Zork Zero - Double Fanucci

Double Fanucci

Zork Zero includes a mini-game to play Double Fanucci against the jester. Double Fanucci is a fictional card game mentioned throughout the Zork series. As the in-game Encyclopedia Frobozzica describes it,

Legend has it that Double Fanucci (or Fannucci) was invented by the deposed Zilbo III in the late seventh century. A game of tremendous complexity and almost infinite rules, King Mumberthrax proclaimed it the national sport of the Empire in 757 GUE. The annual Double Fanucci Championships, held in Borphee during early autumn, frequently leave thousands homeless.

It is immensely complicated, parodying card games with complex rules in a manner similar to Fizzbin or Mornington Crescent.

As played in Zork Zero, cards appear in 15 numbered suits (Books, Bugs, Ears, Faces, Fromps, Hives, Inkblots, Lamps, Mazes, Plungers, Rain, Scythes, Time, Tops and Zurfs) with ranks from 0 (called "Naught"), 1 ("Singled"), 2 ("Doubled"), 3 ("Trebled"), up to 9, and infinity ("Infinite"). There are nine additional cards, like Major Arcana or "Trumps" in Tarot, which are unranked: Granola, the Lobster, the Snail, the Jester, Time, Light, Beauty, Death, and the Grue. It is possible to get four copies of the same card in a four-card hand.

To win the Double Fanucci mini-game, the player must use an unbeatable strategy mentioned only in the calendar feelie's biography of Babe Flathead.

Try as he might, Babe could not master Double Fanucci. Even the unexplained disappearance of the 339 leading Double Fanucci players failed to get Babe into the championships. Fanucci experts believe that Babe's difficulty with the game could be traced to one weakness: his failure to remember that three undertrumps after an opponent's discard of a Trebled Fromp is an indefensible gambit.

Otherwise, the mini-game will continue until either the player's or the jester's score exceeds 1241 points, so consequentally "by Rules Committee Amendment #493, the game is suspended and must be replayed in its entirety, except during a Frotz Moon or in a six-player game where at least three of the players are of Mithican ancestry."

Double Fanucci cards were featured prominently in the browser-based game Legends of Zork, drawn by artist Greg Brown and colored by Jim "Zubby" Zubkavich. Dave Howell has created a physical deck of "Deluxe" Fanucci cards along with some other (playable) games to go with them.