September 15, 2025 – Return to Zork (1993) turns 32: Activision’s FMV-powered revival of Infocom’s classic
Today marks the 32nd anniversary of the worldwide release of Return to Zork, which shipped for Mac and MS-DOS on September 15, 1993.
The game modernized the Zork franchise by moving away from Infocom’s text-parser roots to a first-person, point-and-click graphical adventure; CD-ROM editions featured full-motion video and Redbook audio (one MS-DOS CD version required the RealMagic MPEG board to play in-game FMV).
Return to Zork was the last Zork title released under the Infocom label and became a commercial hit — shipping roughly one million copies by the mid-1990s — helping stabilize Activision after corporate turmoil.
The game modernized the Zork franchise by moving away from Infocom’s text-parser roots to a first-person, point-and-click graphical adventure; CD-ROM editions featured full-motion video and Redbook audio (one MS-DOS CD version required the RealMagic MPEG board to play in-game FMV).
Return to Zork was the last Zork title released under the Infocom label and became a commercial hit — shipping roughly one million copies by the mid-1990s — helping stabilize Activision after corporate turmoil.