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From the disclaimer:

This site is not commercial and in no way affiliated with the current rightholder of Infocom copyrights, Activision, Inc., and does not claim to have any rights pertaining to any and all articles by Infocom and subsequently Activision, Inc.

So I'm not sure they have the right to be offering those games for free.

I recently re-played Zork I all the way through, and it was a blast.

Infocom released all three of the original text adventures on their website for, in their words, "zero Zorkmids!"

Depends on the game. Zork didn't really rely on graphics, and that was a great game. Still available, free, at http://www.infocom-if.org/downloads/downloads.html .

In related news, Infocom (?) is giving away Zork I, II and III on their website. infocom-if.org

Now I'm definitely more likely to be eaten by a grue.

~AA

Just download them from here (legally and for free) and play on your pc.

http://www.infocom-if.org/downloads/downloads.html

I admit I can't find a great source at the moment, but Infocom always intended to do business apps, and the games were actually
originally to *fund* their serious programs.

http://www.infocom-if.org/company/company.html says:
But, unfortunately, not much later in the same year and when Infocom was still on the rise to be one of the brightest stars of the software industry, the company already made its worst decision: Go back to the initial intentions when founding the company, have a business division and do a program called "Cornerstone," a database.

You know, since the kids didn't live through the 80's, you can introduce them to those same early 80s text adventures, and they'll still have fun with them. My daughter and I have had some good times playing Zork (download here Infocom). You can also play The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy online (BBC)

A book like Hitchhikers Guide would make a poor game (IMO).

Two of the definitions on dictionary dot com mention not just the bureaus, but the excessiveness of them that is the common use of the term. If you've ever played this game, I think you would agree.

> TYPE ZORK INTO WWW.GOOGLE.COM

Google suggests that the original poster try the Zork Wikipedia Entry.

It is almost 5:00 pm in your office. You are feeling a mite peckish.

> TRY THE NEXT LINK

Google's second link points to the Infocom-IF page on the history of Interactive Fiction.

It is almost 5:30 pm in your office. You are hungry. Because Congress fucked up Daylight Saving Time, it is not yet dark.

> TRY THE THIRD LINK.

Google's third link points to a live PHP-based implementation Zork, cleverly disguised as a 404 page.

By the time you're done with that, you will have either starved to death, or despite Congress' fucking up Daylight Saving Time, it will be sufficiently dark that you will have been eaten by a grue.

*** You have died ***
Your score is 2 out of a possible (+5, Funny)

Although probably unintentional, those old Infocom games gave non-programmers a great educational CS experience. As you hunt treasure and outsmart the thief, or gather clues and question witnesses, you also learn to think abstractly, create and step through algorithms and carry around a lot of information in your head -- all while working at a genuine command line.

Most of these Infocom games (link below) you can get from somewhere online if you look, and play them with an interpreter such as frotz or jzip.
http://www.infocom-if.org/games/games.html

Only the Zorks are technically legal though, because they were released by Activision. You can also try them out online right here:
http://www.ifiction.org/games/play.phpz?cat=2&game =3&mode=html
http://www.ifiction.org/games/play.phpz?cat=2&game =4&mode=html
http://www.ifiction.org/games/play.phpz?cat=2&game =5&mode=html

I credit years of tinkering with Deadline and the Zorks with giving me a better early foundation beginning around age 11 than I would have had just noodling with the C-64 "Ready" prompt. (Or worse, noodling around in a modern GUI.)

C-jump seems painfully uninspiring to me. I think the problem with games like that and the programming languages "designed for kids" is that they're insincere: Your students will know immediately that they're not doing something real.

'Bureacracy' began with a quest to get your airline tickets for an upcoming company training trip.

Unfortunately, your mail has been misdelivered.

The initial challenge to retrieve your mail requires getting past an ultra-conservative deaf old lady and her parrot, a malicious llama, an ultra-paranoid, an anti-social philatelist, and an annoying geek. Depositing your advance took Herculean effort, and your health was measured by your (in-game) blood pressure. Listening to your voice messages almost killed you, and every time you mistyped a command your blood pressure went up. Summary and Wikipedia with spoilers

Funny, I had just recently gotten back into the text-based games, myself. Apparently all 3 Zork's are now freely available here .

Here's a version of Zork, that has it's own runtime app.

Listed somewhat in chrnological order:

Zork - http://www.infocom-if.org/downloads/downloads.html

Empire - http://www.killerbeesoftware.com/

Sundog - http://dmweb.free.fr/FTLGames.htm

Dungeon Master - http://dmweb.free.fr/FTLGames.htm

Deus Ex - http://www.deusex.com/

While I am currently playing with games like Neverwinter Nights and Far Cry, quality games like these, last and last.

I would highly recommend some all-text adventure games. I have extremely fond memories of the Zork series, Planetfall and the like. They do not require fast reflexes but are still challenging, fun and addictive. Most of the common commands can be abbreviated to a single letter ("n" for "north", "i" for "inventory", "l" for "look" etc...) and I imagine that your user-interface is tuned for text anyway. Oh, and the games can be downloaded for free from infocom's site. And of course, full solutions abound on the net should you get stuck. Enjoy!

Because that's what city planners do.

That wouldn't be much fun, would it? In a game with no points, there's no point in doing something that's not fun.

When real world city planners zone property, they don't give vague percentages and "let the market decide" utilization. They usually set up some form of bureaucracy that requires each building modification or change of use to go through some permit and approval process. I doubt that would make for much of a fun game. (Though Douglas Adams did try once.)

I think we are arguing at cross-purposes here. The original article was critical of SimCity for being a bad "simulation" when its marketed scope is to be a "toy" or "game." Nitpicking SimCity to make it more accurate would only reduce the fun factor of the game. At the same time, some abstractions (the early bias towards public transit verses roads) and artificial challenges (all-or-nothing zoning) were introduced to make players think about the underlying ideas conveyed by the game.

IIRC, the sucking-performance-killing-a-product problem was what caused Infocom's Cornerstone database software to be largely a flop. By the time they'd gotten towards solving performance issues, the company was virtually dead...

Pic

Cool! This made me flash back to the days of playing ZORK The Zork series were old interactive text based games, much like this "new doom". Granted the action wasn't nearly as rivetting as doom.

Sounds like it.

From http://www.infocom-if.org/games/planetfall/planetf all.html:

Released: 1983

About 20 years. Good luck and hope it's the right one.

Tragic! But at least you can get another copy. ;)

I'm holding out for the Leather Goddesses myself...

Best wishes,
Mike.

If you like Infocom adventures you should Download Frotz! 2.4.1. This interpreter installs into /usr/local/bin and runs in the Terminal. It would be nice to have a Cocoa front-end for this. Perhaps some cool Mac Geek will find the time....

Frotz! 2.4.3 is also available in source code form if you're into building from source. You just have to make sure you have the ncurses library installed (Fink helps). I had to rename the "init_process" function (in src/common/process.c and src/main.c) to "my_init_process" before it would build. Some kind of symbol conflict with libSystem....

You can play Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on the web but I don't think it allows you to save the game.

Fortunately you can download the HHGG data file (option-click) right off the web and play it in Frotz!

As for other Infocom and Z-engine games, here are some links to resources straight out of the Mac Frotz readme file:

• Interactive Fiction Archive
• Baf's Guide
• XYZZYnews
• Infocom (unofficial)
• Infocom (unofficial)
• Infocom Documentation Project
• Infocom Gallery
• InterData Development
• Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe
• IF Database
• Doe's IF Page
• "Infocom Games"

That would be Infocom Cornerstone. The point was that since Infocom had experience in getting their games to run on many micro platforms, that could leverage that technology into making business products that also ran identically on many platforms. CS was not an internal tool--it was always intended as a product.

Unfortunately, they underestimated the knowledge of *business apps* that would be necessary to make this work, and the extra costs of expanding the company for this development eventually overwhelmed them. Today we know that the technology for a single development platform that is itself retargeted to host systems can be a product in and of itself. That might have been a way for Infocom to have avoided such a deep commitment to the business environment, although even that road has its share of wrecks.