Microsoft unleashes Zork I-III source code

"Microsoft developer boss Scott Hanselman saved the company's Ignite shindig this week by unveiling the source code for Zork I-III, all 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," said the announcement from Hanselman and Stacey Haffner, Director of Microsoft's Open Source Programs Office (OSPO)."

"The game was ported to the Zork Implementation Language (ZIL), which ran on a Z-machine, a virtual machine developed by Infocom for its text adventure games. This meant that running Zork (and the vast majority of Infocom games) on different computer architectures just required porting the Z-machine. Infocom's wares were therefore everywhere."

"It is still possible to purchase Zork, and the repositories contain only the source for Zork I, II, and III. The announcement suggests using ZILF (ZIL Forever) to compile and assemble the source into a runnable Z3 file. Then fire up something like Windows Frotz to be transported back to the 1980s and the world of Zork."

Microsoft released the source code for Zork I-III under the MIT license to make historically important code available to students, teachers, and developers for study and play. Zork is a landmark text-adventure inspired by Colossal Cave Adventure, featuring a more natural-language parser that increased player immersion. The game was developed on the PDP-10, split into three parts for personal computers, and ported to ZIL to run on Infocom's Z-machine virtual machine for broad portability. Activision acquired Infocom in 1986 and Microsoft acquired Activision in 2023. The repositories contain Zork I–III source that can be compiled with ZILF into Z3 files and run with interpreters like Windows Frotz.

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