Sometimes, though, Infocom threw in puzzles just for the humor of it — if the user never ran into these, they could still finish the game just fine.

It is the last murder mystery Infocom released, bringing an end to a popular genre of titles such as Deadline and The Witness.

Although Infocom started out with Zork, and although the Zork world was the centerpiece of their product line throughout the Zork and Enchanter series, the company quickly branched out into a wide variety of story lines: fantasy, science-fiction, mystery, horror, historical adventure, children's stories, and others that defied categories.

Deadline was a game of many " firsts " for Infocom: their first mystery game, their first non-Zork game, and the game that started their tradition of feelies.

One of the party guests is mentioned as wearing a " square plastic mask "; this refers to the original packaging of the Infocom game Suspended.

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.

Inspired by Colossal Cave, Marc Blank and Dave Lebling created what was to become the first Infocom game, Zork, in 1977 at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science.

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.

Unlike most computer software, Infocom titles were distributed under a no-returns policy, which allowed them to make money from a single game for a longer period of time.

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.

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.

Davis believed that his company had paid too much for Infocom and initiated a lawsuit against them to recoup some of the cost, along with changing the way Infocom was run.

* 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.

This marketing approach cut off potential revenue for numerous Infocom titles that had consistently brought in money for several years.

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

In addition, Zork was written on the PDP-10, and Infocom used several PDP-10s for game development and testing.

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.

Infocom itself used extensions of. dat ( Data ) and. zip ( ZIP = Z-machine Interpreter Program ), but the latter clashes with the present widespread use of. zip for PKZIP-compatible archive files starting in the 1990s, after Activision had shut down Infocom.

Suspect is an interactive fiction computer game designed by Dave Lebling and published by Infocom in 1984.

* The Infocom Bugs List entry for Suspect

** Spellbreaker ( 1985, Infocom )

** Wishbringer: The Magick Stone of Dreams ( 1985, Infocom )

A Mind Forever Voyaging ( AMFV ) is an interactive fiction game designed and implemented by Steve Meretzky and published by Infocom in 1985.

Brian Moriarty ( born 1956 ) is an American video game developer who authored three of the original Infocom interactive fiction titles, Wishbringer ( 1985 ), Trinity ( 1986 ) and Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor ( 1987 ).

Wishbringer: The Magick Stone of Dreams is an interactive fiction computer game written by Brian Moriarty and published by Infocom in 1985.

Cornerstone is a relational database for DOS by Infocom in 1985.

A Mind Forever Voyaging, published by Infocom in 1985, was an interactive fiction game in which the player controlled a sentient computer capable of experimenting with potential future scenarios based on varying public policy decisions.

Spellbreaker is an interactive fiction computer game written by Dave Lebling and released by Infocom in 1985, the third and final game in the " Enchanter Trilogy ".

ZUU can be seen as having two goals: promotion of the commercial title Zork Grand Inquisitor, and an attempt to reconcile with die-hard Infocom fans who may have harbored resentment against Activision for their role in buying Infocom in 1985 and subsequent closure of the company in 1989.

Fooblitzky is a board game-style computer game published by Infocom in 1985 and designed by a team including interactive fiction authors Marc Blank and Michael Berlyn.

The Infocom trademark is currently held by Pete Hottelet's Omni Consumer Products, who registered the name around the same time as Klaeffling in 2007.

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 was a software company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction.

Infocom was founded on June 22, 1979 by MIT staff and students led by Dave Lebling, Marc Blank, Albert Vezza, and Joel Berez and lasted as an independent company until 1986 when it was bought by Activision.

Activision finally 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.

Infocom games are text adventures where users direct the action by entering short strings of words to give commands when prompted.

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.

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.

In an attempt to reach out to females, Infocom also produced Plundered Hearts, which required the gamer to take the part of a heroine in a swashbuckling adventure on the high seas, and which required the heroine to use more feminine tactics to win the game, since hacking-and-slashing was not a very ladylike way to behave.

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.

In 1984 Infocom started putting resources into a new division to produce business products.

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.