{"id":1013,"date":"2013-11-18T15:02:50","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T20:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=1013"},"modified":"2013-11-18T15:39:05","modified_gmt":"2013-11-18T20:39:05","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-choose-your-own-zork-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1013\/retro-scan-of-the-week-choose-your-own-zork-adventure","title":{"rendered":"[ Retro Scan of the Week ]<\/span> Choose Your Own Zork Adventure"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Atari<\/a>“Don’t eat me, ghostly tiger-snake!”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

During the Choose Your Own Adventure<\/a> (RSOTW, 2008)<\/em> book craze in the early 1980s, interactive fiction meisters Infocom decided to get in on the act by publishing a series of Zork-themed “What-Do-I-Do-Now<\/a>” titles through TOR Books.<\/p>\n

Here is one of them, formally titled Zork #4: Conquest at Quendor<\/em>. It was written by none other than Infocom legend Steve Meretzky<\/a>, whom I met briefly in person back in 2008. He is a very personable fellow. (FYI: Back in 2007, Meretzky made a cameo in Jason Scott’s video for the Zork-themed “It Is Pitch Dark<\/a>” by MC Frontalot, which I love.)<\/p>\n

As for the book, I haven’t read it in ages, so I am not equipped at present to tell you if it’s any good. I just recently found it in a box of my brother’s old computer game boxes at my parents’ house (which seems to be how a lot of these scans originate these days). My brother is and was a huge Zork fan, which reminds me that we need to play Zork Nemesis<\/em> together again sometime.<\/p>\n

I will add that the cover art featuring a translucent, floating fuzzy tiger-snake with squidlike suction cups on its body always freaked me out a bit as a kid.<\/p>\n

[ From Zork #4: Conquest at Quendor (TOR Books, October 1984) ]<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

Discussion Topic of the Week:<\/strong> What’s your favorite entry in the Zork game series?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Don’t eat me, ghostly tiger-snake!” During the Choose Your Own Adventure (RSOTW, 2008) book craze in the early 1980s, interactive fiction meisters Infocom decided to get in on the act by publishing a series of Zork-themed “What-Do-I-Do-Now” titles through TOR Books. Here is one of them, formally titled Zork #4: Conquest at Quendor. It was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,7,27,26,9,10],"tags":[293,271,680,672,673,679,676,677,60,675,678,674,681],"class_list":["post-1013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-games","category-computer-info-and-history","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-retrogaming","category-computers","tag-293","tag-books","tag-brother","tag-choose-your-own-adventure","tag-infocom","tag-interactive-fiction","tag-jason-scott","tag-mc-frontalot","tag-retro-scan","tag-steve-meretzky","tag-tor-books","tag-zork","tag-zork-nemesis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}