CoD: Black Ops Hides Full Verison of Zork
Call of Duty: Black Ops features a few Easter eggs to uncover including the old DOS adventure game, Zork I.
Gamers who love to hunt down Easter eggs in their favorite titles may get a kick out of Call of Duty: Black Ops. According to recent reports, there are at least two, both of which can be accessed from the game's main menu.
As seen in the video below, players are strapped down to a chair mounted in front of the main menu. On the Xbox 360 version, they can escape by tapping LT and RT repeatedly (use the Spacebar on the PC) until the arms break free of the straps. Once unsecured, players can actually roam around the area and eventually come across a PC running the old-school classic DOS.
Here's where the Easter egg fun begins. Type in "DOA" and the old computer will load up a top-down zombie shooter called Dead Ops Arcade-- this unlocks the "Insert Coin" Xbox 360 achievement. Type in "ZORK," and the PC will load up Infocom's classic adventure game Zork I: The Great Underground Empire in its entirety--this will unlock the "Eaten By A Grue" achievement.
For the uninitiated, Zork I was one of the first interactive fiction computer games, published in 1980 and the first part of a trilogy. The game originally appeared on the TRS-80, Apple II, the Commodore 64, the IBM PC and a few others, and was installed using the amusingly oversized 5.25-inch and 8-inch floppy disks.
Activision purchased Infocom back in 1986, and has since dissolved the studio. Activision still owns the licensing rights to the Zork franchise, allowing the publisher to include Zork in any Activision release. That could also mean Activision may have slipped in other classic titles.
UPDATE: Players can actually browse through the virtual PC, typing "DIR" to see its full contents and "HELP" to see a list of commands. There's a good possibility that Activision has hidden other Easter eggs on the PC, so gamers are encouraged to experiment.
Additionally, an Eminem song can be activated on the second zombie map called "Five." Simply find and activate the three red telephones.
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Ahhhh... I miss my TRS-80....
I heart ZORK!!
Haha thats awesome. I have always said that games are getting too streamlined by large corporations. I am glad that Activision still has a playful side to it.
If anyone would like to look at the ZORK games, without the need to purchase CoD :BO, you can download them for free here...
http://www.infocom-if.org/downloads/downloads.html
I don't think calling it a DOS game is really correct. Before infocom bought it, named it Zork, and published it for profit, it was played by many a geek on Unix and VMS mainframes.
Nice find JasonAkkerman. Since you posted it, I dl'd Z1 and beat it already! Still beats many of todays games.
I don't think calling it a DOS game is really correct. Before infocom bought it, named it Zork, and published it for profit, it was played by many a geek on Unix and VMS mainframes.
The trilogy of Zork I-III were episodic versions of the original PDP-based game which was too large for 8-bit systems. I played it on an Apple IIe back in the day.
Don't you mean VERSION?
Putting an invisible subscribe button over the entire video...what an *beep*.
wont run under 64bit...
good to see video games still putting in easter eggs!
Seriously, whoever had this idea needs their own special award.
)
Game is on it's way here from newegg now. But I can already tell I'll likely play more of Zork's single player campaign than I will Black Ops. (And not just because BO's is so short.
Putting an invisible subscribe button over the entire video...what an *beep*.
That's clickjacking. Noscript on Firefox detects that. Could be an ISP or an advertiser on Tom's.
Yeah, great, too bad the game is a laggy piece of poop as compared to CoD4 and MWII - at least on the PC...
I was so psyched to be able to have another CoD game and one with DEDICATED SERVERS, and then I started playing it and saw that Treyarch hadn't learned anything from CoD5/WaW... just like that game this one has brutally frustrating lag spikes every time an enemy shows up on screen - to the point that it's nearly unplayable (IMO). I am talking about the PC version - of course. I just can;t understand how the Treyarch gameplay could be so bad when the IW experience is so good and they are using the same game engine.
Well, at least I can play Zork... it'll bring me back to my C-64 days.... ah "Bard's Tale" how I loved thee...
Cheers,
CList
Gimmicks.
"UPDATE: Players can actually browse through the virtual PC, typing "DIR" to see its full contents and "HELP" to see a list of commands. There's a good possibility that Activision has hidden other Easter eggs on the PC, so gamers are encouraged to experiment."
LMFAO! People are definitely in love with M$...
If anyone would like to look at the ZORK games, without the need to purchase CoD :BO, you can download them for free here...http://www.infocom-if.org/downloads/downloads.html
Nice thanks Jason!!!!
Now thats pretty darn cool, I wish more games included easter eggs, it adds another level of fun to a game/software, and even if just for a moment gives you that "special felling" like someone just gave you a gift at random, you know what I mean.
Oh and how do people ever figure out how to do wierd things like that? They must be leaked somehow, the chances of finding that at random is like winning the lotto.
I actually think they did an awesome job on the easter eggs. Not what I was expecting. And at least they didnt make that zombie based smash tv clone a paid DLC.
Is it me or that video showed the first game going by veeeeery fast ?
I would laugh out loud if they just used something like DosBox to make it run without correcting the clock cycle problem with old games!
I clicked the link thinking 'Zork' was like an adware toolbar that was hidden in the game installer infecting heaps of PC's.
Easter eggs on the PC? did they figure this out with potential risk?
Little bit slow to the punch eh TH? Wired had this story yesterday morning.
There should be an achievment for those COD players that actually beat Zork. Not that i care about achievments, but I think any COD player dedicated enough to beat Zork with their gamepad deserves something.
My Atari 800 used to rock Zork. I was so happy once I got it on floppy because the cassette drive sucked the life out of you.
That's awesome.... now I'm definitely getting Black Ops...
you're getting the game to get a free game? LOL!
First off, this is one of the best eggs of all time. I found this secret last night as well. Just to clear something up for a lot of people that may be confused, I'm pretty sure the "computer" is not actually running dos. It looks like some kind of modified unix kernel. The reason I believe this is that unix commands like "ls" also work on the machine.
On a side note - people that own the game may have noticed that there is also an "encode" and "decode" command available (I couldn't imagine a programmer adding these for no reason). I was up all night trying to figure out if these were related to some other sort of egg, but gave up after a couple of hours. You may also have noticed that there is an "rlogin" command that allows you to log in as other users within the "home" directory (with a password of course). Any ideas?
you're getting the game to get a free game? LOL!
Because the free game inside of the game is better than CoD BO?
is it sad if I go out and buy this game just for zork...?
is it sad if I go out and buy this game just for zork...?
You can type in "rlogin dreamland" but I don't know any usernames or passwords.