Zeal is a portable interpreter for the infocom z-machine using the GLK API. It currently runs under Unix, with both terminal and X Windows support. It supports infocom formats versions 1 through 5, 7 and 8, as well as the quetzal saved-game format. Zeal can be downloaded from http://bantha.org/~jcondit/zeal/

In the classic 1996 Squaresoft RPG ChronoTrigger, Zeal is the name of a floating utopia that existed in the game's far past, 13,000 years before the game's starting era. Since the game involves (as the name suggests) time travel, you get to visit this time period late in the game.

Zeal is a floating continent, which consists of three cities: Enhasa, Kajar, and Zeal Palace. All of the cities are inhabited by people living a perfect existence. As if often the case in floating utopias, their existence is not as perfect as it seems to be, and it is threatened both by the existence of the underclasses living on the ground, and by some rather gnostic, time travelling, alien-demiurge plots that their royal family is dabbling in. The only people who seem to be aware of this are the Nu, odd looking aliens that also inhabit the continent, giving cryptic hints in the form of quotes from Zhuangzi. The continent is later destroyed, and the inhabitants are forced to crawl down to the icy surface, where they must learn to live with the surface people they once disdained.

Zeal has beautiful scenery and music, and is an example of the Square turning videogames into art. The exact reason for the city, other than being eye and ear candy, could have something to do with a plot point about seemingly perfect societies, something not unknown in either dystopic science fiction and in the real world. The name Zeal, in fact, probably comes from Zalem (a Japanese spelling of "Salem"), the floating utopia present in the manga Gun Dream.

Zeal (?), n. [F. zele; cf. Pg. & It. zelo, Sp. zelo, celo; from L. zelus, Gr. , probably akin to to boil. Cf. Yeast, Jealous.]

1.

Passionate ardor in the pursuit of anything; eagerness in favor of a person or cause; ardent and active interest; engagedness; enthusiasm; fervor.

"Ambition varnished o'er with zeal." Milton. "Zeal, the blind conductor of the will." Dryden. "Zeal's never-dying fire." Keble.

I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. Rom. x. 2.

A zeal for liberty is sometimes an eagerness to subvert with little care what shall be established. Johnson.

2.

A zealot.

[Obs.]

B. Jonson.

 

© Webster 1913.


Zeal, v. i.

To be zealous.

[Obs. & R.]

Bacon.

 

© Webster 1913.

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