While Beth Daggert's ZZT Newsletters and Epic MegaGames brought us a look at the beginning of ZZT's history today's artifacts provide tremendous insights into another ill-preserved era: The mid 1990s.
Brought to us as a donation from DeadPhrog's own archives, the NL was a ZZT and MegaZeux focused newsletter ran by a small staff that accepted guest contributions. It also seems to have found a good bit of success. Starting in late 1994 and continuing through what looks to be 1997 it's a treasure trove of details about the various companies, games, and changes the ZZT and MZX communities were going through.
Reading them all from beginning to end, what stuck out most to me is just how much of an impact MZX had on the ZZT scene in its day. The 1996 issues all proclaim the year to be "The Year of MegaZeux" and from the articles within, it's a fair label! While ZZT games hardly stopped, there's a recurring theory that the ZZTers who were capable authors were all moving to MZX where ZZT's limits have always been significantly relaxed in comparison. At the same time ZZT reviews have a strong focus on the "garbage" games. Constant "F minus" grades are passed out which as harsh as they are, don't really come off as surprising given some of the titles reviewed. The rule of thumb is that because of MegaZeux's higher barrier to entry, the people making bad ZZT games won't be able to make MegaZeux games at all.
Ironically however because of the vastly widened scopes of MegaZeux projects, the challenge of actually finishing one becomes an issue as well with newsletters talking about how it seems that there are so few games to review while everybody is thirty percent complete with their own games. You can see progress updates mentioning frequent restarts, desperate calls for musicians, and confessions of having done too much work to change gameplay mechanics that are already dated. MegaZeux itself is getting regular updates allowing more functionality within its Robotic language and expanding and optimizing its sound system. The ever increasing power leads to a case where everybody's stunning technical feats stop being impressive before release.
On occasion, a well-made ZZT world does get noticed. Matt William's Coolness gets a lot of well-deserved attention and shows that despite what some are thinking, ZZT isn't dead yet. (Little do the staff know that a few them will be on the Museum of ZZT's Discord server twenty-five years later.) Classic games like Yapok Sundria get reviews about nearly giving up on the game immediately due to a yellow bordered starting room. A not yet united ZZT community spread across AOL, Prodigy, CompuServe, and the greater Internet mean that other ZZT hits of 1996 including Nightmare and Ned the Knight go entirely unnoticed.
The ZZT community on AOL is shown to have plenty of issues itself. Early issues ask readers to email AOL about the creation of a dedicated ZZT/MZX forum as right now it's lumped in with PC gaming (going by the "source" fields of where to download most reviewed games). Later on uploads are incredibly backed up with ZZTers trying to find ways to actually get their games out there, asking people to email them for copies, or celebrating AOL accounts being given a small amount of personal FTP space to host their own files. These delays probably weren't doing any of the more skilled ZZTers releasing quality titles that year any favors.
And of course, there's plenty of humor in the ways which it's dated if you just want a few quick laughs. Please upload a version of your MegaZeux worlds without any of the sound files, it makes the downloads take significantly longer and not everybody has a Sound Blaster after all! One issue contains a list of game design sins with one of the editors constantly butting in with personal asides in disagreement. Every game started seems to be twice the size of the biggest game before it. There's a whole article about beta testing AOL for Windows 95 and how it compares to the Windows 3.1 version. Ambitious high schoolers begin work on first person shooters, promising to make good computer art and not tacky "photographs of the dev team in costumes instead of REAL actors", digging into Rise of the Triad. And they're not "first person shooters" or even "Doom clones", but "Corridor games". Some of the writing in the numerous reviews can be quite amusing as well, sometimes even more-so knowing what kind of careers some of them went on to have working with mainstream gaming news outlets.
As a side note, these newsletters contain plenty of ASCII art headers and as such are displayed with a Code Page 437 font by default for greater accuracy as to what these newsletters were intended to look like. However, there's a good reason why we cp437 isn't the monospace font any longer. On modern displays it can be quite rough on the eyes and as such these articles all have a font selection at the top allowing you change to something that still displays the ASCII art, just not quite as seamlessly while being a lot less harsh to stare at for prolonged periods.
All The Issues
- The NL - Issues 1-4
- The NL - Volume 2 Issue 1
- The NL - Volume 2 Issue 2
- The NL - Volume 2 Issue 3 (The Issue for Windows)
- The NL - Volume 2 Issue 4 (The Thanksgiving and Christmas Special)
- The NL - Volume 3 Issue 1 (The happy NL Year issue)
- The NL - Volume 3 Issue 2 (The Unavailing Issue)
- The NL - Volume 3 Issue 3 (The Mega-PACKED Issue)
- The NL - Volume 3 Issue 4 (Use to be the April Fool's Issue)
- The NL - Volume 3 Issue 5 (The May Issue)
- The NL - Volume 3 Issue 6 (The Issue to Summer Vacation)
- The NL - Volume 3 Issue 7 (The Dull Issue)
- The NL - Volume 3 Issue 8 (The Summer Wrap-Up Issue)
- The NL - Volume 3 Issue 9 (The School's Back Issue)
- The NL - Volume 3 Issue 10 (The Double Issue (Not.))
- The NL - Volume 3 Issue 11 (The Christmas Issue)
- The NL - Volume 4 Issue 4 (The Spring Issue)
- The NL - Volume 5 Issue 1 (From the Ashes)
Alternatively, you may choose to download a zip containing the raw text files.
The NL Issue Guide
Lucky for us, while we don't have the original original releases, we have this convenient compilation that was released for folks who missed out on the original run. The four-in-one format of this makes it significantly longer than any of the other sub-articles in this collection.
Issue #1
- An invitation to chat about advanced ZZT programming
- ZZT Reviews by Chris Kohler:
- School Sucks 7
- One Day At School
- DilloLand
- MegaWorld
- Mission: Enigma
- Dungeons of MegaZeux
- MegaZeux Beginner's Help by Herbie Piland
- Mission: Enigma review by Charlie Goetzman
Issue #2
- MZX Previews
- MZX Kombat
- Legend of Zelda: Star Quest
- Earthworm Jim-MZX
- So You want to Be a Super Hero 4
- Wiseman 3
- Yoshi 1 MZX
- ZZT Reviews by Chris Kohler:
- MZX: The first generation of 3rd party games
- Mission: Enigma - The Unofficial Walkthrough by Chris Kohler
- Editor's Word - Asking AOL for a ZZT/MZX forum
- MZX Character Editing by Herbie Piland
- "Shorthand symbols" (as in text based smiley faces like :) and :(, a novel new concept - Dos)
Issue #3
- A message from the Head of Staff
- MeGa ZeUx! by NL Clint
- Best Games and Tools Nominations and Winners
- MZX Previews (Same as the previous issue - Dos)
Issue #4
- The Good, The Bad, and The Yellow Bordered ZZT Game Reviews by Chris Kohler
- Space Fighter 2000
- X-Men
- Coliseum
- Dufus In Space
- Dungeons of Doom*
- Star Wars: Luke's Missions
- Probation Center of Hell
- Wizrobe
- Time Warpers II
- Duck Tales
- ZZT Learn
- To Cheat? Or Not To Cheat? by Matt Perrotti
- How *KongoSoft* Began by MC DOS 15
- *KongoSoft* News Update by MC DOS 15
- CardShark Productions Update #3 by Matt Perrotti
- YoshiSoft Update by Chris Kohler
- MZX Cheat Codes
* There's not enough information here to say if this is Dungeons of Doom, Dungeon of Doom, or something else entirely.
"Games to look out for" is a list of games to avoid. "Games to get" is a list of games to look out for so you can get them.
For some extreme 90s pop culture, check out the desperate puns of the Batman Forever parody Batman foreclosure preview. They are some impressive stretches.
- HOTwired by Kev Vance
- Lamenting the subpar quality of most ZZT releases these days
- Longest delays
- Games to look out for
- Star Wars A New Hope
- Calvin and Hobbes by Gork
- Super Adventure
- Games to get
- The Magic Journey
- Mission Clean Room
- Coming soon to your computer
- MetaMan
- Batman Foreclosure
- Stuff that goes *BELCH* in the night (the lighter side of ZZT)
- Longest Delays by NL KSDOS
- The Good, The Bad, and the Yellow Bordered ZZT/MZX Reviews by Chris Kohler
- Mission: Renaissance
- NoPoint
- Jungle Mack
- Joe And The Wandering Targets
- Tron
- MegaZeux Previews
- PacMan
- Mission: Enigma - The Unofficial Walkthrough by Chris Kohler
- Preview of Vol. 2 Issue 2 of NL
- Future Pack-In of of Vol. 2 Issue 3 of NL
This is the issue mentioned in the introduction where Yapok-Sundria is almost casually discarded because of a yellow border when the game would go on to have a legacy as a ZZT classic.
- Walkthrough for Chris part 2
- Ultraware Previews by Pfantumb
- The Champ
- Roger Star In: Ghost Station (Working Title)
- Secret MZX Project Delayed One More Time by NL KSDOS
- The Critic Corner by NL KSDOS
- The Simpsons
- Tommy Vs. Goldar
- Parker World
- Yoshi 4
- The Fred Series Gold & Sivion V2.00g
- The Good, The Bad, and the Yellow Bordered ZZT Reviews by Chris Kohler
- Yapok-Sundria*
- Fantastic Four
- Heli
- Pressman
- Rings of Power
- Simpsons Preview
* The reviewed version of Yapok-Sundria implies an earlier version that has yellow borders on the starting board. The earliest preserved version has them removed and potentially other more substantial changes.
ZZT is dying! And it's all MegaZeux's fault with its "ice" and its "lava" and its "player that changes appearance based on the direction they're facing".
- ZZT's current condition: CRITICAL by DeadPhrog
- The Critic Corner by NL KSDOS
- The School Blues by NL KSDOS
- The Good, The Bad, and the Yellow Bordered ZZT Reviews by Chris Kohler
- No Point 2: The Pointless Plague
- Star Wars: The Empire has gas
- Superkid
- Simpsons
- Bobo
- NL NeWZ by DeadPhrog
- A chat with STRIKESOFT
- Upcoming titles from SHATTERED PERSPECTIVES
- BOX BOSS
- LifeSpan
- Immortal Animal Combat
- Cronus: Book One: DreamZ
- Other Upcoming titles
- A new Yoshi MZX side-scroller
- A new RPG
- Ultra ZZT
- MegaZeux 2.03 released
- The Critic Corner by NL KSDOS
Some community drama in this one where Zzturbo/Zpower defends their games after receiving poor scores while the NL staff mentions boards being stolen from other ZZT worlds. There's a pretty generic profile on Janson that reveals information like "enjoys RPG games" and "plays Magic The Gathering".
- HOTWired by Kev Vance
- Controversy - Zzturbo/Zpower accused of making games aren't good and stealing boards
- Alexis Janson Profile
- SHATTERED PERSPECTIVES GAMES Updates by DeadPhrog
- Learning C++
- ZZTorture
- Conspiracy
- The Critic Corner by E. CyberBRO
- Code White
- Mobius
- The Clones of ZZT
- Phoenix Power Magazine #1
- Megasoft Magazine #2
- Mad Magazine
Some non-first-hand information from Alexis Janson about where to get her ZZT games, retiring from making more ZZT games, the MegaZeux contest, and why ZZT board importing was removed from newer releases of MegaZeux.
On the sad side of archiving, this issue came with a preview for Link's Chaotic Adventure, which while preserved on DigitalMZX, E. CyberBRO states that the preview has 21 boards compared to the current unfinished, unreleased, and unpreserved version with 105!
- HOTwired by Kev Vance
- Vacationing in Florida
- Jeuxjeux MZX clone
- ZZT Revolution
- Alexis Janson discusses MegaZeux
- Games to look out for
- Worse ZZT
- Games to get
- About Link's Chaotic Adventure by E. CyberBRO
- ZZT &MZX News Monthly by Owcp
- ZZT/MZX Reviews
- Gaming Gossip
- Ads!!!
- Nl NeWz by DeadPhrog
- Kev Vance's SMARTSOFT Update
- THKirk's White Tiger Games update
- DeadPhrog's SHATTERED PERSPECTIVE GAMES update
- The Critic Corner by E. CyberBRO
The NL NeWz brings up a sudden talent drain happening on the ZZT side of things. The more skilled authors are moving on to making MegaZeux games with significantly relaxed limitations, leaving only more inexperienced and unrefined ZZTers making poor games. It's been a considerable theme throughout these newsletters, with the vast majority of ZZT game reviews being games that receive very poor marks.
There are also plans for an overly elaborate MegaZeux awards show that will happen as a MegaZeux world with the plan being for nominees to submit speeches for their character to read if they win, or remarks for if they lose. It sounds elaborate and like a lot of work for other people, let alone the compiler. An awards show done in-engine, that'd be the day.
The reviews include a review for Caverns of Zeux that complain that it's too ZZT like and shows little command of the language despite being made by the person who created the language. It rules.
- COOLNESS preview by Comthought
- Pfantumb's new company Ultraware
- Outpost Software Updates
- New Releases
- Upcoming Games
- The Five-Card Hero (Super Chuck version 6.3)
- Ski City - The Slopes of Yolanchi
- ADVenture 3 - A True Hero
- Starfleet Academy
- White Tiger Games update by THKirk
- NL NeWz by DeadPhrog
- The Abandonment of ZZT
- MZXSpace Awards Concept
- DeadPhrog's SHATTERED PERSPECTIVE GAMES update
- Capsule
- Survival
- Pipeline
- ZZTurbo/Zpower Productions & ZScope '96 updates
- New member
- Wrists in Chains
- Orb of Oblivion
- Dragon's Eye
- Clash of Magic
- ECreator2's Helios update
- ULTRASOFT joins Helios
- MAJJSoft joins Helios
- X-Box
- HOTwired by Kev Vance
- UltraZeux
- ZZT / MZX Clone
- Kewl MZX Error
- CRiTiqueX MZX by Strikesoft
- MZX Cranky Kong Korner by E. Cyberbro
A very feature rich issue! Without a doubt the highlight is the "Top Ten Design Sins" article inspired by having seen a similar article in a game developers magazine which features a lot of editor's comments by E. CyberBRO finding counter-examples and being generally disagreeable about many of the points. It's the most conflict that ever makes it to print!
- THKirk's White Tiger Column
- Hyperware News
- NL NeWz by DeadPhrog
- Top Ten Design Sins
- SHATTERED PERSPECTIVES GAMES update
- ZZT Shorts
- Capsule
- Immortal Animal Combat
- !nsane-X
- Paranoia
- ZZTorture
- ICE!
- Coolness Editorial
- CRiTiqueX MZX by Strikesoft
- August v1.1
- Cerebus the Aardvark
- Mech Man Z
- Purple Knight 2
- King Rat III
- The Most Meaningless Game in the World Part V
- The Critic Corner MZX by E. CyberBRO
Not a whole lot of new info here. There's some suggestions for those with ZZT and MegaZeux websites to be sure to register them with the Yahoo and Lycos search engines. E. CyberBRO discusses problems with MegaZeux uploads not being properly published on AOL, but mentions that AOL members can upload files to an AOL FTP server using their screen name.
- Really Kewl Stuff by Kev Vance
- Coolness!
- How to tell if you're a good ZZT game maker!
- What Happened to OWCP?
- NL NeWz by DeadPhrog
- MegaZeux 2.50 is coming
- Large Char engine for MZX
- No MZX games means loss of momentum for E. CyberBRO
- The Tiger's Den by THKirk
- Goobers nearly complete
- Empire at a standstill
- Omega-D
- ICE!
- About the author
- The Critic Corner by E. CyberBRO
- Mecha Man Trilogy
- Morphic Fighting 1.0
- Star Wars X-Wing
With the gap between ZZT and MegaZeux being just a few years, it's no surprise that successors to MegaZeux are so quickly being started. FoxEY has support for FLI animations, ZZT/MZX importing, support for using images as backgrounds, and MegaZeux charset/palette support. I've never heard a thing about this one, and I would wager that it didn't get particularly far in development.
- The Tiger's Den by THKirk
- ZZT, Super ZZT, MegaZeux, and now FoxEY by DeadPhrog
- ZZT/MZX spreading from AOL to the Internet
- The Critic Corner by E. CyberBRO
- Chaos Fighters
- Rampager--The Deathbot Sim
- Yoshi MZX
This Internet thing is really taking off! A handful of MZXer websites are linked within as the ability to host your own content online becomes more widespread.
- NL NeWz by DeadPhrog
- MegaZeux v2.50 preview
- New Websites by MZXers
- MZXSpace Awards Ceremony canceled
- MZXSpace Award Winners
- SHATTERED PERSPECTIVES GAMES Update
- Time Tech Foundation Update by E. CyberBRO
- Link's Chaotic Adventure Updates
- NL undergoing changes by E. CyberBRO
- Possible name change
- Pruning the mailing list
- Promoting the NL
- Finding new ZZT game reviewers
- The Critic Corner by E. CyberBRO
I'm just completely distracted by the non-ZZT/MZX content in this one. A breakdown comparing two versions of the upcoming AOL 3.0 client that discusses the pros and cons, with the big advantage of the Windows 3.1 release being able to fit on a floppy disk so you can take it with you to other computers easily.
- The NL Column About Nothing In Particular by Kevin Rohleder
- About the author
- Why are many ZZT/MZXers (ZMers) so weird?
- Interview with Matt Williams
- The Tiger's Lair by THKirk
- Star Cruiser
- Joe's Apartment
- "Empire" being remade
- America Online 3.0 For Windows 3.1 vs. For Windows 95 Beta by E. CyberBRO
- The Critic Corner by E. CyberBRO
- MZX Reviews
- ZZT Reviews
A whopping two whole sentences about "ZZT 2"! The author isn't named and the only thing mentioned is "rumors of being sued". Take that rumor with a grain of salt, because the the story as we know it today is a far less legal "Hey could you not call your program ZZT 2? Thanks. - Tim" and renaming the project to Z2.
The "controversy" about Bloodgate is interesting as it doesn't seem all that extreme in nature? (Take a minute to watch the demo intro over on DMZX, the presentation holds up great 25 years later.)
- NL NeWz by DeadPhrog
- MZX 3.0 Plans
- ZZT 2
- Lawsuit rumors
- Sivion MZX delays
- Older ZZTers Returning
- MegaZeux Password Crackers Released Against Janson's Wishes
- Controversy Over Demo of Bloodgate
- The NL Column About Nothing In Particular by Kevin Rohleder
- The condition of the NL
- The Critic Corner by E. CyberBRO
- MZX Reviews
- Jimmy's Quest
- Woofartegnugan
- Oh-No! Not another Star Wars Parody
- Other News
- PC Gamers forum changes
- MegaZeux v2.5 now available for download
- Promoting the NL
- MZX Reviews
Easily the most notable thing here is Kev's project list bringing up KevEdit. The earliest release of the popular ZZT editor we have is a 0.1 release from 2000 that was published despite being unable to edit objects solely to be used as a tool for a ZZT art contest to speed up placing tiles with STK colors.
Some time is also spent discussing taking people off the mailing list who have been inactive for prolonged periods of time. Things are beginning to wind down for the NL as is, and I can't imagine the list being trimmed had any benefit. If DeadPhrog wasn't a regular writer for the publication, I'd have worried that this pruning is why there are gaps after this issue in terms of what's been preserved.
- MZX'ed by Kev Vance
- ZPlayer's Ads
- SorvE: First Blood preview by dbwilli
- NORMAL? PRoDuCTioNS Update by THKirk
- Empire
- Takeover
- Omega-D
- Upcoming Website
- The ZOP Stop by ZZTOmega
- The past year for Zed-Omega Productions
- Released Games
- Upcoming Games
- Stinky the Sock Munching Ocelot
- Race Track by ZPlayer
- Kings by ZPlayer
- Joe Moe by Jmstuckman
- The ZOP Christmas Special by Jmstuckman
- The Critic Corner by E. CyberBRO
- Smiley Quest (Demo 1.0)
- Quest of Durin (DEMO)
- Quest of Honor 2 (DEMO)
- Process of Elimination
This issue opens with a "rant" that feels more like a discussion about how different types of games focus on different things. It starts off by talking about the roguelike Ancient Domains of Mystery which is fun to see here years before half of the ZZT community got hooked on the game in the mid 2000s much to the chagrin of those who didn't play and were subjected to constant ADOM talk.
- Just me, the nut by Luc(as) French
- Yet Another NL Column About Nothing In Particular by Kevin Rohleder
- The Critic Corner by E. CyberBRO
- RPG Engine
- Color Utility
- Blue Buckaroo V1.1
- Sonic III
Our final preserved issue. Just a single article talking about the NL's return and asking for submissions.
- Letters from the Predator by DeadPhrog
More To Come?
Unlike the previous document dump which was split into two parts, what's been released here is the entirety of what I have. However, DeadPhrog has mentioned having some more content, in the more awkward form of print outs of conversation with staff members and other ZZTers interviewing them about their games. It's certainly something to keep an eye out for in the future!
