** Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz ( 1988, Steve Meretzky )

* The Zork Anthology ( 1994 ; contained Zork I, Zork II, Zork III, Beyond Zork & Zork Zero )

Zork Zero and Planetfall were a bonus in some packages )

* Zork Special Edition ( 1997 ; contained Zork I, Zork II, Zork III, Beyond Zork, Zork Zero, Return to Zork, Zork: Nemesis, and Planetfall )

** Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz ( 1988, Infocom, text with some graphics )

Among the games bundled in The Lost Treasures of Infocom, published in 1991 by Activision under the Infocom brand, were the original Zork trilogy, the Enchanter trilogy, Beyond Zork and Zork Zero.

Activision's 1996 compilation, Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces of Infocom, includes all the text-based Zork games ; the Zork and Enchanter trilogies, Wishbringer, Beyond Zork and Zork Zero.

Since January 18, 2011 Zork Anthology ( featuring Zork I, Zork II, Zork III, Beyond Zork, Zork Zero and Planetfall ) is internationally available at GOG. com, in a form of digital download.

Infocom games were written using a roughly LISP-like programming language called ZIL ( Zork Implementation Language or Zork Interactive Language — it was referred to as both ) that compiled into a byte code able to run on a standardized virtual machine called the Z-machine.

Inspired by Colossal Cave, Marc Blank and Dave Lebling created what was to become the first Infocom game, Zork, in 1977 at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science.

Zork I was released originally for the TRS-80 in 1980 and eventually sold more than a million copies across several platforms.

Even though Microsoft released a cheap version of Adventure with its initial version of MS-DOS 1. 0 for IBM PCs, Zork I was still a popular seller for the PC, thanks to the superior quality of its writing and packaging.

Although Infocom started out with Zork, and although the Zork world was the centerpiece of their product line throughout the Zork and Enchanter series, the company quickly branched out into a wide variety of story lines: fantasy, science-fiction, mystery, horror, historical adventure, children's stories, and others that defied categories.

For example, because Zork was available for years after its initial release in 1980, it continued to top charts in sales well into the mid-1980s.

Zork was ported under the filename " DUNGEN ", dungeon, to FORTRAN by a programmer working at DEC in 1978.

In gaming culture, such a character was called Ageless, Faceless, Gender-Neutral, Culturally Ambiguous Adventure Person, abbreviated as AFGNCAAP ( pronounced " afgan-cap "); a term that originated in Zork: Grand Inquisitor where it is used satirically to refer to the player.

In addition, Zork was written on the PDP-10, and Infocom used several PDP-10s for game development and testing.

Zork was one of the earliest interactive fiction computer games, with roots drawn from the original genre game, Colossal Cave Adventure.

The first version of Zork was written in 1977 – 1979 using the MDL programming language on a DEC PDP-10 computer.

" Zork " was originally MIT hacker slang for an unfinished program.

Zork I was published on 5¼ " and 8 " floppy disks.

The trilogy was written in ZIL, which stands for " Zork Implementation Language ", a language similar to LISP.

Personal Software published what would become the first part of the trilogy under the name Zork when it was first released in 1980, but Infocom later handled the distribution of that game and their subsequent games.

Part of the reason for splitting Zork into three different games was that, unlike the PDP systems the original ran on, micros did not have enough memory and disk storage to handle the entirety of the original game.

In the process, more content was added to Zork to make each game stand on its own.

Zork distinguished itself in its genre as an especially rich game, in terms of both the quality of the storytelling and the sophistication of its text parser, which was not limited to simple verb-noun commands (" hit troll "), but recognized some prepositions and conjunctions (" hit the troll with the Elvish sword ").

Enchanter was originally developed as Zork IV ; Infocom decided to instead release it separately, however, and it became the basis of a new trilogy.

) Although Wishbringer was never officially linked to the Zork series, the game is generally agreed to be " Zorkian " due to its use of magic and several terms and names from established Zork games.

The latest installation of the Zork series is Legends of Zork, a persistent browser-based MMORPG, which was released on April 1, 2009, and shut down on May 31, 2011.

Dornbrook also started Infocom's customer newsletter called The New Zork Times to discuss game hints and preview and showcase new products.

Of six novels published as " Infocom Books " by Avon Books between 1989 – 1991, four were directly based on Zork: The Zork Chronicles by George Alec Effinger ( 1990 ), The Lost City of Zork by Robin W. Bailey ( 1991 ), Wishbringer by Craig Shaw Gardner and Enchanter, also by Bailey.

Unlike Myst, which had no extraspatial dimensions of functionality, Return to Zork featured multiple ways of interacting with each object in the game world, as well as with several non-player characters also present in the world via a menu which appeared on the left side of the screen.

The game Zork was also originally written on ITS.

Hence in the early text-adventure game Zork, also known as Dungeon, the user could mung an object and thereby destroy it ( making it impossible to finish the game if the object was an important item ).

After encountering the original Adventure game ( also called Colossal Cave ), he was fascinated by the concept and — together with Marc Blank, Tim Anderson and Bruce Daniels — set out to write an adventure game with a better parser, which became Zork.

: The large emerald is also one of the Twenty Treasures of Zork from the Infocom text adventure Zork I.

The Great Day of His Wrath can also be seen adorning a wall in the computer game Zork Nemesis.

Zork Zero also has an entry for Festeron in its Encyclopedia Frobozzica.

It is a ' point-and-click ' game on 2 CD-ROMs ( or one DVD that also includes Zork Nemesis ) that allows the player to look around in a full circle of 360 degrees at each pre-rendered location ( called ' Z-vision ').

The game also makes frequent use of self-parody, and contains numerous references and asides to staples and clichés of the traditional adventure genre ; for example, two items almost invariably found and heavily used in almost all Zork games, a tattered map and an elven sword, are to be found in a glass case at the start of the game, with the notice " In case of adventure, break glass !".

Tim Anderson is a computer programmer who helped create the adventure game Zork, one of the first works of interactive fiction and an early descendant of ADVENT ( also known as Colossal Cave Adventure ).

It was also intended, at one point, to be a sequel of sorts to the Zork trilogy.

Subsequently, he also played a small role in the PC game Zork: Grand Inquisitor as the man in the third portal with Lucy and can be seen in a bit role in the film Hancock, starring Will Smith.

Like most other Infocom games, Zork Zero comes with feelies: a printed calendar titled " The Flathead Calendar 883 " with portraits and biographies of the Twelve Flatheads ( also usable as a 1989 calendar ), folded blueprints with a yellow Post-it note attached, and a scrap of parchment.

He also portrayed Chief Undersecretary Wartle in the graphical adventure game Zork: Grand Inquisitor in 1997.

It was designed by William Volk who also was the main designer of the point-and-click interface used in Return to Zork, and used a Lisp-like language similar to Infocom's ZIL.