What it plays

Infocom's text adventures, modern interactive fiction, and Scott Adams' originals.

The Golden Lanthorn plays parser games: the kind of interactive fiction, or text adventure, where you type what you want to do (open the mailbox, go north) and the story answers. It reads the game file itself and works out what kind it is, so you just add your stories to the library and open them. It includes no games; here is where to find them.

Story formats

Z-machine

Versions 1 to 8: every Infocom game, and the thousands of later games written with Inform 6, Inform 7, PunyInform, Dialog or ZIL. Files ending in .z3, .z5, .z8, .zblorb or Infocom's own .dat.

Glulx

The larger format most Inform 7 games use today, with pictures, sound and several windows. Files ending in .ulx or .gblorb.

Blorb

The package that bundles a Z-machine or Glulx story with its cover, pictures and sounds.

Scott Adams

The classic Adventure International games in their .dat form, and the S.A.G.A. graphic releases with their pictures.

It doesn't play TADS, Hugo, ADRIFT or AGT games, or choice-based games made with Twine or Ink.

The Infocom classics

Infocom made the best-known text adventures of the 1980s, and all of them run on the Z-machine. Some that players most often look for:

• Zork I: The Great Underground Empire 1980
• Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz 1981
• Zork III: The Dungeon Master 1982
• Enchanter 1983
• Planetfall 1983
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 1984, with Douglas Adams
• A Mind Forever Voyaging 1985
• Trinity 1986
• Beyond Zork 1987, with its on-screen map and character
• The Lurking Horror 1987
• Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels 1987
• Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz 1988
• Shogun 1989
• Journey 1989
• Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur 1989

The graphical games

Infocom's last games, Zork Zero, Shogun, Journey and Arthur, used version 6 of the Z-machine, with pictures, menus and screens laid out by the game. The Golden Lanthorn draws them properly: in Hybrid, the original art around crisp modern text; in Raster, pixel-true, in the typeface the original machine used.

The sound

The Lurking Horror and Sherlock shipped sampled sound effects on their original release disks, in a format of their own. The Golden Lanthorn plays them as they were meant to be heard.

The original disks

Kept a floppy image of the game you played as a child? Open it directly. The Golden Lanthorn reads the disk, finds the story and everything shipped with it, and plays it as that machine did, with its artwork, sound, palette and status line.

Where a release shipped art for more than one machine, such as Arthur's CGA, EGA, MCGA and Amiga pictures, you choose which one to see.

Scott Adams adventures

Scott Adams' Adventure International games were among the first adventures for home computers. The Golden Lanthorn plays them, from Adventureland and Pirate Adventure (both 1978) onward, including the illustrated S.A.G.A. releases, with the same map and library as every other game.

Modern interactive fiction

People have kept writing parser games ever since Infocom, and many of the best are free. A few favourites it plays:

• Lost Pig Admiral Jota, 2007
• Counterfeit Monkey Emily Short, 2012
• Anchorhead Michael Gentry, 1998
• Photopia Adam Cadre, 1998
• Spider and Web Andrew Plotkin, 1998
• Galatea Emily Short, 2000
• Blue Lacuna Aaron Reed, 2008
• Coloratura Lynnea Glasser, 2013
• Kerkerkruip Victor Gijsbers, 2011
• Junior Arithmancer Mike Spivey, 2018

Games written with Inform, the most widely used tool for parser fiction, come out as Z-machine or Glulx files, so nearly everything on IFDB and the IF Archive made with it will play. See where to find games.

While you play

Whatever the game, you get the same help: a map that draws itself as you explore, hints (a game's own hint menus and InvisiClues-style hint files) in a side panel, saves and a turn-by-turn history you can rewind, a command tray of the words the game knows, and each game's own period look and colours. More on the home page.