Tandy TRS-80 -Zork: The Great Underground Adventure

Odysseus!

What more can I say about Zork? This text adventure, developed by Infocom in 1980, get’s praise everywhere and I can only nod my head in agreement.

You are a nameless adventurer who stumbles upon a white house and once inside finds a sword and stairway (hidden under a rug) that leads to huge underground empire.
Your mission is clear: find all the treasures, store them safely in a case and by doing so, open the door to Zork II. What a nice idea.

The game is big.
You will fight monsters like trolls, grues and a giant cyclops (or just say a magic word to him).
You will solves well thought out puzzles and most importantly, you will laugh alot.
The game is pretty funny in it’s descriptions and if you become bored you can just swear at your character.
The parser is also worth mentioning. While other adventure games only allow two word phrases like ‘hit troll‘, Zork allows longer phrases like ‘hit troll with wooden sword‘ or ‘put sword in case‘, which give the game a little more depth.

Of course Zork is not perfect.
There are mazes (hate them).
You need to draw a map, or find several online and you absolutely need to save very often since luck plays a big role.
Combat is hit and miss. It’s either you kill the enemy or he kills you and its game over.
There is also a major character, the Thief, who will steal your items and drop them somewhere else. This can be annoying, but to be fair, I was really lucky in my playthrough. I killed everyone on my first try and met the thief only a few times.
Remember: Saving will spare you trouble.

Overall, a wonderful, long adventure. Can’t wait for the sequel.

7,5