Zork can run on modern Z-machine interpreters, as well as the older models it was made for originally.

Zork, one of the first works of interactive fiction (a form of adventure game), was an early descendent of ADVENT (also known as Colossal Cave). The first version of Zork was written in 1977–1979 on a DEC PDP-10 computer by Tim Anderson, Marc Blank , Bruce Daniels , and Dave Lebling, and implemented in the MDL programming language. All four were members of the MIT Dynamic Modelling Group .

"Zork" was originally MIT hacker jargon for an unfinished program. The implementors named the completed game Dungeon, but by that time the name Zork had already stuck.

Three of the original Zork programmers joined with others to found Infocom in 1979. That company adapted the PDP-10 Zork into Zork I-III, a trilogy of games for most popular computers of the era, including the Apple II, the Commodore 64, the Atari 8-bit family, the TRS-80, CP/M systems and the IBM PC. Zork I was published on 5¼" and 8" floppy disk. Joel Berez and Marc Blank developed a specialized virtual machine to run Zork I, called the Z-machine. The trilogy was written in ZIL, which stands for "Zork Implementation Language". Personal Software published what would become the first part of the trilogy under the name Zork when it was first released in 1980, but Infocom later handled the distribution of that game and their subsequent games.

Zork is set in a sprawling underground labyrinth. The player is a nameless adventurer, whose goal is to find the treasures hidden in the caves and return with them alive. The dungeons are stocked with many novel creatures and objects, among them grues and zorkmids. The Zork universe and timeline has been extended by Infocom's other works of interactive fiction.

Zork and its relatives are works of interactive fiction. Zork distinguished itself in its genre as an especially rich game, in terms of both the quality of the storytelling and the sophistication of its text parser, which was not limited to simple verb-noun commands ("hit grue"), but understood full sentences ("hit the grue with the sword").

The original Zork Trilogy:

• Zork I: The Great Underground Empire (1980 - Text) by Infocom
• Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz (1981 - Text) by Infocom
• Zork III: The Dungeon Master (1982 - Text) by Infocom

Later additions to the series:

• Enchanter (1983 - Text) by Infocom
• Sorcerer (1984 - Text) by Infocom
• Wishbringer (1985 - Text) by Infocom
• Spellbreaker (1985 - Text) by Infocom
• Beyond Zork (1987 - Text) by Infocom
• Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz (1988 - Text/Graphical) by Infocom
• Return to Zork (1993 - Graphical) by Infocom/Activision
• Zork: Nemesis (1996 - Graphical) by Activision
• Zork: Grand Inquisitor (1997 - Graphical) by Activision
• Zork: The Undiscovered Underground (1997 - Text) by Mike Berlyn and Marc Blank, from the original Infocom Team, to promote the release of Zork Grand Inquisitor.

A series of original novels based upon the Zork universe were also published in the mid-1980s.

All three games in the original Zork trilogy were among those bundled in The Lost Treasures of Infocom, published in 1991 by Activision under the Infocom brand.

See also

• The Zork timeline lists events in the fictional world of Zork.
• The Zork calendar lists months, days of the week, holidays, etc.
• Zork magic lists spells, potions, etc.
• Encyclopedia Frobozzica
• 69,105

External links

• Zork I, II, III and the Undiscovered Underground downloads. These downloaded games can be played on almost any platform using an appropriate Z-machine interpreter.
• Adventures in Zork, a new interactive forum-based Zork adventure
• Sign the Zork petition
• Infocom-IF.org, Infocom history, authors, etc; often updated with any news from Activision
• The Zork Library, with the most "active" Zork-specific forum on the Internet
• Online modified Zork hack
• The Infocom Documentation Project
• The History of Zork, published in The New Zork Times
• Chronology of Quendor
• GUE-Network, with a repository of images from packaging, maps, screenshots, etc.
• Frobozz Magic Co.
• The Zork Legacy
• The Zork Experience
• Cube of Foundation
• Zork Grand Website
• das Zork-Universum (German)
• Club Zork
• The Wonderful World of Zork