Overview
The Spring 1999 24 Hours of ZZT contest was held on March 27th, 1999. The competition was hosted by HM, who had won the the previous 24HoZZT. Participants were given 24 hours to create a ZZT game which was in some way related to the topic of Fear. 18 entries were received, and presumably rated by HM and three other volunteers who took on the role of judge.
The original scores have been lost, with only the top three entries having been recorded on the Interactive Fantasies 24 hours of ZZT archive web page.
This competition marked the event moving from a twice-yearly to quarterly format.
Judges
- HM
- GChucky
- myth
- DarkMage
Scores
Click a heading in the tables below to sort by that field. Filename links will open the file the in the Museum's File Viewer. Title links will jump to the entry descriptions found later in the article. Authors and companies will lead to directories of other ZZT releases credited to them.
Official Results
Only limited information about the official results survives. Individual judges' scores/commentary are unavailable for this event.
Dr. Dos's Rankings
This contest is covered in volumes 13 through 16 of the 24 Hours To Go series. Each entry was ranked relative to one another on a tier list to provide alternative rankings to the missing official scores, as well as a modern perspective on the entries.
Hercules and Hydra's Scores
While the official results are lost, ZZTers Hercules and Hydra of Interactive Fantasies maintained their own personal scores for the contest's entries. These scores may better reflect how the games were received when they were new.
Entry Information
Attack Of The Evil Yellow Borders by butterwhore
It's a beautiful day in ZZT land! Until it suddenly isn't!
When the world suddenly turns yellow bordered and newbie-ish, it's up to you to fight your way to the source of the evil. The AOL corporation.
There's not a whole to this one. You shoot some bears and enter a building to touch a few objects and the pretty graphics are restored to their rightful place.
Attack of the ZZOwl by ZZBlue
ZZBlue, pushed over the edge after being called an owl one too many times goes on a rampage, starting with the then-IRC hangout of the ZZT community #darkdigital before attacking the rest of the world at large. You play as "Player" and have to stop the destruction. This mostly consists of fighting monsters, with a Sokoban puzzle for good measure.
The game is notable for being very much of its time. Players are required to shoot the members of the band Hanson as well as crossing a bridge by answering trivia questions about the movie ZZBlue was watching while making the game and what the current commercials for Old Navy were advertising.
It's capped off with some cute owl art as you do battle with ZZBlue.
🥇 Fear by Misteroo
Rob Tropicana suffers from nightmares which play out in a few engines and traditional gameplay sequences. Players begin by fending off a praying mantis invasion before, then have an RPG battle with the sun, before being hit with an AKWare Impromptu Quiz, demanding answers to impossible to know trivia. The game is capped off with another RPG encounter, against none other than Bob Dole.
A game that appeals due to its wide variety of gameplay styles and comical artwork.
Fear this shitty game by Masamune
After a brief backstory about the history warring tribes, players are told to disregard all of it and instead to take some ammo and kill everything they encounter.
A three board game with ruffians to shoot on the first board. A person to convince to not kill you, and artwork of "Fax Machine Head".
Fear! Dooom II! by Zeux
A sequel Zeux's entry from the previous contest, though there's no real connection between the two. You play as the "Nightmare Lord", entering the minds of your victims while they sleep, fighting off dream guardians, and then planting nightmares to torment your host. In addition to shooting, the game also features some puzzles and caps things off with an RPG battle.
Though the game sounds like it may be dark, the world is set against a bright sky for its background. Nothing too exciting here, but a playable and enjoyable enough game that offers some variety.
Fearrock by mtimhoff
A rogue scientist has attacked his former lab with one of the items they've been researching known as the Thoughtstone. This stone lets its holder enter people's mind where said scientist has inflicted them with waking nightmares. After most of the lab has been attacked, you discover the stone and must use its powers to save the scientists from their own fears.
Each scientist is dealing with something different. To rescue them, the player has to defeat killer droids, shoot down aircraft, and escape a city mid-bombing during World War II.
Some of the nightmares are quite difficult to get through, and figuring out where to go can also be an issue, so be careful!
IMPOSSIBLE MAZE FINAL: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION! ALL 4! by Lemmer
A junk entry consisting of four different mazes to choose from. All of the mazes consist of one board that loops on itself in all directions with no exit or anything else to be found within. Each maze adds more and more blinking elements as well, making the game quite painful to look at for the later mazes.
infestaphobia by coolzx
coolzx submits to the contest a new entry in his Infestation series, an action game where most of your opponents are ZZT's centipedes. This time, you play as Carl, who was unexpectedly arrested, taken a lab, then thrown in some underground tunnels with a gun and the entrance barricaded behind him. Fight your way through ten levels of 'pede-poppin action grabbing ammo and food to keep yourself alive.
The level design is very basic, requiring all enemies to be defeated before an exit door opens. With only one type of foe to deal with, the levels are rather samey, consisting of dark gray caverns with rough contours. The game suffers from bugs (pun not intended) towards the end, with a missing passage to a nasty looking boss fight against a monstrous centipede. That boss battle is also unwinnable, leading to the game really fizzling out.
There's some of coolzx's signature ZZT-gore art contained in the inaccessible ending for those who want to see a centipede burst from a man's chest.
🥈 Night Terror by Zenith Nadir
The player awakens in the center of an old mansion with no memory of how they got there. They do have a chaingun at least. It's quickly put to use as the mansion is overrun with zombies. You must find a way to escape the mansion by collecting several keys hidden throughout the building and its backyard graveyard.
The game relies on a single zombie enemy being repeated again and again across each room. Thanks to some not-too-tight health and ammo constraints, it plays well though it can be a bit repetitive.
Panophobe by Flatcoat Lab
A very incomplete entry. It consists of a single playable board where you can explore the player's home, examining its furnishings and exchanging insults with your brother.
phear: starring gunther t. maggot by yllek
Medal of Honor winner Gunther T. Maggot (an anthropomorphic maggot) returns home from his latest victory only to run in to "Phear", a being of who promises to bring him to a world of eternal despair. Next thing thing he knows, he awakens in a corpse filled room with a demon blocking the exit.
Players guide Gunther through three screens of battles with demons and Phear, done in RPG form using ZZT's message window as the interface. Gunther has a punch that always hits and a bash attack that does more damage but is harder to connect. The game ends up being unwinnable as enemies always hit and there's no way to restore health. Cheating to reach the final screen lets players fight Phear in the same manner.
The game is basically just its engine repeated a few times aside from a memorable drawing of Gunther wearing sunglasses in the introduction.
Pit of Darkness by JM
Ofas Marhuna, a psychiatrist living on a lunar colony is surprised one day by a knock at his door. There he discovers an ex-girlfriend named Karma who disappeared years ago. Something is clearly off with her, and she asks for your help, referring to herself as "we". The two board her ship and she explains how she discovered the secret to immortality and perhaps godhood itself. She has learned to create a universe of her own, but the people within it have begun to take over her body.
While it sounds very cool, the doctor/patient relationship here makes the protagonist out to be quite the creep, getting far too attached and falling in love with her while she has repeated breakdowns in front of him.
The game consists almost entirely of reading its text, with a few art boards to depict the characters and the things Karma has seen. Save for a strange diversion in which Ofas gets to argue with a robotic coffee maker. Definitely one of the weirder 24HoZZT games.
Sailor Moon by C_A
A Sailor Moon fan game that unlike the one in the previous contest, delivers a story that's suitable for the contest's topic. The villain of the week is Eyanima, whose powers inflict Usagi with living nightmares. Players transform into Sailor Moon and fight through a Sailor V arcade machine to confront the villain. Tuxedo Mask of course shows up during the final battle.
A pretty plausible piece of fan fiction! There's not a whole lot of game here, but the conflict and way the characters are depicted fits with the tone of the show.
🥉 Sedimental Worries by Viovis
In a post-apocalyptic future, Jarska Variosa works as a train detective, protecting cargo and maintaining the peace for the riders between Gee Gosh City and Hell, TX. When cargo suddenly goes missing, it's up to you to interrogate the passengers to find the culprit. The game is peak Viovis trippiness, with a surreal art style and most text being written on the boards themselves. The writing accentuates the atmosphere, resulting in a game that's much more about meeting strange characters than solving a mystery.
A game that exemplifies the kind of work Viovis was known for, and in an easy to digest format that can make it appealing even to those who don't typical mesh with it as much.
The Death of ZZT by Dragonlord
The player from all those ZZT games, known as ZZTMan here, arrives at Epic HQ and demands a raise from Tim Sweeney. Tim refuses, so a group of ZZTers band together to convince him to change his mind, with a few fighting him in individual RPG battles. The game then takes a strange turn with ZZTMan attempting to take his own life by jumping into a giant vat of blood. However, he awakens in a strange world where Tim is found on the verge of death. By collecting some ingredients to deliver a cure, Tim is saved and agrees to give ZZTMan his raise for saving his life.
Quite strange. It's fun to see the unique attacks of a few ZZTers during the RPG segment.
The Psychiatric Ward by Jay Anderson
You, the "leading ZZT programmer", have been brainwashed and thrown into a mental hospital against your will. During some immersion therapy in which you're forced to run through a maze of yellow walls, someone breaks into the maze to explain that "they" are keeping you here because you're a threat. You make a break for it, pilfering a gun and trying to find a way out.
This one is particularly noteworthy for its creative workaround to ZZT's inability to use #BIND with #ZAP SHOT for enemies, as shooting one enemy inflicts damage to all of them. By giving enemies two hit points, and allowing them #RESTORE SHOT, enemies seem to take a varying amount of shots instead. It works pretty well, at least for the small amounts of combat seen in the game.
When Newbies Attack by Blazer
A Resident Evil style game where players raid the Knew-B hideout to stop their plan to delete all the good ZZT games and replace them with bad ones. Players explore the hideout, shooting Knew-B members who get in the way of looting crates for supplies and throwing levers to open new areas. There's an RPG battle with a large "phrog" as well!
It's a simple action title, though it has one interesting element in the way you can can see enemies in nearby rooms that you aren't in that will disappear if you've been to those rooms and defeated the enemies. It's kind of neat, though a bit redundant in how it replicates the same rooms of the mansion across multiple boards rather than have them all be on one screen to begin with.
ZT-2 by Vampy
A sequel to an unreleased game. The "Brotherhood of the Eggplant", a villainous group that seeks to destroy the ZZT player and conquer the world, sets into motion their latest plan, to use place a fear-inducing virus into the water supply to spread panic among the people. The game has established rules of how hero and villain are to interact, and so a letter is written to the player to ensure that they have a fair chance in stopping their plans.
The goofy tone results in a large and humorous game that stands out quite nicely from the pack. Players solve adventure-game puzzles, get in a car chase, battle a giant octopus, attend a Star Wars convention, and shoot down an Eggplant airship. There's a lot of things to do in the game, and some memorable art such as the skid marks behind your car when you slam to a stop at the end of the chase and some flirtations with body-horror as the player is depicted as a large smiley face that has arms coming out of his cheeks when needed.
