♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (2:10) “Insanity” by AnthonyThW (1995) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/insanity/]
Exploring the depths of Insansity, a bizarre text mode DOS game that looks like ZZT, but ain't ZZT.
Placed in a giant maze by a mad wizard, you are seeking the exit, which is no small task! The game is a sprawling series of chambers, sometimes just plain mazes, other times more artistic looking scenes like starry skies that you navigate like anything else. Throughout the maze are "riddles" from the Wizard that reveal information on what items do or how to get closer to your goal. Meanwhile, red fiends patrol the maze, hunting down the player. Bullets can be scavenged to defeat them, but they respawn fast.
That's all well and good, but the real highlight of the game are the times when the game goes into strange uh menus? The chocolate fiend feels like a bad AKWare Impromptu Quiz, asking players all about this character's real name, gender, what kind of chocolate they prefer, and what kind of message they want to deliver.
Later we find some magical helmets that really get into it, asking about the meaning of life, unlocking a magic box, and trying to learn some spells, and your answers require you to stop a rapidly moving cursor on the correct text. Try as I might I couldn't escape the sequence!
So we moved to the ZZT port, which has to take a number of liberties, but still feels recognizable enough as we go from one text mode game to another.
The ZZT game loses the elaborate menus, but lets us actually make progress much more easily! Turns out at one point you watch a baseball game. Then later get asked questions about what you saw. It's a lot less manic, even as far as weird ZZT games go, but still kind of fun to see what will happen next!
♦ Play this world directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/insanity/
♦ Originally streamed on December 12th, 2025 ♦
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