And it's IMO a critical piece of game history - ZZT, in part thanks to its level designer, became quite successful and allowed Tim Sweeney to found Epic Megagames, which had a number of successful shareware games afterwards (also thanks to Cliffy B) like Kiloblaster (I remember that one) and Jill of the Jungle, Epic Pinball and Jazz Jackrabbit, until in 1998, a good seven years after ZZT, they made Unreal. And again, part of what made Unreal and later Unreal Tournament popular was its level editor and programming interface - which became available to other game creators in the form of the Unreal Engine, which still is a popular choice a lot of the AAA games of today.
So think again when you hate on emoji :p.
(I wanted to do the ascii smiley face but it doesn't seem to be supported. 2018 everyone).