One of my favorite DOS games from the mid-1990s was Return to Zork. It was a bold departure from the purely text-based Zork games of old, with very nice VGA graphics and a point-and-click interface for interacting with the game’s world. My warm sentiment was not quite shared by my friends at the time, though. Professional critics also gave it mixed reviews, and with good reason.
Let’s just say I love this game more than it deserves. The biggest downfall of the game is the puzzles themselves which are woven through the story of the game: they are needlessly convoluted, and often frustratingly random. Many of the puzzles require plain trial and error, seeing if any of the items in your inventory have an effect on your current surroundings. Some inventory items required to complete the game are only available at the very beginning, but if they are not obtained, the game still continues nearly to the end, until you realize that you needed the item all along, and can only obtain it by restarting the whole game. It was hardly possible to complete the game without a printed guide or walkthrough.
And yet, something about the quaintness of the game’s graphics, the corniness of the acting and dialogue, and the genuine technical impressiveness of the game’s engine makes me feel relaxed and at home in the Great Underground Empire. When not engaging with the game’s puzzles, it allows you to stroll freely through the environment in an open-ended way, which I recommend.
When I played the game in the 90s, I recall wanting to “mod” the game, in the sense of tweaking the graphics and sound (e.g. drawing graffiti on the walls of the buildings, inserting myself as one of the characters, and so on), or maybe even changing the script and the outcomes of certain actions.
Well, better late than never:
Now that we can will software into existence, here is a complete toolkit for unpacking all the assets of Return to Zork! Once unpacked, all of the graphics become PNG files, and all of the sounds become WAV files, editable as much as you like. When finished, the toolkit lets you re-pack everything, magically allowing the game to become playable with your new assets!
Look at the README in the repo for a complete breakdown of all the file formats and how they are packaged, as well as complete instructions for unpacking and rebuilding the game.
The end result? Here is me “standing in” for the character of Moadikum Moodock, the arms dealer who teaches the Player character how to play the mini-game of Survivor, vitally important for defeating the final boss Morphius:
Sorry you had to see that; it’s just a weird way in which I’ve always wanted to immerse myself in this game. No offense meant to the actor who actually portrayed Moodock (Ernie Lively, RIP) (yes, he was the father of Blake Lively!). This is meant purely as an homage, a love letter, to such a memorable character. His delivery of the line “Pull up a chair, and I’ll teach it to you!” is something I still quote to this day.
Care to try it yourself? ‘Course you do!