22 Facts About Zork II

Zork II is a text-based adventure game, first released in 1977 by developers Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling for the PDP-10 mainframe computer.

Zork II was a massive success for Infocom, with sales increasing for years as the market for personal computers expanded.

Several more games in the Zork II series were released beginning in 1987, as well as books and gamebooks.

In 2007, Zork II was named to a list of the ten most important video games of all time, which formed the start of the game canon at the Library of Congress.

Zork II is a text-based adventure game wherein the player explores the ruins of the Great Underground Empire to find treasure.

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The original Zork II contained multiple ways of moving between the areas used in the three episodes, which were removed in favor of a single exit at the end of each game.

Zork II I begins with the unnamed player character near a white house in a small, self-contained area.

Zork II was developed beginning in May 1977 by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling.

Zork II released the port in March 1978, thereby making the game available to a wider set of players without access to a PDP-10 mainframe.

Zork II felt that the game would be wildly successful and develop a cult following, and urged Infocom to produce tie-in products like maps, hints, and shirts; while the rest of the company was not convinced enough to start producing any products, they did add an object in the game that gave an address for players to mail in for maps and hints in case it proved popular.

The first sale of Zork II I was earlier in the year, however; since Personal Software declined to publish the 1979 PDP-11 version of the game, Infocom announced it to various PDP-11 user groups.

Zork II was offered to Personal Software in April 1981 and the contract was signed in June, but Infocom began to be wary of continuing the relationship with Personal Software.

InfoWorld reported in April 1984 that Zork II I "has returned to the top of the sales charts two years after its release".

Zork II's praised the documentation and wondered if the game could ever be completed because it "lets you do pretty much what you want to do, even if the consequences are much less than desirable".

Zork II I continued to be reviewed for several years after its wide release.

Zork II was listed on several lists of the best video games a decade later.

Zork II has been described as "by far the most famous piece of [interactive fiction]" and "the father figure of the genre".

Game historian Matt Barton claimed that "to say that Zork II is an influential adventure game is like saying the Iliad is an influential poem".

Zork II went on to say that it had transcended simply influencing games and instead helped lay the foundations of concepts used throughout the medium around exploring, collecting objects, and overcoming problems.

Unofficial versions of Zork II have been created for over forty years for a wide variety of systems, such as browsers or smart speakers, and decades later it is still cited as an inspiration for text interfaces such as chatbots.

Zork II games have been released in several compilations in addition to Zork II Trilogy.

In 1996, Threshold Entertainment acquired the rights to Zork II and announced plans to create a Zork II movie and live action TV series, though it was never produced.