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General: Legends of Zork Announced
Szark
News ManagerMember Posts: 4,420
Jolt Online Gaming has announced that they are working on a new browser MMO called Legends of Zork, oriented towards casual players and based on the Zork series.
Dublin, Ireland. 14th January 2009. Jolt Online Gaming today announced that it will be publishing Legends of Zork™, which will give players the chance to once again take up the mantle of Zork™, this time via an Internet browser.
The Great Underground Empire has recently fallen and the land is in disarray. The Royal Treasury has been sacked. The stock market has collapsed, leading even mighty FrobozzCo International to fire employees from throughout its subsidiaries. A craze of treasure-hunting has swept through the remnants of the Great Underground Empire. The New Zork Times reports that trolls, kobolds and other dangerous creatures are venturing far from their lairs. Adventurers and monsters are increasingly coming into conflict over areas rich with loot. It's a dangerous time to be a newly-unemployed traveling salesman, but it's also a great time to try a bit of adventuring.
LegendsofZork.com will provide online gamers with a persistent online adventure, playable from any Internet browser. Players take up the role of a recently laid-off salesman and part-time loot-gatherer, as he explores the Great Underground Empire. Designed to provide gamers with a casual MMO game they can play on their laptop, desktop or Apple iPhone (in school, work or on the bus), there’s nothing to download, just go to www.legendsofzork.com
“As a complete Zork geek, I’m very proud to be releasing this title”, stated Dylan Collins, CEO of Jolt Online gaming. “Anyone who plays MMOs will definitely like to spend some time with Legends of Zork while they’re taking a break or browsing around the web. It’s very addictive”.
Read more here.
Comments
I don't know what I am more excited about... Zork, or a browser based something or other I can get away with at work on slow days like today?
>Go West
You enter a dark cave and are eaten by a Grue.
YAY!
So how many of you are old enough to have played the original Zorks? Or Beyond Zork? "Left, Right, Keep those lines Straight!"
Fantastic, and unexpected, news.
I grew up with the Zork series and cant wait to revisit nostalgia...
To err is human....to play is divine
I loved Zork and all of those old Infocom games as a kid. I'm excited about this coming out!
I first played Zork back before there were PCs capable of running such things. It was on a Data General NOVA minicomputer and it was written in PL/I (originally written on a DEC PDP). Before that I played the granddaddy of them all, the Colossal Cave adventure which was written in Fortran in 1976 and just called Adventure, as it was the only one. C.C. is the where the words xyzzy and plugh came from. I think I still have the sources for those on a 9-track reel of tape, gathering dust in a box, but of course, no tape drive to read them on.
Playing those games on the ASR-33 teletype console was kind of slow (10 cps), but it gave you time to think about your next move.
Oh man! Old School Infocom games... Wow those bring back some memories. Those where great games where you had to actually use your imagination.
I was just thinking how Zork would make a perfect MMO. Kinda skeptical of the browser based version, but we'll see. Hopefully they'll do it justice because it was an awesome series.
FWIW, you can still get all the old Infocom games. Just Google it and you'll find em. I still play all the Zorks now and again when I want some nostalgic entertainment.
Those dastardly Grues!
This is awesome... I cut my adventuring teeth on those early Infocom games - I may even have my map of Trinity around somewhere.
While I will definitely keep an eye out for this, the prose-based nature left us all to come up with our own image of what a "grue" looks like, much less how being eaten by one would appear. This will "ruin" that old book-flavor that these games had/have.
Still, it is great to have one of the old-time legacies re-born!
I was thinking the same thing, something I can play from work.
I am old enough to have played the original.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Woot! Zork! Awsomeness. m/
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Bleakmage
In a word, awesome.
It is pitch black...
http://www.infocom-if.org/downloads/downloads.html
i'm so excited about this news. oh~~~ i guess it will be wonderful journeys. go west east~~ i am zork' fan. can't for its coming out. haha
Hah i loved Zork. The game ran on a cassette drive. Haha good times.
Rewinding the tape to reload the game after a failed attempt sucked, buts its funny looking back now.
This announcement is full of win.
Zork-farkin-tastic!!!
Twisty passages maze here I come!!!
))
They say that right before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. That's true, even for a blind man. ^DareDevil^
Now we're talkin'! What's not to like about this announcement?
Arguing with me will not make you right.
OH. MY. GAWD! I won't be able to sleep for a week thinking about this. I cut my gaming teeth on Zork on a C64 and then my greased-lightning C128. Keeping my fingers crossed that they do this Classic-of-Classics justice.
ZORK FTW!
~ Adder ~
Quick, Silent, Deadly
Looking at these replies, and I realize that they're still making most games for kids and teenagers. When will they ever learn?
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Bleakmage
Reading this thread made me happy. It made me feel young, because I have no idea what this is. Never heard of it at all. So, thanks for making me feel young again. My body was feeling all creaky with the bad weather outside. This was nice.
What Happened With SWG Went Down YEARS AGO! Please Try To Stop Whining About It In Every Thread I Read. Mourn It, And Finally MOVE ON With Your Lives! Thanks A Heap.
Never heard of Zork?!!???!
There are only a few explainations for this earth-shattering revelation...
~ Adder ~
Quick, Silent, Deadly
Never heard of Zork?!!???!
There are only a few explainations for this earth-shattering revelation...
Nope. I'm 29. And my mother was the type to try to coax me outside to socialize with others. [And then I'd come back in at the earliest opportunity.] Thinking about it.. is this an early days of the internet thing? Because I didn't get online [or near a computer] until the mid-to-late 90's. Meh, growing up poor. Oh well.
What Happened With SWG Went Down YEARS AGO! Please Try To Stop Whining About It In Every Thread I Read. Mourn It, And Finally MOVE ON With Your Lives! Thanks A Heap.
Zork dates back to the age of the text based adventures so it's pretty old :-)
I've never heard of Zork either. It could be that i weren't a fan of MUD's nor didn't have the chance to sit infront a computer for the first time at the mid 90's.
Though, i guess good for you guys that an old game of yours are getting back to tracks.
The speed of the mole and the power of steel is my weapon
See? I'm not such a freak. [Not because of that, anyway.] I've never played a MUD.
What Happened With SWG Went Down YEARS AGO! Please Try To Stop Whining About It In Every Thread I Read. Mourn It, And Finally MOVE ON With Your Lives! Thanks A Heap.
Wait for it. . .wait for it. . . Youngsters! Zork is older than Windows.
Ok, so that's dumb, but I don't care. 
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Bleakmage
LOL! Zork is older than *DOS*! My first play was as 'DUNGEO' on a DEC PDP-11 (the game was called 'Dungeon', but was truncated due to a 6 character file name limit
.
They say that right before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. That's true, even for a blind man. ^DareDevil^
Gawd all you old geezers... me too. The -commercial- versions of Zork were published in 1980.
I played it on my Apple II.
Good times, good times, when the gaming world was young and exciting and free of the corporate spirit killers of today (like EA).