what the zork
Jul. 20th, 2024 08:34 pmA month or more ago Jimmy Maher did a write-up of Zork Nemesis and Zork Grand Inquisitor, the last two official Zork games. Those were some excellent games: Grand Inquisitor in particular was a lot of fun, but even Nemesis was an enjoyable and atmospheric puzzle-romp. They're among the games for which I'm still lugging the CD-ROMs around, despite not having owned a machine that can run them for at least a decade now.
Except it then occurred to me that that hasn't been true for at least a year. I've got this new laptop, and Windows is famously backwards-compatible. Maybe, I thought when I read the article, I'd take some time this summer and play through them again.
Cut to today. Today I have been out of sorts for a number of reasons I don't want to go into, so I have decided that today will be the day Actaeon the Windows laptop earns its keep. (Yes yes, it's been a fine workhorse for classwork, but its REAL virtue is in allowing me to relive my college gaming years.) So I dug out the three-disc jewelcase for Zork Nemesis and started the installation process. (First convincing the Windows laptop that it wanted to talk to the Apple CD/DVD drive.)
Except: foiled! Turns out the upgrade to a 64-bit OS has finally broken some amount of backwards compatibility. I can't actually just install the game directly from the CD-ROM and party like it's 1996. Or, more likely, 1998-1999. I certainly didn't get Nemesis immediately upon release; more likely I picked it up from the bargain bin a few years later.
Which means that I have installed an emulator on, not my Windows laptop, but my Macbook, and am now in the slow process of copying most of three CD-ROMs onto my hard drive, where they will take up less than one percent of its storage capacity.
I'm looking forward to this.
Except it then occurred to me that that hasn't been true for at least a year. I've got this new laptop, and Windows is famously backwards-compatible. Maybe, I thought when I read the article, I'd take some time this summer and play through them again.
Cut to today. Today I have been out of sorts for a number of reasons I don't want to go into, so I have decided that today will be the day Actaeon the Windows laptop earns its keep. (Yes yes, it's been a fine workhorse for classwork, but its REAL virtue is in allowing me to relive my college gaming years.) So I dug out the three-disc jewelcase for Zork Nemesis and started the installation process. (First convincing the Windows laptop that it wanted to talk to the Apple CD/DVD drive.)
Except: foiled! Turns out the upgrade to a 64-bit OS has finally broken some amount of backwards compatibility. I can't actually just install the game directly from the CD-ROM and party like it's 1996. Or, more likely, 1998-1999. I certainly didn't get Nemesis immediately upon release; more likely I picked it up from the bargain bin a few years later.
Which means that I have installed an emulator on, not my Windows laptop, but my Macbook, and am now in the slow process of copying most of three CD-ROMs onto my hard drive, where they will take up less than one percent of its storage capacity.
I'm looking forward to this.