History of Infocom

Difference (from prior major revision) (minor diff, author diff)

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Producer of numerous computer games (arguably some of the most fun!), primarily interactive fiction, aka text adventure games.

Infocom was the producer of numerous computer games (arguably some of the most fun!), primarily interactive fiction (text adventures).

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The first (and very successful) game "Zork" was created in 1977, 2 years before the creators founded the company "Infocom", let alone released the game (which finally occurred in 1980).

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Eventually merged in 1986 by another great in the computer gaming industry, Activision?.

In 1986, Infocom merged with Activision?, another great in the computer gaming industry.

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Many Infocom titles remain available throughout the Internet community (most of them illegally), available as the game's "source", requiring an emulator of sorts to play. (These Infocom emulators have been written for various platform?s, ranging from older computers, to PC, Macintosh, and even Java).

Many Infocom titles remain available throughout the Internet community (legally in the case of the Zork trilogy, but illegally in most other cases).
They are available as Z-machine story files, which require a Z-machine emulator (a Z-code interpreter) to play.
These interpreters have been written for numerous platforms, ranging from older computers to palmtops to the IBM PC and Macintosh, and even Java.

Changed: 11,12c13

An excellent site detailing a timeline of Infocom's founding, release, and eventually dissolution can be found at...
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/timeline.html

An excellent site detailing a timeline of Infocom's founding, releases and eventual dissolution, can be found at http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/timeline.html.

Added: 13a15

A very detailed examination of Infocom's creative successes and marketing failures is avaiable from http://mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/infocom/.

	Revision 12 . . (edit) December 19, 2001 5:00 pm by (logged).28.191.xxx *[Added link to [excellent] MIT student project paper on Infocom.]**
	Revision 11 . . (edit) November 22, 2001 6:30 am by Zundark [remove my mention of Inform, which is out of place and now redundant]
	Revision 10 . . (edit) November 22, 2001 6:01 am by Zundark [link to Z-machine]
	Revision 9 . . (edit) November 22, 2001 12:37 am by Zundark [link Zork & fix typo]
	Revision 8 . . November 22, 2001 12:36 am by Zundark [Z-code is not "source", & mention that Zork is legal, & some copyediting]
	Revision 7 . . (edit) September 26, 2001 10:35 am by Bryan Derksen