Return to Zork (1993) FMV game trailer

You are standing behind the white house. There is something in the mailbox. A video message from a wizard informing you that you are the sweepstakes winner to the Valley of the Sparrows... right now, by magic flight. Upon arriving at this mysterious place however, not everything is as it should be. There's nobody to meet you and those who you do come across don't seem to have any knowledge about a sweepstakes. It looks like this is a private vacation and you'll need to find your own way through this land.

Return to Zork is a 1st person adventure game using video, and the revival of the famous Zork series by Activation. Similar to Myst in interface, you must rotate your viewpoint to discover new areas and uncover items that can be used or picked up. Various characters will be met along the way and spoken to via a system of dialog choices.

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Gaming

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• Return
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• zork

[bobmortock]

Hollywood = the older kid from the Wonder Years?

[fmvgamer2010]

@bobmortock I would guess so but from the credits , the guy who played Flash Gordon in the classic 80s movie was also in this ?

[YouthFreedomFighters]

So what is the technology level in Zork? I always thought it was arthurian level of technology but with some of the scenes in this game, its shown to be more advanced.

[halo120]

If I like, that would mean I sort of appreciate seeing this video because I really don't like it. But if I choose dislike, I may make this guy look bad for something he didn't make. D'ahhhh! Decisions. @@

[Slikhedgehog]

Thumbs up if Kotaku brought you here!

Also thumbs up to a great under-appreciated but humorous adventure.

[NitekMuscle]

Set pieces such as the Selenetic Age, Channelwood Age and Myst Island itself are far superiorly rendered than RTZ's Whispering Woods, chunky-looking West Shanbar or even Canuck's Island. Activision should have been embarrassed!

[koolkitty8989]

@NitekMuscle

Stuttery??? (the floppy disk version maybe -which seems to be in the video above, but not the CD game on a decent multimedia PC) Crappy VGA Graphics? WTF... Myst was VGA too, similar image quality (if not worse compression in some cases).

And as for fans, I'm sure most were far more disappointed with Nemisis (a far better game on it's own, but not really a Zork game at all, not nearly enough humor or inside refrences, satire etc). Grand Inquisitor beats all of that though.

[mikillero]

@NitekMuscle Love myst...

[NitekMuscle]

I bet the Zork purists were rather disappointed when Return to Zork made its August '93 debut, with its laughable VGA graphics and 'stuttery' full motion video. Myst, which had to have been made with a much smaller production budget, simply trounces this game on a graphical level.

It's okay, RTZ still has nostalgic value to me.