A review by gengelcox
ZZT by Anna Anthropy

informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

The third Boss Fight Book and already the series is going places I didn’t expect. In this case, a love letter to text-based shareware DOS games, in particular the puzzle-oriented ZZT series that was the foundation for the creation of Epic MegaGames. Anthropy clearly loves the game; the attention to detail and description of these games sound much better in her words than they ever did when I played them, likely because my first computer was a Macintosh and thus my earliest games on the computer had actual graphics. 

The other surprise here is how Anthropy interweaves her personal story with the history of the game. Not the interweaving, per se, as that was definitely a part of both Baumann’s Earthbound and Williams’ Chrono Trigger, but the particularly story of how ZZT assisted those who felt different from their society assigned gender. So, yeah, this book is about ZZT, but it’s also about X and Y, too. 

Unlike the other two books, I had no urge to play ZZT during or after reading this book, partly because I didn’t play it in the past and have no nostalgia for the game or its type. However, I did enjoy learning more about shareware games and the culture behind them.