♦ Livestream of 6 ZZT worlds. ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (2:51) "Spin Gun: The Game! (v1.0)" by LtDeMiz, LtJgRemlk [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/spingun(1)/]
• (19:36) "It Starts" by ZZTurbo (1996) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/itstarts/]
• (29:31) "ZZTurbo Quest Pak" by ZZTurbo (1995) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/zztpaksw(1)/]
• (38:29) "Motor World Wide Racing" by Apollo13a (1997) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/mwwr/]
• (49:14) "Dale Earnhardt's Nascar Racing 2 (v1.0)" by Apollo13a (1997) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/nascar2/]
• (1:07:04) "Xtopia5" by m0sh (2005) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/xtopia5/]
An assortment of all sorts of unpreserved worlds, with a focus on two games published by "Frogware".
Spin Gun is another reverse-shooting gallery where players need to dodge spinning guns and other hazards in order to make it to the exit. This means running past guns at point blank range hoping they opt to not fire, before entering a room that endlessly fills with star throwing tigers players need to race past before being overwhelmed due to a lack of ammo. It's also a great demonstration of how often stars can push things through walls.
It ends with a weird ZUTS-esque pusher system, but one that the player has to wait to arrive at their position in an otherwise empty room, really missing the point of offering players a ride. A weird little game.
"It Starts", which needs to be renamed to "ZZTurbo Ultimate Quest Pak" is a three board adventure of going into a cave to search for a missing archaeologist. That sounds like a nice thing to do, but the game points out that she's been in there for two years! Good luck finding her now.
You then get to fight through a little cave board filled with creatures and keys to collect before running into Grue, an evil wizard that wants to rule the world, but first plans to toy with you a bit and make you complete three trials. You don't get to do that though, as the game ends immediately after he brings up the idea. To be continued indeed.
The "ZZTurbo Quest Pak" seems similarly styled as if it might be a continuation, but is in fact a compilation of two single board adventures. In "Mystery Forest" you get lost in the woods and find a village. To escape you must find the mystical sword. Cute presentation for a single screen game with a little lake, cave, and sword centered in a sunbeam.
The other game is "Crazy Zoo" in which yet another ZZT player is banned from the zoo after shooting all the animals inside to steal the keys in their cages. Extra points for the killer plants that have to be navigated around rather than fought. Those points are then taken away for what I consider the world's worst elephant.
"Motor World Wide Racing" is the first of two Frogware games which up until now have only been mentioned in passing in ZZT magazines. However, if you're hoping for a fun racing title, these aren't really it. This one has a few cute drawings of cars, car interiors, and jet skis, but just a single race which consists of having the player outrun another smiley face object. It feels more like a foot race than anything.
"Dale Earnhardt's Nascar Racing 2" builds on the previous game a little, but still isn't really anything playable. You get a number of tracks, and this time there is a very simple engine to move a car around (though it has no momentum so you stop the moment you stop pressing buttons), but there's no timer, lap system, opponent, or anything to else to give it more purpose than seeing a car move. An inaccessible board has a race with an opponent though they move significantly slower than you and there's still no victory condition implemented.
Lastly, "Xtopia5" which is the first time a world purposely rejected from z2's archives has been recovered. With z2 being effectively the sole ZZT site to upload to for a decade and a half (with momentary exceptions) anything deleted due to not meeting quality standards was pretty much lost forever! Now we can see the games THEY don't want you to see.
Unsurprisingly, it's not a high quality world. You board a space ship for the planet Xtopia 5. It crashes. You run and gun some aliens (ZZT creatures) and steal a ship back to Earth. It's one of many first worlds by authors who needed time to develop their skills, but at least in the AOL era your game would actually be seen by others. So it's no shock to learn that the author of this game did not publish anything else after being rejected. Well, at least there's one survivor now.
♦ Play these worlds directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/spingun(1)/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/itstarts/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/zztpaksw(1)/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/mwwr/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/nascar2/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/xtopia5/
♦ Originally streamed on December 15th, 2024 ♦
