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| The Zork Anthology | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Infocom |
| Publisher(s) | Activision |
| Engine | Z-machine |
| Platform(s) | MS-DOS, Mac OS |
| Release | 1994 |
| Genre(s) | Interactive fiction |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
The Zork Anthology is a video game compilation published in 1994 by Activision for the PC. A version compatible with modern computers was published in 2011 by digital distribution platform GOG. [1]
The Zork Anthology contains the following games:
Next Generation reviewed the compilation, rating it three stars out of five, and stated that "Zork Anthology is an enchantingly nostalgic as well as a welcome return to the past". [2]
Infocom was an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced a business application, a relational database called Cornerstone.
Zork 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. The original developers and others, as the company Infocom, expanded and split the game into three titles—Zork I: The Great Underground Empire, Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz, and Zork III: The Dungeon Master—which were released commercially for a range of personal computers beginning in 1980. In Zork, the player explores the abandoned Great Underground Empire in search of treasure. The player moves between the game's hundreds of locations and interacts with objects by typing commands in natural language that the game interprets. The program acts as a narrator, describing the player's location and the results of the player's commands. It has been described as the most famous piece of interactive fiction.
Wasteland is a role-playing video game developed by Interplay Productions and published by Electronic Arts in 1988. The first installment of the Wasteland series, it is set in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic America destroyed by a nuclear holocaust generations before. Developers originally made the game for the Apple II and it was ported to the Commodore 64 and MS-DOS. It was re-released for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux in 2013 via Steam and GOG.com, and in 2014 via Desura. A remastered version titled Wasteland Remastered was released on February 25, 2020, in honor of the original game's 30th anniversary.
Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail! is an adventure game originally developed and published by Sierra On-Line in 1996. It was the last Leisure Suit Larry game written by series creator Al Lowe, and the last to feature original protagonist Larry Laffer as the main character until the release of Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don't Dry in 2018. It followed the 1993 Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out!. Despite being known as Leisure Suit Larry 7 during its development, Love for Sail! was actually the sixth installment in the Leisure Suit Larry series due to the (intentional) nonexistence of a fourth game.
Return to Zork is a 1993 graphic adventure game in the Zork series. It was developed by Activision and was the final Zork game to be published under the Infocom label.
A grue is a fictional, predatory creature that dwells in the dark. The term was first used to identify a human-bat hybrid predator in the Dying Earth series. The term was then borrowed to introduce a similar monster in Zork, a 1977 interactive fiction computer game published by Infocom. Following Zork's massive commercial success, grues also appeared in other Infocom games such as Wishbringer, and eventually became geek culture figures. With Zork's prominent position in hacker history and lore, grues have become a reference model for monsters across generations of video games afterwards.
Brian Moriarty is an American video game developer who authored three of the original Infocom interactive fiction titles, Wishbringer (1985), Trinity (1986), and Beyond Zork (1987), as well as Loom (1990) for LucasArts.
The Lost Treasures of Infocom is a 1991 compilation of 20 previously-released interactive fiction games developed by Infocom. It was published by Activision for MS-DOS, Macintosh, Amiga, and Apple IIGS versions. It was later re-released on CD-ROM, and in 2012 on iOS.
Zork: Grand Inquisitor is a graphic adventure game developed and published by Activision, and released for Windows in 1997; a second edition for Macintosh was released in 2001. The game is the twelfth in the Zork series, and builds upon both this and the Enchanter series of interactive fiction video games originally released by Infocom. The game's story focuses on the efforts of a salesperson who becomes involved in restoring magic to Zork while thwarting the plots of a tyrannical figure seeking to stop this. The game features the performances of Erick Avari, Michael McKean, Amy D. Jacobson, Marty Ingels, Earl Boen, Jordana Capra, Dirk Benedict, David Lander and Rip Taylor.
Zork Nemesis: The Forbidden Lands is a graphic adventure game developed by Zombie LLC, published by Activision, and released in 1996 for Windows 95, MS-DOS, and Macintosh. It is the eleventh game in the Zork series, and the first title not to be marketed under the Infocom label, while featuring a darker, less comical story within the Zork setting. The story focuses on players investigating the sudden disappearance of four prominent figures and their children to the hands of a mysterious being known as the "Nemesis", and uncovering a sinister plot during their investigations that they must thwart. The game features performances by Lauren Koslow, W. Morgan Sheppard, Allan Kolman, Stephen Macht, Paul Anthony Stewart, Merle Kennedy, and Bruce Nozick.
Beyond Zork is an interactive fiction computer game written by Brian Moriarty and released by Infocom in 1987. It was one of the last games in the Zork series developed by Infocom. It signified a notable departure from the standard format of Infocom's earlier games which relied purely on text and puzzle-solving: among other features, Beyond Zork incorporated a crude on-screen map, the use of character statistics and levels, and RPG combat elements.
Slipstream 5000 is a 3D airplane combat/racing video game developed by The Software Refinery and published by Gremlin Interactive for IBM PC compatible computers in July 1995.
Zork: The Undiscovered Underground is an interactive fiction video game written by former Infocom Implementors Marc Blank and Michael Berlyn and implemented by G. Kevin Wilson using the Inform language. The game was commissioned by Activision as a free promotional product to coincide with the release of Zork: Grand Inquisitor. It was released on August 28, 1997.
Pizza Tycoon is a business simulation video game. The game was designed by the German company Cybernetic Corporation and Software 2000 in 1994, and was published by Assemble Entertainment after its re-release in 2017. It was published and adapted for the American market by MicroProse with changed artwork and locations.
Marc Blank is an American game developer and software engineer. He is best known as part of the team that created one of the first commercially successful text adventure computer games, Zork.
Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces of Infocom is a collection of 33 computer games from interactive fiction pioneer Infocom, and the top 6 winners of the 1995 Interactive Fiction Competition, released in 1996. All 39 games are combined on a single cross-platform CD-ROM, which also includes PDFs of all the Infocom games' instructions, maps, and hint booklets.
Menzoberranzan is a 1994 role-playing video game created by Strategic Simulations (SSI) and DreamForge Intertainment. Menzoberranzan uses the same game engine as SSI's previous game, Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession (1994), and is set in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms campaign setting.
Screamer 2 is a video game developed by Milestone and published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment, released in 1996 on September 30 in North America and November 15 in Europe. It is the second game in the Screamer series. Unlike its predecessor, which drew heavily from Namco's Ridge Racer, Screamer 2 moved towards a rally-oriented style, replacing the six high-performance road cars of the previous game with four rally cars. The game supports up to two players using a split screen and up to four players over a network. A sequel, Screamer Rally, was released in 1997.
Of Light and Darkness: The Prophecy, also known as simply Of Light and Darkness, is a first-person point-and-click adventure video game developed by Tribal Dreams and published by Interplay Entertainment in 1998.