Zork I: The Great Underground Empire (English/Netlink)
Really a mix of homebrew/translation, this keeps everything that disc did well and puts a real Z-machine underneath it.I poked around in the original disc and did find English menus, but sadly most of the interpreter mechanisms work purely from Japanese sentence structure and it became a task of futility to translate.
Instead this release jumps into a Z3 interpreter after the opening cutscenes, reusing all of the games assets and adding online functionality as well as support for any Z3 game (including Lurking Horror and it's BLB sound assets).
Details
New features added- Swaps in a general Z-Machine to play all 31 Infocom Interactive Fiction classics
- Lurking Horror's sound effects, heard before only in its Amiga and Atari ST rereleases
- A netbin version you can launch straight from the Saturn's NetLink browser (suin.uk/zork)
- In game map with quick travel
- A command panel and on-screen keyboard, so the whole game plays on a controller; the Saturn keyboard and mouse work too
- Saves to the Saturn's backup memory
- A synth soundtrack for every game that isn't Zork I, much of it built in Ableton Live
- All 74 room backgrounds, read straight off your own disc
- All 19 inventory item pictures
- All 13 animated area borders
- All 31 CD audio tracks
Patching Instructions
You need your own copy of Zork I - The Great Underground Empire (Japan), Redump T-21502G V1.001: one .cue and 32 .bin files. The patch carries none of the original disc and does nothing without it.XDelta
- Grab an XDelta patcher like Delta Patcher
- Unzip the patch bundle
- For the Original File, pick Zork I - The Great Underground Empire (Japan) (Track 01).bin
- Pick zork1-english-netlink.xdelta and click 'Apply Patch'
- Keep using the same .cue. Only Track 01 changes.
Sega Saturn Patcher
- Open the original .cue in Sega Saturn Patcher
- Pick zork1-english-netlink.ssp
- Outside Japan, tick Region Free
- Patch
Adding the other stories
The patch ships with Zork I, II and III, the three that Microsoft released as open source. To add the rest, double-click add-additional-games.bat, or run ./add-additional-games.bat on macOS or Linux. It finds your patched Track 01 next to the patch folder, or asks you to pick it, then downloads the stories and Lurking Horror's sound effects and adds them to the disc. macOS and Linux need xorriso installed.Netbin version
Special Thanks
- ReyeMe and contributors, for SaturnRingLib
- eaudunord, for the Netlink tunnel
- Andrew Plotkin, for the Obsessively Complete Infocom Catalog
- Kevin Bracey, for the Lurking Horror sound files
- Will Crowther and Don Woods for Colossal Cave Adventure, and Jeff Nyman for its Z3 port
- Arc System Works and Shoeisha, and Yuzo Koshiro and Motohiro Kawashima, for the disc this is built on
- Ryan 'Icculus' Gordon for the MojoZork engine
- Every Infocom implementer (the full list is in-game under Credits)
