In 1980, Infocom sold the TRS-80 version of Zork I through Personal Software (it didn’t sell very well). By Februrary 1981, they released an Apple II version, also through Personal Software (it did much better).
By mid-1981 Infocom was preparing to release Zork II (they signed a contract in June) but Personal Software’s VisiCalc spreadsheet software hit such big sales that they decide to drop publishing games entirely. This led the founders of Infocom to decide to become their own publishers. By the end of the year they had released Zork II in time for Christmas.
The manual for Zork II gives credits to Marc Blank and Dave Lebling. It includes some of the material cut when Zork mainframe was ported to Zork I, but is still very much its own game, most notably for replacing the thief antagonist with the Wizard of Frobozz. From the back of the package:
EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED WHEN YOU TAKE ON ZORK II: THE WIZARD OF FROBOZZ.
As you explore the subterranean realm of Zork, you’ll continually be confronted with new surprises. Chief among these is the Wizard himself, who’ll constantly endeavor to confound you with his capricious powers. But more than that, you’ll face a challenge the likes of which you’ve never experienced before.
It begins right where Zork I left off, at the ancient barrow.
Inside the Barrow
You are inside an ancient barrow hidden deep within a dark forest. The barrow opens into a narrow tunnel at its southern end. You can see a faint glow at the far end.
A sword of Elvish workmanship is on the ground.
A strangely familiar brass lantern is lying on the ground.
I appreciate the “old friend” feel of having the lantern and sword awaiting.
Path Near Stream
The path follows the south edge of a deep ravine and heads northeast. A tunnel heads southwest, narrowing to a rather tight crawl. A faint whirring sound can be heard in that direction. On the east is a ruined archway choked with vegetation.>sw
Carousel Room
You are in a large circular room whose high ceiling is lost in gloom. Eight identical passages leave the room.
A loud whirring sound comes from all around, and you feel sort of disoriented in here.
Here I reach my first quibble with Zork II compared to Zork I — I really dislike this room. Trying to leave sends the player in a random direction.
>e
You’re not sure which direction is which. This room is very disorienting.Topiary
This is the southern end of a formal garden. Hedges hide the cavern walls and mosses provide dim illumination. Fantastically shaped hedges and bushes are arrayed with geometric precision. They have not recently been clipped, but you can discern creatures in the shapes of the bushes: There is a dragon, a unicorn, a great serpent, a huge misshapen dog, and several human figures. On the west side of the garden the path leads through a rose arbor into a tunnel.
The opening of Zork I had a wide airy space, the iconic house, a slow entry, and an intriguing mystery with the trap door being locked behind the player. The RNG spinner here is essentially the first element of Zork II, and I don’t think I’m too fussy in saying it’s less compelling.
Still, I remember Zork II being fine otherwise, but it’s been a long time since I’ve played, and while no doubt some puzzle solutions are identical to Zork mainframe (which I do mostly remember thanks to me writing about it) I’m likely in for some surprises.
Downward to danger!
Renga in Blue 
By coincidence I was recently tackling “Mirror Of Khorontz” which was an unreleased sequet to “Gateway To Karos” by Derek L Haslam from 1984 via the BeebEm emulator and it has a Small Round Room with eight identical exits where you feel dizzy. I wonder where he got the idea for that from?
Thankfully (although by coincidence) shutting off the Carousel is the first puzzle I solved.
IIRC, according to the Invisiclues, the chance of actually leaving the Carousel Room in the direction you specify is 30%, so a bit better than random, but still annoying.
Oh, I’d forgotten that! Checked the source code to see if they were telling the truth there, and it’s close enough (about 31.1%) as long as you don’t try to go west.
The exact logic is (from line 77 of 2ACTIONS.ZIL onward): when the player tries to leave the Carousel Room, if they’re going west or an 80% chance succeeds, send them in a random non-west direction. Otherwise, let them go through unaltered.
So if you try to go north, you have a 20% chance of being unaffected, and an ~11% chance of being affected but ending up randomly going north anyway (80% × 1/7).
(Turns out also, “GO OUT” is treated as “GO EAST” for all this logic. Didn’t know that bit either.)
My memories of Zork II shall forever be “that game I owned and played as a young lad where I got almost *nowhere at all* until many years later with hints in hand.”
Ironically, one of the very few things I *did* manage to solve way back then, without hints, was either its most-infamous or its second-most-infamous puzzle (depending on where you place the Bank of Zork) (no I did not solve the Bank of Zork).
I never solved it, even Invisiclues in hand, as a child or teenager. It took some dedicated plugging away later in life (though what I was trying to arrive at by then was not merely finishing the game at all, but a stab at a “best” or at least methodically “good” path through the game, solving it without flailing around). At about 13 years old I did have great fun tape-recording dramatic readings of the Invisiclues with their sometimes sarcastic remarks, though…
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In the Eristic.net Zork II walkthrough, in the For Your Amusement section dealing with the Oddly-Angled Rooms, there’s this suggestion: “Wander around the Oddly-Angled Rooms while under the influence of the fantasize spell.” In the older Zork II versions where the fantasize spell works, I’ve tried that. Frustratingly, nothing unusual seems to happen. No fascinating illusions come. So I give up. Anybody, go ahead and spoil this non-essential Easter egg for me. What’s supposed to happen when I’m “fantasized” while wandering around the baseball diamond?
(hey, that’s my website!)
OK, this is beginning to be a bit of a mystery to me. My glib answer was going to be “I took that from the Invisiclues For Your Amusement section, and my recollection is that you start hallucinating the crowd in the stands or something like that.” But…
1. I’m looking through source code at https://github.com/historicalsource/zork2 and at https://github.com/the-infocom-files/zork2 and not finding any evidence the game would ever give this response (only the global FANTASIZE results of “pile of jewels” “gold ingot” “basilisk” “bulging chest” “yellow sphere” “grue” “convention of wizards” andd “copy of ZORK I”)
2. I can’t find any evidence there’s even such a suggestion in the Invisiclues to begin with! (See at the end of https://mocagh.org/infocom/zork2-zughintbook.pdf for instance)
Even when things are definitely from the Invisiclues, sometimes they are a little vague as to what to do or how to know you triggered the intended funny response from the game, so I like to test them out. This has resulted in a few cases where I just didn’t include something in my walkthrough or a notation, like in Suspended, that I couldn’t get the game to respond the way whoever was writing the hints apparently expected it to. No such note for Zork 2. So now I am really wondering where I picked up this idea in the first place!
OK Lisa. Thanks for putting that mystery to rest. BTW I also notice that, when I’m “fantasized”, I only hallucinate in certain rooms but not others. With all my experimenting, I never hallucinated even the normal illusions anywhere in the Oddly-Angled Room. Maybe the implementers took that out just before releasing Zork II? Maybe that specific random factor would have caused a crash.
I’m digressing now. Speaking of Suspended, (this really belongs in the Suspended blog, but I can’t figure out how to get there, if there is one) I was frustrated not knowing how the devil to know that the dead robot’s name is Fred. I stumbled on that solution when I typed “impossible”, and after a couple of moves, when everybody died, there was this message: So long from all the gang — Iris, Waldo, Sensa, Auda, Poet, Whiz, FRED, and last but not least, we three FCs. I would have deduced, by process of elimination, Fred’s identity. There ought to be a better way, though.
Suspended is from 1983 so I don’t think Jason’s gotten there yet.
Here’s a relevant bit of code about Fred, which I hope will come through ok in the comment and not have its less-than signs interpreted as HTML…
<OBJECT DEADBOT
(IN CABINET)
(SYNONYM MECHAN CONSTRUCT DEVICE FRED)
(ADJECTIVE BROKEN UNTAGG)
(FLAGS TAKEBIT)
(SIZE 200)
(ACTION DEADBOT-FCN)
(OBJDESCS )
(CLC-TXT )>
You can get the “FRED” response out of Poet if you have him look at the broken robot. (The limerick doesn’t get used.) But there are other synonyms for the object, so you don’t actually need to know that he’s Fred to refer to him.
Suspended is one of my favorite text adventures
but I’m pretty sure that was directed at the one here who had an Infocom website since 1996. (I never connected you with it before! Cool site.)
I’ve got a face-mask Suspended with 8 inch disk signed by Michael Berlyn.
d’oh. of course it tried for HTML. taking those out:
OBJECT DEADBOT
(IN CABINET)
(SYNONYM MECHAN CONSTRUCT DEVICE FRED)
(ADJECTIVE BROKEN UNTAGG)
(FLAGS TAKEBIT)
(SIZE 200)
(ACTION DEADBOT-FCN)
(OBJDESCS PLTABLE 0
“An open mechanism with similar parts to myself sits here, totally immobile.”
“Miles of circuitry rest within the device sitting here, though it no longer
seems operational.”
“A broken construct sits here, totally immobile.”
“There once was a robot named Fred,|
Who never conceived being dead.|
But late in the night,|
A terrible fright|
Left him clearly without his own head.”
“There is a device here which the CLC cannot identify.”
0
“broken mechanism”
“broken device”
“broken construct”
“FRED”
“device the CLC cannot identify”
0 0 0 0 0 0)
(CLC-TXT PLTABLE “This robot is a dead and departed robot who is totally beyond repair.” “There may be some salvageable parts inside it.” “This robot was an all-purpose, multi-function robot which proved inadequate for maintenance purposes.”)
Uh… I don’t know if that comment got moderated or what… but anyway, you can see for yourself the bit I am trying to quote in this source file: https://github.com/historicalsource/suspended/blob/master/objects.zil
It got directed to spam, I pulled it out (without context ZIL code kind of resembles one of those random-garbage spam messages).
Here’s one more tidbit:
Awhile back, I posted the following on the Tvtropes Unwinnable By Design / Infocom page:
“The Zork II hint book indicates two ways to move the menhir. It doesn’t mention that one of those ways makes the game unwinnable. If you ask the demon to move the menhir, then you can’t get the Wizard’s magic wand, which is required to win the game.”
Later on, someone amended my comment with the following:
“Although this only applied to later versions of the game, and in the earlier ones getting the demon to move the menhir was a valid solution.”
I misunderstood that. I thought it meant I wouldn’t need the wand in the endgame, in the older versions. It turns out that I do, in all versions.
Aside from exploiting the Version 7 bug mentioned in Graeme Cree’s Infocom Bugs List: http://graeme.50webs.com/infobugs/zork2.htm in all the old versions prior to v48, (spoiler alert!) you can actually ask the demon to both kill the wizard and move the menhir in one concatenated command:
tell demon “kill wizard.get menhir”
The demon grins hideously. “This has been my desire e’er since this charlatan
bent me to his service. I perform this deed with pleasure!” The demon forms
himself back into a cloud of greasy smoke. The cloud envelops the Wizard, who
waves his wand fruitlessly, mumbling various phrases which begin with “F”. A
horrible scream is heard, and the smoke begins to clear. Nothing remains of the
Wizard but his wand.
The genie departs, his agreement fulfilled.
The demon flashes away for a second. “I have little use for such a thing, but
perhaps as a doorstop…”
The genie departs, his agreement fulfilled.
As you can see, the parser’s response is slightly buggy, with the genie departing twice.
Aside from the above, if anyone knows of another way to get the wand, please post.
Of course, from and including v48 on, asking the demon to move the menhir is a trap, similar to putting the lore book in the slot in the puzzle room in Zork III or (spoiler alert) using the Kulcad spell in the wrong place in Enchanter.
Maybe the hint book statement “In later releases (revisions) of the game, the landing is guarded by magical runes” is misleading.
Acknowledged.
The first time I played Zork II (it was 1985) on my new Atari 1050 disk drive I suffered the “Fluoresce” command. This happened early on in the game so all my subsequent saved games had this feature applied. It wasn’t until several months of playing later that I got to the end and couldn’t see what I was missing to complete the game. Many moons had waxed and waned before I deduced what had transpired.
All the spells the wizard casts on you should wear off in a little while. I find it very strange that the effect somehow lasted the entire game.
“Fluoresce” is the one exception to the temporary spell protocol.
Unless Fluoresce is somehow excepted from this…? but Ferment or Freeze, for example… if you just hang out, they wear off.
The hint manual did mention the “Fluoresce” spell as a workaround to your lamp burning out. The manual went on to say that “Fluoresce” did have an unfortunate side effect. Besides, who would have thought of turning off the lamp in the crypt to reach the end game? It’s as difficult a puzzle as the Oddly-Angled Room would be to people who are unfamiliar with Baseball.
Given you don’t need the baseball clues to solve the oddly-angled room
I think the lamp thing may be worse. I _think_ I used the hint book. This time around I just remembered the solution. Never did experience the glowing spell.
It definitely didn’t wear off when I played it.