ZZT - NicheInterests/mistfunk GitHub Wiki

ZZT (the "Zoo of Zero Tolerance" is its unofficial Acromania unpacking) was Tim Sweeney's 1991 answer to the Kroz games of Scott Miller of Apogee, an action game for [MS-DOS] machines using simple colourful [textmode] [roguelike] graphics. The game was foundational for his company Potomac Computer Systems, later known as Epic Megagames and today simply Epic Games, and without it there would be no Infinity Blade, Fortnite or Unreal Engine today. Unlike Kroz, a big part of ZZT's success and strange longevity through the years was its engine's robust object-oriented scripting language, yielding a creative community of folks taking their first step into the waters of indie game development. (The expanded [MegaZeux] might represent their second step.) Due to the necessary use of textmode [character graphics] baked into its engine, for decades they kept a small flame burning for ANSI art in total isolation from the primary, underground, community of ANSI art practitioners, like ENDOOM artists or illustrators at the 8bitMUSH.

ZZT's use of textmode character graphics features similar but different constraints from regular ANSI art.

The only ANSI artist known to straddle the gap between ZZT and the underground computer artscene is [the Green Herring] (whose ZZT magnum opus was "[Cyber Purge]"), but ZZT ANSI art is a whole world of its own, totally unknown to outsiders. Here are some recommended highlights: WiL, PogeSoft (1, 2, 3, 4), myth, Commodore (1, 2), Zephyr (1, 2), and RT-55J.

In June of 2014 Anna Anthropy released a book about ZZT (titled, simply, ZZT), third in the series of Boss Fight Books. The focus is on the gameplay and level design aspects rather than the minimalist textmode aesthetic, but it's something!