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Return to Zork (w/Grayson)
1 Playsin 3 hours
Jess is on assignment with his family (but makes occasional appearances) so Grayson returns to talk Return to Zork.
Quest Quest podcast is Ben Vigeant and Jess Morrissette.
Editing by Ben Vigeant
Show art by Kevin "WilcoWeb" Wallace
Read Grayson's joke explainer blog:
https://www.imightaswellexplainthejoke.com/
Watch us on Twitch!
Ben: https://www.twitch.tv/ps_garak
Jess: https://www.twitch.tv/decafjedi
Give us a review, they help people find this show! Unless you hated it, in which case, don't.
Talk with us on Discord!
https://discord.gg/ve9fqjgPp2
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Humor
00:00:31
Speaker
it's quest quest sandwich oh just stop just we're not up to that part of the of the show yet i went back to kfc for the first time in years last week just sandwich sandwich all right hey hey calm down man calm down jess hey we haven't introduced you yet oh sandwich you know, listen, uh, hi everybody. Uh, welcome to quest quest.
00:01:00
Speaker
I'm Ben. I'm joined as I always am by jazz sandwich. is Who is not a selection of 10 voice clips.
00:01:14
Speaker
Well, he and his family enjoy, uh, like a lovely summer vacation. ah But ah not a special guest host, only a guest. And let's not forget that.
00:01:34
Speaker
This isn't like a Joan Rivers situation. Or a Jerry Lewis situation. ah Jerry did Jerry ever guest host the tonight show?
00:01:44
Speaker
No, he, he had his trial run as his own with his own talk
Nostalgic Gaming Memories
00:01:48
Speaker
show. Obviously I know that we watched that together. Grayson joined by Grayson. Yeah. The new, the new Jess, but how does it, who with Jess here, but limited in speech, ah who, yeah I mean, do you feel like you're, you're taken over as, as the deep voiced alpha of the, of the show?
00:02:11
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Are you saying that I have a deeper voice than you? I don't know if that's true. i would hope do We have a similar. Well, so hold on. I've got ah turn up Jess's mic.
00:02:22
Speaker
I agree, Ben. Well said. That's right. Thank you, Jess. That's true. I don't know. I don't know. do we have similar registers? Tambors? What's the word? ah We have similar Jeffrey Tambors. We have similar Jeffrey Tambors.
00:02:40
Speaker
How are you doing, Grayson? Oh, I'm doing I'm doing just fine. It's a you know, it was a little behind the scenes. We were talking about the weather. And we're in that we're in that pretty nice.
00:02:53
Speaker
Period that's about to be horrible. Yeah. You know, uh, yeah. What, what, what is the, the weather over there in New York city, New York city.
00:03:05
Speaker
Uh, we, ah I think half-assed attempt to do a Matt. Like i was like in my brain, I was like, don't do the Matt Berry New York city, because I can't do it as just it' inimitable.
00:03:19
Speaker
Yeah. Um, And and then but like, i it's very difficult for me to say New York City now without hearing Matt Barry say, yeah. thatie Yeah, it it definitely has wriggled in there and just gotten stuck in the brain. Because I mean, what an all time, you know, line read.
Theater and Streaming Insights
00:03:40
Speaker
But yeah I think we're we're warming up here. We got, I think, 80 today. Hey, this is a video game podcast, Grayson. So how about you say, it's heating up. It's heating up.
00:03:52
Speaker
We're on fire. ah ah What's another, what are some, what's some other jock jams stuff of the era? Ram a lemon ding dong. What did he say? Oh, it's a boom chock, boom chock, a lock. Yeah. That's what I was looking I don't know. Like they,
00:04:09
Speaker
Every barcade worth its salt has an NBA jam because those always, those earn. People just see a NBA jam, even in, ah you know, 2026 and they'll, they'll drop some quarters. And it's four player. I think unlike a lot of arcade games, you can, you can get all the homies onto to it. You know, you don't have to be like, Oh, let's watch two people play a game.
00:04:35
Speaker
um but ah But I haven't played, i don't think I've played NBA Jam. I don't recall actually ever playing NBA Jam on an arcade cabinet. I've played it. I've played it on the the Sega Genesis.
00:04:52
Speaker
I don't know that I played it. Play it with my neighbor. It seems likely I did just, just cause it was so popular, but I can't say for sure that I ever played it in the arcade before it became a barcade staple. I definitely played it also on home console.
00:05:08
Speaker
Yeah, like it was it was on, and I'm sure like the the Genesis version isn't nearly as good. Well, the Genesis version has has blood.
00:05:20
Speaker
That's the big difference. Shut up.
00:05:24
Speaker
is it Is it the Genesis version that that you can play with Bill Clinton on your team? Oh, so there I don't remember. i had a game. I had, I think, one of the, it might have been the same. Was it, was this Midway? Midway was? mid and Midway made.
00:05:40
Speaker
Midway. Chicago Zone. mid Midway. Midway. They made ah a, I think it was Midway made a followup that i played on that it had a 1064 called and NBA hang time.
00:05:52
Speaker
That one definitely had a bunch
Challenging Action Games
00:05:54
Speaker
of funny characters. It had Clinton and aliens and stuff. um I don't remember if an earlier one had those. So they have big head mood. it it did have big head mode. It had all the Mortal Kombat-esque cheats that you could input, you know, while the game booted up. Yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, you, like, kind of, ah like, tile through. yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. yeah just Just for those who might not either be familiar ah with the previous ah ah podcast that you've been, i mean, your yeah, you're guest hosting. ah Grayson streams with me Adventure Tuesday, PS underscore Garrick. He's also the creator of the critically beloved m ah ah prequel to Codename Iceman titled Kid Name Ice Boy.
00:06:46
Speaker
i Now that I have made that a thing in the world, I i now have to, confuse those so easily because they're four very similar words. Yeah, and I had to i had to do some real work. Yeah, and because i have arrived at a point in my life where I, for some reason, talk about Codename Iceman a lot, this is a regular problem for me where i'll I'll be referring to one or the other and I'll say the wrong one or I'll say some novel combination of those of those components.
00:07:15
Speaker
Grayson, that's horse shit you know it. Ugh,
00:07:19
Speaker
Just if I have that kind of rapport, though, it's fine.
00:07:25
Speaker
um Do you know that this has been throwing me? Have you heard of this? There's a musical called Ice Boy. Is there? There's a musical. there It's in Chicago right now.
00:07:37
Speaker
Okay. And I keep seeing advertisements for it. Is it like, ah what's Ice Boy about? Is it like a caveman generated from ice? Guess who's starring in it? Lin-Manuel Miranda.
00:07:48
Speaker
No. no but Beloved ah married couple and sitcom stars Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman. Really? kind of being sarcastic, but actually that that is probably a lot of fun to see.
00:08:03
Speaker
I mean, they're both really, they are they pretty fun. They're both wonderful entertainers. They're both very funny. Yeah. i I think there's a time when Nick Offerman, he got so, he was so saturated in the culture that there was, there was a time, with just a small window where I was like, you know what?
00:08:21
Speaker
I don't, it's not like I dislike him. He never went that far, but I was like, I've seen, and I've seen enough Nick Offerman. I've seen enough Nick Offerman for a while, but I think he knew either he or his career just slowed down enough. yeah like Now I'm like, Ooh, Nick. Yeah. He, he kind of,
00:08:39
Speaker
ah ah he hit a cultural saturation point and also kind of like, you know, there was that moment ah where it was like, Bill Murray showed up to my wedding. Oh, yeah.
Classic Strategy Games
00:08:50
Speaker
yeah yeah yeah Obviously, Nick Offerman and and Bill Murray are like massive levels of fame apart from each other but they were kind of in a similar genre of it's like whoa nick offerman like this thing you know uh but now uh but but he pulled back like just when he was a little too oversaturated and now it's just delightful yeah now i'm now i'm happy mullaly's hilarious and then yeah she's she's i've never been tired of seeing mcgillaly no maybe i should see this it closes in august
00:09:21
Speaker
bet these tickets are pretty expensive. Yeah. Right into the show, if you saw Ice Boy and know what it's about, It is, ah it's, here we go.
00:09:34
Speaker
A musical 40,000 years in the making. Good start. um broad reance That's a reference to Jurassic Park, which came out in 1993, foreshadowing for later. Okay. Very good. um Broadway's brightest star of 1939. I'll that's not years ago.
00:09:56
Speaker
Vera Vim, Megan Mullally, is at the top of her game until she adopts a 40,000-year-old Neanderthal discovered frozen in the Arctic. and So it is ah it is a caveman story.
00:10:10
Speaker
And as Ice Boy thaws, he unexpectedly becomes a theatrical sensation, inspiring Eugene O'Neill, ah Nick Offerman, and challenging Vera for center stage.
00:10:25
Speaker
I will note that this synopsis isn't promising. ah But you know what? Also, I don't know very much about you Eugene O'Neill, in fairness.
00:10:37
Speaker
But you know what? uh uh mission accomplished by the goodman theater i still will see it despite how baffling or we'll consider seeing it and go like too expensive uh uh because i like nick kofferman and megan mulally yeah that's their power and that's why that's why they were cast floor the floor seems like it's been raised quite a bit with with both of them you know on the playbill You know, I think they're going through the this theater. I think they also recently had Jenna Fisher in a thing.
00:11:13
Speaker
And so
Exploring 'Return to Zork'
00:11:14
Speaker
maybe they're running through, you know, your your NBC comedy stars of 15 years ago. um Right now. Yeah. i Tina Fey next.
00:11:29
Speaker
think Tina Fey might be a little too big. She's too big. Yeah, probably. I think she's, she's well, she's definitely bigger than Jenna Fisher, but she's probably, i mean, she's, you know, she's like, ah yeah, no, she's she's too big.
00:11:45
Speaker
Too big for a a two horse town like Chicago. yeah that's true. She's bi-coastal. I agree, Ben. Well said. Thank you, Jess. Okay.
00:11:59
Speaker
Oh, get ready. Get ready. Get ready. Yeah. Oh man, Jess, we're always on the same wavelength. It's like, we're always finishing each other's. Grayson, that's horse shit. You know,
00:12:13
Speaker
you know, uh,
00:12:17
Speaker
you know i ah is Is it going to be unbearably hot in New York next week too? Because it's going to be 90 degrees Fahrenheit here in Chicago next week. i think I think it's supposed to get pretty hot, yeah.
00:12:32
Speaker
Yeah. Fucking miserable. But speaking of miserable miserable things, what have you been playing, Grayson? I just finished a little while ago, nina the Hollower, the the beloved new top-down Zelda slash Castlevania slash a little Dark Souls-y pixel adventure game. Grayson?
00:12:53
Speaker
Yeah. Here's a question. she You know my tastes generally. Would I like it? I think so.
00:13:03
Speaker
I think the main sticking point for people who both, ah for people who like it and dislike it in is its difficulty. I think oh it's toot pretty high.
00:13:14
Speaker
If you're not like a regular time action game person, especially one that's like that kind top down game, you may find it little more difficult. It looks like a Game Boy Color game, right? Yes, it's very much like Like a Link's Awakening? Yeah, this is the art club.
00:13:31
Speaker
They made Shovel Knight, right? So they have a really keen interest and this and in in that kind of style. And yeah, this is kind of really riffing off the the Link's Awakening kind of look and feel. But they they but think they take it into this, like, what if it was kind of this gothic-y sort of Dark Souls Castlevania thing. It looks beautiful. like the The pixel art's all what very wonderful.
00:13:52
Speaker
um i I think you'd like it, Ben. It's cheap. It's like 20 bucks. You know, the the the thing, it's it's so interesting, me with, like, kind of difficult action games, because sometimes, like, I play it and i go too hard, bounce off, and then like, I'm going to grind through this level, and I yeah don't know what that is. Like, I don't know...
00:14:23
Speaker
what it is that like if I'm playing like, and it like if like, you know, Dead Cells is pretty tough. I love Dead Cells.
00:14:36
Speaker
So, you know, I see you narrowing your eyes. Yeah, it's the kind of, well, I've never played that. I've seen you play Dead Cells. i I think it's the kind of game that really wants you to, when you die, to go like, ooh, I'm going to get you. It wants you to feel like. sixnack Yeah, Yeah.
00:14:52
Speaker
That's exactly it. like I think, you know, I think i think it's it's the kind of game, especially moving forward, a lot of people are going to be like, oh, I always meant to try that. And then it'll be like 15, 10 bucks on a Steam sale. And you'll go like, yes, now's the time.
00:15:07
Speaker
So, you know, I think i think it's good. I i i agree. What is there? You know, i'm I'm going to reveal this. It's the Steam sales, and maybe I'll i'll i'll knock this out right now. I've never played Shovel Knight.
00:15:21
Speaker
Shovel Knight's pretty fun. It's a very, I mean, it's it's at this point... you know, 10 years old, something like that. So I haven't played it in a minute, but I bet it's, I bet that's a game you could have for quite cheap these days.
00:15:36
Speaker
Like very, very finely tuned action games as well. and If you say nothing else about Yacht Club, they really, they got the game feel down. Yeah, you know, that's a that's a funny thing. Like, i I've found myself falling into holes where I do get pulled into those difficult action games where, like, I avoided Shovel Knight specifically because it had the reputation of being a tough action game.
00:16:04
Speaker
But now I'm starting to realize that I kind of like those. They're very, they're very, I think they're they're tough in a very... straightforward way where that it's it's it's being tough and exactly how you think it will be so i don't think it's it's pulling one over you and it's i don't know it's a game you sit down and you're like it's it's supposed to be a kind of tough old-fashioned kind of game so i think you're and for at least for me when i play one of them i go into it thinking yeah i'm gonna die a little bit that's fine you do you cry a little bit when you you die
00:16:37
Speaker
I will eventually cry and pass it to my older brother and make him beat the hard bosses.
00:16:47
Speaker
Now, is it, does it have like the Game Boy Color like resolution? Like kind of a narrow like kind of box? I think, I don't know. like Is it 4.3? Is it widescreen? I think it's widescreen. i remember with with Shovel Knight, they were very particular about They cheated a little bit, but they were very particular about it being, I think, NES accurate, even though it's like it's like a widescreen game. theres A lot of the design is like, well, this could be on the NES.
00:17:16
Speaker
I don't know if they had a specific kind of target with Me to the Hollow War in mind, but you look at it and you're like, oh yeah, this this feels like a Game Boy it feel feel
Zork's Writing and Design
00:17:28
Speaker
yeah they might they They were at least targeting that aesthetically.
00:17:32
Speaker
I appreciate that we we are definitely like, because there was the the era where, and like Shovel Knight was at about the end of it, where like there were so many NES throwback games.
00:17:48
Speaker
And like, yeah, you know, then then we we've we've also seen a ah lot of like kind of SNES style throwback stuff.
00:17:59
Speaker
and like kind of Genesis throwback stuff. But it is interesting and fun to me to see them start to do, people start to do throwbacks to like kind of weird, like to handhelds and things like that. Yeah. I played a game that had like ah a Game Boy Advance, like the oversaturated, like two bright colors like look. And I was like, oh, this is, this is neat.
00:18:26
Speaker
There's a game coming out. i I'm blanking on the name. I apologize. But it's a it's a riff on Zelda 2. Oh, yeah.
00:18:37
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure you to yeah if you search Zelda 2 throwback video games, some combination of those things, you'll find it. I'm going to do that. But, yeah, that's just to say that, like, we're we're at this point where there's So many people with with so many games that they grew up with or have come to really like grow fond of that you can find kind of spiritual successors of all sorts of stuff.
00:19:06
Speaker
I'm going have to type in adventures of link because typing in Zelda throwback game 2026 the ocarina of time. That's very true. Um, um, of link twenty six throw back
00:19:21
Speaker
yeah the As you know, as every everybody... I can't find the name. and Everybody, you all know it. You're listening. Yeah, i write in if you're making this game and are mad that we didn't promote it by name.
00:19:34
Speaker
It does look cool. It looks cool. There's a demo during ah the demo fest, the Steam thing. Anyway, cool.
00:19:47
Speaker
I've been playing... Uh, Master of Magic. Have you ever played Master of Magic? You know, I never, I never did. I don't think I ever got around to that, even though it's, it's, uh, obviously a very, at this point, very famous kind of canonical PC game.
00:20:05
Speaker
It's a, like a canonical Civ-like. Um, and, uh, the, the thing is, is that, uh,
00:20:16
Speaker
So I loved, I played, Master of Magic in 1995. I played it when it came out. Um, we had, we, we had it.
00:20:29
Speaker
I bought it at Toy Works.
00:20:38
Speaker
like, I really loved that game, Master of Magic, which is, like, kind of a, um,
00:20:46
Speaker
Like, uh, uh, it is, like, a Civilization I riff with, uh, fantasy, like, instead of being civilizations, it is,
00:21:01
Speaker
It is like you, for like real world civilizations, it is like you are various wizards building kingdoms of various,
00:21:13
Speaker
like, you know, creatures and fantasy like orcs and wizard men and gnolls and shit like that. And, um... Uh, like, uh, so you build your kingdom, you fight the other wizards, uh, there are multiple ways to win.
00:21:31
Speaker
Um, and one of its bigger, like, you know, you have spells, uh, you know, which is obviously not in civilization. It's also that it has, like, a tactical battle battle system where you control the battles, which is a lot of fun. i I played Master of Magic before,
00:21:53
Speaker
I played Master Magic before Civilization came out, so when I later went and played Civilization and other games like it, other 4X games, I was always kind of surprised and disappointed that you didn't actually control the battles. It was just like mash the two armies together and roll a die and then be like, you win. Do you ever play the Age of Wonders games? I have not played. Are those supposed to be a Master of Magic kind of...
00:22:22
Speaker
Torchbearer? Well, here's the thing. So I was just about to say, so I'm actually playing a couple years ago, there was like a ah modern master of magic.
00:22:34
Speaker
that came out and I bought it. It had like kind of mixed reviews. And so I bought it and then just like kind of was just, you know, just kind of set the steam backlog.
00:22:48
Speaker
And I got this week or or last week I got the steam controller. And so i was just like, oh you know, that might be kind of a fun test case of playing a game on my TV that I couldn't otherwise play with, you know, my normal controller. and so I've been playing it with, uh, uh, with, uh, my, my Steam controller, which actually feels great.
00:23:18
Speaker
Like, playing that type of, like, 4X game on it with, like, the the two trackpads and the two analog sticks, like, use, like, the left analog stick to move the screen around and the right trackpad to move the cursor around actually feels really good.
00:23:38
Speaker
like I like, haven't played too much of this this remake. The remake has a big remake problem, which is that...
00:23:53
Speaker
Master of Magic has so many shooters and so many people that love it that they're saddled with that they have to remake, like, especially because it's been so long. They just have to make modern Master of Magic.
00:24:11
Speaker
Yes. Yes. Um, and so like they're kind of hemmed in, as far as I could tell, not having played too, too much of it. But it's like, I play it and I didn't even like do a tutorial. It was just like, oh yeah, this is Master of Magic. Except now there's Hexes.
00:24:27
Speaker
Like, like that's the, that's the 21st century move. It's like, now it's in Hexes. We
Music and Sound Design in Zork
00:24:34
Speaker
really, sorry, we really just got to, we got to move to Hexes. The superior man's grid.
00:24:38
Speaker
um And what do you think about that, Jess? do you like hexes? I agree, Ben. Well said. All right. He loves hexes.
00:24:53
Speaker
different thing. And the funny thing is, is that I have haven't really done any of the tactical battles. The thing that I said was my favorite thing. There is a auto resolve button. And I've been like, yeah, I don't want to do any of these.
00:25:07
Speaker
I play a little bit of, um there's a new Heroes of Might and Magic called Olden Era. Yes! Which is, I played a little bit of that over the past couple of months. Also a throwback.
00:25:18
Speaker
And the same thing where if you run into a- By the way, the Zelda 2 game is Enigma Heart. Enigma Heart. Enigma Heart. Looks very cool. It's very neat. But it's the same thing, old Nera, a game, also a strategy game where you run around a map and then you you zoom into a tactical battle. And whenever I have the ability skip one of those battles, I'm like, boom, auto resolve, let them flee. Like, I don't want to do this. I mean, those ah like those battles are like the the the heroes of Might Magic thing. Yeah. I see you still wind up doing a lot, but I take that effort. Well, it's very there are a lot of trash battles yes in in heroes.
00:25:57
Speaker
I have also been playing Heroes. um um I don't think I've talked too much about it on this podcast. I'm waiting. It's early access. I'm waiting. Like, it's pretty, it feels pretty good.
00:26:08
Speaker
it does a good job you know, flattering my memory of Heroes 2 and 3.
00:26:18
Speaker
But looking at their roadmap, it does look like they're going to add some, like, new and interesting things. Anyway, yeah, I've been playing i've been playing a Master of Magic 2, the new one, mostly to just see how it feels to play a 4X strategy on my TV with a Steam controller, and you want to know what?
00:26:43
Speaker
Feels good. feel great Feels good. The game itself, it's Master of Magic, which is a classic. sample But here's the thing. I'm kind of like, maybe I'll just play the DOS.
00:26:56
Speaker
In fact, I could probably just do that on my Steam Deck. Just drop the DOS game on there and we'll play it that way. I played a somewhat older game on my Steam Deck pretty recently. Oh, what did you play?
00:27:10
Speaker
I played a little game called Return to Zork. Getting a little bored? Getting little bored conversation? I'm just trying to be, I'm trying to fill in the the steady hand that Jess normally brings. Jess is not the steady hand. No, if Jess was here, we would we would go way longer.
00:27:28
Speaker
We'd go way longer. i agree, Ben. Well said. We'd be on sandwiches still. Grayson, that's horse shit and you know it. um uh just anyway just does have more than three things he could say yeah he he gave me a bunch i have to cycle them uh but yeah sure let's talk about
Legacy of 'Return to Zork'
00:27:48
Speaker
return to
00:28:17
Speaker
right, well, well, you pulled us into this shit. Uh-huh. So what's Return to Zork?
00:28:29
Speaker
Return to Zork. ah This is your idea, Ben. I don't know why I'm leading it, but I'll say it. Return to Zork is a 1993 adventure game by Activision.
00:28:41
Speaker
um I think faith it is the game that... that launched the recently, recently incorporated Activision, I think, uh, it was the career of one Bobby Kotick.
00:28:55
Speaker
Uh, yeah. So, uh,
00:28:58
Speaker
It is so not recent like so Activision as as we know that's that starts with you know all the the the former Atari guys um you know they go make ah Pitfall and Keystone Capers and all those wonderful games and then ah like After that, they have a really terrible 80s.
00:29:23
Speaker
A really, really terrible 80s. Yeah, Azork's the exact division. which Which involves, like, ah a like there's a point where they try to rename, well, they do rename to the Buzzy for, like, trying to, like, trend chase name Mediagenic.
00:29:45
Speaker
Because multimedia, that was, you know, the future. We're going to be talking about multimedia. That's turn to Zork. Oh, yeah. Like, here's the thing. This should be mediogenic game, not an Activision game, for sure.
00:29:58
Speaker
And, ah like, the the flailing around ah 80s Activision ah purchased...
00:30:10
Speaker
I think they framed it as a merger, but it was a purchase. The the ailing Infocom, ah which ah Infocom, which had you know, the the storied a creator of text adventures ah and like the Zork games, ah Infocom ah not only was kind of stuck with that they just kept making text adventure games and they were like pivoting to graphics far too late. I think they were actually part of Activision at that point, but also they had, uh, spent, uh,
00:30:52
Speaker
i spent like had lost an enormous amount of money on this ah like professional database software scheme called Cornerstone.
00:31:08
Speaker
um where like is Infocom had like half of the company was trying to make business software and they put all their resources ah in one, in one program and it failed. And then they had to be bought, I think is the the short version of it.
00:31:30
Speaker
But anyway, yeah, Mediogenic Activision ah ends up ah like, you know, ah like just a really terrible situation. And in comes ah Bobby Kotick.
00:31:50
Speaker
And he ah like to this like flailing and failing company. And one of the things, to my understanding, that was like an early breakout hit for Activision was a compilation of Infocom games. that They just like were like, all right, here here you go for like, you know, however many, like 40 bucks or however much. Yeah, I mean, that's that's one of those. They just sold all, like half of the Infocom catalog, and it was a big hit.
00:32:25
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:32:28
Speaker
that's one of those you're entering 1993 you have Zork
00:32:33
Speaker
you have to like zrk like Infocom and Zork were very well, very popular PC games, right? These were, ah they were good sellers.
00:32:44
Speaker
They were like, if you were an adventure gamer of the time, these were just games you would know and have played, right? these These obviously have fallen out of the kind of zeitgeist, but it was lost treasures of Infocom 1991. They sold, they sold $99.
00:33:02
Speaker
for ninety nine dollars And it sold over 100,000 copies. Like, I'm looking at ah Wikipedia now. um It sold over 100,000 copies. And, like, all these games were made. It was already done. Like, but it was it was just like, here's ah a CD or a collection of floppies with a whole bunch of shit that has already been made and will definitely work on your computer.
00:33:32
Speaker
Like, um and, and so ah like, that was just, it was a huge hit of like development cost free, you know, game.
00:33:47
Speaker
100,000 copies too. Also ah a pretty handsome success. 100,000 copies at $100 each. Yeah, at the time at a time, yeah, the the cost to to unit volume was, the the math was a little different. And right, 100,000 was like a good amount of of to sell for a game.
00:34:04
Speaker
And, uh, so like, all right, you know, holy shit, we got to get in this business. We got to get like, and the thing is, is that when like Activision more or less like kind of, uh, like at, at one point you could read all this on like various websites. So, or watch, um,
00:34:30
Speaker
Jason Scott's Get Lamp documentary. um So if I'm getting details, you look it up. I'm tired. um But I'm pretty sure, like, at one point, ah like, so Activision acquires Infocom, but Infocom remained, ah you know, in Massachusetts. And then at one point when, like, you know, their sales were you know, shitty and stuff like that. They invited, like, they were like, we're shutting down your offices. I guess if you want to move to California, maybe you can.
00:35:06
Speaker
And I don't think very many people took them up on that. So that was essentially considered the end ah for Infocom. And now this newly birthed Activision is like,
00:35:17
Speaker
oh, we own this tremendous IP that just made us, like, enough money to stabilize the the company. um And so the the first thing they did was not return to Zork, but they did Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2. 2. Because Leather Goddesses of Phobos...
00:35:42
Speaker
was one of the best sellers, was one of the best Infocom sellers. So I assume that was probably why, ah like, they're like, all right, well, let's let's do that. And they brought back the designer, Steve Maritzki, to do that. And my understanding is that it is not good.
00:36:02
Speaker
um you have not played this game. Uh, so I can't, I can't speak to it, but it like, it was poorly reviewed and, uh, like, I don't think it sold very well.
00:36:16
Speaker
And, uh, uh, that was it for, uh, I think, I think, ah it's supposed to be considered quite easy as well. So adventure heads in particular, we're like, well, this, this isn't, we don't like this. Yeah.
00:36:30
Speaker
And, and so it's like, okay, well, you know, All right. Like, okay. So the, the infocom magic might not stick to everything, but they have like, they still have one of the most like enduring trademarks, which is Zork.
00:36:49
Speaker
RTZ. um And so we, without any of the, the original implementers as they were, were called a design team got to work making return to Zork.
00:37:05
Speaker
Now, Ben, we talked about this briefly, but this is a game that has a lot of really interesting ways you could approach it ah can i can i Can I kind of run through some of the big themes I noticed, but maybe maybe we'll see what you want to, what road you want to go down. Like big themes in the the game, or like usually ah ah i kind of work through each, like i kind of corncob.
00:37:33
Speaker
you know, with Jess here, right? I agree, Ben. Well said. All right. And I'll, I'll, maybe I'll ah ah hold on. i And here, actually, Jess, how about you say, start seeing this one now? Great point, Ben.
00:37:50
Speaker
yeah ah um well all right what what's the plot grayson what is the plot oh good lord uh that's where i hope we wouldn't start because it's no it's uh i mean it's got it's got a kind of in general ah plot in general it's this kind of farcical fantasy world right uh kind of the mode of the time like yeah i wouldn't compare this favorably to like a douglas adams or a terry pratchett but like the kind That kind of like silly farcical genre humor was like a way that these kinds of stories were told at the time.
00:38:28
Speaker
um And this one, like the the premise is basically that you're some dude, you get a you you get a letter in the mail, you've won a sweepstakes to go to some magical land where you'll- front of the historic White House yes from Zork 1. Yes.
00:38:46
Speaker
uh also kind of a you know speaking of the zork lineage this game was i think the first time a lot of this stuff was visualized uh in ah in a game um but yeah you get you get it you win a sweepstakes uh to go somewhere it's it's like an all expenses paid trip to and then you have to sit and watch like a timeshare presentation these are all very funny jokes in 1993 sweepstakes is timeshare presentations um but then yeah you basically walk down to, you, well you start the Valley of the Vultures.
00:39:23
Speaker
Yeah. Which is the, the, the, the reward is that you get to go to the Valley of Sparrows. the Yes. Scenic Valley of the Sparrows where the, uh, the town Shanbar is, uh, to, to go hang out.
00:39:38
Speaker
And, Oh, it's become the, Valley of vultures. So yeah, you're like you're you're sort of idyllic sweepstakes winning trip immediately kind of becomes this this strange fantasy ah journey. ah You eventually head down, you talk to a light, you you meet various kooky characters, a lighthouse keeper, the, of course, famous wants some rye guy. town drunk. The town drunk. ah The town beggar under the bridge. Yes, the waif, the waif. of The waif.
00:40:10
Speaker
Um, eventually you make your way to East Shambar or West Shambar. In the, the great underground empire. It's, it's sunk down. Yes. you know, into Zork world. You start to kind of poke your head into a very strange fantasy realm, Zorkland.
00:40:26
Speaker
And, ah I think you, there's some ah Morpheus villain. So as you try to like, there is a mystery plot way too much credence here. This is such a that it is everybody is very concerned because ah like West Shanbar, which is above the ground, which is just a town hall, ah schoolhouse,
00:40:57
Speaker
again an abandoned gift shop and a decrepit hardware store. um And a waif. And a waif. Oh, and the mill.
00:41:08
Speaker
And the mill. Is like, you know, half a town and the other half of the town vanished one day. And so the, as you play, it's revealed that ah evil people,
00:41:20
Speaker
wizard Morpheus uh has i like I think it's that they they like he rediscovered because over the course of the game it's revealed that that like they uh like they they got rid of evil magic and like it's specifically called that evil magic and And this Morpheus has brought it back, and so you have to defeat evil magic.
00:41:53
Speaker
That's it. Like, you have to, like, through the help of, like, and work with a whole bunch of weird people are concerned. This is one of my notes, and Grace, and we could talk about this, which is,
00:42:05
Speaker
I have kind of a nostalgia for a type of adventure game that like is um not written by writers.
00:42:19
Speaker
Well, yeah here, here. Go ahead. Nonsense. Yes, here so here's... ah Yeah, one, I think that's a correct way to describe this. um I will say a thing in the production of this game that is interesting is that is that it ah it was made at this time when big, expensive multimedia video games were, like, appearing, right? Mm-hmm.
00:42:41
Speaker
yeah but And this has FMV and it has 3D like video transitions from scene to scene. There's a there's a whole voice acting. Yes. There's a whole technology component to this game and sort of production innovation that we could talk about. But with the with the writing specifically, they also there was a.
00:43:03
Speaker
There was a ah journal of game design at the time that the writer for this game, who's credited as Michelle M, she was, ah she wasn't the main plot and like puzzle designer. That was another guy. um But Michelle M was kind of ah hired to punch up all the dialogue.
00:43:23
Speaker
And she wrote for ah a game design journal, which in 1993, it's fascinating. There was a game design journal in 1993. um But she wrote a little a little article about like, here's my tips for people, for writers, professional writers who are entering this, at the time, brand new space.
00:43:43
Speaker
um And a lot of it is very like typical writerly advice where she's talking about like, don't forget, you know, kind of your your general good writing practices, like keep things like short and punchy and don't waste the people's time. But she kind of talks about how you know, this isn't a video game. There might be characters might have 20 responses that they have to have ready to go to different ways people might interact with them. So she talks a little bit about the particulars of it.
00:44:13
Speaker
um but But to your point, Ben, i think it's interesting because, yeah, this is a very silly game that... ah moment by moment, basically never feels shit happens. Right. But like a moment by moment, you're just, you're both a lot of stuff is happening and nothing is happening, but they were, they, this was the time when they were like starting to throw writer resources at this. They're like, Hey, maybe a game should have a writer.
00:44:37
Speaker
And not just a programmer who can spell, you know, like or not spell, as was often the case. um So I think it's ah whoever Michelle um M is, I don't I was trying to look this up. She's credited as Michelle m In this journal article she wrote, she she said she was a Hollywood screenwriter, um but she has i could not. Her IMDb credits just say Return to Zork.
00:45:00
Speaker
um oh man yeah if you're listening please please tell us what did she do like um literally like literally her her imdb credits is like returned to zork and then something from 2019 so but she says i mean maybe this was a scam maybe she she scammed her way into the job but um anyway i thought it was interesting because i think this game does not feel like whatever she did god bless her but the the game is not like a a triumph of writing i'll i'll know that like so she's not the first like you know at at lucas arts they bring over um like uh hal barwood who uh who designed he was uh the director of fa fate of atlantis which came out the year before
00:45:49
Speaker
And Hal Barwood, um like he did work, like he he wrote ah he like he he wrote a couple ah movies, none of ah none of which I've heard of other than one, which is Steven Spielberg's Sugarland Express, which I have not seen. Have you seen the Sugarland I've never seen Sugarland Express.
00:46:12
Speaker
um But like, you know, they like, so this was, and and I mean, You know, there were definitely, you know, in ah like Ron Gilbert famously writes ah early when they were Lucasfilm Games, you know, writes an adventure game design manifesto.
00:46:35
Speaker
um So so this is this is a little late. Like it has been happening. Yes. It's not. And obviously like Infocom, like the lineage of this game.
00:46:51
Speaker
Infocom was very thoughtful Massachusetts, Cambridge writers.
00:47:01
Speaker
yeah And like, well, Zork starts out as like kind of your, you know, college mainframe people just kind of like the, the, the classical people.
00:47:15
Speaker
meaning of hackers like, Oh, I'm a hacker. I use a computer. um Like, you know, putting games together. um Like you, you have like the aforementioned Steve Maritsky like Brian Moriarty and ah like those two in particular, they designed like,
00:47:39
Speaker
two games for Infocom that were their kind of prestige plays. no Um, uh, Maritsky designed, uh, and, and wrote the game, a mind forever voyaging.
00:47:54
Speaker
ah and, uh, Brian Moriarty, designed like, uh, Trinity. And both of those are like Infocom, like expressly going, like we're going to make, uh,
00:48:09
Speaker
something like a game for grownups. Yeah. And so I think, right, right. This, this Michelle, obviously that well predates this. Yeah. And but I'm right. And I think this Michelle M person writing this, this guide to writing for video games, I think it's, it's less that she was the first person to do it. And I think more it's, Right. She's, she's coming on the, on the heels of, of a line of, Oh, there are like good writers writing for video games.
00:48:38
Speaker
And now they're hiring writers. Then there are specifically big budget productions, big budget productions, hiring writers. And now there's a demand for advice on how to get into this industry. Well, and also like kind of building on your point here, it's also that like, you know,
00:48:57
Speaker
Return to Zork with live actors. Like this is considered the future. Like hollywood we or uncle Hollywood. Sillywood was what they call Like Silicon, like not so like, but sillywood.
00:49:11
Speaker
Yeah. Um, And, and so like, you can see like, it's like, okay, well we have Steve Maritzky and Brian Moriarty and we have got like guys like Ron Gilbert and all these people are thinking like very seriously about writing for games, but they've never written dialogue for actors in front of a camera.
00:49:34
Speaker
And so it's like, oh, well, of course we're going to need Hollywood, like someone who has some kind of professional screenwriting experience because not only like, you know, are we starting to make these games, but that's what games are going to be.
00:49:54
Speaker
Yes, this is because this is also right. If anybody forgot the timeline of this, this game came out, according to Wikipedia, a week before Myst. certainly in the literally the week before this, obviously this missed. And I think seven guests, seven guests were the, the big kind of CD-ROM. go forwards Yeah.
00:50:16
Speaker
So, right. and But no, to like this was promoted as a big, like, like a fusion of video games and Hollywood production. It was reviewed as such.
00:50:27
Speaker
Um, And then it's got like this incredible brand attached to it. They had a quote unquote Hollywood actors. Like they were kind of B-list TV people, which is which is it's really fine was time was considered a much less prestige. Like now TV is prestigious, right? But at the time a TV actor was a less prestigious person.
00:50:49
Speaker
And it's also, it has like, you know, the, the, like, I think one of the actors in it, like, it's like, oh, well she was in like a couple episodes of Twin Peaks. And it's like, I, you know, I adore Twin Peaks. I've no, like, I'm like, who?
00:51:06
Speaker
yeah you even at the time like at the like at the time because i was looking at some old reviews for this that was the the the more negative reviews kind of pointed that out where the there were positive reviews kind of kind of we're a little in awe. They were, I think that there were positive reviews that were really tickled by the novelty of just quote unquote, real actors being in the video game.
00:51:28
Speaker
And they were like, these people come from the you know, Tinsel town. um And then there were more, there were people who were like, yeah, but they're like at best ensemble TV actor. Like these aren't big gets, you know? I mean, there's, there's, there's a real big gets. Maybe they are for the time big gets.
00:51:49
Speaker
There's there' is a real, um like, and and this continues today, like continues to 2026, is that video games have a real little brother syndrome towards movies.
00:52:10
Speaker
Movies in particular, like TV, sure. But, like, movies in particular. And, um like, you know, you you you think about Sierra where, like, you know, Ken Williams is thinking about Walt Disney and being Walt Disney and creating, like, you know, and and and this, like, kind of movie production process.
00:52:35
Speaker
And, you know, that I think that was... ah like across the the board like I think a lot of these these companies were really uh thinking about it's like well we you know we gotta be the next Hollywood thing and you said that about like it's like well these these be actors that strikes me as just the best they could afford because the thing is is that you could eventually get more recognized, like productions eventually did get more recognizable actors. Like not to tune instruct act two years later. And, you know, and we're again, we're not talking about, uh, Christopher Lloyd isn't the biggest star in the world, but he's like us. He's like, you're like, wow, it's Christopher Lloyd.
00:53:26
Speaker
In like, uh, like, uh, the, the, the CD-ROM version. of Star Trek 25th anniversary comes out the next year. Like the game itself came out in 92, but the CD-ROM version with the voices comes out in 94, and that has the full TOS cast.
00:53:44
Speaker
You know, like it has everybody that was like, ah you know, ah like, you know, you got Nimue. Yeah. Oh, and like, yeah, certainly, certainly getting people into a booth. kind Like that's, that's. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But remember ah when, when on our stream some years ago, we played that like 1995 Goosebumps game.
00:54:10
Speaker
Jeff Goldblum, Isabella Rossellini. Yeah, that had Jeff Goldblum and Isabella Rossellini. Now, I'll know Isabella Rossellini shows up for like all of, let's say, five, ten seconds.
00:54:23
Speaker
Like it's a... It's a short scene. It's... But I mean... you, there were definitely like real actors that were like, Oh yeah.
00:54:36
Speaker
Like, or, or maybe, maybe not even the actors, but like their, their agents who are like, Oh, maybe like, maybe this might be a thing you can get ah in on the ground floor of. And yeah, and there was a, there was a real sense that there was right. It wasn't just that video games are the next big thing. There was a sense that these forms would kind of fuse at some point that there would be like,
00:54:58
Speaker
it interact like they're right. Quote, unquote, like interactive meet multimedia thing experiences would be the future of entertainment. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
00:55:08
Speaker
Absolutely. And like, and Netflix is still trying it. Yeah. Like Netflix is still trying this. Like all these, like, it It is an idea that every, you know every, like, you know, six or seven years, somebody's like, all right, I think we got it. Can I can i can i go on a little a little tangent? i want There's one thing I found when when looking up stuff about this game that I do want to just read read this story, speaking about ah interactive storytelling, which was... um
00:55:43
Speaker
There was a magazine, the piece, a magazine PC games before, before return to Zork came out, they were doing a little preview of it and they have a quote from a ah designer of strategy games from the era, Chris Crawford.
00:55:56
Speaker
um And he, and he's, and he kind of talks a little bit about how he's skeptical. What else did Chris Crawford do? is it He did. um Oh, I, I'm looking him up. Yeah. You're looking up. Okay. Anyway.
00:56:12
Speaker
anyway he ah he kind of Chris Crawford kind of talks a little bit about how oh he's skeptical and strikes back. Yeah. ah Well, very, very well-selling war games. that I've never heard of. all right.
00:56:26
Speaker
Anyway. he has a kind of a quote about how he's skeptical of this technology because he sees it as non-interactive and kind of a gimmick almost where he's like, yeah, but it's a video game. I can't play. The emperor has no clothes. He calls yeah it a little bit immediately. He's absolutely calling it out. He's right. yeah and and And this has always been attention, right? This is attention to this day of, of how much game does a game need to have a game? This is still something people get talk, get, what a wonderful sentence you said there. ah
00:56:59
Speaker
The but I had mentioned this guy because I was like, who's Chris Crawford? I'm going to look I'm sorry, but you're wrong. There we go. Well, just disagreed. Just disagreed. i if i if I can, i want to read this entire Wikipedia quote about Chris Crawford.
00:57:18
Speaker
In 1992, so about the time he was quoted, craw Crawford withdrew from commercial game development and began experimenting with ideas for a next generation interactive storytelling system.
00:57:31
Speaker
So he was thinking about this too. Flash forward to 2018. In 2018, Crawford announced he had halted his work on interactive storytelling, concluding that, quote, it will take centuries for civilization civilization to embrace the required concepts.
00:57:50
Speaker
I don't know what he was, the link to that, that quote is cited. The link no longer works. As far as I could tell. um i have no idea. He has, I mean, he, he's a, he, he wrote a ah pretty big book, Chris Crawford on, on game design.
00:58:06
Speaker
I'm sure he did. But I don't know what he was cooking that he thinks is centuries ahead of human civilization, but all that's to say. He actually saw some twisted shit.
00:58:18
Speaker
All that's to say, people were so hyped up about this fusion of of media storytelling, right? They were like, there were people who truly thought that like, yes, this is the future. We are we are on the track to the future.
00:58:32
Speaker
Eventually we will have... movies that we jack into and are part of and we press buttons and I don't know what happens. But i wonder what, what ah I wonder what he thought about ah like the Oculus.
00:58:48
Speaker
Like you, if, if that was like a thing where he was like, Oh my God. And yeah now like today, like VR is essentially like, you know, just, it's more just a weird niche thing.
00:59:02
Speaker
it's it's more just a yeah weird niche thing We as a society got access to consumer level, pretty affordable consumer level, very good VR. And we were like, nah,
00:59:13
Speaker
nah, it gives me a headache. I don't want it. yeah Yeah, exactly. It gives like, it gives me a headache. It gives me a stomach ache. That's that. Like, cause at 1993, VR was having a moment back then too. And not to sidebar about VR too much, but ah it it was, it was kind of part of this milieu of exciting technology that was all obviously a little but needed to be in the oven for a while. It was like, oh, this is so promising.
00:59:35
Speaker
And then eventually it's like, oh wait, no, there was, no Yeah, you could buy this. You don't even need to hook it up to your computer anymore. You can just stick it on your head and it will teach you how to play the piano. And it's just like, eh. Yeah. I mean, the the best company is owned by absolute shitheads. The best technology is owned by Meta. Like, a truly vile company. But yeah and anyway.
01:00:01
Speaker
But Ben, to get back to Return to Zork, a question... I have, let's let's just, maybe, maybe let's just rip the bandaid off. Ben, do you like Return to Zork?
01:00:13
Speaker
course you do. Did you like Return to Zork? We streamed it. I forget what you thought about it. So I like, all right, cards on the table, right?
01:00:26
Speaker
Yeah. Return to Zork is a bad game. It's a, it's a poorly designed adventure game. i think I think I agree. And in my head allow me to finish my thought.
01:00:37
Speaker
Yes. But. But. There's a but. Okay. maybe yeah I thought it was a period. but it is so ways.
01:00:49
Speaker
strange like ah it's a deeply odd and strange game in so many ways in like all the multimedia stuff, which we talked a lot about, um ah like the graphical style, the ah music, which is exceptional.
01:01:13
Speaker
um You know, I talked a little bit about how I like the the the writing, like the plot of the game, not so much the like, not talking specifically about the dialogue, which itself is very iconic and and memorable itself, but ah like the plot of the game where it's just like ah you go down, like you rappel down a cliff or something and there's comedy club. Yeah.
01:01:40
Speaker
and and there's like a comedy club yeah Like there's a standup club at the bottom of this And not a fan not a fantasy standup club. It's just like oh it's just a Yeah. absolutely wild. Yeah.
01:01:56
Speaker
a standup club like the some of the performances in this game are absolutely wild Like ah the, the interface I think is fascinating. it's completely pin in Let's put a pin in the interface. That was major everything, yeah which is to say like, I don't hate this game.
01:02:23
Speaker
i I think it's a bad game, but it's a game that has so many interesting things that it really fascinates me. Like, it's a very fascinating game.
01:02:36
Speaker
like... ah and like and And so I find myself drawn back to it every, you know, couple years or so, because there's just so much strange and compelling things in it.
01:02:54
Speaker
And then I get like really frustrated at like something. Yeah. yeah um When you when you mentioned this as a topic to discuss, because we streamed it a couple of years ago.
01:03:04
Speaker
um It's been a but as soon as you mentioned it, five or six scenes popped into my head from the game. And and it it it is like, it is one of those games that you do walk away from it, remembering stuff.
01:03:17
Speaker
um Like just, just odd little surprises or just screens that you're like, why am I looking at this now? um It's a, yeah. And I like my big impulse watching playing it again for this podcast is I would almost, I might pick this if I was like,
01:03:38
Speaker
I wanted to give to a complete newbie to adventure games of the era, not the best game, obviously not the weirdest necessarily. i might be I might be like, this is the most stereotypical point and click. you just said this You said this to me earlier, and I would like you to expand on this. I think it's curious what you mean by this. It it did Okay, so a couple of things. One, it demonstrates a lot of the technology of its era that was considered novel and interesting, including not only the FMV and the the kind of hardware stuff, but even like like the interface was novel, the the user and ah interface. um
01:04:18
Speaker
I think it's... It's very arbitrary and mean and weird in ways that I think people that's kind of the reputation adventure games have with some. is um It like it's a game that will absolutely just it teaches you to save a lot. You know it's that kind of game that will destroy you if you click the wrong.
01:04:37
Speaker
Directional arrow, it has really classic problems with adventure games. It has the soft locks and the dead ends. um It has mazes. It has mazes. It has a mosaic.
01:04:49
Speaker
it It's it has. Yeah. And then it's got. Right. All these little mini puzzles. It has its own little board game you have to play. So. i ah And then that's a big that's like the the climax of the game.
01:05:02
Speaker
That's like ah the game actually turns around and it's like, ha ha, that was important. um So, again, i use stereotypical in the like, if you ask someone to describe almost what they think a sort of platonic point and click adventure is warts and all you would get pretty close to return to Zork. Because I think if, if I think someone, if you said like platonic adventure game, they'd probably say secret of monkey Island.
01:05:31
Speaker
That would be the, see, that's why I say so stereotypical. Cause I think Secret Monkey Island would be like, hey, what's the best one, right? A lot of people go to that. But if you go, hey, what what what game kind of wraps up a lot of feelings associated with adventure games, good and bad. What interesting thing. Good and bad. Maybe more bad than good with Return to Zork. But again, I think the fact that it's got a sort of gravity to it where you're like, yeah,
01:05:58
Speaker
It's certainly not good. It's very compelling. You're, you're, you're ours you're, you're walking away with, with something. There's, there's a certain type of alchemy to a game where you knock or rather you ring the bell of a school door, like outside a school door.
01:06:20
Speaker
And the, the, the teacher, a very stereotypical, like kind of rendering, like she's, got oh my like yeah yeah like the angled glasses with the the chain and stuff and like a high-pitched voice and then she immediately gives you a quiz on in the cd version it is what day ah what is the third day of the week it's copy protection right she gives you the copy protection quiz yeah which um on Apparently on the disc version, I was reading, somebody posted this, i think like I was reading in, I think, comments somewhere.
01:06:56
Speaker
um Like the the the floppy disc version, the copy protection questions were considerably harder. I will say that when I got, is um I first played this game I'm going to say like probably 96 years.
01:07:15
Speaker
So, so three, three, like around 96, 94, 97.
01:07:21
Speaker
um Like it was like a clearance box that like somebody was like, here you go. Happy birthday. And um i the, this like clearance section box of it.
01:07:38
Speaker
just had like the CD in a jewel case and um the encyclopedia Fraz Basica, which I don't think could.
01:07:52
Speaker
No, wait, you know what? I don't think actually i take it back. It was just the jewel case. It did not come with the encyclopedia Fraz Basica. I got that. ah I got that many years later and then was like, oh, that's how you get the I thought when I played because most CD games didn't have copy protection at the time that it was on a CD was the copy protection.
01:08:19
Speaker
um I thought that the puzzle when I played it as a like a 10 year old was that um was to find the names of the days of the week, which you can find in the files Yes. In ah like the town hall.
01:08:39
Speaker
And so like in the town hall, there were like, ah there's files that you can go through and it says what the...
01:08:51
Speaker
like the day that it was filed at the top. And so I like noted all of those down, not knowing what, which order they were in, but I just saved the game before she asked and then would just be like, try them. And then it wasn't until many years later that I got the Encyclopedia for Asvasica, which has all the days. oh you no It's just, it's just copy protection. right I was like, yeah Yeah, I thought it was just some sort of, like, puzzle, and I, like, I brute-forced my way through it, um which is funny.
01:09:25
Speaker
But, yeah, anyway, like, that was a real side tangent. um Like, I, you know...
01:09:35
Speaker
it there's a certain alchemy uh to this game where like you yeah you walk into that school and she asks you what the day of the week is and if you get it wrong i think you die or maybe she just kicks you out and you're dead ended um and it's a very mean game in that way there's a lot of ways to both well the deaths are are almost generous because you know you died right you could just reload and there's a lot of soft locks in the game Um, the, it is, I don't know. There's just something I think about, like, so obviously everyone who's ever played the game knows this. Want some raw?
01:10:15
Speaker
course you do. People are listening to this podcast anticipated that I would play that clip. Right. Like it is, it is because every time you enter a booze's mill, he says that.
01:10:31
Speaker
Yes. yeah And it's right at the top of the game. Yes, and i as somebody who just played through that part of the game, pretty honestly, I kind of forgot the exact solution. So I was i was puzzling around that room for a little bit. bit I probably heard that sound.
01:10:47
Speaker
Of course you do. I probably heard it 50 times, like literally 50 times. The solution is in the files in the town hall. where I got through it. I got to East east but West Egg, whatever it was. Here's a... ah ah You know, I've actually done, it teaches you, like, because what it is is what Booz is doing is he's doing a traditional, like, a series of toasts.
01:11:13
Speaker
So it's like, what's the rye? course you do. Here's to us. Who's like us? Damn few. And they're all dead. i think is, is what it is. And so I've done that. I've done that with someone. Cause I'm cool.
01:11:24
Speaker
There's another, there's there's another one, which like adventure game fans that ah like have, have kind of memed, obviously want some rye is, is the winner, but this, this is another pretty memorable line delivery.
01:11:38
Speaker
Go away! i haven't got anything for you! I've only got one milk cow, and she only eats carrots! Ugh. That is such a... Speaking of... speaking of this game just... Why is there an Irishman? Yeah. And why is it playing like an irate? Like if you listen in the background there, it's playing like kind of like a da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. It's a good example of, again, this is a game that you turn a corner or you click on something and all of a sudden you have no idea what you're looking at, but someone, this Irish guy is talking about carrots, right? It's Eric Adams, New York. Yeah. There's a story around every corner. So I...
01:12:19
Speaker
I do think this is something, again, of the era that is important to remember, which is um
01:12:27
Speaker
videos and kind of unique illustrations and stuff like that, those are rewards for a player. Just just finding more stuff, especially at but at the time when when video on your computer was such a novelty.
01:12:39
Speaker
Just just click through just clicking through this game and seeing a weird Irishman yelling at you at 20 frames a second or maybe less. But ah like that was that was already there. Like finishing the game is whatever. Just just seeing a bunch of crazy shit was the appeal of this where.
01:13:00
Speaker
this ah this This is actually something that that that Chris Crawford guy was talking about when he was talking about Return to Zork. He mentions the use of video segments as rewards. explicit like These were explicitly designed to amuse you just just seeing a video.
01:13:16
Speaker
um So I think there is an argument that I might even make a little bit that for all the bad puzzle design and and kind of questionable writing of Return to Zork,
01:13:29
Speaker
it is a game where you see a bunch of ah kooky shit. Like, you know, it gives you that reward over and over and over again. And eventually you hit you either beat the game unlikely, or you just hit a dead end and you're like, all right. I got my money's worth. I saw like, because, you know, here's what, like, because when I play this game also, I can, I can feel the tickle.
01:13:54
Speaker
behind my eyes of even in like 1996, even removed from like, you know, years later when kind of the bloom is off the rose of like this kind of multimedia era and we're starting to to move into like real time 3D.
01:14:13
Speaker
Um, uh, i I can still feel the excitement of seeing the FMV 3D animation of seeing when you go up the lighthouse stairs and there's this like 3D animation of you like zooming up a spiral staircase of a lighthouse in that very iconic, like pre-rendered, like early to mid nineties like in, in my mind,
01:14:51
Speaker
that will always be the future. And the game is very generous with little video. Like it's like shortly after that, you ride a raft down a river and you watch a little animation of riding a raft down a river. And that's amazing to me.
01:15:11
Speaker
you know, it's still it it's very generous with, with those little animated sequences. And again, I think i early on the game had reasonably popular reviews at the time. The negative reviews, as you might expect, are kind of focused on the, on the puzzling, which is the game is the puzzles are bad. It's like the, it's, it's,
01:15:32
Speaker
I don't think there are many people on earth who would, you know, be shooters for the specifically the puzzle design in return to Zork. I'm sorry, but you're wrong.
01:15:43
Speaker
Wow. Yes. They're wow. Yeah. um Hold on. ah You know, I, I, Jess is signaling to me that he wants, ah that he's, he's kind of done talking about the game and he wants to talk about food again. i guess you could call it my return to spork.
01:16:02
Speaker
ah who Oh, well, i'm glad Jess was here tonight. He is here. He is here. i yes I'm glad he is here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah um Do you want to talk about the the interface? Because the interface is pretty cool. So I will, a thing I was struck by, again, i was reading some old previews of the game.
01:16:24
Speaker
and Tell me about, how how how were they talking about this game in previews? So ah there was a, I think Computer Gaming World had this real early preview where, and this is, again, the sign of the times. The preview was they invited, ah Activision invited a reporter to come tour the soundstage, right? That was, so the the preview was was very kind of wow, theres this reporter being wowed by the production. A little razzle dazzle. Yeah, there's, right. So ah there was definitely a part of the hype of it was like, oh, holy shit, here we are in the multimedia CD-ROM era. Obviously, CD-ROMs were like, oh my God, 800 megabytes. I mean, in and in and think about, i think if they were 650.
01:17:13
Speaker
Yeah. Think about how Not that long ago. Like, so it's like, when was this preview? Like 92? It was like, I believe 92. Yeah.
01:17:25
Speaker
And so it's like, okay. Like, so, you know, you go... not even ah like you go seven years before and it's all like CGA graphics. Yes. 16 color. Like in, you know, King's quest one comes out in what? nineteen eighty four
01:17:50
Speaker
1984, 85 around that. Like, so this is not even 10 years later, right This is like, and it's like yeah we've got like actors on a soundstage and like live.
01:18:02
Speaker
produced music like holy shit and and the people the the the the people who are more razzle dazzled by all this they did they would they would just kind of refer to right the word hollywood was thrown around a lot right they think hollywood actors on stage right um but also the interface was the the kind of this this smacked of marketing speak to me but there was again you have to put your 1993 goggles on user interfaces were a new field of research.
01:18:32
Speaker
So like the advertising for return to Zork would mention that the UI was like inspired by research happening at MIT, right? They were really pushing that. The manual the manual itself hypes up the interface.
01:18:47
Speaker
um Now be Ben, describe the interface. Cause I think it's based on this diamond. So the interface is, it's yeah. Like, so
01:19:00
Speaker
it First off, it it is... I'm going to rewind a little bit and say that it's like, because also 93, we're we're not that far into like the, the mouse era of adventure games where like games are fully like, and it's like maniac mansion ah is, is in the eighties. So, think you know, we still have a little, but yeah,
01:19:31
Speaker
Like, this is... it is trying to to harness a
01:19:39
Speaker
like kind of the sense of, um, like kind of, uh, composing, uh, a text adventure sentence. And, you know, there, there is actually recently, uh, uh, pre, uh, former, uh, uh, guest of the show, Josh Mandel, designer,
01:20:02
Speaker
of uh freddy farkas and many other uh games um gave a talk at naroscope uh this year which you can watch on youtube and he actually i believe on the podcast he said he was he was thinking about doing something like that And in this talk, he he discusses um kind of, and and and he's not the only person who designed games that I've heard, like, say some sort of version of this, is that moving over to point and click from, ah like, a text parser was painful for a lot of designers. They didn't like it because it really limited...
01:20:48
Speaker
like kind of the the freedom, ah both for the player and for the designer. You are winnowing down what seems like unlimited options to, you know, however many verbs they decide to go with on the screen.
01:21:09
Speaker
And Return Zork, ah in return to zrk Their solution to that is that there is, it's kind of like a verb coin, but what it is is that like when you you click on something to interact with it, or if you use an item, you get a diamond,
01:21:35
Speaker
which fills up with actions that you can take and and... they're contextual. Yeah, they're all contextual. So it's like, so if it's, you're using an, ah like, let's say you're, ah it's, you click the knife,
01:21:51
Speaker
on a person it will say like give knife show knife attack like it it gives instead of being like say know say the the the scum engine where it's like push pull you know uh turn on turn off so on and so forth it is uh specific to each ah item or whatever you're doing.
01:22:19
Speaker
and And so that's really... That is a really cool thing. And it is an interesting a solution to that problem that was really vexing designers at at that moment.
01:22:35
Speaker
And the the the big kind of UI, generally in the field of of user interfaces at the time, the big kind of innovation there was instead of like the verbs existing, let's say at the bottom of your screen statically,
01:22:52
Speaker
The point of interest was where you clicked on. the This verb diamond, this diamond would appear where you click. it's And so the kind of UI innovation was, oh, the UI is where it's, it's wherever it needs to be. If you're clicking over here, the UI over there. If you're clicking over there, it's over there. um Star Trek had that in 92. Yeah.
01:23:13
Speaker
So that's kind of what it why a verb, again, this, the verb coin is such a normal adventure game thing now, but at the time that was the innovation. um But to your point, Ben, about how do you design around this?
01:23:24
Speaker
Right. The, if, if, if the If this diamond only had solutions to clues in it or to puzzles in it, it would streamline the game too much, right?
01:23:35
Speaker
um So you almost, you have to put in deliberately useless actions. yeah that's the That's how you kind of maintain the puzzleness of it.
01:23:49
Speaker
And I will say, even even given that, one of the of the people who didn't like this game as much, the ah contemporary contemporary reviewers, one thing they didn't like was that it was a little too linear as a puzzle game. it it And I think it it kind of is. there it has It has some notoriously strange puzzles um or unfair puzzles and a lot of random deaths. But most of your progress is pretty straightforward.
01:24:14
Speaker
i'd say I'd say a lot of clues. It is it does. It's the, the, the game does clue you on a lot of stuff. It's, it's more that sometimes the clue might not be where you want it to be. Like, yeah because a thing you have to do is like take photos of everybody and then like show, like you can show photos of people to other characters and that's how you talk.
01:24:41
Speaker
to you And here, yeah, while we're talking about the interface, let's talk about what's the ah dialogue ah interface, which I would say is considerably less successful.
01:24:51
Speaker
Yes, that also a little innovative, you know, points for trying, I guess, which is ah at the time, the idea that you'd be a blank protagonist, right? It's like, well how do how do you allow a blank protagonist to talk to people?
01:25:04
Speaker
And so they kind of go with moods and moods. kind of aspects almost where it's like, all right, I'm talking to this lighthouse keeper. You'll have a, a threatening apologetic, like you'll have moods that you can talk to this person in.
01:25:20
Speaker
It doesn't, and I think the, what, what really kind of bumps me on that. Like again, yeah. sounds like wait i i understand where it's coming from Yeah. I think,
01:25:33
Speaker
what it is is that ah like every other game kind of cues you to when it is to push those inputs where the game does not cue you. Like, it's just like this person's just going to talk and there are invisible to the player points where your inputs on the mood reaction things are accepted.
01:25:59
Speaker
and i Yes. and And then like, I would say it's, underused in general in the game. So when you do use it, it's kind of could it's kind of surprising. Also, it's not 100% consistent. where sometime like I noticed this when talking to booze in the mill.
01:26:14
Speaker
At some point you have to ask him for keys, but ask for keys is a context action within the diamond rather than a dialogue option, right? Even though it is. Oh, that's a good, yeah, I forgot. So I think it's, it's, it's it's again, if, if, if someone explains this to you in on paper, you're like, okay, so you, you have moods instead of specific dialogue options. It's like, oh that sounds fine. And then in it just wasn't implemented very well. um Which is maybe what you could say about a lot of return to Zork.
01:26:44
Speaker
But, It, uh, a lot, again, at the time, a lot of this was like, oh, what a, what a fun new way to do this. Uh, even if it wasn't literally the first, it was considering this game was quite popular. This was going to be a lot of people's first time with this sort of new, almost at the time, experimental interface.
01:27:04
Speaker
Yeah. um The, like, the the chat, and then, like, the thing is, is that after that, then, as I said, you can talk to them, and you can use all of your, like, you can ask them about every inventory item to which they mostly have generic responses.
01:27:25
Speaker
ah You can ask them about every location on the map, and then you can ask them about every photo that you've taken. Those are all options. Yes, another another problem with the game, which is if you're not following a walkthrough, the amount of brute force stuff to run through with every single character in the game is so big.
01:27:46
Speaker
um where if you're If you're stuck and you're looking for like some clue on how to get past a puzzle, Yeah, you can talk to a dude and there might be, you might have 20 items in your inventory plus 20 photographs plus every point on the map and you're just clicking through and and praying that you trigger something. Like, oh, eventually he'll, you know, there will be something. Can we talk a little bit about um ah the the music in the game? Like, so I played the intro earlier. I've got um i've got another tune that I really like. Here we go.
01:28:23
Speaker
Like there are little, uh, lay motifs in it too. Like the da-na-na like is in most of the tunes in this.
01:28:51
Speaker
And that's for like, I think only one scene. Yeah. Yeah. It's, this is something I don't understand. And maybe, you know, maybe there, there, there, there must be like a technical reason for it, which is that,
01:29:07
Speaker
There are ah like this is, you know, wonderful ah CD track audio, which i they were they were CD tracks. So you could just pop that into your boom box and listen to them.
01:29:24
Speaker
um ah But then there's also like kind mild... mild ah MIDI tracks that play. And then sometimes there are some scenes where it's just playing the MIDI version of the CD track.
01:29:41
Speaker
And i'm I'm like, well, why, why isn't it playing like the nice version? Like, sure like maybe they're like, maybe it's a bug. Maybe there's a technical reason that I'm like, because I'm sure playing like the CD track, you know, is, is taking some level of resource from the CD ROM.
01:30:01
Speaker
Uh, like, and you're probably, working you know, you're working with launch CD-ROM drives, so can't really be asking for too much from them. So maybe that's it. I don't know.
01:30:11
Speaker
That always kind of bothered me.
Personal Stories with Zork Soundtrack
01:30:13
Speaker
One thing I really like about the music was, as it's like, uh... I'll pull up. So the the intro tune will always have a very special place in my heart ah like this.
01:30:38
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I can hear it. The very Batman type theme. Um... So when I was in high school and college, my friends and I would, you know, like we had like mini TV cams and we'd make movies in our backyards and basements and driving around our hometown.
01:31:07
Speaker
And we made one movie that we scored I think almost, almost entirely, not entirely, but almost entirely with the return to Zork soundtrack.
01:31:19
Speaker
Oh, you're intimately familiar with this. I'm very familiar with this music. You know, it's funny, I'm looking at the credits, the music credits specifically, and it it's it seems like, and if I'm reading this correctly, just kind of of hired guns. They had some work they hired hired some orchestra people.
01:31:37
Speaker
um I don't even know who like wrote the music. um Are you on movie games? Yeah, Joel Iwataki. This is why I'm thinking maybe kind of hired guns, because here's the person credited as a ranger for the for the for the game.
01:31:52
Speaker
He did Return to Zork in 1993. The first credit. Next credit, 2012, Call of Duty Black Ops 2. Well, he stayed with Activision. ah Next credit, Call of Duty Black Ops 3.
01:32:07
Speaker
But all this to say that like these just seem... Bobby knew who to call. He picked up the phone. He said, yeah i remember your great work on Return to Zork. But all this is just to say that this these don't seem like specifically video games. Drop him into IMDb and see if if he did ah anything like in in TV. Oh, good call.
01:32:25
Speaker
um but But I would be really curious if if they just like called up someone like an orchestra and they're... Yeah, this guy, Joel Iwataki... as he's got Rogue Iron Man 3, Inside Out, Coco. Those are good music. That's real. Those are real scores. He seems like Coco has... Coco in particular has extreme... like extremely good music hold on we're we're doing we're doing research in real time uh this is uh yeah this was this is this is what it must have been going back to the hollywood thing this guy was a working movie mixer scoring mixer he worked in demo on like demolition man in 93 big movie alien 3 so they probably they must have spent some of that money and they're like we want hollywood music in this game we want we want that that tinsel town sound Can you make ah our our ah Zork light comedy adventure game have a Batman theme?
01:33:25
Speaker
This guy makes three ninjas kick back? what a What a a career. Yeah. So, yeah, the the music in Return to Zork will always have a special place in my heart because I'll always think about the the movies I made with ah my friends,
01:33:44
Speaker
ah the Steve, Paul, Andrew, and Travis. like yeah like and And the nice thing about it was that no one ever called it, no one ever recognized it. yeah yeah No one was ever like, oh, is that Return to Zork?
01:34:06
Speaker
No, no, I made it. was someone Someone's like, oh, I know that. That's from Zork Nemesis. And you're like, oh,
01:34:15
Speaker
close.
01:34:19
Speaker
um
Zork's Puzzles and Characters
01:34:20
Speaker
But yeah, I, you know, the the the music, it is, as you said, like this is it is a real,
01:34:30
Speaker
picture of a point in time where this this game which which can be very arbitrary cruel to players ah is also like sells really well, ah does. there was one of the best selling games of the year.
01:34:54
Speaker
Which is in it, which obviously Myst was all like, there were other really popular games, but like this was a. What happened with Myst? I think they kind of fizzled out pretty quickly. They never made another one. There was never a sequel to Myst.
01:35:06
Speaker
ah
01:35:11
Speaker
Oh, I, you know like,
01:35:19
Speaker
uh, yeah. I mean, Jess, what do you think? Do you have anything to say about a return to Zork? This really reminds me of Norco. Oh yeah. does have. Jess has not been able to stop thinking about Norco.
01:35:33
Speaker
ah
01:35:37
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, It does also, as your to your point, has a potpourri of puzzles. The arbitrary board game puzzle. yeah It's not even a good one. It's really, it's, it's you know, it's just, it's it's not good. they try as a new As far as I can tell, it's an original board game. Like they invented a board game for this game, ah but not not very compelling, especially one that's used in the climax. Yeah.
01:36:07
Speaker
like yeah you play it once and that's how you get a sword uh and then buff that buff black oh my god there's a a sexy black we could have re-recorded this entire podcast just talking about our favorite characters yeah the sexy blacksmith um sexy witch a lot of sexy characters they they they knew what's up they knew what we wanted
01:36:35
Speaker
There's ah there's a ah a wizard that's the ah a duck.
FMV and Technological Advances
01:36:41
Speaker
There's a lot of Canuck. You unducked Canuck. That was where I thought, oh, this game is is is doing a little, this game is having little fun.
01:36:52
Speaker
There's a guy named Canuck. The game having a lot of fun There's a guy named Canuck who's turned into a duck. And when you cast a spell to turn him back into a man, it says on screen in text, it says, you unducked Canuck.
01:37:04
Speaker
ah Do you think yeah it's in my notes? Do you think ah there was a like a victory lap taken around the Activision offices that day? I think so. I think so. Some some guy was like Terry Pratchett.
01:37:20
Speaker
You know, go to hell. i'm I'm the funniest fantasy writer around. I'm unducking Canuck over here.
01:37:27
Speaker
um unducked Canuck.
01:37:33
Speaker
Horrible. There's like, you know, it does it does do you the kindness of giving you pretty late in the game ah fast travel which at least there's that. At least you you can also, yeah, I will say there are some, there are some for all, for how much you can dunk on this game for, for some of the puzzle design. There are some, especially for the time kind of quality of life things you can turn off,
01:37:58
Speaker
um the transitional fmv like animations which again are very fun you ever do that what right maybe you would do it if you're if you're on your 100th run of this game trying to beat it like where you're just i can also see that as like i don't know how much of the game was offloaded onto the hard drive and how much was still on the speedy so it's like if you have yeah like if you have a like a single speed CD-ROM and you're just trying to go up the stairs.
01:38:26
Speaker
You just hear your CD like... And you're just like, I just... Just let me to... Just get up there. ti I got to tie a rope ah so I can get to whatever, like the place where the priestess Like, did you know...
01:38:46
Speaker
ah When you were doing your your research, did you look up like the various versions of this game? Because this is a game with some versions.
01:38:57
Speaker
There is a floppy disk version, which to my understanding isn't materially too different. Obviously, it's not going to have the the video. It's not going to have the voice acting.
01:39:11
Speaker
um i but also there's the the real R-E-E-L, real magic version. Have you ever, have have you watched clips of this, the real magic version Return to Sword? No, I don't think so. You got it, you got it. And if you are ah listening to this and you have not watched, because, so, for, to explain, um,
01:39:41
Speaker
So Real Magic was this technology that they were like this video CD technology that they were trying out where I think you had a special drive or special card. It was hardware based, yeah. Which had an MPEG decoder on it.
01:40:03
Speaker
took ah decoder on it And so when you see the video clips, ah the FMV video clips in Return to Zork in the version generally in circulation, um,
01:40:19
Speaker
ah They're, you know, what you expect. It's a 1993 DOS game. Like it's very like compressed and artifacted and, and like the, the video segments are short before they're replaced with a like four still frames kind of moving around with like, and then their, their mouths like kind of Pac-Man as they play voice audio. Yeah.
01:40:44
Speaker
The real magic version has like full video and it looks great. Like the video like looks very high quality um and it's like high frame rate and it doesn't have the artifacting.
01:40:59
Speaker
And it was ah like, I think a couple of years ago, like it it was a total pain in the ass to get, emulated um and so and i think it still is but it's now possible to do it and so a couple years ago ah people started streaming the real magic version of it and so you can see the videos in full blazing like high resolution high uh high frame rate and it actually looks really cool. That is something I need to look those And also the dialogue is different. There are gameplay differences. Wow.
01:41:40
Speaker
Okay. So um like it is, it is worth checking out if, if you want to see more. And of course, like a high quality ah version means all of those costumes look extra dog shit.
01:41:56
Speaker
Yeah. Oh yeah. no They look, they look cheap in DOS. They look, they do not look expensive. ah And that, that is that the, some of the research I was doing about this, they did they did talk about that. And,
01:42:10
Speaker
Right, at the time, it's like this expensive piece of hardware. um It would often come just with the game packaged in, as it kind of had to, because it's like a $400 piece hardware. a piece of hardware And right it was a, it was kind of a market question at the time of like, do consumers want this? Do they, are do they, are they going to spend this much money to improve the resolution and frame rate of their video on, on their home computer? What? Like, um does anybody give a shit about that? And I don't, I, I, I,
01:42:46
Speaker
Don't, I think it wound up being a relatively small seller. Like obviously it was not the version most people played. um But, you know, it was kind of looking forward a little bit to a future where it's like yes, of course people want to watch video on their computer. Of course they do.
01:43:07
Speaker
um
Final Puzzle and Closure
01:43:09
Speaker
But it was also ported in Japan to the Sega Saturn. Oh, really? That'd fun. Which I'm just kind of scrubbing through it now and hearing like Japanese dubbing on those same actors, which is very funny.
01:43:26
Speaker
that'd be fun. That would be fun. Yeah. So... Anyway, Grayson, do you have anything else to say from from your research or from your notes? Because i've I've run through most of my notes. There's one last thing I wanted to touch on. I do.
01:43:45
Speaker
I think we hit pretty much everything. i just think it's such a... it's such a great snapshot of the multimedia experience at the time, not just for the FMV usage, but even in within the game, like you have a, we'd never, we didn't mention this. I don't think you have a work, a quote unquote working tape recorder in game that you can use to play voice clips back to solve puzzles. Like it was really all bought in on this multimedia experience. And I think it's such a, ah you know,
01:44:14
Speaker
For a game, I think I spent $6 on Steam to kind of toodle around in it for an hour or two. had a great time. the The last thing I'll say is that, so when we streamed it many years ago, we didn't actually finish it. um we ah we there There is an infamous final puzzle before the final boss board game challenge ah where...
01:44:42
Speaker
You have to, like, throw all of your inventory items into a chasm and it makes a bridge bridge rise up. i yeah I've never understood this, but whatever. Anyway...
01:44:58
Speaker
People in our like in the chat were like going like, oh, by the way, this this like if if for whatever reason your inventory isn't all correct or whatever, you can just be softlocked here. And that's exactly what happened. And I was just like, well,
01:45:14
Speaker
that was returned to Zork. Yeah. There's like three or four really brutal soft locks. And the that, that one's almost even, I think it's possible it can be glitched. Cause you, you, we threw either you in theory, you don't need as many items as we had, but something was wrong.
01:45:28
Speaker
There's another item. There's the, the vine at the start of the game. Another. Yeah. Yeah. The, um, yeah, yeah the um So ah it wasn't until I was preparing for this and then like watched like a long play.
01:45:43
Speaker
I've actually never seen the end of the game until I watched that. And so like I watched the end of the game, which is like they they play the fucking board game with Morpheus and then he's defeated and all the the good wizards win. and magic loses Yeah. And it's like evil magic is is is over. um Good magic has won, which is...
01:46:03
Speaker
Very, you know, whatever. But anyway, there's a really funny thing that happens in the the final FMV, which really made me laugh watching it, which is like the final FMV. You see like every character, every, every actor they got in the game, including like little incidental ones, like these dwarves that you meet briefly.
01:46:23
Speaker
they all like stand and wave at the camera. Like it just like kind of gives you like a slight, like a little video slideshow where it revisits every like exterior and interior, every, every character in the game, they look at the camera and they wave.
01:46:42
Speaker
You made me laugh. And then you finally see what's his name? The guy from the very, very beginning. And he's just going to have to talk about strategy with you. Rupert or something like that. ru It's like Rupert or Roper. Ebert and Roper.
01:46:58
Speaker
yeah Anyway. so yeah. Return to Zork. ah It is a game. It's a game.
Promotions and Future Topics
01:47:11
Speaker
Grayson, if someone appreciated all the the interesting research that you put into ah this podcast ah ah appearance, where could they enjoy something like that?
01:47:25
Speaker
You can go to blog.com. called I might as well explain the joke it's called i might editor I might as well explain the joke.com that yeah URL was available. Can you believe it? um yeah It's a v blog about jokes in the context of American history, where they come from, ah why they were popular.
01:47:45
Speaker
ah the most recent one was about ah the poem, but the little schoolyard poem, Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit, where that where I think that might have come from.
01:47:56
Speaker
And that's the trajectory that that took. And I'll give i'll i'll give a a special preview only for podcast listeners. yeah Okay. The next one, it releases the the first Monday of every month. So the next one's going to be about a week after this disc comes out.
01:48:09
Speaker
Yeah. It's going to be about the origin of license plates that say, honk if you're horny. It's going to be an exploration of where those came from. So it's not bumper stickers or license plates that said that? Or stickers. Bumper stickers. I was saying the wrong thing. Bumper stickers that say honk if you're horny. If you ever wondered where'd that come from, I think I have the answer.
01:48:31
Speaker
i I think i don't know genuinely, genuinely, I think it's surprising. I think you, I think, uh, if you, if anybody can message me before it goes live and tell me the answer, um, Venmo you a dollar.
01:48:47
Speaker
Um, I, I, I, you know, this is exciting for me because even though Grace and I are are are close friends and and collaborate on a ah bunch of projects, I never, i never get to hear about these. So this is, that's breaking news to me. And I'm very excited.
01:49:07
Speaker
I'm very excited to hear about Honk If You're Horny. um But yeah, it's a really, it's a really, really great, a monthly a blog. um what what were some of the other ah What were some of the other subjects? We talked talked a little bit about jokes about Elvis being alive. talked a little bit about metrosexuals, ah party animals who wear a lampshade on their head.
01:49:36
Speaker
um And this is, you know, this is the kind of, ah it's a it's it's it's got a newsletter sign up. So if you just want to get it in your email, you can do that. Um, you know, it's nice.
01:49:47
Speaker
I think it's, I think, you know, uh, promoting my own blog aside, i think it's just nice to have a few blogs that come out infrequently and you're like, Oh, this is up.
01:49:59
Speaker
I'll enjoy this over breakfast. Yeah. It's, it's, it's something to enjoy over a cup of coffee. ah Well, thank you so much for joining us for ah Quest Quest, the adventure game ah podcast. I've been Ben.
01:50:14
Speaker
Great point, Ben. Oh, thank you, Jess. ah We were, of course, ah joined by Jess. ah Let me see. Were there any other voice clips? just Does Jess say his own name?
01:50:27
Speaker
No. He says sandwich. I heard him say sandwich. Yeah. I think I, I think Jess has said all he can say. wait, that's not the right one.
01:50:39
Speaker
Uh,
01:50:42
Speaker
Oh, sandwich. There it is. Sandwich, sandwich, sandwich. Well, thank you, Jess. All right. But, uh, pipe down, uh, Jess will, we'll, uh, Jess, we'll be back. Uh, we'll, and, uh, if you enjoyed, this, uh, please give us a five-star review.
01:50:59
Speaker
send us an email. We love to, to get, uh, emails. You can send us an email at quest quest podcast at gmail.com join us next week.
01:51:10
Speaker
When we discuss Space Quest 4. I it.
01:51:20
Speaker
Jess is not here, of course. So I'm going to have to ask you. What about space quest for do you have any memories? We played space quest for it. My stream streamed it. I have a give me what what's the thing that happens. I have no memories of it. You have no memories of space quest for. They all they all kind of blend together, space quests.
01:51:44
Speaker
you know i know I know you and Jess have have stronger, more pointed opinions about them. ah yeah i just like That's the the time travel one where he goes forward in time. You see space quests like seven or whatever. and Space quests 12. 12. And then you go back to space quest one.
01:52:05
Speaker
yeah this doesn't help. This is literally they're all blending together.