♦ Livestream of 7 ZZT worlds from the “24 Hours of ZZT Winter 1998 [History]” competition. [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/24hoz-win1998/]♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (1:49) “The History of Da Hood” by Tseng
• (6:20) “A Really BAD Game” by Zamros
• (16:17) “Carrot War” by Scribbit, Goldenhog
• (34:41) “Areocon” by Kev Vance
• (47:41) “The Dawn of Time” by gchucky
• (1:01:13) “Red Coats” by coolzx
• (1:19:53) Personal Rankings
Histories real and imagined in this somewhat improved edition of 24 Hours To Go!
Starting with "The History of Da Hood", in which Tseng bashes himself and calls himself lazy more than he presents any history of his Da Hood universe features in nearly all of his releases. Did you know? The mafia raided Area 51 and stole a spaceship that they then flew to Da Hood. Did you know? Aric was once shipwrecked. Then Master Walnut rants and the game ends on its 3rd non-title board. Not much in art, or story, or even information in this one. Though Tseng admits to only have 3 hours to work on the entry which explains a lot.
"A Really BAD Game" by Zamros tells the story of a child with an upcoming history test, and comes up with some great ways to organically add the word HISTORY to things. "The worst-looking food in history", "Those bugs are history", "This will be the biggest battle in history". Someone knows how to work a topic into a game. Eventually things get weird and you find yourself on a 19th century plantation (just like in your history textbook) where you do at least get to beat up the owner. Then it's off to 1980s Times Square until the game also suddenly ends. A bit buggy and maybe slightly uncomfortable in its presentation at times, but you actually do things and get a reasonable amount of game.
Scribbit and Goldenhog's "Carrot War" takes a smart approach to the topic of just making any old ZZT action game and framing it as something you dreamed of in a far future history class. The Carrot War is about price fixing according to the robo-teacher, but your dreams turn it into a battle against mutant carrots. It's a bit slow at first, with just a single enemy type and a number of same-y boards. Eventually things get more creative with some labs with more fun designs to shoot through, and interesting spaces like a room filled with carrots in suspended animation and eventually a giant tank with a giant mutant carrot inside. Pretty solid in the end. A bit more story or more interesting enemy designs could have made this one a real contender.
"Areocon" by Kev Vance ain't half bad either. A time rift sends damages your spaceship and sends you to the planet of Areocon for repairs. This planet's inhabitants famously destroyed themselves in a nuclear war, but when you land you discover that you've gone back in time and the big kaboom has yet to happen, but will soon enough! A race against the clock to get repairs and back to your own time before being caught in the middle of the devastation. Not a whole lot to do, but a very cool concept!
Chuck's "The Dawn of Time" is a half-serious attempt of telling the story of ZZT's history. So it starts with Tim Sweeney and other ZZTers (who would be young children at the time) working for Bill Gates in 1991. Tim makes ZZT. Bill kills him. Draco kills Bill. MOVING ON.
There's perhaps more accuracy in ZZT being put on Prodigy, and then people leaving for AOL, and ZZT companies forming and merging and having drama. This part seems believable at least. AOL catches on fire and the ZZTers flee to the world wide web where they congregate on IRC to this day (in 1998). Given how few surviving sources of info there are for the ZZT's community history, this one is kind of neat. The latter portions don't feel too inaccurate as far as who is around and what they're working on, but take its tale with a grain of salt perhaps...
"Redcoats" by coolzx makes a game out of the American revolution, with George Washington as the player. Battles are fought between the patriots and the British troops using an engine seen in coolzx's "Viking ZZT" game. The engine isn't very well tuned however, and a number of battles are unwinnable due to the vastly superior firing rate of the redcoats. You do get to push crates of tea into the Boston harbor though! It's also loaded with art that has just the right amount of crustiness to it to make it memorably weird. Were it winnable, this one would also be pretty great.
Lastly, some personal rankings of these games which are a step in the right direction compared to the first batch, but still feel weaker on average than the previous contest's games.
♦ Play these worlds directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/24hoz-win1998/
♦ Originally streamed on August 3rd, 2025 ♦
