Microsoft open-sources classic '80s text adventure game Zork under the MIT license
Microsoft's Open Source Program Office (OSPO), in collaboration with Xbox and Activision, has open-sourced the historical text adventure games Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III under the MIT license. This effort, made possible in collaboration with Jason Scott, a digital archivist at the Internet Archive, aims to make historically significant code available to students and developers for research and learning.
Preserving code that shaped generations: Zork I, II, and III go Open Source
Zork is a text adventure game that was popular in the late 1970s and 1980s. Its most distinctive feature is that it has no graphics or background music, and progresses solely through the text displayed on the screen and the player's own imagination. Players explore a vast underground empire, facing adventure and danger in a vivid world constructed through text. Developer Infocom was founded by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student and programmer who was involved in the development of Zork.
Here's what Zork looks like on the Apple II. Players enter simple English words and phrases like 'north,' 'open trunk,' and 'put the lamp and sword in the case' as commands, and the game progresses accordingly. The program's responses are conversational and sarcastic, reminiscent of a tabletop role-playing game .
Zork: The Undiscovered Underground walkthrough (Apple II - Activision) - YouTube
The original Zork was developed in 1977 on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's PDP-10 mainframe. However, before it could be commercially released, the game was split into three parts: Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III, because the game's size was too large for home computers like the Apple II and IBM PC.
At this time, Infocom developed its own virtual machine engine called the 'Z-Machine.' This allowed the same story file to run on different platforms, such as the Apple II and IBM PC, without reprogramming. This made Zork one of the first truly cross-platform games, and it has become one of the best-selling series of all time.
The public repository contains the source code and documentation for each game, but does not include commercial packaging, marketing materials, or trademarks, which remain the property of their respective owners.
GitHub - historicalsource/zork1: Zork I (Microcomputer Version) by Infocom
GitHub - historicalsource/zork2: Zork II (Microcomputer Version) (Infocom)
https://github.com/historicalsource/zork2
GitHub - historicalsource/zork3: Zork III (Infocom)
https://github.com/historicalsource/zork3
Microsoft has shown how you can play Zork on your own PC using the released source code and tools like ' ZILF .' For a more retro feel, they also show how you can use a tool like ' Fic ,' written in Python, to apply a CRT monitor-style filter to the terminal screen.
The reason why Microsoft owns the rights to 'Zork' is because Activision acquired Infocom in 1986, and then Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard in 2023.
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