♦ Livestream of 6 ZZT worlds included in “24 Hours of ZZT Summer 1998 [Night]” by Mono, Various (1998) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/24hoz-sum1998/] ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (1:44) “Night Hacker” by No1Dive, Knightt, and zzt98
• (42:30) “Night of Ruin” by kev carter
• (53:11) “Shadows of the Night” by Jeff Conroy and Viper
• (1:05:51) “Night of the Chickens” by Red
• (1:14:38) “Nightlife” by GoldenHog, Scribbit, and DarthVagrant
• (1:43:10) Personal Rankings
Starting with the unhinged "Night Hacker", a game about using your computer skills to harass folks with deadly computer viruses, and eventually taking on both Steve Case of AOL and Bill Gates of Microsoft. The game gives you choices of viruses to unleash and then lets you view the results. Were it just weird art boards of people being hit with cans of SPAM shooting out of their computers and being banished to the Town of ZZT, this would be endearing. The actual game eventually shifts over to some missions of taking up arms and shooting your way through corporate offices which is a little more offputting. The game uses an awful interface where one board links to all the scenes of the game, opening up doors depending on your choices, but eventually bugs out and stop working making navigating the back half of the game a pain. Even when it is working, it's very easy to miss a door suddenly vanishing leading to hoping the passage you don't remember entering is correct lest you have to zoom through a completed scene a 2nd time.
"Night of Ruin" revolves around stopping a group of hackers from launching American nukes upon the world. This one was a lot more fun than expected due to it taking place in what was then the far off future, which is now... *checks calendar* less than 3 weeks away at the time of writing.
A very paintstakingly coded computer monitor presents the story, with you setting out to stop the group. One plane ticket to England later and you're at their base trying to use some device to interfere. The game is definitely rushed, and quickly cuts to credits. Also the only ending coded into the game is the one where you fail, so mark your calendars, and enjoy these last few days.
"Shadows of the Night" was streamed back in April as the game was the only one missing from the collection of entries. Shadow creatures from the moon are going to take over and rapidly multiply once the sun rises. You have to figure out how to stop them. This involves finding $500 in your bathroom garbage can and spending the money at the general store to purchase a nuke to launch at the moon. There's not much to this one, but the presentation isn't half bad. You can feel the squeeze the time limit put on this one.
Red's "Night of the Chickens" gets silly with it. A farmer's land is invaded by a UFO full of chickens who reveal that their species crash landed on Earth ages ago, and now they're here for revenge at how they've been treated. You get to go around the farm beating up chickens in a simple pop-up operated RPG battle system as you collect new weapons and tools to access new areas. Eventually you board the ship and fight the leader. Cute idea, though very repetitive.
"Nightlife" caps things off with a solid finale. As a Conan O'Brien fan, you've become a night owl staying up to the watch his talk show, which the local NBC station doesn't air at the right time, requriging you to stay up until 4:00 in the morning! Loaded with caffeine, you explore the town and what's open at that hour, mostly getting into trouble harassing employees at the "Vomit Pancake House". Things go awry when you end up in a warehouse filled with dead bodies (explaining why your friends have gone missing, something not brought up prior). Until you end up on planet Prennishipullishious where Mr. O'Brien, Andy Richter, and Max Weinberg reside and are treated as gods. You run a few errands on Conan's behalf. Very much an exploratory game filled with with locations and characters made all the better thanks to some comedic writing.
And lastly, my finalized personal rankings.
Overall, it's no wonder why this first 24 Hours of ZZT became a tradition for years. There were some really great games here with City of the Stupid, Mission: Break and Enter, and Dreamling. A number of entries were enjoyable and unique, and even the half-finished games felt like they had solid groundwork that could have been more memorable if the authors had a little more time.
♦ Play these worlds directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/24hoz-sum1998/
♦ Originally streamed on July 20th, 2025 ♦
