Does anyone know where to find downloads of Leather Goddesses and Hitchhiker’s Guide?
I found a site once, but instead of downloading the game, it gave my operating system such a virus I had to have a tech reinstall it.
Those games are still technically owned by Activision, and unfortunately they haven’t released them for free.
There are such sites as abandonware, which are on tricky legal ground. It’s not a secret, so I’m pretty sure I can say here that they exist.
If you got a virus, then maybe you were browsing a “warez” site. Abandonware is legally iffy, but they are usually safe sites. Warez sites are a huge NO-NO.
If you did manage to find the games online - or if you bought them from an Infocom collection - you’d find they have .DAT files, like for instance “leather.dat”, that you can open in most any standard ZMachine interpreter.
Draconis: Are you sure? Seems I heard otherwise.
Peter: I downloaded from an abandonware site, and it definitely zapped me.
Yes. Zork 1-3 were released for free at one point, but Activision has never said anything definite about the rest.
Re abandonware virus: Then in my experience you got very, very unlucky. It also depends what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for high-profile games, like a KQ6 CD version, or LSL6 CD version, or Gabriel Knight, then you’re more likely to get fake results and unwanted viruses.
Whereas if you look for games like Deja Vu, or I Damian, or Captain Blood, or BAT, well, those are examples of games pretty much below everyones radar. It’s still legally iffy for you to download them, but compared to the games I mentioned before, pfff.
Anyway, this discussion of abandonware is a bit beside the point - you may find it, you may not. No one will prevent you from looking. But Activision is still actively selling Lost Treasures of Infocom, even on the iOS app store, so you’re definitely trying to freely download something that is currently on the market.
Activision never definitely said that Zork 1-3 could be distributed for free, either. They were downloadable for a limited time.
True. And none of the others (to my knowledge) have ever been officially released for free, except possibly as short scenes in the “samplers”? (I don’t really know anything about those but I’ve read they were created as promos at one point.)
I wonder if the apps on the iOS app store would run on my Dell laptop.
The .dat files would. I don’t have an iOS device so I don’t know how easy they are to extract, but those can then be run on any Z-Machine interpreter.
Thanks.
For Hitchhiker’s Guide, it is freely playable online in a 30th anniversary version on the BBC’s website, so if online works for you, there it is.
It is not hard to extract data files from an iOS app, if you have the app downloaded in iTunes. See osxdaily.com/2011/04/07/extract- … -mac-os-x/ . I just tested this and it works on Activision’s Infocom app (“LT of Infocom 1.0.2.ipa”). The data files are in Payload/infocom.app/Data and have .bin suffixes rather than .dat.
Note that the iOS app uses in-app-purchase – Zork 1 is free to play, the rest of the games can be unlocked for $10 (for the set). Extracting the .bin files lets you bypass the paywall. You could be polite and pay before you do this.
(You should be able to download the app from iTunes without having an iOS device. I guess you’d need an iOS device to pay, though.)
Note that Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy is available on IFDB ever since Douglas Adams released it online.
That version was archived, and I can’t figure how to get to it.
Just click the “Story File” link. It downloads just fine for me.
Yep, there’s a major culturel difference between warez sites and abandonware. But in my experience, wares sites are not all that much more questionable than any other sources. Both Java and CNET tries to fool you into installing crapware. Lots of “free” software are spyware/crapware-sponsored too. An cd-rom for a tablet PC corrupted my boot sequence. And try to google any major brand together with the phrase “spyware scandal”.