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Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz

by Steve Meretzky

Episode 5 of Zork
1988
Fantasy, Zorkian
ZIL

About the Story

The Great Underground Empire is in its heyday. Upscale condos crowd the massive caverns. Subterranean highways stretch from Aragain to the Fublio Valley. And no adventurer has yet set foot in the open field west of the white house.

But now both town and countryside are being abandoned, their inhabitants fleeing in the wake of a dread wizard's curse. The curse has already disposed of the royal Flathead family. It threatens to destroy the whole kingdom - unless you can stop it.

Your quest will take you to every corner of the empire, as you seek out objects ranging from the absurd to the sublime. The quixotic jester will test you with games, riddles, and tricks. And the immense Flathead palace and its environs offer a multitude of surprises.

Zork Zero combines the best of the legendary Zorkian universe with the latest technology in interactive storytelling. It has all the richness and depth you expect from Infocom interactive fiction. Author Stever Meretzky, whose award-winning stories include Planetfall, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Leather Goddesses of Phobos, lends his characteristic whimsy to the tale.

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3 Off-Site Reviews

Adventure Classic Gaming

Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz is very well designed from a gameplay standpoint, improving again upon all of the enhancements the previous games have innovated. Though you can use the keyboard to type in directions as normal, you can also move around by using the compass rose at the top of the screen or by clicking on locations on the online maps. The maps are very useful to have. The geography of Zork Zero is extensive, so keeping track of yourself as your travel between regions of the game can often be quite a chore. The parser, as is expected from Infocom, is extremely intuitive and mostly forgiving. There are practically no situations in the game when you are stuck because you cannot think of the word to move on. Being the pinnacle of Infocom's creative achievement, this game incorporates everything the designers have learned about parsers and game interaction to spectacular effect. Communicating with an Infocom game is never easier than it is here.
-- Matthew Murray
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SPAG
There isn't (...) enough payoff
There are entertaining moments in Zork Zero, to be sure. It's questionable whether there are enough to keep the average player interested throughout, though, and to whatever extent it succeeds, it does so in a very different way from any of the other Zork entries. Though it has its moments, I found Zork Zero the weakest of all Infocom's text Zork games.
-- Duncan Stevens
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>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction
So yes, the mirror location was a wonderful discovery. Less wonderful: hauling the game’s bazillion objects to the mirror in numerous trips to see if it could tell us something special. But then when we found something cool that helped us solve a puzzle: wonderful! This is quintessential Zork Zero design — an inelegant but good-natured mix of cleverness, brute force, and sheer volume.
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Game Details