I've always been fascinated by Zork despite coming of age decades after its release. Reminded of it a few years back through The Digital Antiquarian, I wrote a C# implementation of the Z-Machine ( https://github.com/raegwolf/zmachine ). Seeing how so much could be achieved with so little memory was eye opening.
I wrote one in Haskell [1], ostensibly as a uni class project but also as a way to teach myself Haskell and have fun; I had the infrastructure in place and was trying to run Zork, implementing opcodes, one by one, when finally I saw the familiar message "You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here." The sense of accomplishment was rewarding and elating.
2004. Good times.