Infocom games

Looking for a Dragon or CoCo game not already in the archive - Then request it here and hopefully it will either be uploaded to the archive or another member can upload it to this forum.
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Yoruk
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Infocom games

Post by Yoruk »

Hello,

Did you know if Infocom games were available on the Dragons ?

I'm a big fan of the Zork games series, it would be great to play on a real machine !

I made some researches, looks like.. no :roll:

Thanks in advance if someone have some information. :P
Alastair
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Re: Infocom games

Post by Alastair »

Unfortunately Infocom never released any title for the Dragon. At the time there were not enough households with a Dragon plus a disc drive (the disc drives cost more than the computer itself, so only a small percentage of Dragon owners bought a drive) to make the market worthwhile for Infocom. Also Infocom was an American company and despite the appearance of the Tano Dragon, the computer had a negligible presence in America.

For a list (incomplete) of text adventures that were officially released for the Dragon, or in the odd case announced but not released, please check out the Classic Adventure Solution Archive (CASA for short).
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Yoruk
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Re: Infocom games

Post by Yoruk »

Ok I see.

I understand now why the Zork games were very popular on Commodore/Atari and Apple machines...! :mrgreen:

Thanks for the link, very interesting.
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snarkhunter
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Re: Infocom games

Post by snarkhunter »

The safest bet now, as far as playing the "Infocom" games is concerned, might be to resort to emulation. I think I retrieved the whole range in Amiga format, many years ago...

I believe it should also be quite easy to play those online nowadays...
https://pot.home.xs4all.nl/infocom/
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Yoruk
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Re: Infocom games

Post by Yoruk »

An other way is actually to use a modern "interpreter" for these games.

Infocom created a virtual machine, the "Z-machine" to simplify the porting to the various range of 80's computers. The game file itself is the same on every machines, only a small executable (the "interpreter") is different for each machine.

Today, you can use software like WinFrotz or Gargoyle to run these games on modern computers, laptops, tablets, phones...

It's still possible today to create this kind of interactive-fiction games, (and compatible with the software above). Take a look at Inform 7 for example.

I am a writer since some years, all my games are playable online or offline, even on old computers. Unfortunately, it seems that no zmachine interpreters were made for the Dragon... :oops:
Alastair
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Re: Infocom games

Post by Alastair »

I've been looking into this and there are some Infocom games available for the CoCo (TRS-80 Colour Computer), a computer that is very similar to the Dragon. So I suspect it may be possible to port the CoCo zmachine interpreter to the Dragon.
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Yoruk
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Re: Infocom games

Post by Yoruk »

I know that some Coco cartridges can work on the Dragon, but for the floopy games I don't know.... :?: But it's a very interesting discovery !! ;)
bluearcus
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Re: Infocom games

Post by bluearcus »

At least one game has already been ported... Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy is available in the archive if you look in the disk Software section.

Does that mean we could potentially get the whole range of Infocom games running then?
admin
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Re: Infocom games

Post by admin »

Potentially yes - If you look at the HHGTTG game, I think the Z-Machine engine has been ported, so theoretically it should be possible.
Simon Hardy
Alastair
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Re: Infocom games

Post by Alastair »

Does anyone know how N.D.U.G. created their port of "Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy"?
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