Beyond Zork

Beyond Zork has the privilege of being the only stand alone, commercial release of a IIGS text adventure, to my knowledge. The Lost Treasures of Infocom arrived much later and included almost all of Infocom's older text adventures, playable from a rather capable interpreter. Unfortunately, just like the Lost Treasures, there are no graphics and worst still, no accompanying sound. If you're a die hard text adventure fan, which I have to admit I'm not, well, you might appreciate the fact they made a IIGS version. Though to be quite honest, I'm not sure why they bothered, when an 8-bit version of the game using 80 columns would have been more than sufficient for play on the IIGS. I'm fairly certain an Apple IIe/IIc version was also available.

The game itself? As Infocom bills it, an interactive fiction game. You take on the role of a lowly peasant, but you have big shoes to fill; the land of Quendor is without protection as mysteriously, all the wizards have disappeared leaving monsters to roam freely. Combining role playing elements, your character will evolve and you must groom yourself for the true task ahead of you, yet to be revealed.

One small thing to note: the game can be loaded from System 6, but it will affect the font used to display arrows and the map in the top right hand corner of the screen. It's odd that it does this, as the game uses Shaston, the font found in the IIGS ROM. Playing the game from the version of GS/OS on the disk image ensures no font problems.