Welcome to Advent of Computing, the show that talks about the shocking, intriguing, and all too often relevant history of computing. A lot of little things we take for granted today have rich stories behind their creation, in each episode we will learn how older tech has lead to our modern world.
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episode 68: Zork
Make sure you have some extra batteries for your lamp, this episode we are delving into the depths of Zork. Written in 1977 Zork would quickly become the epitome of text based adventures, pushing aside all competitors. A lot of this comes down to it's simple gameplay, and the simple fact that Zork is fun to play. But lurking deeper into the game is a hidden treasure. Ya see, the other huge part of Zork's success was it's portability. That was made possible thanks to some sick programming tricks, and a virtual computer called the Z-machine. Selected Sources: https://sci-hub.se/10.1109/MC.1979.1658697 - Early article from IEEE https://web.archive.org/web/20060427000213/http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/NZT/zorkhist.html - Tim Anderson's Zork history https://archive.org/details/a2woz_Zork_I_1981_Infocom_r75 - Go play Zork