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Bob's Text Adventure Reminiscences

I wanted to talk a little about my longtime enjoyment of interactive fiction. Skip right to Zork for Free or Lengthy List of Links if you don't want to read the following paragraphs, which try to give you a little background and perspective.

In the late 70s home PCs were a rare novelty, but my friend Gary Ames (how are ya, Gary? e-mail me) had one and I was able to play text adventures when they first appeared. I have fond memories of playing Adventureland and The Count on Gary's Vic-20, which stored its tiny programs on a regular cassette tape. Later, I had a lot of fun playing classic games like Zork, PlanetFall and The Lurking Horror from a company called Infocom - first on Jim Hoskin's Apple IIe and later on my own Apple IIe.

By the mid 90s I had long left Apple behind and PCs increasingly sported flashy graphics and sound. The series of Zork sequels led to Return to Zork, among the first non-text, graphical adventures with sound. It was a lot of fun, though like all the Zork games it had some obscure solutions and you basically were forced to buy the hint manual.

Play text adventures today

These days, you can easily play all the old text adventures by downloading a free "interpreter" program. Interpreters exist for most operating systems. For Windows, you want WinFrotz. WinFrotz, developed by Richard Lawrence and Stefan Jokisch, runs old text adventures, all the original Infocom games, plus many others developed by amateur game enthusiasts.

You can still buy Infocom's games, or get some Infocom games for free. You also can download from a large selection of free games at http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/. When you get there, try these directories: Infocom, Competition95, Competition96 etc. You can download about anything that ends with the extension .Z5, .Z3, or .DAT. You then can play those game files with a free "interpreter" program from http://www.ifarchive.or/if-archive/infocom/interpreters. Windows users: get WinFrotzR53.zip from the Frotz directory.

I was just glancing around at the link in the preceding paragraph, and noticed it doesn't really explain itself, so here's a quick reference: you can find an Apple II interpreter in the Apple directory; UNIX, DOS, Amiga and Windows interpreters in the frotz directory; Apple Newton interpreter in the yazi directory; Java help in the zax directory (apparently it lets you play text adventures in your browser); Atari ST, Amiga, Silicon Graphics Irix 5.3, Apple IIGS and Acorn Archimedes interpreters in the zip directory.

With WinFrotz, in no time at all I was running old Infocom adventures. Most amazing to me, I was able to use it to finally hear sound effects that someone developed many years ago for my favorite old Infocom game: The Lurking Horror (these sounds were the exception to the rule; 99 percent of text adventures have no sound). Though the sounds are included on the Masterpieces of Infocom CD (see next paragraph), it is impossible to hear them using the software included on the CD.

Get Infocom's Entire Output Cheap

With that groundwork laid, let me help you get started in text adventures. You can do plenty for free, but you might want to look into Masterpieces of Infocom, a single CD that collects Infocom's entire output (well, most of it) in one place. The CD also includes PDF (Adobe Acrobat) versions of the original books and maps that came with the games when they were sold singly, along with hints for every game, in case you get stuck.

The CD includes everything you need to run the games in the Windows, DOS and Macintosh operating systems. And don't forget that if you have some other operating system, you can download an interpreter and run the games that are on this CD. Yes, that's right, the game files are cross-platform; get the right interpreter and the game files will load and run.

You can get the Masterpieces CD for around $20, which is great but breaks the hearts of us oldtimers who paid that much for each game.

Where to buy Masterpieces of Infocom - Sadly, Activision has not made or sold any Infocom game collections for years. They still own the rights to them, they just don't feel like selling them. BUT YOU CAN STILL BUY IT! You can often find Masterpieces on sale online. Start with ebay.com, a great place to find hard-to-find stuff. Just type "Infocom" in the Search box. Soon you'll have at least a few buying opportunities. You may also see some other Infocom collections, which are quite good, but Masterpieces is the most comprehensive. Also, type "masterpieces of infocom" into any search engine and you'll probably find online software retailers who still have a few copies in stock. And also, check out the next section:

ZORK for Free!!

Interactive Fiction articles at Wikipedia.org

• The Zork series:
  • The original Zork Trilogy (Marc Blank & Dave Lebling):
    • Zork I: The Great Underground Empire (1980)
    • Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz (1981)
    • Zork III: The Dungeon Master (1982)
  • The Enchanter Trilogy:
    • Enchanter (1983, Marc Blank)
    • Sorcerer (1984, Steve Meretzky)
    • Spellbreaker (1985, Dave Lebling)
  • Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor (1987, Brian Moriarty)
  • Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz (1988, Steve Meretzky)
  • Zork: The Undiscovered Underground (1997, Michael Berlyn and Marc Blank)
• Deadline (1982, Marc Blank)
• Starcross (1982, Dave Lebling)
• Suspended: A Cryogenic Nightmare (1983, Michael Berlyn)
• Infidel (1983, Michael Berlyn)
• Planetfall (1983, Steve Meretzky)
• The Witness (1983, Stu Galley)
• Cutthroats (1984, Michael Berlyn & Jerry Wolper)
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1984, Steve Meretzky & Douglas Adams)
• Seastalker (1984, Stu Galley & Jim Lawrence)
• Suspect (1984, Dave Lebling)
• A Mind Forever Voyaging (1985, Steve Meretzky)
• Wishbringer: The Magick Stone of Dreams (1985, Brian Moriarty)
• Ballyhoo (1986, Jeff O'Neill)
• Hollywood Hijinx (1986, "Hollywood" Dave Anderson)
• Leather Goddesses of Phobos (1986, Steve Meretzky)
• Moonmist (1986, Stu Galley)
• Trinity (1986, Brian Moriarty)
• Border Zone (1987, Marc Blank)
• Bureaucracy (1987, Infocom & Douglas Adams)
• The Lurking Horror (1987, Dave Lebling)
• Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It (1987, Jeff O'Neill)
• Plundered Hearts (1987, Amy Briggs)
• Stationfall (1987, Steve Meretzky)
• Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels (1988, Bob Bates)
• Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur (1989, Bob Bates)
• James Clavell's Shogun (1989, Dave Lebling)
• Journey (1989, Marc Blank)

Other titles

• Graphic Adventures
  • Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2: Gas Pump Girls Meet the Pulsating Inconvenience from Planet X! (1992, Steve Meretzky)
  • Return to Zork (1993)
  • Zork: Nemesis (1996)
  • Zork Grand Inquisitor (1997)
• Other Games
  • Fooblitzky (1985, Marc Blank, Michael Berlyn, Poh Lim & Paula Maxwell)
  • Quarterstaff: The Tomb of Setmoth (1988, Scott Schmitz, Ken Updike & Amy Briggs)
  • Mines of Titan (1988, Louis Castle & Brett Sperry)
  • Tombs & Treasure (1989, developed by Nihon Falcom)
  • Circuit's Edge (1989, developed by Westwood Studios)
• Infocomics
  • Lane Mastodon vs. the Blubbermen (1988, Steve Meretzky)
  • Gamma Force in Pit of a Thousand Screams (1988, Amy Briggs)
  • ZorkQuest: Assault on Egreth Castle (1988, Elizabeth Langosy)
  • ZorkQuest II: The Crystal of Doom (1988, Elizabeth Langosy)

Collections

• The Zork Trilogy (1986; contained Zork I, Zork II & Zork III)
• The Enchanter Trilogy (1986; contained Enchanter, Sorcerer & Spellbreaker)
• The Lost Treasures of Infocom (1991; contained 20 of Infocom's interactive fiction games)
• The Lost Treasures of Infocom II (1992; contained 11 interactive fiction games)
• The Zork Anthology (1994; contained Zork I, Zork II, Zork III, Beyond Zork & Zork Zero)
• The Masterpieces of Infocom (1996; contained 33 Infocom games plus six winners of the SPAG Interactive Fiction Contest not affiliated with Infocom)
• Zork Special Edition (1997; contained Zork I, Zork II, Zork III, Beyond Zork, Zork Zero, Return to Zork, Zork: Nemesis, and Planetfall)
• Zork Classics: Interactive Fiction (2000)

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