Zork: The Great Underground Empire

The Good
Zork 1 is a well written game with lore of a forgotten empire. You explore an underground world and "treasure hunt" historic objects while confronted by a thief who may steal all your belongings, a cyclops and a battle troll. I liked in this world it was the year 948 GUE and you could be eaten by a grue if you wandered into a dark place without your lantern. You are armed with a sword and need to use your imagination to understand where you really are each room doesn't give you much information unless you start examining everything.

The Bad
The commodore 64 release was interesting because your computer was hooked up to a floppy disc drive. The disc drive would begin to make noise if you typed in a command "Kill Thief with Nasty Knife" that actually moved you forward in the game. Most early gamers had no map to know where to go. The games creators made this adventure HARD but not impossible to succeed in winning.

The Bottom Line
Zork 1 is a text adventure game that was written from the original MIT cave adventure that was so big it had to be cut into 3 parts to be released on 5" Floppy disc at the time. In the early 1980s, every move you make in an adventure game could be your last. There were no walk through cheats and hints were hard to find (i used a hint book and played for months) so you were on your own with no guide. By exploring a small white house in the forest you find that you are sitting above a great underground empire. You then have to fill a trophy case with 19 items in order to score 350 points and win the game.