Return to Zork
| Return to Zork | |
|---|---|
| Studio | Activision |
| Publisher | Activision |
| Senior Developer | Doug Barnett |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
September 15, 1993 |
| platform | 3DO , FM Towns , Mac OS , MS-DOS , PC Engine , PlayStation , Sega Saturn , Windows |
| genre | Point-and-click adventure |
| Game mode | Single player |
| control | Mouse keyboard |
| medium | Floppy disk, CD-ROM, download |
| language | English |
| copy protection | Enclosure referencing |
Return to Zork is a point-and-click adventure game released by Activision in 1993.
action
Return to Zork is set in the fictional kingdom of Quendor and the Great Underground Empire below, 400 years after the events of Beyond Zork . The player is the winner of a competition and has won a holiday in the Valley of the Sparrows in the Kingdom of Quendor. He travels to Shanbar, a town in Quendor. There he finds little hospitality, the few locals are dismissive and distraught. The player finds out that over a period of a few years the entire eastern part of the city has gradually disappeared. The few remaining residents of Sparrow Valley are plagued by recurring nightmares dominated by a fundamentally evil creature named Morphius. It seems that the magic that was banned from Quendor 400 years ago is on the rise again, but this time under bad omens. The aim of the game is to track down and defeat Morphius.
Game principle and technology
Return to Zork is a 1st-person adventure, which means that the presentation of the events is from the perspective of the player. A partially animated still image of the player's surroundings is displayed, which he can examine with the mouse cursor. If the shape of the mouse cursor changes at a so-called hotspot, interaction with this point is possible. A left click opens a context-sensitive menu consisting of animated pictograms at the cursor position. A right-click opens the inventory at any point in time, a pictorial representation of items you have carried with you, from which one can be selected by left-clicking and then used with a hotspot. The interface provides and allows a larger number of possible interactions for most objects used, which can lead to the player inadvertently destroying or irreversibly changing objects necessary for solving the game. Enabling such situations is generally viewed as a design flaw. A further menu can be used to communicate with NPCs ; You can ask questions about objects, locations and previously recorded photos and sound recordings. Most commands can alternatively be given by pressing a command-specific key on the keyboard.
Return to Zork is one of the first computer games in which FMV scenes are integrated into the game world. Snippets of film shot with actors are placed over parts of the computer-generated scenery. The diskette version of Return to Zork was delivered on 21 disks and had to do without the orchestral soundtrack due to lack of space; the two successor games Zork Nemesis and Zork: Grand Inquisitor only appeared on CD-ROM. There are no subtitles for the spoken dialogue, so players without sufficient knowledge of English are at a disadvantage in the game.
Production notes
Return to Zork was the last game to be marketed by Activision under the "Infocom" label. The company Infocom , which was bought by Activision in 1986 and liquidated in 1989, had successfully released nine games to be played in the Zork universe in the 1980s , so Activision wanted to address buyers of these games with Return to Zork. A significant difference to the previous nine games is that they were all text adventures , while Return to Zork, apart from Murder on the Mississippi , which is based on a completely different technology , was Activision's first graphics adventure. Like the earlier Zork games, Return to Zork also contained so-called "Feelies", objects designed and manufactured for the game that are intended to enhance the gaming experience. The first edition of the game contained an envelope with the winning notification from the competition organizer and the Encyclopedia Frobozzica , a printed encyclopedia with articles on people, places and events in the fictional Zork universe. These supplements were referenced in the game and therefore served as copy protection. In subsequent editions of the game, the rather elaborate supplements were replaced by digital copies. The Encyclopedia Frobozzica goes back to a fan of the Zork games who had compiled the information for the encyclopedia from the package inserts of the earlier games. To save time and money, Activision obtained permission to use this dictionary commercially.
The game has a soundtrack of 25 pieces, each played at specific locations. The music was partly played by a nine-piece wind orchestra.
While the player character was unqualified in all previous games in the Zork series - in 1997 the following Zork: Grand Inquisitor, the player was even jokingly referred to as AFGNCAAP , Ageless, Faceless, Gender-Neutral, Culturally-Ambiguous Adventure Person - was given to him in Return to Zork given a gender - the male.
Credits
The following people were involved in the creation of Return to Zork :
| activity | Surname |
|---|---|
| design | Doug Barnett |
| Art director | Joseph Asperin |
| Technical Director | William D. Volk |
| executive producer | Eddie Dombrower |
| programming | Joseph T. Chow |
| Sound engineer | Michael B. Schwartz |
Designer Doug Barnett worked as a freelancer for Activision and was responsible for several scripts, but only that for Lords of the Rising Sun caused generally positive reviews. Technical Director William Volk began his career in the 1980s as a programmer in the computer games division of Avalon Hill . After Return to Zork, he left Activision and founded various companies of his own in the video game industry; he is now CCO at PlayScreen, a manufacturer of mobile games.
The following actors were used for FMV sequences:
| Surname | role |
|---|---|
| Charles Carpenter | Guardian, orc leader |
| Michelle Dahlin | Witch Itah |
| Matthew Grimaldi | Cliff Robberson |
| Edan Gross | Waif |
| Jason Hervey | Troll King |
| Michael Johnson | Rooper |
| Sam J. Jones | Blind archer |
| Allison Joy Langer | Rebecca Snoot |
| Deena Langer | Ms. Peepers |
| Ernie Lively | Moadikum Moodock |
| Jason Lively | Ben Fyshin |
| Lori Lively | Tree spirit |
| Robyn Lively | fairy |
| Howard Mann | Lighthouse keeper |
| Raoul Rizik | mayor |
reception
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The New Straits Times praised the successful controls that allow the player to concentrate on experiencing the adventure, the animations and the character depth of the NPCs , and the "breathtaking" voice output and the atmosphere of the game were highlighted. However, the newspaper criticized the general graphics quality and described the actors appearing in the game as at best second-rate. The PC Joker noted "graphics at its best" and a high density of puzzles, but also stated that, due to the lack of subtitles, the English language version had to be used and that the player could be killed by wrong decisions in the game. The Power Play only praised the animation of the filmed characters and otherwise criticized: A humor that fell significantly compared to the previous text adventures, "stuffy puzzles", frustrating, deadly traps, incomprehensible voice output, unhelpful controls and "irrelevant" to "shabby" Background graphics were noted negatively. For PC players , Boris Schneider-Johne saw Return to Zork as a principally worthy successor to the old Zork games and praised the high density of puzzles, but missed the richness of detail and the "playfulness" of the text adventure genre. In the same issue, Heinrich Lenhardt praised the complex controls and the "relatively sharp" film sequences, but was "sometimes confused" by the game, among other things because of the lack of German setting.
Return to Zork is in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by Universe Publishing listed.
literature
- Steve Schwartz: Return to Zork: Adventurer's Guide . Siliconwasteland Press, Lake Havasu City 2015, ISBN 978-1-5025-4787-3 .
Web links
- Return to Zork at MobyGames (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Entry at MobyGames. Retrieved August 17, 2015 .
- ↑ Review on Metzomagic.com. Retrieved August 2, 2015 .
- ↑ PlayScreen Management Profile. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on September 7, 2015 ; Retrieved August 19, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Review on Adventure Classic Gaming. Retrieved August 22, 2015 .
- ↑ a b Review in PC Joker 12/93. Retrieved August 12, 2015 .
- ↑ a b PC Player 1993-03, p. 80
- ↑ a b Review in Power Play 12/93. Retrieved August 14, 2015 .
- ^ New Straits Times, Nov. 1, 1993, p. 26. Retrieved August 17, 2015 .
