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Infocom
Infocom was an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced a business application, a relational database called ''Cornerstone (software), Cornerstone''. Infocom was founded on June 22, 1979, by staff and students of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and lasted as an independent company until 1986, when it was bought by Activision. Activision shut down the Infocom division in 1989, although they released some titles in the 1990s under the Infocom ''Zork'' brand. Activision abandoned the Infocom trademark in 2002. Overview Infocom games are text adventures where users direct the action by entering short strings of words to give commands when prompted. Generally the program will respond by describing the results of the action, often the contents of a room if the player has moved within the virtual world. The user reads this information, decides what to do, and enters another short serie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zork
''Zork'' is a text-based adventure game first released in 1977 by developers Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. The original developers and others, as the company Infocom, expanded and split the game into three titles—''Zork I: The Great Underground Empire'', ''Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz'', and ''Zork III: The Dungeon Master''—which were released commercially for a range of personal computers beginning in 1980. In ''Zork'', the player explores the abandoned Great Underground Empire in search of treasure. The player moves between the game's hundreds of locations and interacts with objects by typing commands in natural language that the game interprets. The program acts as a narrator, describing the player's location and the results of the player's commands. It has been described as the most famous piece of interactive fiction. The original game, developed between 1977 and 1979 at the Massachusetts Institute of Tec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Interactive Fiction
'' Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the form of interactive narratives or interactive narrations. These works can also be understood as a form of video game, either in the form of an adventure game or role-playing game. In common usage, the term refers to text adventures, a type of adventure game where the entire interface can be " text-only", however, graphical text adventures still fall under the text adventure category if the main way to interact with the game is by typing text. Some users of the term distinguish between interactive fiction, known as "Puzzle-free", that focuses on narrative, and "text adventures" that focus on puzzles. Due to their text-only nature, they sidestepped the problem of writing for widely divergent graphics architectures. This feature meant that i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Text Adventure
'' Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the form of interactive narratives or interactive narrations. These works can also be understood as a form of video game, either in the form of an adventure game or role-playing game. In common usage, the term refers to text adventures, a type of adventure game where the entire interface can be " text-only", however, graphical text adventures still fall under the text adventure category if the main way to interact with the game is by typing text. Some users of the term distinguish between interactive fiction, known as "Puzzle-free", that focuses on narrative, and "text adventures" that focus on puzzles. Due to their text-only nature, they sidestepped the problem of writing for widely divergent graphics architectures. This feature meant that i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leather Goddesses Of Phobos
''Leather Goddesses of Phobos'' is an interactive fiction video game written by Steve Meretzky and published by Infocom in 1986. It was released for the Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Amstrad PCW, Apple II, Macintosh, Atari 8-bit family, Atari ST, Commodore 64, TI-99/4A and MS-DOS. The game was Infocom's first "sex farce", including selectable gender and "naughtiness"—the latter ranging from "tame" to "lewd". It was one of five top-selling Infocom titles to be re-released in Solid Gold versions. It was Infocom's twenty-first game. Gameplay To start the game a gender must be chosen and the player will get a sidekick character. If the player's character is male, he will meet a burly but dim-witted man named Trent; if the player's character is female, she will find an attractive but somewhat ditzy woman named Tiffany. There are differences in game-play between the two sexes. ''Leather Goddesses of Phobos'' bore a difficulty rating of "Standard". The game has 75 locations, including the maze kn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cornerstone (software)
''Cornerstone'' is a relational database for MS-DOS released by Infocom, a company best known in the 1980s for developing interactive fiction video games. Initially hailed upon release in 1985 for its ease of use, a series of shortcomings and changes in the market kept ''Cornerstone'' from achieving success. It is generally considered a key factor in Infocom's demise. Development Games were only considered a "jumping off" point for Infocom. It was originally established as an outlet to develop "serious" products. Before forming the company, several of the founders had created the game ''Zork'' on mainframes while attending or working at MIT. When they joined to form Infocom, ''Zork'' was a natural choice as a first product because it was practically complete and didn't require much up-front funding. The enormous success of the game and its "sequels" (which were actually the other portions of the original mainframe game, which had been split into pieces that early personal comp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (computer Game)
''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' is an interactive fiction video game based on the comedic science fiction series of the same name. It was designed by series creator Douglas Adams and Infocom's Steve Meretzky, and it was first released in 1984 for the Apple II, Macintosh, Commodore 64, CP/M, MS-DOS, Amiga, Atari 8-bit family, and Atari ST. It is Infocom's fourteenth game. Plot The game loosely mirrors a portion of the series' plot, representing most of the events in the first book. Arthur Dent wakes up one day to find his house about to be destroyed by a construction crew to make way for a new bypass. His friend Ford Prefect, who is secretly an extraterrestrial, helps to calm Arthur down and hitches them a ride on one of the ships in the approaching Vogon constructor fleet, moments before the fleet destroys the Earth to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. Aboard the ship, Arthur learns that Ford is a journalist for ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' and has b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Planetfall
''Planetfall'' is a science fiction themed interactive fiction video game written by Steve Meretzky, and the eighth title published by Infocom in 1983. The original release included versions for Apple II, Atari 8-bit family, TRS-80, and IBM PC compatibles (both as a self-booting disk and for MS-DOS). The Atari ST and Commodore 64 versions were released in 1985. A version for CP/M was also released. Although ''Planetfall'' was Meretzky's first title, it proved one of his most popular works and a best-seller for Infocom; it was one of five top-selling titles to be re-released in Solid Gold versions including in-game hints. Planetfall uses the Z-machine originally developed for the Zork franchise and was added as a bonus to the "Zork Anthology". The word ''planetfall'' is a portmanteau of ''planet'' and ''landfall'', and occasionally used in science fiction to that effect. The book ''Planetfall'' written by Arthur Byron Cover, uses the game image on the cover, and is marketed "In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Z-machine
The Z-machine is a virtual machine that was developed by Joel Berez and Marc Blank in 1979 and used by Infocom for its text adventure games. Infocom compiled game code to files containing Z-machine instructions (called story files or Z-code files) and could therefore port its text adventures to a new platform simply by writing a Z-machine implementation for that platform. With the large number of incompatible home computer systems in use at the time, this was an important advantage over using native code or developing a compiler for each system. History The "Z" of Z-machine stands for Zork, Infocom's first adventure game. Z-code files usually have names ending in .z1, .z2, .z3, .z4, .z5, .z6, .z7, or .z8, where the number is the version number of the Z-machine on which the file is intended to be run, as given by the first byte of the story file. This is a modern convention, however. Infocom itself used extensions of .dat (Data) and .zip (ZIP = Z-machine Interpreter Program), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Activision
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one of the largest third-party video game publishers in the world and was the top United States publisher in 2016. The company was founded as Activision, Inc. on October 1, 1979 in Sunnyvale, California, by former Atari game developers upset at their treatment by Atari in order to develop their own games for the popular Atari 2600 home video game console. Activision was the first independent, third-party, console video game developer. The video game crash of 1983, in part created by too many new companies trying to follow in Activision's footsteps without the expertise of Activision's founders, hurt Activision's position in console games and forced the company to diversify into games for home computers, including the acquisition of Infocom. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deadline (video Game)
''Deadline'' is an interactive fiction video game published by Infocom in 1982. Written by Marc Blank, it was Infocom's third game. It was released for the Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Atari 8-bit family, Commodore 64, IBM PC (as a self-booting disk), Osborne 1, TRS-80, and later for the Amiga and Atari ST. ''Deadline'' was Infocom's first mystery game, their first non-''Zork'' game, and the game that started their tradition of feelies. The number of NPCs, the independence of their behavior from the player's actions, and the parser's complexity were considered revolutionary at the time of the game's release. Plot The player's character in ''Deadline'' is an unnamed police detective, summoned to a sprawling Connecticut estate to investigate the apparent suicide of wealthy industrialist Marshall Robner. The suspects, who walk around the estate pursuing their own agendas during your investigation, are: #Leslie Robner, the victim's wife #George Robner, the victim's son #Mr. McNabb, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Mind Forever Voyaging
''A Mind Forever Voyaging'' (''AMFV'') is a 1985 interactive fiction game designed and implemented by Steve Meretzky and published by Infocom. It is Infocom's seventeenth game. The game was intended as a Polemic, polemical critique of Ronald Reagan's politics. Plot The story is set in the United States of North America, which is similar to the real-world US, in the year 2031. The player controls PRISM, the world's first artificial general intelligence, sentient computer. PRISM is instructed by its creator, Dr. Abraham Perelman, to run a simulation of Senator Richard Ryder's "Plan for Renewed National Purpose". This plan is intended to address the nation's failing economy, the high Teenage suicide in the United States, teenage suicide rate, and to strengthen the nation's position in a nuclear arms race. PRISM simulates the life of a man called Perry Simm, ten years after the plan has gone into effect. The player experiences some time in Perry's life. The plan appears to have had ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al Vezza
Albert Vezza was a computer science professor and a founder of video game company Infocom. Career Vezza was the assistant director of MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and in charge of LCS's Dynamic Modeling (DM) group in the late 1970s when group members Dave Lebling, Marc Blank, Tim Anderson, and Bruce Daniels began creating the game that would become ''Zork''. By 1979, many of the graduating students in the DM group were interested in continuing to work together by establishing a company, and Vezza, who had long wanted to bring together his former students in a commercial venture, agreed to help fund the company, named Infocom. Vezza became a member of the board of directors of Infocom when it was incorporated on June 22, 1979. While the computer game business brought Infocom quick success, Vezza and others on the board were not convinced that computer games would remain a viable market over the long haul and advocated a move into business software. As Infocom bega ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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