "A hollow voice says 'Fool.' "

References to the game

Release

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.

Statistics

(From The New Zork Times Vol.3 No.2 Spring 1984)

Some statistics about Zork:

  • Number of rooms: 110 Number of different ways to die: 28 Number of words in vocabulary: 698 Number of takeable objects: *59 (The raft is actually three different takeable objects: inflated, uninflated, and punctured)

Zork User's Group

The demand for Zork maps, tips and, eventually, memorabilia for game enthusiasts and veterans, led Mike Dornbrook (Infocom's first product tester, hired to debug Zork -- later better known for leading Harmonix) to establish a service that provided (in the beginning, personalised, type-written) hints and maps to would-be adventurers of the Great Underground Empire.

In September 1981, the organization was formalised as the Zork User's Group (run out of his parents' Milwaukee basement), and their product line expanded to include buttons, bumper stickers, posters, t-shirts and a Zorkian newsletter... as well as their most permanent contribution to the Infocom legacy, InvisiClues hintbooks. In July 1983 -- by which time their mailing list had grown from 700 to over 14,000 -- it was folded back into Infocom, Dornbrook hired on again by Infocom, this time as Product Manager in the Department of Consumer Marketing.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • November 1992 (Issue #100) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) - #13 on the “150 Best Games of All Time” list
    • March 2001 (200th anniversary issue) - #9 Best Game of All Time (Readers' Vote)
  • Game Informer
    • August 2001 (Issue #100) - #70 in the "Top 100 Games of All Time" poll
    • October 2004 (Issue #138) - one of the "Top 25 Most Influential Games of All Time".
  • GameSpy
    • 2001 – #39 Top Game of All Time

Information also contributed by Adam Baratz, Belboz, Big John WV, Chris Martin, Chris Mikesell, Droog, Martin Smith, Mirrorshades2k, Mo, Nélio; [PCGamer77](http://www.mobygames.com/user/sheet/userSheetId,1717/), [Pseudo_Intellectual](http://www.mobygames.com/user/sheet/userSheetId,49363/), [Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe](http://www.mobygames.com/user/sheet/userSheetId,631/) and [FatherJack](http://www.mobygames.com/user/sheet/userSheetId,244870/)

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Brian Hirt.

Commodore 128 added by Trypticon. TRS-80 CoCo added by Slik. PC-98 added by Riemann80. Apple II added by Droog. Atari 8-bit, CP/M, TRS-80 added by Kabushi. Browser, Mainframe added by Pseudo_Intellectual. Commodore 16, Plus/4, Macintosh, Amiga added by Terok Nor. Amstrad PCW, Tatung Einstein added by Игги Друге. Amstrad CPC added by LepricahnsGold. PC-8000 added by vedder. Commodore 64, Atari ST added by Belboz.

Additional contributors: Dietmar Uschkoreit, Ummagumma, Tony Van, Jeanne, Pseudo_Intellectual, Maw, Nélio, mo , formercontrib, c64fan, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack, Joe Pranevich.

Game added March 1, 1999. Last modified March 8, 2024.