Speedrunner Discovers New Glitch For 1993's Return To Zork

Alex McCumbers,

January 15, 2018 6:00 PM

Return to Zork has been out for decades and is normally a very lengthy game, but a new glitch discovered by a dedicated speedrunner has trimmed the game to mere minutes.

Zork is a franchise that might only illicit enthusiasm from older generations of gaming and hardcore video game historians. It’s a product of the earliest era of PC gaming that had players typing in their actions and responses to unravel the story and progress. That said, dedicated players are still challenging the franchise and finding new quirks to unravel in its aged code. Speedrunner Uematsufreak just discovered a new trick in 1993’s Return to Zork that resulted in a new low-time completion of the game.

Most players who indulged in a Zork game's quest will remember being forced to draw up their own physical maps, making graph paper a valuable tool, but even then, it took some dedication to push through and finish the games. Return to Zork was the first to add graphics for the adventure series, but the infamous level of challenge remained. 

Like most speedrunners, Uematsufreak can make these difficult games look like a piece of cake. With the point and click nature of the game, the run is really a sight to behold. With frantic clicks all over the screen with an almost hidden precision, Uematsufreak often blows through the hours of content in Return to Zork in less than one hour. Using glitches, including his latest discovery, the player has reduced the run down to just below 20 minutes. 

Uematsufreak took us through the new exploit that has improved his runtime so much, something that he described as a pipe-dream. 

“When you drop an item in Return to Zork,” Uematsu explains. “It typically shows up on the lower-right hand corner of the screen you dropped it on. Dropping multiple items on the same screen causes it to show a generic ‘multiple items’ icon instead, which brings up a menu of all dropped items when clicked.” 

“For some reason when you drop the joke book amongst other items, then attempt to pick up the joke book from that ‘multiple items’ menu, that menu doesn't change or disappear. At this point you're holding the joke book, but can still pick up the joke book from the ground. If you pick up the joke book a second time, it instead picks up the next item in line on the ‘multiple items’ menu, which is the Waif's Gift in the case of this glitch.”

“Put that in the inventory and now you can pick up the Waif's Gift again since you never actually picked it up, and now you have a regular instance of the waif's gift - an ‘infinite’ instance that you can actually drop, throw, or otherwise use an infinite number of times as it's now permanently in your inventory, and you have a glitched blank inventory slot. At this point, there are many different things you can do to softlock, hardlock, or outright crash the game, so routing was interesting.”

The Waif's Gift is a key item in the game that unlocks most of the forward progression in the game. Without having to go track down the requisites for it, the game takes a fraction of its normal run time.
The Waif's Gift is a key item in the game that unlocks most of the forward progression in the game. Without having to go track down the requisites for it, Uematsu has created a shortcut through hours of gameplay.

Despite the dangers of losing your progress if you take any action that crashes or stops the game at the aforementioned point, Uematsufreak pointed out that by being able to duplicate the Waif's Gift, you can circumvent most of the game's puzzles and questing.

“The Waif's Gift is something you wash in-game to obtain one of the six pieces of the infamous Flying Disc of Frobozz (which is the main item you are to obtain in the game to gain access to the big bad, Morphius) but using this method, you simply wash five copies of his gift and obtain the sixth from the slide puzzle, since you need to solve it anyway for the Illumynite Rocks it gives you as well. This means four major quests to obtain disc pieces are omitted from the Any% run entirely.”

With so much technical knowledge of how this interesting glitch came to fruition, we had to ask how long Uematsu’s been running and researching Return to Zork. Despite his vast knowledge of the game’s twists and inner-workings, his interest in professionally crushing the old game is relatively young. 

Return to Zork was my first active speedgame and I began routing it in February 2016. Since then I've become more known on Twitch for running Sonic 3 & Knuckles as well as playing other classic Sonic titles, and I've recently started some very early work on running MegaRace, another DOS classic. That said, Return to Zork will always be one of my favorite games to explore, route, and now break.”

Despite his sheer skill in conquering Zork, Uematsufreak has put very little interest in similar games outside the Zork series thusfar.

“One of my big reasons for doing Return to Zork in the first place was to beat it down like it beat me down as a kid. That game is relentless and full of unfair puzzles. I had to focus on that game so much that I barely even played any other adventure games as a kid. I played through Zork: Grand Inquisitor a couple times, so I have considered running it at some point, but other than that I'd have to discover something else that speaks to me. I haven't even played through a single King's Quest or Space Quest game!” 

According to the How Long To Beat website, Return to Zork is a 9 hour game even if you rush it and know what you're doing. Uematsu's run is less than twenty minutes with glitches, making it a phenomenal any% record in the speedrun world.
According to the How Long To Beat website, Return to Zork is a 9 hour game even if you rush it and know what you're doing. Uematsu's run is less than twenty minutes with glitches, making it a phenomenal any% record in the speedrun world.

Lastly, Uematsu spoke to various changes in his perspectives on the games he’s mastered in his speedruns.

“Having ‘the run’ doesn't change much for me,” Uemastu claimed. “Making that glitch discovery, though, has made me realize that things you may joke about as pipe dreams can become reality. I've joked about duplicating disc pieces for most of the time I've run the game, and here we are.”

“As far as learning a speedrun goes, oh yeah, it's definitely changed things for me. Honestly, speedrunning Sonic 3 & Knuckles is the big one that changed things for me. I'll never be able to play any classic Sonic games the same way again, now that I know how to do certain advanced techniques. This is one of the big reasons I will personally never speedrun a game before experiencing it ‘as intended’ a ton first.”

For Uematsufreak reaching a record time is temporary, but discovering one of the main methods to shave off time is a treasure that will last much longer. The research, creativity, and fruits of his efforts are something to which no one else can lay claim.

You can find Uematsufreak streaming and routing his latest speedrun interests on his main Twitch channel.

Note: As of this publication, Uematsufreak's record has not been submitted to Twin Galaxies for official adjudication and recognition.



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