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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Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.
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endif 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.Reply -
JasonAkkerman If anyone would like to look at the ZORK games, without the need to purchase CoD :BO, you can download them for free here...Reply
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.Reply
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festerovic Nice find JasonAkkerman. Since you posted it, I dl'd Z1 and beat it already! Still beats many of todays games.Reply -
jhansonxi fismitI 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.Reply