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Lost Infocom Games Discovered

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the retro-hotness dept.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Archivists at Waxy.org have gotten a copy of the backup of Infocom's shared network drive from 1989 and are piecing together information about games that were never released. In particular, there is the sequel to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy called Milliways: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and there are two playable prototypes of it. And yes, they have playable downloads available."

3 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Infocom was a damn good company by Mr.Radar · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's actually already happened, in a way. After Infocom went out of business the fan community reverse-engineered their VM (the Z-Machine) and Graham Nelson designed a new language and compiler for it (Inform). That, along with other interactive fiction languages/toolkits that compile to their own VMs (TADS, Hugo, AGT, ALAN, and many more) and a small but dedicated community has ensured that interactive fiction hasn't died out.

    Every year dozens of new games come out, usually for the two major annual competitions (the IF Comp and the Spring Thing). Most of them are shorter than "commercial-era" games, mainly because they're written by hobbyists who don't have the time and resources to commit to building large games. They run the gamut from puzzle-focused games in the style of Infocom to story-focused games that eschew large numbers of elaborate puzzles to focus on story, and there are also more experimental and artistic games that try to push the medium in new directions. The IF Archive has an extensive collection of these games, and there are several review sites that attempt to catalog and organize the archive. The IF community has long had rec.arts.int-fiction and rec.games.int-fiction at their center, though with the rise of blogs and web forums it has started to fragment some.

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  2. And now writing the games is a game... by Mr2001 · · Score: 5, Informative

    After Infocom went out of business the fan community reverse-engineered their VM (the Z-Machine) and Graham Nelson designed a new language and compiler for it (Inform). This is fascinating not just for Infocom fans, but also for programmers. For example:

    The Deathbot Assembly Line is a room. "Here is the heart of the whole operation, where your opponents are assembled fresh from scrap metal and bits of old car." The dangerous robot is a thing in the Assembly Line. "One dangerous robot looks ready to take you on!" A robotic head, a drill arm, a needle arm, a crushing leg and a kicking leg are parts of the dangerous robot.

    That's source code. Inform 7 has been out for a couple years, and I've been working intimately with it for most of that time, but I'm still impressed.
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  3. The Original Hitchhiker's Game Online by boot_img · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... can be found here. I never did get through that sulky door. Now I can relive the aggravation all over again.