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History Of Infocom aka The Creators Of Zork

Posted by Hemos on from the let's-do-the-time-warp-again dept.

halcyon7 writes: "My MIT research group has spent the last two months studying Infocom [?] , Inc. (the creators of Zork [?] ) in great detail. We have talked to many of the original founders and employees, studied board meeting minutes, looked through source code, and done everything we could to tell the story of Infocom's history in a fair and accurate way. As of Friday, our project has concluded. Our report and presentation, entitled "Down From the Top of Its Game: The Story of Infocom, Inc.", is available online in both PDF of the paper and a PDF of the presentation. The presentation was given on December 13th in a quasi-public forum to members of EECS, STS, the MIT community, and some former employees of Infocom." Ah, Infocom. Many a day was whiled away trying to figure the syntax for the next command *grin*.

7 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hitchhiker's by Fluffy+the+Cat · · Score: 4

    They didn't need to. Infocom produced a virtual machine for all their adventure games, with interpreters for different platforms. The same data file can be used on a PC, a Spectrum and an Osbourne providing that you have an interpreter that supports that version of the machine. Someone wrote an interpreter in Java, but the data file used is still the same as the one included on the original HHGTG disks.

  2. Don't forget Scott Adams Adventures by DuctTape · · Score: 4
    For those of us that cut our teeth on an Apple ][ (not + , c, or e), the old Scott Adams Adventures are still available here. Click on the Classic Games Download link.

    He's got Pirate Adventure, The Count, etc. Gotta love those two-word parsers. Also available for the Palm, tho I haven't tried them out.

    DT
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    Is this thing on? Hello?
  3. Americans: don't kill ftp.gmd.de by kyz · · Score: 5
    Use the American mirrors:
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    Does my bum look big in this?
  4. Modern day interactive fiction by eXtro · · Score: 5
    This is only tangentially related to the story, but at least its not a Nth post post.

    There's still a following for games built around craftily written descriptions and puzzles. In fact new textual interactive fiction pieces are developed by a small buy loyal fanbase. Some of the games are really good.

    There's information about the current state of the (well, somewhat ancient in internet time) art of interactive fiction here.

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    Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware

  5. Re:Hitchhiker's by Barsema · · Score: 5

    If you want you can play it online! here

  6. More information about Infocom by beebware · · Score: 4

    Details about infocom and their game titles are available here, while more about Interactive Fiction (that's text based games usually) can be found here. The main IF archive can be found at IFArchive.org where you can download many of Infocoms games.
    Richy C.

  7. Infocom - masters of the written word by kyz · · Score: 4
    Ah, Infocom. Many a day was whiled away trying to figure the syntax for the next command *grin*.

    Actually, no, Infocom's market dominance was based on the fact their parser was flexible and powerful, and you didn't need to play 'hunt the verb'.

    Usual links:
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    Does my bum look big in this?