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Zork, one of the first works of interactive fiction (a form of adventure game), was an early descendant 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 64Commodore 64 C64 CBM 64 was a popular home computer of the 1980s. Announced by Commodore Business Machines (founded and owned by Jack Tramiel) in January 1982 and released in September of that year at a price of US$595, it offered unprecedented value (sou, the Atari 8-bit familyAtari built a series of 8-bit home computers based on the MOS Technology 6502 CPU, starting in 1979. Over the next decade several versions of the same basic design would be released, but the models remained largely identical internally. History As soon as, the TRS-80This article is about the Tandy TRS-80 computer. For the Chicago-based electronica group called TRS-80, see TRS-80 (group). TRS-80 (also affectionately or derisively known as the "Trash-80") was the designation for several lines of microcomputer systems p and the IBM PCThe IBM PC (Personal Computer), is a trade mark of IBM. The predecessor of the current personal computers, it was introduced in August 1981. The original model was designated the IBM 5150 . It was helped created by Don Estridge who changed the world of IB. Zork I was published on 5¼" and 8" floppy diskA floppy disk is a data storage device that comprises a circular piece of thin, flexible (hence "floppy") magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic wallet. Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive or FDD not to be. Joel Berez and Marc Blank developed a specialized virtual machineIn general terms, a virtual machine in computer science is software that creates an environment between the computer platform and the end user in which the end user can operate software. Specifically, the term virtual machine has several distinct meanings to run Zork I, called the Z-machine. The trilogy was written in ZILZork Implementation Language ZIL is the language which Infocom used to produce their works of interactive fiction. See Z-machine. Zavod Imeni Likhocheva (, ZIL Russian: Likhachov Factory) was an automobile factory, which manufactured armored cars for most, 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:
Later additions to the series:
A series of original novels based upon the Zork universe were also published in the mid-1980s.