Return to Zork

aka: Return to Zork: An Epic Adventure in the Great Underground Empire, Return to Zork: Ein episches Abenteuer im großen Reich der Unterwell, Return to Zork: Une aventure héroïque dans le Grand Empire Souterrain
Moby ID: 1219
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

You are standing behind the white house. There is something in the mailbox. A video message from a wizard informing you that you are the sweepstakes winner to the Valley of the Sparrows... right now, by magic flight. Upon arriving at this mysterious place however, not everything is as it should be. There's nobody to meet you and those who you do come across don't seem to have any knowledge about a sweepstakes. It looks like this is a private vacation and you'll need to find your own way through this land.

Return to Zork is a first-person adventure game using live actors and video sequences. The game is similar to Myst in interface; the player is also able to rotate the viewpoint to discover new areas and uncover items that can be used or picked up. Various characters will be met along the way and spoken to via a system of dialog choices. The game allows the player to experiment with items in various ways, including discharging them; however, this often leads to "dead ends", rendering it impossible to complete the game.

Spellings

  • リターン・トゥ・ゾーク - Japanese spelling
  • 决战大魔域 - Traditional Chinese spelling
  • 죠크행성 - Korean spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

99 People (90 developers, 9 thanks) · View all

Design
Art Direction
Technical Direction
Screenplay
Music
Producer
Lead Programmer
Audio Engineer
Artists
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 74% (based on 21 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.2 out of 5 (based on 92 ratings with 6 reviews)

Graphics and sound, but no "Zorkness"

The Good
Well there are plenty of nice photographic backgrounds and fine background music. The script is quite good, has good humour just like the original Zork Trilogy and is well acted. I also like the idea of detective work by photography and speech recording.

The Bad
Normally I complete a game before reviewing it, but Return to Zork was too much a test of my patience. So at the beginning we get to the see the white house from the very first Zork game(text-adventure, 1980). Then we're moved to the game's main setting, the Valley of the Vultures, from which we find another trapdoor entrance the "Great Underground Empire"(Zork). There appears only a loose connection to original Zork Trilogy. I felt the very first Zork text adventure had a lot of charm to it. The game was a simple treasure hunt really, but I think, done really well. Return to Zork has a plot in which a villain called Morphius is controlling the people of Shanbar through their dreams, causing them to move underground and rebuild their town. Or something like that anyway. I found the storytelling very vague and I didn't enjoy having to piece it all together from the little bits of knowledge scattered around. Not far into the adventure I got a bit stuck so I decided to check a walkthrough rather than spend my precious time scrutinizing everything to try and find the way forward. When I found out what the way forward actually was, I realized that I was not going to have the time and patience get through the game without reliance of a walkthrough. Even if I could work out some sort of objective, the game is full of strange problems and solutions that seem to require the player's utter commitment. I tried my best to enjoy the game by piecing together the plot and determining what my purpose is and I carefully checked the walkthrough to make sure I didn't misstep and screw up the whole game(there's an item at the start of the game that you have to "take correctly", otherwise I don't think you can't win the game i.e you're screwed from the start and don't even know it). But I decided that I'd given all I could when a bug messed up the game. I was in a forest, one of the game's mazes, and I'd just saved the game, only to realized that something had gone wrong and I couldn't make the mouse pointer change into an arrow and allow me move forward or change my facing. The game's puzzles are bad enough, but combined with bugs, it's unbearable. I wanted to play it, because of it's connection to the Zork Trilogy, which I'm still very fond of, but I don't think this game particularly does a service to those games. There are references to things of the Zork Trilogy of course e.g grues, the Flatheads, the GUE calendar, Frobozz Corp., but I'm still much happier replaying Zork I than this, text-only and all. The good script, sound, graphics and acting arn't good enough to sustain me through all the game's troubles.

The Bottom Line
If you loved one or all of the Zork Trilogy you'll not necessarily enjoy Return to Zork. The Zork Trilogy is very challenging just as Return to Zork is, but you could say that the games challenge and reward differently. You may like the idea of finally getting Zork with graphics, but the game doesn't really feel like an expansion of the Zork Trilogy or either Beyond Zork(1987) or Zork Zero(1989). I don't think fans of the earlier Zork games would necessarily feel as though Zork was genuinely being kept current by this game.

DOS · by Andrew Fisher (697) · 2017

Zork -- Now with Pictures!

The Good
The first thing I remember about this game is the music. How fantastic are live recordings as background music? I only wish more games had decided to jump aboard this great development.



The Bad
Adventure games can sometimes be plagued by the 'used item' problem -- that is, if you use an item incorrectly, you're stuck. There is nothing more frustrating than realizing you need to restart a game because 2 hours ago, while trying to figure out a problem, you misused part of your inventory. Zork, unfortunately, exhibits this problem on numerous occasions.

Also, the game has 3 distinct maze areas which do nothing put aggravate the player in an attempt to make a longer game.

The Bottom Line
Quite a masterful working of the original Zork world with... well.. graphics. Some players may be upset to see another's vision of what only existed in their heads for so long.

DOS · by Game22 (35) · 2004

One of the best adventure games

The Good
The graphics were very good for its time (1993.) I also liked the use of the FMV videos. Basically an all round good game.

The Bad
I didn't like the fact that it was too hard. You cannot finish this game without some kind of walkthrough or hint system, but thats all thats wrong with it.

The Bottom Line
I would get it if you like adventure games, and play the original zork text adventures. It helps if you do.

DOS · by James1 (240) · 2001

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Trivia

1001 Video Games

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

Bugs

The endgame has one of the most frustrating bugs ever in the history of adventure gaming. In order to reach the final confrontation with the main villain, you have to throw every single item in the game that isn't nailed down into a pit to raise a bridge. The problem is, due to various bugs, you'll sometimes end up not raising the bridge even after throwing everything into the pit, making it impossible to progress to the ending and resulting in you having to restart the game from the very beginning.

Because this game was made before the WorldWide Web allowed for the widespread distribution of patches to correct post-production bugs, this error was never addressed and anyone playing the game will just have to hope they're lucky and don't run into it.

Cut Content

The singing tree mentions some "friends" who have brought you to her. This is a reference to the Mushroom People, who were in the game's original screenplay and design but ultimately cut out of the final version. The tree's reference to them was accidentally left in.

Development

The creators of Return to Zork weren't familiar with the rest of the series, never having actually played any of the original text games.

Encyclopedia Frobozicca

Nino Ruffini, compiler of the Encyclopedia Frobozzica, merged the encyclopedia entries from Sorcerer and Zork Zero with text from some of the other Infocom games' box contents and a few of his own entries. The original version of the Encyclopedia was circulated around Delphi and the rest of the Internet until Activision came across it and asked Ruffini for permission to use it in RTZ so they wouldn't have to recompile everything themselves.

Floppy Version

The floppy version of this game came on an incredible 12 floppies! In order to play the game, you had to spend a fair amount of time installing it first by floppy swapping. It proved to be one more reason to get a CD-Rom drive for your computer.

Macintosh Version

In the Macintosh version of Return To Zork, many things that were not required for completing the game were eliminated. For example, in the original DOS version, showing the matches to the Lighthouse Keeper would trigger a response "Thank you, I never smoke cough". In the Macintosh version however, he simply has nothing to say about it.

MPEG Version

A special version of the game was released with re-encoded MPEG video for both DOS and the Macintosh in 1995. It was exclusively sold as OEM version. The Macintosh version came with the Apple MPEG Media System card and the DOS version came with the ReelMagic card.

Japanese PC Version

This version is fully dubbed and all game text are translated. The disc contains installers for DOS/V, PC-98 and FM Towns.

Korean and Chinese Versions PC Version

This version is fully dubbed but NO text is translated, not even in the menus. Chinese dialogue was recorded in Taiwan. This version was sold in both Taiwan and Mainland China (and possibly Hong Kong).

Planetfall Trailer

Return to Zork came with a trailer for Planetfall. Infocom/Activision was developing a graphic update of the the verenable favorite. Unfortunately, the game never saw the light of day.

References

The game's intro video begins with the text on a black screen "You are standing behind the white house. In one corner is a small window which is slightly ajar.". This text is copied from the first thing shown on the screen of the first Zork game. The video then shows you the house and rotates around it before finding the sweepstakes invitation in the mailbox (which is not what happens in the first Zork game).

Information also provided by Alan Chan, molokaicreeper, Scott Monster, Techademus, Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe and WildKard

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Related Sites +

  • Design documents
    Resources collected for The Zork Compendium. Includes design documents, letters, storyboards, scripts, maps and sketches used during the development of the game.
  • Game Nostalgia
    Provides extensive background info for Return to Zork, pictures of the cast and examples of voice-overs, full credits with shots and info about the design team, a demo of the game, specific details about the game, various goodies, all musical themes, shots of every location in the game, saved games, a list of reviews, including a "nostalgic "review and tech specs.
  • Museum of Computer Adventure Game History
    Contains scans of the manual and official BradyGames guide by Peter Spear.
  • Playing Return to Zork Windows XP
    Instructions by Inferno will tell you how
  • ScummVM
    supports Return to Zork under Windows, Linux, Macintosh and other platforms.
  • The Infocom Bugs List
    Consolidated list of bugs by Graeme Cree, originally appearing in XYZZY newsletters.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 1219
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Derrick 'Knight' Steele.

PC-FX, SEGA Saturn added by Corn Popper. Windows added by Dragom. PlayStation added by Kabushi. PC-98, FM Towns added by Terok Nor. Macintosh added by Cyborg.

Additional contributors: Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe, Jeanne, Shoddyan, martin jurgens, ケヴィン, Macs Black, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack, trembyle, Colette Lambert.

Game added March 28, 2000. Last modified March 1, 2024.