Beyond Zork
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| Beyond Zork | |
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| Developer(s) | Infocom |
| Publisher(s) | Infocom |
| Engine | Z-code version 5 |
| Platform(s) | Apple II, Apple IIGS, Atari ST, IBM PC, Commodore 128 |
| Release date | Release 47: September 15, 1987
Release 49: September 17, 1987 Release 51: September 23, 1987 Release 57: December 21, 1987 |
| Genre(s) | Interactive fiction |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Media | 1 3½" floppy disk |
Zork games
Enchanter trilogy
Other games
Wishbringer • Return to Zork
Zork: Nemesis • Zork Grand Inquisitor
Zork: The Undiscovered Underground
Companies
Miscellaneous
Beyond Zork (full title: Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor) was an interactive fiction computer game written by Brian Moriarty and released by Infocom in 1987. It was one of the last games in Infocom's Zork series; or, rather, one of the last Zork games that many Infocom fans consider "official" (titles such as Zork: Nemesis and Zork Grand Inquisitor were created after Activision had dissolved Infocom as a company and kept the "brand name"). It signified a notable departure from the standard format of Infocom's earlier games which relied purely on text and puzzle-solving: among other features, Beyond Zork incorporated a crude on-screen map, the use of character statistics and levels, and RPG combat elements. It is Infocom's twenty-ninth game.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
The player explores the Southlands of Quendor somewhat aimlessly at first. Soon, however, a task is bestowed by the Implementors, a group of godlike creatures jokingly based on Infocom's game designers. The Coconut of Quendor, an incredibly powerful artifact that embodies the whole of Magic, has fallen into the claws of an unspeakably foul beast: an Ur-grue. Rumoured to be the spirits of fallen Implementors, Ur-Grues can surround themselves in a sphere of darkness that only sunlight can pierce. The player must recover the Coconut from this monster's grasp or face the unthinkable consequences.
[edit] Feelies
Almost since the company's beginning, Infocom's games included "extras" (called feelies) in the packages, often serving a dual purpose of entertainment and copy protection. Beyond Zork is no exception. The game package contained:
- A large fold-out map of the "Southland of Quendor"
- A small book titled The Lore and Legends of Quendor, a field guide of sorts to the flora and fauna of the area (several entries contained information necessary to defeat or incapacitate creatures in the game)
[edit] Notes
Beyond Zork bears many similarities to a simplified role playing game or Multi-User Dungeon, particularly in the implementations of character statistics and levels. The "attributes" that affected the character were endurance, strength, dexterity, intelligence, compassion, and luck. These attributes could be manually allocated by the player at the beginning of the game or randomly set by the computer. Additionally, there were several preset characters that could be used. The values of these attributes affected combat and other aspects of the game; the values could be changed by gaining experience levels, eating or drinking certain things, or wearing or using certain objects. (Humorously, repeated typing of profanities would lower the player's intelligence.)
Many locations, creatures and events encountered in other Zork games were referenced in Beyond Zork.
A short section of the game involves the magical land of Froon, "the setting for a series of beloved children's books by L. Frank Fzort, and later became a successful movie musical starring Judy Garlic." This is a not-very-subtle tribute to (or parody of) L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Beyond Zork was one of 20 Infocom games bundled in the 1991 compilation The Lost Treasures of Infocom published by Activision.
[edit] Technical details
The game's most noticeable enhancement relative to its Infocom predecessors is the addition of an onscreen map to the heads-up display, which shows the player's location in relation to the surrounding area. In addition, game navigation can be accomplished via mouse clicks on the map, if the operating system that the game is running on supports mouse input.
In addition, the game continued the Zork series' early use of procedural generation in videogaming. A number of magic items have initial locations and descriptions that are randomly determined, and some sections of the area map are randomly reorganized, each time a new game is played. Role-playing game-like elements are also present in the combat, including the concept of hit points and character statistics. Infocom had used these concepts before only in a rather limited way in Zork I and III.
Like Infocom's other games, Beyond Zork is platform independent and runs on a virtual computer architecture called the Z-machine. There were 4 versions of the game released in 1987, all using version 5 of the Z-machine. The game has 144 rooms and 77 objects, with a vocabulary of 1569 words and a total of 32778 opcodes.
[edit] Reception
A review in Computer Gaming World was pleased with some of Beyond Zork's features, particularly the ability to define macros and bind them to the function keys. The randomness of the game was described as frustrating, particularly as maps and item properties randomize upon restoring a previous game save. The review concluded by describing Beyond Zork as "a curious hybrid... mostly tough Infocom adventure with a patina of role-playing elements."[1]
[edit] Tagline
Hunt the Coconut of Quendor!
[edit] References
- ^ Scorpia (December 1987), “Beyond Zork”, Computer Gaming World: 32-33, 57-58
[edit] External links
- Beyond Zork at MobyGames
- Beyond Zork overview and information
- Beyond Zork screenshots and review
- Scans of the Beyond Zork package, documentation and feelies
- Partial transcripts of Beyond Zork
- Infocom-if.org's entry on Beyond Zork
- The Infocom Bugs List entry on Beyond Zork
- The Dot Eaters page featuring a history of the Zork games and Infocom
