Zork: The Undiscovered Underground On SynTax Disk 1195 PC Reviewed by John Ferris Welcome to Zork! The year is 1066. You are a Private, Seventh Class, in the Inquisition Guard. After being relieved by Earl at the Port Foozle Inquisition Gift Kiosk, you find yourself standing in the Headquarters of Frobozz Electric. Gesticulating in front of you is the Pastor of Disaster, the Minister of Sinister, the Grand Inquisitor. It appears he has a very special mission for you: Zork: The Undiscovered Underground The original Zork was released in 1977 and to mark its 20th anniversary, Activision have released a new Zork text adventure, Zork: The Undiscovered Underground (ZTUU). The game also functions as a tie-in, a promotional vehicle for Zork: Grand Inquisitor (ZGI) Marc Blank and Mike Berlyn, two of the original Infocom authors, wrote the text and puzzles. ZTUU was programmed using Inform by Kevin Wilson who wrote "The Underoos That Ate New York!" and many articles on adventure game creation which can be found on the Internet. It comes with a special version of the WinFrotz Z-Machine emulator which for us mortals means the program that plays Infocom/Inform game files. With Messrs Blank and Berlyn on board, this promised to be a treat for Zork fans longing for the good old days. A treat it is too, albeit a short one, it's not Zork IV* by any stretch of the imagination. ZTUU is a mini-game with less than 20 locations but with plenty to do. It starts off with the player *In the back of my mind I am sure that Infocom did produce something with the Zork IV title. Can anyone enlighten me on this, or am I just being nuttier than usual? @~ Would that have been Beyond Zork? ... Sue being given the task of exploring a newly discovered part of the Great Underground Empire. Upon entering the tunnel, it promptly caves in. The tunnel leads to the Cultural Complex where you get to visit the Theatre, the Hall of Science and the Convention Centre. This is no ordinary convention full of business suits and corporate presentations. It even makes the Adventure Probe convention look normal. It's the Annual Grue Convention and the lamp is starting to dim... Yes, this is Zork territory alright. After the lamp, the Convention puzzle was the next I solved and it turned out to be the easiest. There were two puzzles that I found quite difficult but this might be because I'm not really tuned in to the Zork way of writing puzzles. One of them involved the end game which had to be played several times before I got it right. I think seasoned explorers of the GUE will find these a lot easier than I did. As for atmosphere, it really felt like I was in the GUE. The text, puzzles and humour were recognisably Infocom/Zork. The writers would have had to try really hard to ruin the atmosphere since the Zork mythology is so deeply ingrained, the formula so familiar that the player knows what to expect and enters into the spirit of the game immediately. The Rocky Horror Show is an example of what I'm trying to get across. The people who turn up in fancy dress already know what it is about and want to enjoy themselves. It would have to be a particularly poor performance to ruin the atmosphere. I hope I've got the point across, basically they were onto a winner! Don't be put off if you are unfamiliar with Zork and the GUE, as an introduction it's pretty good. Not many people get to meet a grue in the dark and live! To sum up, ZTUU was a short but enjoyable game with no bugs that I could see. It is not a full-blown adventure game to rival its ancestors but as a tribute twenty years down the line, it fits the bill nicely. Incidentally, the original Zorks I-III are available for download from the Internet, all legal and above board courtesy of Activision. I would recommend that PC users run them using Frotz/WinFrotz because the runtime program provided produced lots of junk characters. Activision have not ruled out the idea of releasing further mini games with the rest of the ZGI trilogy. Personally I doubt this will happen but I hope to be proved wrong. - o -