Space Station ZZT

It's been awhile since I played anything decidedly old. So I thought I'd look for something from 1992 or so and see if anything stood out. And something did! It was Starbase ZZT, a 1992 release by Jerry Hsu and Jesse Chang. A game that I played as a kid and never beat, and then happened to stream back in 2017 where I was caught off guard at just how involved a game it was, and didn't finish it. Then, for whatever reason never returned for a part two?

Well now's a good a time as any-

Wait. Stop. Hold up. I was playing the sequel without ever playing the original? That just won't do. I try not to jump into things mid-series when possible. So instead, we're going even older, with the game's predecessor Space Station ZZT. How early are we going here? No idea! It's so old that the file is dated 1980! But if its sequel has a much more plausible date of April '92, then Space Station ZZT must be a real historical artifact. It's a game from ZZT's earliest days when there was little to look at for influence beyond the original games, and perhaps ZZT's Revenge. Hsu and Chang get to be pioneers here, with a world that's a real contender not only for the distinction of being the first space-themed ZZT world, but the origin point for several ideas that would be implemented again and again by ZZTers down the line.

And the two do a nice job of it! Space Station ZZT, outside of perhaps its very first two or three boards, shows a lot of consideration for how players navigate its spaces and how its authors can surprise players with something they haven't seen before. The biggest fault of Space Station ZZT is that it's a bit on the short side. What's there though, is really ambitious for such an early title. Expectations of the game being a Town-like in space are quickly replaced with a pleasant surprise of some unique puzzles in addition to a realization that the game was likely an inspiration for Code Red!

The title screen gets things off to an adorable start. A blinky little space station with a slowly drifting rocket ship. The art style is quick to be appreciated as the game's authors immediately show off what fun combinations of ASCII characters they can piece together. Half-block characters are used extensively in the lettering, setting the game apart from the usual blocky letters or minimalist use of ZZT's text characters to just type the name out. From the very title screen, the game puts it best foot forward, enticing players with its classy appearance, to assure players that this is no mere product of noodling around in the editor, but a high quality experience that awaits.

Yet the starting board threw me for a loop. There's a lot to parse out here. The "ZZT" arrangement of gems flashes, creatures in the corners shuffle about, and players find themselves in a tutorial on basic terrain? Early 90s ZZT games drawing from Town are a given. Demo? Not so much.

Fun fact: Demo also calls blink walls "blinkers".

The scroll within arm's reach looks to be the expected welcome to the game where players find out what's going on and what they'll need to do to win.

...or it's just a sentence about the self-explanatory walls.

The tutorial improves after a rough start. Transporters can be some of ZZT's more complex elements, and while the authors don't really provide any text, the live exercise gets the job done of teaching players the difference between a transporters whose opposite side is blocked versus one that's clear.

It also establishes the game's theme. This board isn't teaching you how ZZT works, it's teaching the in-game player what to expect aboard the space station. Space Station ZZT builds on the originals the same way most of the more fondly remembered early worlds do, establishing that players are in an environment that exists as more than just a playground for video game challenges.

In Town, you hunt purple keys because the game said you want to see the mysterious palace and simply have to accept it. In Space Station, there's going to be a story that puts you in a dangerous situation with the station being the only hope of survival. You aren't playing for keys or points. You're playing to see how you'll get home in one piece.

After grabbing the modest provisions and crossing the fake wall, this pair of objects had me curious. The ampersand sits motionless and unresponsive while he red circle alternates between an open and closed shape. Touching the circle provides another bit of tutorial text.

The first plaque to commemorate a historic event is earned right here. ZZT's first depiction of the Energizer bunny. While not exactly as commonplace as a certain other purple character (American) kids would recognize from TV in the 90s, this little rabbit shows up on the Mission: Enigma title, ensuring that the iconography of would remain known to ZZTers for decades to come.

The lifetime supply of energizers lets players take out a small crowd of monsters safely surrounded by forest to demonstrate their potency. The opposite corner provided some spinning guns to confirm invulnerability there as well, in addition to demonstrating how water can be shot over.

But the line of energizers has a more subtle effect of blocking a previously unblocked transporter near the slider/pusher test area, allowing for an easier exit than fighting a conveyor. The authors don't exactly hammer it into your head that this is important knowledge to have, but they definitely realized there's some power in terms of board design around the idea of changing how a transporter behaves. It will certainly be on the test later.

The actual story begins when you talk to mission coordinator Scott Carpenter, who provides the immediate goal of checking out the two passages as a form of training to prove that you're a "man with the right stuff". As soon as I saw that line, I knew Hsu and Chang understood how to capture the slightly silly tone of the original worlds. A line like that is all it takes to want to see what other odd text awaits.

The first training room may have yellow borders and giant centipedes, two classic newbie design tropes (one per author perhaps), but don't be misled into thinking the board won't have any appealing qualities. The implementation here is a novel challenge that felt fresh playing it in 2026, and would certainly be something new in 1991/1992.

There's not enough ammo to deal with the centipedes, so you're better off not shooting at all. Instead, you need to rely on the bombs, attempting to light one when you feel confident that the explosion will take out a significant number of segments, and ideally get the head to prevent the explosion from leading to more centipedes than you started with.

The centerpiece traps another centipede where there's a decision to be made. Either shoot open the wall, letting the centipede out intact, or use a bomb and be confident that you'll hit enough segments for it to worth setting the remaining creature loose in a suddenly open area.

Adding to the difficulty, there are a small number of invisible walls in the maze as well, meaning any escape route runs the risk that players suddenly themselves cornered.

When players acquire the key, the next decision is whether to open the door on the previous screen to complete training, or to be a little greedy and unlock the door here so that some gems and torches can be collected. The invisible walls prevent reaching the main treasure room without the key, so players can't be cheeky and get away with going the long way around while keeping their prize.

I liked the board, though I did not yet trust the game enough to open that door. Enough ZZTers new to craft have been unable to resist the urge to put players in an unwinnable situation out of "greed". I didn't want to take any chances until I could see for sure that it was okay to open it.

The centipede maze was a reasonable start to the game. It was at the very least more than your run of the mill maze with a centipede in it. Coming up with some original ways to combine ZZT's building blocks like this is a big part of Space Station's appeal. This will hardly be the only time a basic premise is made a little more interesting, and a little more memorable through the creative minds of Hsu and Chang.

The other training room is dark maze as well. The authors aren't out of ideas just yet. They just have some other neat ideas about mazes.

In this one, players are barred from shooting, turning navigation into a proto-survival horror experience where the narrow halls sometimes lead players directly into a lion, forcing them to high tail it out of there.

In the darkness, it's hard to realize how few lions there actually are. The low intelligence means they wander aimlessly so the player isn't likely to actually get bit if they're looking where they're going. It strikes a nice balance of danger without being oppressive. There aren't any dead ends here, so unless two lions manage to accidentally employ teamwork, it's very possible to take no damage.

All the while the board features gems embedded in the walls that can't be reached. These are mostly just a trick, as of the three bombs in total on the board, two are positioned in corners that prevent easy repositioning. One bomb has to be used to blast open access to the key, so there's not a whole lot of extra gems up for grabs. Plus, trying to nail the positioning of a bomb explosion in a dark room where the gems have to be just outside the blast radius to then be reached rather than destroyed in the explosion makes it a lot of effort for little benefit.

My one complaint with this one is that the initial paths make it extremely likely that you'll find the white key seconds after entering, making it very much possible to just leave and completely miss out on the much more interesting lion chase facet of the room entirely. For players that are okay with picking up some extra gems and ammo by exploring thoroughly, a much richer experience awaits them.

After training is completed, taking the passage that I assumed would lead to a space ship or reveal that you've been on the space station this entire time, reveals that so far, you've only seen a regular old Earth building (full of mazes, bunnies, and centipedes). Though I am fond of the extra bit of decor around the entrance. It's a lovely outdoor scene, set along a riverbank with some really nice pre-STK trees.

While Space Station ZZT has its share of techniques that it has reasonable claim of being the first to implement, using text for trees ain't one of them. It seems like everyone immediately realized the potential of using text to get additional colors of solid walls. The Crypt and The Great Co-Co Caves of Bratha are some of ZZT's earliest non-Sweeney worlds, both of which enhance colors with text. (Really, even the original worlds use it, though there it's always a part of a shape meant to highlight a sign rather than text rather than used to get a better color for a specific prop being drawn.) From basically the very first moment, ZZTers were lamenting their limited color choices, and coming up with anything they could to squeeze a bit more into the immediately-outdated program they were working with.

The sign puts to rest any fears that it'll be some time before you get to go into space, while the measurement of one "skidoodal" had me constantly mumbling the unit for the next several minutes. Classic ZZT charm right here.

One skidoodal later, and there was indeed a very sleek looking craft ready to launch to the stars. It's a fantastic little ship, and an excellent early example of ZZT art, with the authors taking the time to use half-block objects to build finer points on the fins and nose cone.

Alas, a new obstacle is introduced in raising 100 gems for the trip. The framing of it as a security deposit is hilarious. The funniest possible reason to be denied a journey to space.

There are a good number of gems in the training room, and while I'm sure I could have scrounged up a few more, 100 is too big of an ask. Instead, it's time to head into the opposite direction with its cute little bridge.

All the gems you could need are here on the Yellow Brick Road with its trio of Wizard of Oz references. The board name, "lions and tigers and bears", and even a transcription of the Yellow Brick Road song itself in #play form.

The music, clearly trying its best, is played at a very slow speed as if one were taking a moment to find the next note to play. It's recognizable at least!

This lovely board also has plenty going for it. It's all about managing your greed. Ammo is still a little bit tight. At least, it wouldn't be possible to use it all to clear all the enemies from the screen. Instead, players need to decide how much they're willing to spend for some extra gems.

But with some consideration to your movements, you can easily pick up well over a hundred gems while keeping the animals harmlessly penned in by those that remain. You can certainly take more if you desire, and will almost certainly do so if you accidentally misstep and free some creatures.

I was impressed by how this board played with expectations. It certainly looks like you're going to be fighting enemies in a typical action sequence, and the game won't punish you for doing so. However, once again the authors are interested in making boards which play on your expectations, allowing them to surprise you when the lions and tigers and bears do not have to be a threat whatsoever.

And now, significantly richer, I could afford the deposit and finally get into space.

...Not that I should expect a ZZT game this vintage to do such a thing, but I was a little let down that the launch sequence is kept entirely off screen. Buzz gets his deposit, and enters the ship, then the passage drops players off on this screen where they've already arrived at the space station. Perhaps it's a bit too early of a ZZT world to pine for fancy ASCII cinema.

This is where the game's story really gets underway. Unexpectedly, as soon as the game unpauses, Buzz jettisons away in an escape pod (with his "So long sucker" text in my screenshots annoyingly looking like it's printed text on the space station). Though certainly a jerk about getting the only escape pod to himself, this situation isn't a premeditated one.

A broken life support system has turned the ship into a death trap unfit for travel. Buzz took the escape pod, and now if you want to avoid death by starvation, you must board the Space Station ZZT and find a new way home.

I expected, as I imagine most players would, that the Space Station ZZT was going to be a high-tech base in the stars where perhaps things would go awry. I never once considered the idea that the station would already be abandoned and derelict. It's honestly kind of cooler that way, although ZZT's limited bright palette makes it difficult to convey it as particularly abandoned.

A second plaque is awarded to the game for the most distinguished honor of being the first ZZT game to let me press buttons on a spaceship that result in instantly dying. Now it's an all-timer.

Actually, it's even more fun when there's a countdown! Love the touch that Buzz is laughing in the distance as he watches you activate the warp drive on a damaged ship.

Whoops.

There's an amusing "far off future" date of 2010 for the station's founding date.

You're thrust right into the middle of an active and dangerous board upon boarding. Finally, we get to see what the space station part of the game is like, and the first impression is that it's gonna be a doozy.

Security systems immediately detect the player and zap them with an energy bolt which knocks off 80 health. This removes much of the extra health gotten from the gems collected on the Yellow Brick Road. At the time, I didn't even notice, as I was much more focused on trying to parse the board layout itself, a grid of blink walls with a bunch of transporters. It's a very visually busy scene that looks rather intimidating!

It's important to mention that the blink walls are set to blink as rapidly as possible. This prevents players from crossing unaided as the moment they step into the gap after a wall turns off, the wall will turn back on and zap them. This is the board's central mechanic, finding ways to get past the walls, reach the red key, and get to the exit.

The key itself is protected by ricochets, leading to a bit of guesswork to figure out how to gain access to it. Fortunately, the most likely candidate, the green music note at the bottom of the screen, is all it takes to open things up. Still, there's a bit of apprehension as you attempt to move through the board. Opening paths is committal, and a bad commitment could very well prevent the board from being completed. No hints are provided as to what might do something when interacted with, so players have to rely on their instincts and hope that Hsu and Chang's ideas match their own.

Sliders and boulders can be pushed to block blink walls and get into adjacent cells, or to move in front of transporters. Players need to remember their training, blocking transporters to be able to use them to travel more than a tile away. Actually making this into a gameplay mechanic, as opposed to a simple way to quickly zip across a finished board is pretty ahead of its time. Rerouting transporters as a puzzle element is something I associate with ZZT games several years down the line (particularly Sixteen Easy Pieces which will teach you all about it). This is another pioneering instance of a technique. The only thing remotely close to deliberately using dynamic transporter exits is this board from The Lost Crown, where clearing away a forest tile can prevent a shortcut from functioning. Though I'm not entirely sure even the author was considering that when the board was made.

The authors here even have a little robot that moves in a fixed L-shape which sometimes blocks one of the transporters. It's very clearly an intentional part of the board's design.

Other oddities within the cells include a pulsating orb in the top left which seemingly does nothing, but looking at the code causes the # character to move east a few steps to block another transporter. Getting to the orb requires you activate a pusher that will end up blocking its path. It's not required to get through the board, which is a nice change of pace for these early ZZT games where usually pushing the incorrect slider requires loading a save.

There's also a scroll in the center area warning you to just go for it rather than looking before you leap. This one is the mean trick as if you listen after reading and shoot the breakable wall, you'll be pinned between the southern blink wall's rays and an invisible wall. You can never fully trust an early ZZT game.

As much as I like the idea behind this board, the implementation makes it quite possible to only go through the top row and then down one cell to be able to reach the key. The presentation is great, the effort is there, but it winds up being too easy to ignore most of the board, reducing the sense that the board is a puzzle to be solved when so much of it ends up being extraneous.

Curiosity may not count much for me, but perhaps the authors were hoping other unknown objects like the little red characters would convince players to brave additional cells. Those little dots are bullets, which each provide two shots of ammo when collected. A meager enough bonus that I had no regrets when I confirmed what I missed out on later.

The ricochet destroying musical notes do so by changing them to gems, playing a little rendition of We're In The Money (YouTube / #PLAY) as it does so.

Figuring I'd take a peek at the board below first, I didn't expect a long narrow corridor with the bulk of the board dedicated to the stars outside. The robot here lives up to its murderous reputation much better than the one that just paced around in the blink walls. This one paces around and throws stars!

Curiously, it can't be killed, which means this board is rather pointless. Regardless of which side you enter from, you can't get through.

The other direction leads to a strange gem-filled room where all the money is protected by line walls. Some torches, and a few more of the game's very precious bullets are locked up behind a blue door.

Internally, Space Station ZZT has a very jumpy arrangement of boards whose order in the file hardly matches the route available to the player. This board is in fact the first after the title screen, the blink wall board on the station is the fourth, and yet board number three is the Yellow Brick Road back on Earth. From the player's perspective, none of this is visible. Seeing the list in the order that is in, suggests that the authors were making boards as they pleased, and worrying about stitching them together later.

You can kind of get a feel for this when you look at the way the board exits are structured. Nearly every screen uses the entire room, has a thin rectangular border, and just a tiny piece or two removed to add in the entrances and exits. You'll notice that the boards which feel most like they're set on a space station are the ones that don't use most of the space, as leftover room is filled with stars. When a board is filled to the borders, you could put it in Town without batting an eye as there's no room for sci-fi set dressing.

Though I will admit the chaos of the blink wall board feels believably space station thanks to the emphasis that the place has been abandoned and is filled with malfunctioning robots.

When a board looks like this, it feels devoid of any connection to the station. That doesn't stop it from being a good board, it just looks like one of the weaker screens of Nightmare. Those boulders better be crates filled with laser guns!

This is one of those light puzzles that requires the player to clear a path through the boulders to reach the exit. Another removed tile from the wall in the top right again suggests that there may be something more going on here. Don't be fooled. The exit is clearly labeled. That space is needed to be able to actually slide the top row out of the way in order to reach it.

There's always an underlying tension when moving through boards like this. One misstep could spell disaster in most screens like this. Here, it's much harder to gauge as the sheer size means surely there must be alternate routes not yet closed off, save for the last few pushes by the exit itself. I felt like I made mistakes, and felt like the game gave me a chance to make up for them.

With all the sliders scattered throughout the board, it's a lot harder to say for certain how much room for error there actually is. I consider this a good thing. Far better to tread carefully and make your choices decisively than to just plow through and reveal that there was no real resistance.

The exit brings players to another grid-focused board. This time it's a classic weave between a series of bouncing bullets board. It suffers from the same issue as the blink wall board where there's all these cells that players have no reason to bother with. This time there aren't every any objects or items to at least tempt players to delve in. There's genuinely no reason not to just go up through five bullets and then hug the wall to reach the end.

Those little red plus signs are everywhere when the board is entered. They're required to get the board underway as ZZT's default editor doesn't let you place bullets at all. These days, you could place them down and set a direction for them to move in, no code required, but I like the little ritual here. A board that's both silent and still that rapidly transforms itself into a cacophony of shooting and bouncing noises!

The reward being a key is fun as it's obviously gonna be useful, but this time the door hasn't been seen before the key, so what exactly it will be useful for, won't be known until it happens. Boards like these have to convince players to go for it now instead of coming back later, an easy sell in most cases, but sometimes you enter a room and simply nope your way right back out until you have no other options.