♦ Livestream Contents
“24 Hours of ZZT Summer 1999 [Space]” by Misteroo, Various (1999) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/24hoz-sum1999/]
(5:57) “Empty Space!!!” by X
(17:55) “Void” by JM
(39:34) “Last Hope” by Smiley13
(55:30) “Stupid RPG Episode 2” by Knightt (not played)
(1:01:22) “Space! The Polaris Murders” by Fishfood
(1:23:37) “¡Blaughelm!” by AKNeutron
(1:50:38) Personal Rankings
"Empty Space" goes for a newbie-style game where the space isn't "outer"! A few boards of floodfilled enemies in otherwise blank rooms get players jogging to the next screen. Luckily the game isn't content to just recreate bad ZZT design, and has its share of cute no-STK art. If you've ever wanted to see the ZZT player emerge from a toilet, this is your game.
"Void" is a prequel to the previous contests "Pit of Darkness", aka the game where you play as an unintentionally creepy psychologist for a girl. The backstory provided here makes that game's romance slightly more palatable (at least it's not entirely out of nowhere now). You play as Karma, who gets exiled from her planet for awhile and then starts hearing voices in her head telling her that she's been chosen. An annoyingly lengthy dark cave maze is about all you get for gameplay, but the game is spared a miserable score by having some nice looking artwork.
"Last Hope" gives us some much needed action. You play as the excellently-named Chris Phion. Your ship's computer, JAL, has gone rogue and is planning to crash(?) into the Earth and destroy the planet! You need to disable various components to stall for time and stop the computer. This game has a running clock that persists between boards giving the game a real frantic energy. You'll play mastermind, stop some meters, and do some work on the hull. Sadly, a missing passage makes the game unwinnable.
"Stupid RPG" is the first of several entries in this competition that don't get the benefit of being streamed. Sorry pal, you named one of the main characters F**nuts. We're able to flip through the boards and take a look at this crystal collecting game that needs more work than a name change to make it stream friendly. A game of its era to be sure.
"Space! The Polaris Murders" deals with a detective's efforts to discover who murdered a number of scientists on the yet to be launched Polaris space station. Investigate some crime scenes, catch some irregularlities, interview persons of interest. It's a pretty neat little crime solving puzzle game, though it can be hard to figure out where you need to go at any given moment. It too runs into bugs that have to be worked around to complete it, but this is an ambitious and unique game that's my favorite so far!
Lastly, "¡Blaughelm!" gives us that iconic AKWare energy, with a weird comedy filled with nonsense and gratuitious violence. It's a more palatable if still edgy game from the era where an unfortunate gerbil does not make it through to the end. Due a malfunction, you're released from cryostasis early to fix some problems abord the ship. This means solving puzzles like getting past hot doors via a frozen Kool-Aid manm, escaping the wrath of a "cerebral chansey" (the Pokemon?), or blowing things up with difficult to procure explosives. Also a lot of people exploding in space. Probably pretty funny in 1999 at least!
And as is tradition, some personal rankings, though in this case we actually have a number of the original scores!
♦ Play these worlds in your browser
https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/24hoz-sum1999/
♦ Streamed Feb 1st, 2026
