Running Zork Games on XP, Vista, Linux, & Mac OS X
Back in 2004, I wrote a guide for getting the game Zork Grand Inquisitor running on Windows XP. The game didn’t work well without the guide because it was originally designed for Windows 98. I’ve been a fan of the Zork series for almost 10 years now. After receiving a message from another Zork fan in regards to that guide I wrote, I decided that it was time to look into the games again. With a few changes, the more modern games in the series are supported under Windows XP and possibly Vista. That’s when I had an idea. With Wine, DOSBox and Frotz, it should be possible to run any Zork game on Linux and Mac OS X too. With that, it becomes feasible to run any game in the Zork series on any major operating system. That’s a big task. I began a project to work on making that idea a reality. I’m not alone though. I’m receiving some help and hosting from DAT, the maintainer of the only Zork website still active, The Zork Library.
The guides are currently at http://www.kevinbecker.net/zorkguides and will soon be hosted on http://www.thezorklibrary.com as well. The project is a work in progress and needs help on the configurations I can’t test myself, mainly Mac OS X and Vista. Help with writing the guides and testing them, as well as comments and questions would be greatly appreciated!
This entry was posted by Kevin on July 1, 2008 at 11:11pm, and is filed under Linux, Mac OS X, Operating Systems, Videogames, Windows, Zork. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.
I can confirm that Frotz works on Mac OS. It’s directly available through the fink package manager, or can be downloaded and compiled.
Thanks for the info. I don’t have a Mac, so I can’t test it myself, but I’ll make a note of it on the guide index page soon. Feel free to write a guide yourself, even just modifying the one for frotz that I provide if you like.
Your XP guide for Zork: GI works perfectly for Vista as well – I really can’t thank you enough, I played this game as a child and getting it working on my current machine is a dream come true.
thank you so much for doing this, but i am still having trouble saving the changes on the ZIX file on step c of the manual method.
i un-ticked the read only box, and all my settings allow it, so why cant i change it?
and i dont really understand how the automatic way works!
is there any way i can make it work?
The XP way doesn’t quite work for me. It runs the program without the possibility of starting a new game, and if i do anything it shuts down.
I got a problem my Zork Nemesis CDs are very old..and i cant find the nem_man.exe on my CD1 plz contact me
Icq 296831517
or e-mail
After looking into the issue more, I have found that nem_man.exe isn’t really necessary. You can proceed without it.
Mac osx guide that worked for me (using leopard on a macbook)
http://www.silentcorner.com/archive/2004/01/31/play-zork-on-mac-os-x/
Thanks so much for this guide…it got the game working on my Vista-running laptop. Unfortunately, it crashes when I try to restore saved games. Has anyone else had/managed to fix this problem?
Hi,
I have Windows Vista 64bit. The game freezes when I use the zix file with the information that I copied off your sight. Using the zix file off of an older pc I had, I was able to get to the screen where it asks for the cd, but I already had the cd in the drive, so I’m not sure what was wrong there.
Kevin
Hi, I followed your instruction using the manual way, i created those folders, created the nemesis.zix file, copied the whole modified text into it , and so on. All I see is a black screen!?!
Please help me!!!!!!!!!! thx
Sorry for the delay in responding everyone. I’ll try to get to all the comments.
@Tickle: Thanks for the kind words. Glad I could help!
@marisa: It sounds like you installed to C:\Program Files and aren’t running as administrator in Vista. Either run from an administrator account or right-click on Zork Nemesis and select “Run as Administrator”.
@Tom: I don’t understand your problem. Can you give me more details?
@Maurice: Thanks for the info!
@Meghan: It sounds like you have the same issue as marisa. Check my answer to her above. I’ll be incorporating all this info into my next revision of the guides.
@Kevin: I haven’t tested my guides of 64-bit Windows, so I can’t say for sure if the game works there. Try right-clicking on properties on Zork Nemesis and going to the Compatibility tab. There you can try a few different compatibility modes. Also, try running as administrator like I recommended to marisa and Meghan.
@Marc I haven’t heard of this issue before. It may be a video card driver issue. Can you give me more info about your computer and operating system?
Kevin first let me say thanks for making it possibe to play Zork: GI. Now for my issue, I installed the game and your patch manually. I folled the directions exactly, but I cant restore my saved game. I have read all of the post on this site and have seen that Meghan has the same problem. Perhaps she installed the game in Program Files but perhaps not because I made sure not to and am still having this problem. Please help. Thanks
@Phillip: Responded to via e-mail to begin troubleshooting.
Thank you so much for your ScummVM installation guide. I followed your directions and was delighted to find the white house on my screen again. But then I had a problem. I got all the way to Boos Miller, and was unable to get more than a single toast from him. After that he just sits silent or offers me more rye, no matter how many glasses I take. (Yes, I can successfully restore the game.)