Way before Unreal Engine, Epic Megagames had already put out a different game creation system. In fact, it was their first product! Back in 1991 ZZT started out as a text editor, but apparently Tim Sweeney got bored and before he knew it, he was making the editor into a game. The editor remained part of ZZT and was even included in the shareware version, so it didn't take long before people were making their own ZZT content. Even now in 2026 people are still making their own ZZT stuff! Sadly Florian ("rnlf") couldn't make this episode. Host Martijn ("Tijn") is joined by DGC member Simon ("carbontwelve"). We also have two people from the ZZT community to help us make sense of it all: Artee ("RT-55J") who has made many ZZT worlds and has been part of the scene for a long time, and Dr. DOS who has been involved with several ZZT websites over the years and is currently the maintainer of the Museum of ZZT, the largest online collection of ZZT games. https://www.dosgameclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/ep116.mp3 [ download mp3 ] (134 mins, 153 MB) Thanks to our producer Pix for helping to make the podcast happen, and thanks to DGC member Console for editing the audio. Thanks to all who make this show possible, we couldn't do this without you! RELEVANT LINKS: * Museum of ZZT, a website dedicated to keeping ZZT alive and kicking * Anna Anthropy wrote a great book about her personal experience with ZZT. * z2 used to be for a good decade and a half the definitive ZZT archive. * A few of our own club members and former guests also released a few games: David X Newton (David Newton, merc) and Chris Kohler. * We talked about a few notable games on the show: Code, Yoshi series, Little Square Things, Tales of Adventure: The Treasure of Captain Cutlass, and also Burger Joint which its author later released a modern version called Streets of Rogue on Steam. * Other notable authors: WiL and Interactive Fantasies. * MegaZeux is a related game creation system with a similarly active community. * We talked more about Tim Sweeney on episode 046, back in September 2020.
Zzt was awesome. I've had so many adventures playing that game. It's creative use of ASCII, game mechanics and the need to use imagination was fun.