ZZT is a 1991 action-adventure puzzle video game and game creation system developed and published by Potomac Computer Systems for MS-DOS.
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ZZT is a 1991 action-adventure puzzle video game and game creation system developed and published by Potomac Computer Systems for MS-DOS.
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ZZT's success led Sweeney to change his company's name to Epic MegaGames, and focus on competing as a video game company using shareware to distribute commercial games.
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ZZT is a top-down action-adventure puzzle video game and game creation system.
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ZZT includes an in-game editor, allowing players to make their own worlds.
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Everything within ZZT are shown through the use of the 255 characters of the IBM PC's character set to create environments.
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ZZT found it more fun to make it into a game by adding bullets and creatures to fight.
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ZZT shared it with friends and neighborhood kids, taking notes of their joy and excitement playing his own game.
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ZZT discovered that making games allowed him to share something to the world, and could earn more income compared to wage earners, and chose to sell the game.
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ZZT would operate his company out of his bedroom, having orders sent to his parents' address, where he would send the remaining episodes on floppy disks by mail delivery.
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ZZT would sell the game as the first major game with object-oriented programming.
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At one point, City of ZZT was distributed as ZZT's City, through Softdisk's On Disk Monthly service.
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The final copy of ZZT was shipped to game designer Zack Hiwiller in November 2013.
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Scott Wolf of PC Gamer stated the graphics and sound for ZZT to be "truly awful", while the gameplay serves as a flashback to "when gameplay was not overshadowed by flashy video and animation".
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ZZT found making a game fun, thanks to the interface being nearly identical to the game, allowing for the easy placement of objects and terrain.
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ZZT wrote that while ZZT-OOP was basic and limited, children could learn about and make games without knowing anything about programming.
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Hardcore Gaming 101 in a podcast episode stated ZZT was "not all that fun", criticizing that official worlds and community made worlds included unavoidable damage, and instant death.
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On getting $100 a day from ZZT, Sweeney was convinced he could earn enough from the shareware industry, and decided to work in the video game industry.
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ZZT renamed the company to Epic MegaGames in October 1991.
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Shortly after the release of ZZT, Sweeney started a level designer contest for registered users to make their own worlds and submit them to him.
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The game plays similarly to ZZT, while adding more features such as greater colors accessible within its editor, new enemies and objects, and scrolling map screens that allowed for larger boards than in ZZT.
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Many fan-made worlds and editing tools were created following the game's release, with a fan website, Museum of ZZT, devoted to archiving and curating game worlds and utilities made by users.
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