New old game: a Z-code version of Acheton

[David Kinder]

Around a decade ago, work was done on converting some of the games written
on Cambridge's Phoenix mainframe during the 1980s to Z-code. Possibly the
most historically important of these, Acheton, was started on but not finished.

Inspired by Richard Bos' solution of the MS-DOS version of this game, and
helped by Adam Atkinson, I've gone back to this, and worked out the last few
bugs preventing a full play-through of the game. The resulting Z-code file
is here:

http://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXphoenixXgamesXzcode.html

This is probably the third large mainframe text adventure written, after
Adventure and Zork. By any standards, it is difficult, and unfair. But if
you like such games it is interesting. And if you don't, it's at least a
part of text adventure history.

David

[namekuseijin]

Historical interest, sure. I like the "Welcome to Adventure" that all
such games borrowed from the original. :)

in any case, I don't think this will be of much help: "If you have
any problems, please contact JGT1, DJS6 or JRP1.
Good luck!" :D

[Adam Atkinson]

If you type "inform" it says something else.

[namekuseijin]

Those are only nicknames for the original authors, yes, but my point
is that contacting those authors as stated in the "historic" text
should prove to be of no usefulness nowadays. :)

But "inform" at least provides an up-to-date maintainer.