![]() ![]() This is all new and I’m mapping carefully. I traverse a linear path into a cavern, across a small bridge, and finally into a dark tunnel where I need to turn on the lamp. I hope you’re not too disappointed in me. Even though I’m a native English speaker, I still had to look up what a “barrow” was: it’s an ancient burial mound. We didn’t enter a password or load a saved game to start this one so that makes sense. Our trusty sword and lamp are also here, although nothing else carried over from the previous game. The climax of that game was discovering a secret passage into a barrow and that is where we start this one. Zork II begins immediately after the end of its predecessor. Let’s play!Ĭlowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am: stuck in a barrow with you. If you are just joining us, you’ll probably want to read my review of Dungeon before reading this as I may skim over the solutions to puzzles introduced in that game. I vaguely remember that there’s a wizard that comes by and shoots spells at you and that we’ll have to steal his wand to solve some of the puzzles, but that’s just it. The foundation was built for them to expand.įull disclosure, I also played this game as a kid although I do not think that I beat it. Perhaps more so than with Zork I, this game marks the moment when Infocom became a real company: they had an office, they had their first real employee, and they were managing the sales themselves. ![]() Although Zork II wouldn’t take advantage of it, this in-house distribution system would later allow them to build the creative “feelies” that they became known for. To better control the product and the messaging, Infocom brought distribution in-house and managed their own mail orders. Personal Software distributed the previous game, but it was clear at this point that they were not focused on marketing games. Since they still had more Zork that was not yet adapted, Dave and Marc spent much of a year building a new game around the puzzles excised from the previous one and new challenges that they were devising. This was Infocom’s first product, but were they a gaming company? Or a business software company that sold games to get off the ground? This question would eventually sink Infocom several years later, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The first Zork hit the shelves for the TRS-80 in December 1980. How will the designers, Dave Lebling and Marc Blank, fare when they have to create a new game using the parts of an old one? I look forward to finding out!īefore we get to the game, there’s a bit of history to follow up on. It’s time to turn our attention to its sequel, the aptly named Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz. It was a good game, but it could not hold a candle to the original Dungeon. Last month, I conquered the first real game in our marathon, Zork I. ![]()
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