Any legal way to obtain these Infocom games?

I’ve never been able to play:

Zork Zero
Return to Zork (except for an all-text remake entered in IFComp one year)
Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels
Arthur
Journey
Bureaucracy
Beyond Zork
Nord and Bert Couldn’t Make Head or Tail of It
Shogun (though I’m not really interested in it)

Is there any legal way to get a copy of these games? Especially Nord and Bert and Bureaucracy.

Find Lost Treasures I & II.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_ … of_Infocom

Once you own the actual box, you can probably legally grab the files from online somewhere and play them with a z-machine terp. The later games might be problematic, I don’t really know.

Note that Return to Zork (a graphical adventure not made by the actual Infocom) is not included in the Lost Treasures collections.

Oh good, I’ll take it off the list. I thought the text remake was not very compelling, and atrributed it to the port-er, but after looking it up, it seems the original was also uncompelling.

gog.com/game/the_zork_anthology is a licensed repackaging which includes Beyond Zork and Zork Zero. You can also buy RTZ as a separate purchase from the same site.

There is an iPhone/iPad app on the Apple app store: itunes.apple.com/ca/app/lost-tr … 26745?mt=8.

It’s free, but only Zork I is included – the other games (almost all games and invisiclues are there along with improvements except for a few which are held by other companies/people such as Hitchhikers or Shogun) are $13.99 in Canada, other prices elsewhere.

It’s legal and you get the full collection remastered and restored.

That app is desupported. It won’t run on iOS11 – it won’t even appear if you search the App Store on an iOS11 device. Activision never bothered to recompile it 64-bit.

Also, it is missing exactly the games on my list; I loved that app, and played all the games on it.

Activision sure loves to support these games, don’t they?

To nitpick myself: Activision released the iOS collection in late 2012; the last patch was Jan 2013. They never even updated it for iOS 7, never mind iOS 11.

Now they have the Zork Anthology up on GOG, but none of the other Infocom games. (There was an Infocom Mystery Collection, Sci-Fi Collection, etc.)

It’s hard to guess what’s going on inside the corporate monolith for such a low-status product. Maybe a single manager is pushing to keep the games available, but without the support of higher-level management. Maybe it’s some kind of gimmick to keep the “Zork” trademark active.

I have an old iPhone 4 that I purchased new. I have kept it as an iPod. I haven’t upgraded the iOS for a number of years. I can still play the Lost Treasures app on the 4.

You can probably find an old iPhone that has not been upgraded for a small amount, connect it to wifi and download Lost Treasures from the App Store while it is still available.

fos1