this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2025
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Zork I, Zork II and Zork III are now officially open source (www.gamingonlinux.com)
submitted 23 hours ago by homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world to c/retrogaming@lemmy.world
22 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://no.lastname.nz/post/1917886

Microsoft announced today that they're preserving a bit of history here - with Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III now officially and clearly open source. The source has been around for a while but now it's all proper.

From the announcement they said:

Today, we’re preserving a cornerstone of gaming history that is near and dear to our hearts. Together, Microsoft’s Open Source Programs Office (OSPO), Team Xbox, and Activision are making Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III available under the MIT License. Our goal is simple: to place historically important code in the hands of students, teachers, and developers so they can study it, learn from it, and, perhaps most importantly, play it.

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[–] IronpigsWizard@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Are there any tablets good for old text adventures games?

There was the Ink Console coming out, but that seemingly died off.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

How do you mean? in terms of a keyboard? Or e-ink?

[–] IronpigsWizard@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Both, so I will assume I am being unrealistic. :(

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

Well if you have a lot of money everything's great :D But srs, there's a bunch of them that run out-of-the-box android that would do it. Boox is what I'm thinking of specifically, maybe a used one even - and they have a USB C port you can just plug your favorite clicky keyboard into and baddabing - perfect e-ink Zorkage.

[–] LedgeDrop@lemmy.zip 9 points 14 hours ago

Wow, even released under the "commercial friendly" MIT license.

I look forward to playing an Ai derivative "coming soon".

[–] AntifaTeamLead@lemmy.world 12 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I've been wanting to get these running via virtual assistant (Alexa, Google, Siri, etc.). Imagine playing these on a long car ride, via voice!

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

That would be awesome!

[–] krooklochurm@lemmy.ca 5 points 8 hours ago

That plus fine tune a model on the text and and get weird

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 7 points 16 hours ago

>be eaten by grue

[–] musubibreakfast@lemmy.world 22 points 22 hours ago

So they're now openzork!

[–] harmbugler@piefed.social 4 points 19 hours ago

Nice! Would love to see Zork Zero opened as well.

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago

Reminds me of a game my buddy and I made called BIP.

BIP was a crazy computer that went nuts.

Our code was about as sophisticated as this. As in, not. lol

[–] Nemo@slrpnk.net 4 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

So, where can we get them?

[–] ClassifiedPancake@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

By following the links in the article

[–] Nemo@slrpnk.net 4 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Sorry, didn't realize only an excerpt was posted here. That's on me.

[–] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Maybe it's lazy, but I always ask for people to post things in the comments that are in the article, so I don't have to read the article.

[–] Nemo@slrpnk.net 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Or maybe...it's Maybelline???

[–] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 hours ago

Yes that's it :D

[–] ClassifiedPancake@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

I understand if the article is long or convoluted and you just need a short summary but even refusing to click the link and do a quick check is lazy AF and should not be encouraged. Or at least use AI for that.

[–] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Holy fuck, I'm not using AI for that shit.

A lot of times people are happy to share stuff in the comments. I do it myself for articles I'm actually interested in reading. It's part of the human connection that makes the internet a interesting place to be, not an AI hellscape.

[–] ClassifiedPancake@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 6 hours ago

It’s like going to a store and asking a random person nearby to pick out the item you want, which you are fully capable of reaching yourself, while you keep standing around and do nothing. Great human interaction.