19 lines
2.9 KiB
HTML
19 lines
2.9 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>Infocom</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../I.html" title="I"/><link rel="previous" href="inflate.html" title="inflate"/><link rel="next" href="initgame.html" title="initgame"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">Infocom</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="inflate.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">I</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="initgame.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="Infocom"/><dt xmlns="" id="Infocom"><b>Infocom</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> A now-legendary games company, active from 1979 to 1989, that
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commercialized the MDL parser technology used for
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<a href="../Z/Zork.html"><i class="glossterm">Zork</i></a> to produce a line of text adventure games that
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remain favorites among hackers. Infocom's games were intelligent, funny,
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witty, erudite, irreverent, challenging, satirical, and most thoroughly
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hackish in spirit. The physical game packages from Infocom are now prized
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collector's items. After being acquired by Activision in 1989 they did a
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few more “<span class="quote">modern</span>” (e.g. graphics-intensive) games which were
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less successful than reissues of their classics.</p><p>The software, thankfully, is still extant; Infocom games were written
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in a kind of P-code (called, actually, <span class="firstterm">z-code</span>) and distributed with a P-code
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interpreter core, and not only open-source emulators for that interpreter
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but an actual compiler as well have been written to permit the P-code to be
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run on platforms the games never originally graced. In fact, new games
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written in this P-code are still being written. There is a home page at
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<a href="http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/" target="_top">http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/</a>,
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and it is even possible to play these games in your <a href="http://www.xs4all.nl/~pot/infocom/" target="_top">browser</a> if it is
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Java-capable.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="inflate.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../I.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="initgame.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">inflate </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> initgame</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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