Timeline | 1980-1983: Zork Trilogy

Zork I was probably one of the greatest Text-Adventure games ever released.

'Zork' was originally slang among members of the MIT community for an unfinished program (especially a game) and it was under this name that several programmers at MIT developed a game they would eventually name 'Dungeon'. They finished their program somewhere around 1977 but received a copyright violation notice from the publishers of 'Dungeons & Dragons' and so they renamed the game back to Zork and released it for PDP-10 mainframe computers (common in universities at the time).

Zork was an immediate cult classic among the university scene and so those same programmers decided to get together and form a company to publish and distribute Zork to the masses. As common computers of the time couldn't handle the entire game as it existed on the PDP-10, Infocom (the company they formed) split the game into three parts: Zork I, Zork II and Zork III. Each game was slightly altered and more content added so they could function as stand alone games and they began releasing the games, starting with Zork I on common computers of the day (Apple II, Commodore 64, IBM compatibles, etc.)

Zork I was released in 1980, the premise of the game was simple: you were an 'adventurer' presented with situations and questions and you entered commands into the game like 'open door' 'go to the right' and so on to navigate the story and find all the treasures to earn the title 'Master Adventurer' doing so give you a map to a 'stone barrow' which is where Zork I ends...

Zork II was released in 1981 and was a well received follow up to Zork I

...and Zork II begins! Zork II was very similar to Zork I in terms of gameplay (they are all three text-adventure games based on the same engine) but the storyline is a little different. In this game you are still looking for treasues, however collecting them is not the entire goal - in fact it will not win the game for you if you collect all 10, nor is collecting all 10 necessary to finish the storyline and advance the plot to win but some of them are.

The final game of the original Zork trilogy was released in 1983.

Zork III takes a slightly different path than I and II, in this game instead of looking for treasure to advance the plot you are trying to prove yourself worthy of becoming the 'Dungeon Master'. An interesting twist in this game is a time sensitive event, an earthquake that usually occurs somewhere around turn 130 that the player must have advanced for enough into the game to have gotten the key by that point or the game becomes unwinnable (also there are things you can't do until the earthquake alters the landscape).

The Zork games where very challenging, very engaging and tons of fun when they were released. Even as early Action-Adventure games were coming out Zork really defined the Text-Based Adventure game. Later Action-Adventure and RPG games were heavily influenced by the Zork Trilogy.


You can download all three of the original Zork games for free here:
http://www.infocom-if.org/downloads/downloads.html

GoG.com also has the Anthology and later Zork games available here (its about $10 for the entire series)
http://www.gog.com/game/the_zork_anthology