Really old very obscure DOS game

[Aardvark_lord]

I was hoping someone could shed some light on an old game I played alot when I was younger. Everything was in ascii characters, with very bright colours, you went around a maze that had several differant section each with a differant style trying to avoid monsters that patroled around the area. You had three lives (I think) and one of the maze sections that I remember was lots of stars with the text "The stars are very bright tonight" or something similar written outside of the maze area. Oh and there weren't any attacks or weapons that I recall. You just had to move away.

[DOSGuy]

The most obvious answers are Caves of Thor, Kroz, ZZT and Super ZZT. Most levels of Kroz have a name. Kroz levels don't scroll, while ZZT levels do. It would help to know if the screen could scroll or not.

[Aardvark_lord]

The level scrolled with you, but there was only one level. The whole maze was one continuous whole I think, each area being stylistically different but connected. Just looked at the ones you suggested and ZZT looks the most similar but I don't recall any kind of start up screen it just kind of jumped almost directly into the game. The original elite was also on the same computer so I'd assume the games are from a similar year.

[stelegrey]

Sounds a lot like Super ZZT to me. ZZT doesn't scroll with you - when you hit the edge of the screen, you find yourself on the next screen.

Super ZZT however does scroll with you and has brighter/larger characters than ZZT. If I recall correctly, the general concept behind the game was that you got trapped somehow in a zoo full of nasty creatures and had to find your way out, and you went through numerous areas with a variety of different creatures in them.

However, you mentioned you had 3 lives. Both ZZT and Super ZZT have health bars and as soon as you run out, you lose. Also, they both have ammo and shooting.

What character represents the player? Also, do you remember what the sound, if any, was like?

Edit: Does MegaZeux ring a bell? It was a spiritual succsessor of ZZT created by Greg Janson. Never played it, so I don't know too much about it.

[DOSGuy]

Good point. What I meant to say was that in Kroz, each screen is its own level, whereas ZZT is a large world composed of contiguous screens, so that you when you leave one you end up in another. Super ZZT actually scrolls, so that's another point distinction to make: did you move from screen to screen, or did the screen actually scroll?

Incidentally, the reason why the characters are larger in Super ZZT is because the game used 40x25 character mode instead of 80x40. That causes less of the level to fit on the screen, which is probably why scrolling was necessary. Level design would have been extremely limited if each area had to fit on one screen like ZZT with only 1000 characters per screen instead of the usual 3200.

[qrleon]

I'm pretty late to this. He emphasized that it was a text graphic maze with lives, so he might have been talking about Insanity. (Youtube) (Blurb)

Even if he wasn't, you should take a look at the video. It's one of the goofiest things ever made for DOS.

edit: the video is a big spoiler, but it's so chaotic and baffling that you will probably not pick up anything useful from it without really studying it

[ThreeHeadedMonkey]

Wow, that's crazy. Insanity is right.