Technology

Zork was originally written in MUDDLE, a higher-level programming language, who had a loyal user community at MIT’s project MAC (Tim Anderson et al, 1985). Project MAC (Math and Computer Science) at MIT was responsible for creating the time-sharing system that allowed multiple users to access programs from a computer remotely (Pyfer James, 1).

The choice of programming language greatly affected the accessibility of Zork, as the cost of a PDP-10 was around 400, 000 dollars (Tim Anderson et al, 1985). Adventure was another game that swept the ARPAnet, however it was programmed in FORTRAN. This led to the developers of Zork migrating to FORTRAN, which is fundamentally different as a programming language than MUDDLE. We know that migration is generally not preferred as a preservation method (Carta, Giovanni 197). However in order to increase accessibility and the player base from only those who had remote access to a PDP-10, this change was necessary. FORTRAN albeit much more complicated than MUDDLE was able to run on almost anything, which included PDP-10s, the later PDP-11s, Apple computers and the Commodore-64.

Now with the personal computer market being dominated by Microsoft and Apple (Windows and MacOS as their respective operating systems), systems that run DOS (disk operating system) are virtually extinct. IBM used to own the majority share of the personal computer market, and currently do not make personal computers. DOSBox is an emulator that interprets video game software that previously ran on DOS into modern operating systems.

Lastly, especially with video games, epitextual resource preservation is just as important. An expitextual resource can be defined as “documents that augment and explain a primary text” (Hodges, James A 1584). These can be original walkthroughs, guides, game manuals, etc. Without these epitextual resource, the game may not be playable in its original state. These documents are important pieces, and like the game itself provide some cultural history. The Zork Library serves as a center-piece for epitextual documents for the entire Zork trilogy.