Seeking out a ZZT game..

[Raven]

I'm relatively certain that the first video game I ever played was ZZT, in 1991 or some such (I was born 1990). I do not, however, know what "game" of ZZT it was, since it was more of a game building platform than a game, really.

What I remember is this:

I played it on a laptop, and it was monochrome (probably the laptop, not the game doing this). Your character had a light radius around it, and there were torches of some kind to expand this. You were wandering around a labrynth under these conditions, seeing the walls you were close to. The character was one of those smiley ASCII chars, and the walls were, I think, the checkerboard-dithered full-block characters (can't be 100% sure on that). I don't remember any more details.

Anybody have any idea? I'd love to know what it was, see it again, have a copy, etc. At some point I'll dig through the disks we have with ZZT on them, but I remember we were borrowing the laptop from someone at the time, so I doubt we own the copy of whatever ZZT game it was..

Thanks.

 

[commodorejohn]

I'm relatively certain that the first video game I ever played was ZZT, in 1991 or some such (I was born 1990). I do not, however, know what "game" of ZZT it was, since it was more of a game building platform than a game, really.

What I remember is this:

I played it on a laptop, and it was monochrome (probably the laptop, not the game doing this). Your character had a light radius around it, and there were torches of some kind to expand this. You were wandering around a labrynth under these conditions, seeing the walls you were close to. The character was one of those smiley ASCII chars, and the walls were, I think, the checkerboard-dithered full-block characters (can't be 100% sure on that). I don't remember any more details.

Anybody have any idea? I'd love to know what it was, see it again, have a copy, etc. At some point I'll dig through the disks we have with ZZT on them, but I remember we were borrowing the laptop from someone at the time, so I doubt we own the copy of whatever ZZT game it was..

I'm afraid that all the stuff you describe is standard ZZT mechanics, so it's not much help in differentiating. (The monochrome is a selectable operating mode of the program.) That said, I'd bet that it's probably Town of ZZT, the included game world.

Good stuff, that

 

[Maverick1978]

Seconded... best bet - go search for ZZT on a shareware archive (I use the SimTel ones). It was probably one of the two (?) shareware versions anyways (ISTR there being two trilogies, so 2 shareware versions).

Also... if you really like these kinds of games, ZZT was a knock-off of the Kroz series from Apogee, which in turn was a knock-off of the old Rogue games.

Caves of Thor, also from Apogee, utilized similar mechanics, graphics, and gameplay.

If you've access to underground gamer, check out the full Apogee torrent - a LOT of fantastic stuff in that one. All the ZZTs are probably also around there somewhere.

Also - just for the record... ZZT was not originally meant to be a world-building game, though a level editor was included, and most fans quickly got into making their own maps, which IIRC, made up the bulk of "Best of ZZT" release.

 

[commodorejohn]

Seconded... best bet - go search for ZZT on a shareware archive (I use the SimTel ones). It was probably one of the two (?) shareware versions anyways (ISTR there being two trilogies, so 2 shareware versions).

I think you're thinking of Super ZZT, which was mostly the same, but ran in 40x25 mode and had large scrolling areas instead of flipping between 80x25 "boards."