Top Ten Most Viewed Pages
- Museum of ZZT
- File Search
- Upload Queue
- Browse - S
- Browse - A
- Browse - Z
- Browse - B
- Roulette
- Browse - All Files
- Browse - R
You know, I was gonna start at ten and count up, and then realized the big shocking reveal of "the most popular page on the website is the front page" isn't exactly something you can build suspense for.
Listen, I included this in previous stats articles and so now we have to live with that decision of seeing what letters are "in" each year.
When not landing on the front page, visitors to the Museum love to search for files. Who knew?
I wonder how much the other letters are folks just combing through the archive in order before getting tired. Every time I've had to go an audit something and browse every page of files, it quickly turns into a chore, and if you're just looking for something to check out, you'll be better off realizing the roulette page returns a list of randomized files that are ideal for shopping around.
At the same time though, "S" has eighteen pages of files to browse and "Z" has twelve. I was going to suggest that just browsing the entirety of a letter inherently skews the results towards letters with more releases, but "M" is also a dozen pages in size and doesn't make the list at all, so perhaps not. Apparently the best SEO is to make sure your game's title starts with an "S", or at least one of these letters.
All of the letters here showed up in the top ten last year as well, with "I" falling off compared to last year.
Top Ten Most Viewed Files
Now here, since the options are a bit more exciting, I can get away with going from least to most views!
- Bulbasaur's Online Pokemon RPG Randomizer
- ZZT Manual
- End Of The World
- We Have Court At Home
- Corrupt Mind
- Castleweavia 2.1
- X Files Reopened*
- Dragon Eye
- Nameless Awards 2022 Award Ceremony LEAKED FOOTAGE (4K HIGH QUALITY RIP)
- ZZT
* The actual file is an earlier revision of the game that was removed and replaced with this later current release. I figured I'd just go with listing the proper version rather than striking it from the record and adding the 11th most viewed style instead. This will be the case when the game appears in the next section as well.
Good news for the Pokémon fans out there. Bulbasaur's Online Pokemon RPG Randomizer is no longer in the #1 spot. This ZZT random number generator spits out a random first generation pokémon and level, and has nothing to do with modern romhacks for the series. Before when it was in the #1 spot, I felt bad for all the confusion it was surely causing. I genuinely considered adding a special banner to that page to try and explain what was going on.
Instead, visitors are reading Chris Kohler's ZZT manual from 1995. Uhhhh I don't know if that's the best info these days, as I haven't personally read through it looking for errors, though at a glance it seems okay. I take it back, it says you only get nine flags rather than ten. Unforgivable.
On the bright side, it has diagrams for how transporters and ricochets work, which is nice.
A few other spots go to featured worlds, which have the advantage of potentially showing up on any Museum page. There may be a link to one of these games in your browser right now! End Of The World, Corrupt Mind, and Dragon Eye all get to benefit from their purple keys. I'll go to bat for End of the World, it's one of those ZZT games that exemplifies what good games from 1996 were like in this little community. Dragon Eye, had a very silly premise which is all I really remember of it when I streamed it, and Corrupt Mind is one I've still yet to play, though notably it is a regular on the ongoing Closer Look polls for patrons.
The list includes three worlds created in 2023 which is always a welcome sight. I love the classics as much as anyone, but you'd hope that new releases aren't being overshadowed here.
For new games, all the way up at #2 is the acceptance speech for Best Character in the Nameless awards WiL has revived. Verasev's Castlevania-inspired Weave action game, appropriately named Castleweavia shows up at #4, and is one worth running through yourself if you can handle the challenge! With multiple characters, and some great sprite-work, it's a very frantic and fun looking game. Even I got to show up for once, with We Have Court At Home, a terrifying and accurate look at where the jury selection process is like now that it's done remotely.
Then, appropriately enough, ZZT takes the top spot. Of course it does. That's how you start ZZTing!
Top Ten Most Played Files
- Hollow Knight: Silksong
- Kill Barney
- Mo' Paint, Mo' Box
- Sisyphys
- Treasure Island Dizzy
- Bulbasaur's Online Pokemon RPG Randomizer
- Mined Out
- Da Hood
- X Files Reopened*
- ZZT
Hahah well maybe I spoke too soon about Bulbasaur because now instead of being on top of the most viewed, it's in the middle of the most played despite not showing up on that list at all last year. Of course, that's not the only instance of confusion being the emotion of choice when someone arrives on the Museum. A special thanks to the April Fool's day joke release: Hollow Knight: Silksong for more of that organic SEO that will surely improve the site's "purchase revenue heartbeat" that Google Analytics tells me is zero dollars.
These ones are always pretty strange to try and find any justification for. Treasure Island Dizzy? I mean, sure? I like the ZZT Dizzy games, but enough to be in the top ten? Mysterious. Mined Out is at least another featured world. The original Da Hood though? Where are this stealth Tseng fans hiding? Lord knows I also have a soft spot for Tseng's games, but we're getting to old material when we start talking about Da Hood. I'm sure I'll play it one of these days, but I will not be going in with high expectations.
Is Barney killing once again popular? Are ZZT games the sole survivors of readily playable Barney shooters in your browser now that the age of Flash has ended?
Mo' Paint, Mo' Box, is at least a new release, and quickly viewable art collection easily gotten through by playing in the browser. It's the most sensible thing on here that isn't ZZT itself to me.
The least sensible of all though, is undoubtedly Sisyphus. My joke game from 2019 that is nothing more than an endless Ping-Pong-Path. Why now would it suddenly be something people play. The world appearing on the list is at least a good reminder that "opening the play page" is a far cry from completing a game in the browser. I have a hunch these sessions didn't last very long.
Top Ten...ish Most Viewed Articles
Counting is hard. This one has to get a weird disclaimer attached because one of these articles appears twice on the actual top ten with two different pages making the cut. Thankfully they are the first two and not the first and last or I'd be really worried. I've just included #11 as #10 and left the double-article in its more favorable position.
- Supporting The Worlds of ZZT Project
- We Are Still Out Here
- ZZT Cheats
- The Best of ZZT Part 2 - Modern Treasures
- The Best of ZZT
- ZZTing With Zeta
- Closer Look: Z-Files
- ZZT-OOP 101
- ZZT Versions
- About ZZT
The support page makes the cut. That's nice :)
There's also We Are Still Out Here, summarizing what happened to the ZZT community from the decline of z2 to the rise of the Museum. This one managed to get a news post on z2 itself in 2020, so any old ZZTers that find themselves reminiscing about ZZT, curiously typing zzt.org in their browser's address bar wind up finding the site remains up and get a helpful little resource bringing them here. The effort in getting a news post added to z2 for the first time in exactly six years since the last continues to have been worth the effort.
The Closer Look for Z-Files is the one odd article out (and our double pager). ZZT toolkit boards are some of the neatest to gaze upon, and so whenever Z-Files gets rolled for the WoZZT screenshot post, there's always that link to learn more. For outsiders, what exactly these boards are all about, with their messes of colors and symbols is quite the source of curiosity.
Everything else on here pretty much boils down to learning about ZZT itself. How to run it on modern computers with Zeta, the versions article you get when you click on "ZZT" under the essentials in the sidebar for folks looking to get started, a bit about ZZT itself, a bit about ZZT-OOP, how to cheat so you can actually progress in a lot of less balanced worlds, and of course the two Best of ZZT articles. Not the Epic board compilation from 1992, but the two articles that provide newcomers with recommendations on what they should check out to get an idea of what this ZZT thing is all about, and why it's still kicking after all these years.
These are ideal articles to populate the list. They basically all exist to help newcomers, and so as long as they're showing up in the top ten, more people are arriving here for the first time. Hopefully they're doing a good job of things.
