Written by Joe Pranevich
A few weeks back, I conquered mainframe Zork (also known as Dungeon), one of the most influential text adventures of all time. It was a fantastic game but a true marathon: at more than thirty-six hours of play (not counting my look at the 616-point version afterwards), it is the longest game currently on the site. It had plenty to explore, well-designed puzzles, and a parser that is still best of breed. Written by students for a very specific MIT-flavored PDP-10 system, it wasn’t intended to be a commercial success. It was a fun coding project by a bunch of guys that really thought they were going to get real jobs after graduation.
That is where the story of Dungeon ends and the story of Infocom begins. In 1979, the original designers (Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling) formed a company together. It wasn’t a gaming company. It wasn’t intended to sell Zork to the masses. It was a way to keep the band together as they transitioned to “real” projects. That they changed adventure games forever happened entirely by accident.
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| Box art that cannot be unseen. |
That is where the story of Dungeon ends and the story of Infocom begins. In 1979, the original designers (Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling) formed a company together. It wasn’t a gaming company. It wasn’t intended to sell Zork to the masses. It was a way to keep the band together as they transitioned to “real” projects. That they changed adventure games forever happened entirely by accident.
