Zork and Imagination

Back when we occasionally had to use our brains to create the images within games, a.k.a. in the 1980s and earlier, a text-based adventure game called Zork was incredibly popular. Since most games back then were either played on a board or in the backyard, our imaginations regularly got a workout. Besides, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and other books (stories written on piles of flat sheets called “paper” and bound together) were popular back then too, so the imagery came easily.

If you were born after 1980, brace yourself; the image you see below may shock you.

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Flashback to August of 1995. Westwood Studios released Command & Conquer, a real-time strategy game (RTS) pitting the UN-backed GDI forces against the Brotherhood of Nod. The Brotherhood was supposed to be evil, but GDI was the UN, so it was a tough call to pick your poison. C&C was a fun game. So much so that several sequels and expansion packs were released, including Covert Operations, Sole Survivor, Tiberian Sun, TS Firestorm, and Renegade. An alternate universe series, Red Alert, was also released. It included C&C: Red Alert (1996), Counterstrike and The Aftermath (1997), Red Alert 2 (2000), and Yuri’s Revenge (2001). Another related game is C&C: Generals and its expansion pack, Zero Hour.

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OpenArena is a free (GPL) content package for the Quake III Arena engine (with which it comes packaged). Essentially you download and run this 72.8 MB installer and end up with a free first person shooter based on the QIIIA engine. The graphics are not too bad (for free that is) and it supports single …

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