h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I heard somewhere that there was talk of a new Zork game appearing for WAP compatible mobiles. Can anyone shed any further light on this?

I can shed light on this. I'm involved in the project.

Actually, you may be refering to something that Activision is attempting to do with their old text games. Methinks that they are going to attempt to sell them over the Internet.

However, if you want the *REAL* story,...several dedicated Zork fans around the Internet (myself being one of them) are creating the first fan made Graphical Zork Game, from which we hope to move onto a series of text games that we can sell over WAP phones. Activision has yet to say anything about this, but Laird Malamed (the director of the Zork department in Activision) thinks that it's a neat idea.

Zork has evolved into something more than the game. It's got fan made text games, a dedicated community on the Internet, daily conversations about the certain games, there are even some fan fiction authors out there (who don't do too shabby a job, actually. If only they knew Zork better, they wouldn't make so many mistakes...)

So. Any questions?

Zork! I had completely forgotton about it. Its like meeting an old friend after all those years. Lets see, 1983 and I had just started work. For some bizarre reason I was let loose on a old PDP mini which had no casing 'cause it overheated so much. It looked like something out of Blakes 7. Somehow a friend managed to get hold of a copy of Zork and we loaded in the tapes. Wonderful.

Every spare minute I could, I played this game, made the usual incomprehensible maps and beat my head against the table in frustration. One problem was that the system was meant to be doing some real work for the other users on the system and this thing would ramp up to 90% of the processor time no problem. I don't think the company ever found out why their system slowed down at lunchtimes!.

Favourite moment. Working out what to do in the revolving room. Worst moment, losing all my saves in a crash. Most bizarre moment. Trying to give a reason why I had a map of Zork on my desk. (I said it was directions to a friend's house in Slough... I tell you, it might actually work!)

So here I am, middle aged and now itching to find a copy.... is this the menopause perhaps

That was silly. I went to [url removed by moderator]... All it said was "Go away."

[To moderators: does that count as a link? If so, can it possibly be considered a commercial one?]

Thank you for proving my point. I can't even post anything with a .com in a forum?

I am now officially peeved.

-Twinkle

Don't feel too bad about the moderators. They're only doing their jobs.

As for the website: I know several websites out there with the Freeware games (some of which are on my User Space) that are worth playing, and Activision is selling their CD for the Infocom Masterpieces Collection again. Zork's still alive, and it's still possible to get to it.