Zork (Patreon)

Among of the latest set of TI-99 artifacts was a Zork I disk and manual. Since it was the only Infocom title he had, the game was probably not his thing. I had played through Zork II and III, but never the most popular Zork I. Playing that one on a TI-99 would be my ultimate retro experience, so I look forward to that. Zork was written on a mainframe and was a monstrous 80K in size, so when they wanted to sell it for microcomputers in 1980, they had to break it into three parts. Zork I has the bulk of the mainframe's puzzles, The extra space let them do some world-building on the original, rather than Zork just being a string of puzzles to solve in order to collect treasures and earn points. Part II & III also added some new puzzles.

It reminded me of my adventure game days of the mid-80's. The most famous hint book for adventures was the Book of Adventure Games by Kim Schuette. The book documented each game of the early 80's with a review, a map and then solutions in the back of the book. Inspired by this, I created a spoof review, map and solutions for my own reality of living in a basement apartment with my friend Rich for university. This was my way of poking fun at him. Kind of a "glass houses" situation, I know. The files are attached at the end of the post.

Our Polish landlord, Wanda Troc and her annoying 20-something daughter (Lydia) lived upstairs. They maintained access to the washer and dryer in the furnace room just off our living room, so Lydia could come running down at any point. Occasionally, Troc’s brother would visit, talking a mile-a-minute in Polish, punctuated with his booming old world laugh that penetrated the floorboards like he was in the room with us. Also, we had to cut through the backyard to get to the city bus stop, and every year she would plant more trees and bushes until it became a jungle! The rest of it you can probably figure out ... but mostly based on true events (except Ultima's Baby Bob and the Dead Body). I was 20, so it’s not the most mature work, but might give you a laugh.