And the system requirements for this game, that "looks like it was made in 1996", will probably call for a 4.4 Ghz Core i7, 8 GB of RAM, 36 GB of drive space (plus 12 GB for the day one patch) and dual-12 GB GTX Titans in SLI.

Zork's requirements are a bit high for a text adventure. Considering these things ran on 8bit computers...

But if the act of playing it (shooting, keycard hunting, gore-ish, funny bits, etc) are nailed, the random/procedural nature of the level wouldn't automatically detract the game quality.
I get that people get fed up with the retro style, pixel art and the failed attempts to capture that felling, but yet, if only they try and judge/play the game for what it is, instead of what it isn't or what it should be or attempted to be, I think they could have a better time, perhaps find new favorites and what not.
For example, you could try the Strafe demo for yourself and maybe change your mind. :)

Minimum system requirements are not meant to just indicate the minimum amount of computing resources/power needed to run a game, but also are an indication of the minimum technology the company selling the game is willing to devote resources to supporting. Most of the ancient 1980s and 1990s games GOG sells would theoretically run on 486, 386 and even 286 or 8088 computers, and if one copied the right files out of the game folder onto an older machine like that they could probably even get them running. But neither GOG nor the publisher of those games is willing to stock computers going back to the 1980s and test their product on them and support it on those systems because it would be impractical and a waste of resources for the market demand there would be for it.

So you'll see old 8088 games like Zork or King's Quest 1 etc. perhaps with system requirements of a processor made in the last 10 years not because the game requires that level of performance/RAM whatever, but they are only willing to stock their labs with computers made in the last 10 years or so to test the game and make them run on modern operating systems. If someone rips the game guts out and puts them on older systems it'll probably run fine but support is likely to respond to support queries of someone trying to run Zork on a 286 by saying "How about that local sports team? I hear they're doing good this year. Oh, look at the time, I gotta run, nice chatting with you!"

:)

Watched the trailer. Made me chuckle, but there's virtually nothing of the game actually shown and what is shown seems uninteresting to me. Not because I don't like old games, I love them and own zillions of them, but when I play old games I play them for the memories I had of them, or the memories I wished to have had and never got a chance and I respect the old games as they are with their old graphics and limitations as a historical thing. I'm never really moved or motivated to play a brand new game that is trying to time travel back into the 90s so pretend that it came out in the 90s though, not interesting to me at all personally. That does not mean that I'm dissing the game though either, it just doesn't compel my personal interest that's all. Having said that, there is obviously a big market for modern retro games or they wouldn't fly out of the garden hose continuously either, so I can understand to a degree why some people go crazy over things like this too. Still, I have an open mind also to not just write it off either, but the trailer doesn't really show the actual game, just some actors playing out a skit which isn't enough to judge a game on. I'd want to see a full blown game play video with no gamer dialogue/acting going on, showing the actual game. Still, it'd be hard to get me excited based on the premise. I'd probably rather throw on one of the original DOOM games, Blood series, Duke 3D series, Shadow Warrior, Heretic, Hexen or other 90s FPS that I have fond nostalgic memories of or didn't really get a chance to dig into back then.

Depending on what the actual gameplay is like, it might be a good fit for the GOG crowd though. I know a lot of people crave more games like that whether they are authentic nostalgia or new retro.

Yes I know and understand. Still it just seems kinda crazy. I'm certain with very little work Zork can be ported to perl, and then run from any maching supporting it (Including ancient computers). Although anything able to run an emulator sufficient for the game should be the requirements. I know the Atari800 emulator ran fairly well on a 233Mhz 386 (this was back in 1996?), and with that you'd get Zork working. Although if there's a DOS version of Zork, that would probably be the one to use with DosBox vs a fully emulated environment (although full emulation isn't outside the spectrum).

Oh well...

The minimum system requirements for The Witcher 3 call for some pretty beefy hardware. My GPU is just under spec, but I know people with GPUs much further under spec that can play the game by lowering the resolution down significantly and disabling various 3D effects, reducing draw distance of foliage and grass etc. and other changes not unlike the things that "Low tech gamer" guy on youtube does. So technically the game can run on much older hardware, but minimum specs are never intended to indicate what the absolute oldest hardware something can run on is once tweaked to death, but rather a combination of what is recommended for a minimally optimal experience and what the developer is willing to support as I mentioned. I understand what you're saying but all developers have options to support more systems if they wanted to, but they look at the market and they have to put the cutoff point somewhere and they carve a line in the sand somewhere to which there will always be people above and below and those below wont like it perhaps but it's a necessary thing that a business needs to decide where they're going to draw the line as they can only support a finite amount of things. They're not selling their products to people who own computers that theoretically could run the game, they're selling to a target audience that makes up the majority of the revenue stream which they can reasonably devote resources to claiming support for.

I can understand how it seems crazy in terms that the software could run on other stuff, but it's not crazy at all from a business resource allocation and ROI perspective. In a highly competitive market that is overcrowded like video games are, decisions like this can potentially be what makes a company survive versus squandering resources on a small niche market for example. If 99% (or 99.5, or 93.4 or whatever the case may be) of gamers use system XYZ or better, then the line is drawn "you must have XYZ or better".

At the same rate I think it is cool people might want to play some of these games on old systems for nostalgic sake on the hardware side too, and I've seen people request that GOG support old systems like that or even rant and rave about it in the past. It really comes down to resources, effort and market size though and IMHO at least, the market out there for people wanting to for example play 90s games on 90s gaming hardware would be extremely small and not worth a company like GOG putting the resources into pursuing as they'd never see a return on investment come back. I'm not sure if there are any game companies out there trying to support such a market niche or not, but I wager they'd either go under quick or they'd have an extremely small business in terms of profitability ultimately. I mention 90's hardware, but the same holds true with hardware produced in the early to mid-2000s too. Makes sense for fun nostalgic purposes, but not really for business profitability or growth.

As for Zork, if I'm not mistaken it was put into the public domain years ago and there are dozens of alternative versions of it out there if someone wants to run it on an 8088 or in javascript in their web browser or whatever. No need to tie up GOG support and engineering resources to support that nostalgically when people can just get it somewhere else for free I believe. Might not be the case for other games of course. I understand that many of these things are technically possible with varying degrees of effort, but that's not ultimately the issue a company like GOG is going to be more concerned about. As a business, it's always going to be ultimately about a return on investment for resources put into supporting, and it's not just GOG but the developer/publisher also.

We as gamers might do these things for the fun of it, but we're not building a business with limited resources in a highly competitive environment and trying to survive it either. :) Personally, I'm surprised the minimum system requirements on half of the game catalogue haven't been raised by 5 years or more technologically to reduce system testing and support load. Presumably there are actually enough people using that hardware that it is indeed important, but then that actually surprises me too. :)