Infocom games were written using a roughly LISP-like programming language called ZIL ( Zork Implementation Language or Zork Interactive Language — it was referred to as both ) that compiled into a byte code able to run on a standardized virtual machine called the Z-machine.

With the Z-machine, Infocom was able to release most of their games for most popular home computers of the day simultaneously — the Apple II family, Atari 800, IBM PC compatibles, Amstrad CPC / PCW ( one disc worked on both machines ), Commodore 64, Commodore Plus / 4, Commodore 128, Kaypro CP / M, Texas Instruments TI-99 / 4A, the Mac, Atari ST, the Commodore Amiga and the Radio Shack TRS-80.

Whereas most computer games of the era would achieve initial success and then suffer a significant drop-off in sales, Infocom titles continued to sell for years and years.

Whereas most game developers sold their games mainly in software stores, Infocom also distributed their games via bookstores.

Since their games were text-based, patrons of bookstores were drawn to the Infocom games as they were already interested in reading.

Next, Infocom titles featured strong storytelling and rich descriptions, eschewing the day's primitive graphic capabilities, allowing users to use their own imaginations for the lavish and exotic locations the games described.

And to compete with the Leisure Suit Larry style games that were also appearing, Infocom also came out with Leather Goddesses of Phobos in 1986, which featured " tame ", " suggestive ", and " lewd " playing modes, and that was notable for including among its " feelies " a " scratch-and-sniff " card with six odors that corresponded to six cues during the game.

Infocom also released a small number of " interactive fiction paperbacks " ( gamebooks ), which were based on the games and featured the ability to choose a different path through the story.

Reviewers were also consistently disappointed that Infocom — noted for the natural language syntax of their games — did not include a natural language query ability, which was the most expected feature for this database.

And a final disappointment was that Cornerstone was available only for IBM PCs and not any of the other platforms that Infocom supported for their games ; while Cornerstone had been programmed with its own virtual machine for maximum portability, that feature had become essentially irrelevant.

Infocom had sunk much of the money from games sales into Cornerstone ; this, in addition to a slump in computer game sales, left the company in a very precarious financial position.

* Infocom had a successful marketing approach that kept all their games in store inventories for years.

While this made sense for the graphically intensive games that made up the rest of Activision's catalog, since Infocom games were text based, it didn't make sense-the newer games didn't have improved text.

Infocom had traditionally produced about four games per year with more staff than they had post-merger.

* Davis pushed Infocom to release more graphical games, but the one they did release, Fooblitzky, bombed.

For a few years, Activision continued to market Infocom's classic games in collections ( usually by genre, such as the Science Fiction collection ); in 1991, they published The Lost Treasures of Infocom, followed in 1992 by The Lost Treasures of Infocom II.

* The Lost Treasures of Infocom ( 1991 ; contained 20 of Infocom's interactive fiction games )

* The Lost Treasures of Infocom II ( 1992 ; contained 11 interactive fiction games )

* Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces of Infocom ( 1996 ; contained 33 Infocom games plus six winners of the SPAG Interactive Fiction Contest not affiliated with Infocom )

With the exception of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Shogun, the copyrights to the Infocom games are believed to be still held by Activision.

There are currently at least four Infocom sampler and demos available from the IF Archive as Z-machine story files which require a Z-machine interpreter to play.

The dungeons are stocked with many novel creatures, objects and locations, among them grues, zorkmids, and Flood Control Dam # 3 — all of which are referenced by subsequent Infocom text adventures.

Only two version 1 files are known to have been released by Infocom, and only two of version 2.

It is possible to kill several of the game's civilian non-player characters, whereas in every other Infocom or Zork game, such actions are either impossible to accomplish or immediately punished by death.

Among the extra items, which Infocom called feelies, in the Bureaucracy game package are:

They have cropped up in other fantasy realms, though rarely, as they are seen as being strongly attached to the Zork universe, Infocom and the medium of interactive fiction in general.

Included in the Wishbringer package are several items, which Infocom called feelies:

The feelies pioneered by text adventure company Infocom include many examples, such as blueprints, maps, documents, and publications designed within the context of each game's fictional setting.

* Infocom Documentation Project-Group working with Activision's permission to recreate manuals for Infocom games in PDF and text formats.

" The command commonly produces a humorous response in other Infocom games and text adventures, leading to its usage in the title of the interactive fiction competition, the XYZZY Awards.

** Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz ( 1988, Infocom, text with some graphics )

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 all its text adventures to a new platform simply by writing a Z-machine implementation for that platform.

The undisputed giants of the genre were Infocom, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who practically redefined the genre by ensuring the interface ( or text parser ) never provided a barrier between the player and the fictional elements of the game.

They later founded Infocom and published a series of popular text adventures.

Their first products were all illustrated text adventures, some of them designed by Infocom veteran Steve Meretzky.

: The large emerald is also one of the Twenty Treasures of Zork from the Infocom text adventure Zork I.

" One significant achievement noted by reviewers was that Infocom was able to contain the entire program on one floppy disk, a bonus provided by their use of their custom virtual machine ( in addition to other facilities, it compressed text ).

For the Infocom text adventure, see Starcross ( video game ).

* Solid Gold Series, five Infocom text adventure games updated with in-game hints among other improvements

Like a few other Infocom games, Stationfall has a bug in which it will return corrupt text in response to the command " hand hand hands ".

The other major publisher of text adventures, Infocom, allowed the player a great deal of freedom.

One of his works was Aikaetsivä, a Finnish language text adventure in the style of Infocom, which the Tamperean retailer Triosoft bought publishing rights to.