back to article Kindle users get Zorked out

Kindle users can now lose themselves in the worlds of Zork I, II & III, as long as the connectivity lasts, and not in the dark obviously. The capability isn't actually new, PortableQuest.com has been providing a minimal interface for those who fancy seeing spending some time in a maze of twisty little passages, via their …

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  1. William Towle
    Boffin

    Fluff!

    +1 warm fuzzies.

    I (re-)read the Hiker's books/radio scripts to get my head around the game; it got me further in than with The Hobbit/LOTR - or at least it felt like I did (damn good job you could save too, given that any typo set the Vlhurgs/G'gugvunts off! I have a vague recollection of needing to be told to feed the yappy dog while at the pub...).

    Interesting nostalgia trip a, triggered memories of Secret Diary of Adrian Mole (http://www.crashonline.org.uk/23/adrian_mole.htm) while I was as it.

    These days you too can enjoy hiker.com courtesy of FreeDOS (FWIW I'm carrying a USB stick with both on right now!)

    1. TakeTheSkyRoad
      Thumb Up

      A win for...

      Secret Diary of Adrian Mole.... I still have the (slightly battered) paperback books somwehere too !

  2. Michael C

    Infocom was awesome

    I bought a boxed set of their stuff way back in the day. Had the entire Zork saga on it (at least up to that point, which I think included the first one in a "GUI" as well as HHGttG and about 20 other games. All of them were copied to my PC HDD ages ago and forgotten in a folder migrated from system to system over the years. On nostalgia, i just remoted back home and dug for it. Even under Win7, the old Zork dos game did in fact launch! Of course, I have it on my iPhone (Adventure, anyway, a clone)...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      twisty passages for bofs

      Ah, I remember playing Adventure on the PDP-11, long before ye olde PC existed and I'm pretty sure it wasn't new then. It was written in Fortran, IIRC.

      1. William Old
        Pint

        OK, can't beat a PDP11, but...

        ... the DEC MicroVax that was installed at the machine halls at the James Clark Maxwell Building (University of Edinburgh, King's Buildings) was only regarded as fully SAT-tested once everyone had made sure Adventure was working properly on it...

        :-)

        You have been eaten by a grue.

  3. CADmonkey
    WTF?

    WTF...

    does:

    "Even more popular than Zork, and equally text-based, was The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, despite (or because) most of us never made it to the pub. That's available in Java form, and Flash, but not yet in the minimalist HTML interface suitable for rendering on an electronic book - even one that happens to have a keyboard"

    ...even mean?

    1. Steven Knox
      Boffin

      It means..

      "Learn advanced sentence parsing techniques before attempting to read this or anything written by Douglas Adams."

  4. LuMan
    Happy

    Ooh. Come on, now..

    "worth revisiting if only to remind one how far we've come."

    Zork is worth visiting for so many more reasons, but possibly mostly for the fact that, once you get the hang of it, it's bloody entertaining.

    Of course, modern yoofs won't be interested in using their imaginations. If it can't shift a zillion texture-mapped polygons at 60fps they don't care.

    Mine's the one with the 'Create Your Own Adventure' book in the pocket.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Zork != Infocom

    Zork came from MIT, Infocom adapted it to home computers.

    AFAIK the rights to Infocom's own products (including the sequels to Zork) still lie with Activision. HHGTTG was a bitch of a game, I was always into the Leather Goddesses of Phobos myself.

    Mine will be the one with the scratch-and-sniff feelies.

    1. Petrea Mitchell
      Thumb Up

      Ahh, memories

      LGoP was a good one, but my all-time favorite (of the ones I managed to finish) is Trinity. Buy Zork, everyone, and maybe the rest of the catalog will become accessible!

  6. stukiwi
    Unhappy

    Flash HHGTTG

    I'd love to use it since it apparently lets you save and resume which the Java version doesn't but I keep getting this:

    Seriously - this isn't the game - it's an error message from the BBC's 20th Anniversary Edition Game Server. Something went wrong, and we couldn't initialise a new session.

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