Okay. Well, hmmm. This is a new one.
Normally, December 31st means publishing whatever is left in the queue to have a nice clean start for the new year. This time, that's not happening! Out of nowhere just a few days ago WiL suddenly began uploading all kinds of files from about twenty-five years ago, unleashing thirty-three new finds with no warning. Well, as much as like a tidy queue, I know the realities of saying "excuse me, would you mind waiting a few days before uploading all this stuff?" The mood to do this kind of digging through old files and enter all this data on the upload form isn't one that strikes people very often. To ask for a delay of a week is as good as asking for a delay of another few years.
But that does bring into question how to approach it all! The reason there's been an internal queue of unseen old worlds has been so they can be streamed and get some attention drawn to them rather than just uploading hundreds of worlds and grinding away at publishing them with only minimal attention as to what they are, and why they might be of interest. So, the plan is for these games to supplement the last few games on that internal queue to make sure they too get seen. Looking at the titles and making connections to some of WiL's other games, I think there's going to be a lot of interesting material in here, and the end of the Wildcard stream has been staved for a bit. If anything, they'll be WiL-dcard streams, with his uploads now surpassing what's in the unpreserved queue.
Which means this oversized end of year pack gets to have what you'd expect: recently streamed games about killing Barney, being Yoshi, and turning a successful Saturday Night Live bit into a cartoon and then into a ZZT world. Then some end of year material in the form of a lovely collection of art by PogeSoft. Lastly, a few of WiL's uploads that at a glance don't necessarily need a stream, old utilities, and two variations on existing worlds. (...Well, maybe APNDA would make for an odd stream. We'll see.)
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“The Pink Pogie Club” by PogeSoft (2024)
PogeSoft returns with an assorted art compilation for the year's end. Featuring cats, mecha, landscapes, memes, and more. As well as some loving memorials to a number of good old cats who are unable to join us in 2025. Best viewed in an editor or Museum file viewer with blinking disabled!
“1 Object Fireplace” by Dr. Dos (2024)
A gag game for a gimmicky Christmas live stream. Paying homage to Yenrab's famous 1 Object Fire, this fireplace loops the same animation with some more holiday-aligned set dressing.
“Spin Gun: The Game! (v1.0)” by LtDeMiz, LtJgRemlk
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A reverse shooting gallery where you are the target. Escape some mean boards with lots of spinning guns and star throwing tigers.
“ZZTurbo Quest Pak” by ZZTurbo (1995)
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Two single board adventures in one! "Mystery Forest" has you fight your way to a cave and then to a clearing to claim a magical sword. "Crazy Zoo" has you go to a zoo filled with dangerous creatures and shoot them with reckless abandon. One of these concepts sounds a lot more appealing than the other...
“Motor World Wide Racing” by Apollo13a (1997)
The first of two Frogware titles. A love of racing with little idea how to adapt that to ZZT in terms of gameplay. While there's little to do, it does feature a number of cute art boards depicting various vehicles.
“Dale Earnhardt's Nascar Racing 2 (v1.0)” by Apollo13a (1997)
The second Frogware game recreates a number of race tracks in ZZT form, but still doesn't have much actual racing. It too has some artwork as well as a bizarre "create a car" feature that really just lets you paint a vehicle a solid color.
“Ed Grimley in The Great Cowlick Rescue” (1997)
Ed Grimley was before my time, so going in all I know was that Barney the dinosaur was set to appear at some point. Little did I know I'd be playing a fan game of a Saturday Night Live sketch turned Saturday morning cartoon. This Ed Grimley character seems like a decent guy.
“Death To Barney 1” by Greg Gilbert
A far more traditional Barney-killing game. Fight through PBS studios (as always), then chase Barney down to Iceland, but don't get distracted by their many casinos!
“Death To Barney 2” by Greg Gilbert
The sequel follows a similar structure to the original, and now incorporates a full color palette via STK, but the love just doesn't seem to be there. This time it's off to China to defeat the dinosaur once and for all.
“Yoshi's Quest” by ThePiper (1999)
Nothing but love for this dinosaur. Yoshi's latest adventure in the ZZT canon has him dealing with... uh, "Wizzo Boser". Travel through some colorful levels in faux-platformer style, at least until the number of disconnected boards and frustratingly hidden mandatory secrets brings this incomplete adventure to an early halt.
“Darkness (Unfinished)” by Darren Hewer (1998)
Huh, speaking of Yenrab. Friend of the Museum, Darren Hewer of DOSGames.com dug up this old barely started game of his from 1998. Yenrab of course appears on a title screen as was legally mandated back then. Beyond that, it's a single board (in two worlds) which later morphed into MiniDarkness for MegaZeux.
“ZBoard1” by Atrocity (2001)
Program Description
A utility that reads the number of boards attached to a ZZT file and sets the board # in the world header to that number of boards. Useful for circumstances where someone used a binary copy to append .BRD files to a ZZT world and wants that world to still work properly.
A simple DOS utility that takes a ZZT world and updates its board count value to match the number of boards the world actually contains. Intended to be ran after combining .BRD files via console to add them in to a ZZT world without having to constantly run through the process of typing in board file names. Could be a useful workflow in 2001 if you have odds and ends to combine!
“APNDA” by Anthony Testa, kev-san, WiL (2000)
Okay, now this one really caught my eye. A rewriting of kev-san's Freedom, a ZZT musical. Now loaded with early 2000s FishIg speak and vandalized boards. Art builds upon art. This version of the story has a lot more David Bowie as well, so you know it's good.
“Killer ZZT” by WiL (2000)
Program Description
I had trouble letting go of projects I liked but knew I would never finish. So I made a batch file that would help me kill those projects.
Utility or self-care? WiL's dedicated tool to say farewell to a world he no longer expected to finish, moving it into a few possible vaults rather than deleting them outright. I have yet to ask, but I wonder how many of these recent uploads were saved from destruction by this script...
“Newtris” by Masamune, WiL (2000)
Another file which immediately had my attention. For years I had heard that at one point there was an improved version of Masamune's ZTris, the first implementation of Tetris in ZZT*. I think this is what folks were talking about. While Masamune's original release clocks in with so few bytes of board memory to spare that it usually crashes ZZT on exit, WiL's cuts that size by more than half, with a 8082 byte implementation of the engine dated a year later. It makes use of the illusion bug to give the board a background for a nicer look as well! Also the controls move at cycle 1 rather than 3, thank goodness.
*Both this and Masa's original use triominoes rather than tetrominoes. It took until Drake Wilson's Preposterous Machines in 2009 until something one would truly call Tetris was done with vanilla ZZT.
“Play - A Collection of ZZT Music v1” by WiL
More historical novelties! A number of versions of WiL's ZZT music compilation world #Play are preserved, but this appears to be the very first version. It's more of a practical world for WiL to store music than something intended for players to listen to like later versions. Expect isolated boards with a single object containing a song and nothing more, except in the very few instances there's art meant to accompany a piece. Of the two tracks I listened to, both sounded brand new to me, so I suspect that those familiar with the 2001 v5 release will still find plenty of new tracks.
“Xaq's Very Mysterious Dungeon” by Xaq (1998)
Just an adorable little "my first adventure" game. A short dungeon, numerous appearances in game by the author, and a world where pretty much every object is alive and has a well defined role in life. Fun writing mixed with amateur design creates one of the better yellow-bordered titled worlds around.
“Xaq's Very Mysterious World” by Xaq (1998)
The sequel gets a lot more focus, while retaining the original's charm. This time some Greek letters are trying to take over the world and your job is to stop them. Which won't be easy given the size of the nuclear bomb they plan to detonate so close to your house! This one has more story and structure, plus a number of recurring characters.
“RPG” by RADICAL8
Lastly, RPG. King(?) Duncan commands you to defeat the dark ninja because he is evil. Then you head to town and shoot the guards to get inside. Then you break into a mansion and shoot the guards there. You shoot a lot of people as the hero in this one. It's a rather odd RPG experience of trying to figure out how to make progress in a town where nobody is much help. At least the dancers at the cafe are hot.
Ends on a hilarious cliffhanger as the author lost interest in ZZT and will now be making MegaZeux games. C'est la vie.
