Mastodawn

Fellow #infocom text adventure fans, the newest #Vezza #zmachine #interpreter is now available for the #Amstrad #NC200 running CPMish. Using the glorious built in LCD display at 79x18 characters, it was a lot of fun to build. Special mention to Matthew Logue for not only requesting the NC200 version and providing platform information, but also for sending me a huge amount of photos from real hardware so I could debug, and doing a complete play though of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to prove it worked.
#retrogaming #retrogaming

N-gated Hacker News Apr 12

🎩🔧 Oh, the joy of resurrecting the Z-machine in a language so absurdly unsuitable that it's like knitting a sweater with uncooked spaghetti. 🙃 This article is a delightful blend of #nostalgia and masochism—because who wouldn't want to recreate 1980s tech struggles in the most convoluted way possible? 🕰️💔
https://whitebeard.blog/posts/building-a-z-machine-in-elm/ #Zmachine #TechStruggles #AbsurdProgramming #1980sRevival #HackerNews #ngated

Building a Z-Machine in the worst possible language

In which a 1980s virtual machine for text adventures is reimplemented in a pure functional language, against all better judgement, and somehow emerges working.

Whitebeard's Realm

Hacker News Apr 12

Building a Z-Machine in the worst possible language – Whitebeard's Realm

https://whitebeard.blog/posts/building-a-z-machine-in-elm/

#HackerNews #ZMachine #Elm #WhitebeardProgramming #GameDevelopment #CodingChallenges

Building a Z-Machine in the worst possible language

In which a 1980s virtual machine for text adventures is reimplemented in a pure functional language, against all better judgement, and somehow emerges working.

Whitebeard's Realm

13 Jan 3

Zork Running on 4-Bit Intel Computer https://hackaday.com/2026/01/03/zork-running-on-4-bit-intel-computer/
#Games #Retrocomputing #Fourbit #Intel4004 #Virtualization #Zmachine #Zork

Zork Running On 4-Bit Intel Computer

Before DOOM would run on any computing system ever produced, and indeed before it even ran on its first computer, the game that would run on any computer of the pre-DOOM era was Zork. This was a te…

Hackaday

Hackaday [Unofficial]Jan 3

Zork Running on 4-Bit Intel Computer

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://hackaday.com/2026/01/03/zork-running-on-4-bit-intel-computer/

Shawn Sijnstra Dec 24

As a surprise Christmas gift to #retrocomputing, I've pushed out a new version of my #Vezza #Infocom #zmachine #interpreter. This time it's a #CP/M build, specifically for the #TRS80 models 2/12/16... on glorious 8-inch floppies. My requestor and tester Ziggystar12 was kind enough to take a photo of Bureaucracy running on a machine with the 8-inch drives; a game that could never be run on that machine before even though it was contemporary! #retrogaming #retroBattleStations

S. John Ross Dec 24

My #InteractiveFiction disasterpiece, the aggressively awful yet sincerely huggy Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom, celebrates its 18th birthday today!

If you've never played a text adventure before, this free game will give you the wrong idea about them in ways that may never fully heal. If you've played ToaSK already, Gunwar and Vessa have _missed you._ Come home, barbarian! 🥰

https://ghalev.itch.io/toask
https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=8upuvdnsk4sho6ac

#TextAdventure #AdventureGame #Inform7 #ToaSK #ZMachine

Stylus Dec 15

Last week @hkz geektrapped me into understanding how "z5" format text adventures were distributed on the Apple II. A tool, interlz5, was written some years ago. Today, the source seems to be lost. I reverse-engineered what interlz5 was doing, and wrote my own version, interl5.py. (the z got lost, sorry). And just now I blogged about it: https://emergent.unpythonic.net/01765766083

Let's hope this one doesn't get lost too.

(also just to confess, until I tried to @ them in this post I was sure hkz's handle was kHz, a fitting name for someone dabbling in old and slow computers)

#interactiveFiction #zMachine #z5

"interlz5" in Python -- Apple II text adventure adventures

hkz Dec 12

A paper on how to reuse interpreters to get inform v3/5 games on your Apple II:
https://www.kansasfest.org/wp-content/uploads/apple_ii_inform_paper.pdf

There's just a slight issue: the linked tool used to interleave v5 story files on floppy images can no longer be downloaded.
The original URL is http://3.buric.co/interlz5-001.zip, archive.org doesn't seem to have it.

Please, tell me that someone here has it...

#apple2 #infocom #inform #ZMachine

NERDS.xyz – Real Tech News for Real Nerds [Unofficial]Nov 20

Microsoft releases Zork I, II, and III as open source

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://nerds.xyz/2025/11/microsoft-zork-open-source/