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Published by: Personal Software

For: TRS-80

Links: L M C

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Lars Brinkhoff	2023-02-11 16:04:29
The PDP-11 is not considered a mainframe.

Ben	2009-10-02 14:54:39
I think the description is a little misleading. Infocom as a development company did exist; it was founded in June 22, 1979 by recent graduated MIT students. It is credited with the copyright on the top of the floppy disk label as well as holding the trademark for Zork. Personal Software was also founded by MIT graduates in 1978. It was originally setup as a publisher to market software programs for personal computers. They agreed to market Zork for the PDP-11 mainframe in November 1980. In December 1980 they were selling Zork ported, TRS-80. In the next year it was ported to the Apple II. Though Infocom were unsatisfied with the support given by Personal Software, so by the end of the 1981 they decided to market and publish their own titles.

Ben

2009-10-02 14:54:39

I think the description is a little misleading. Infocom as a development company did exist; it was founded in June 22, 1979 by recent graduated MIT students. It is credited with the copyright on the top of the floppy disk label as well as holding the trademark for Zork. Personal Software was also founded by MIT graduates in 1978. It was originally setup as a publisher to market software programs for personal computers. They agreed to market Zork for the PDP-11 mainframe in November 1980. In December 1980 they were selling Zork ported, TRS-80. In the next year it was ported to the Apple II. Though Infocom were unsatisfied with the support given by Personal Software, so by the end of the 1981 they decided to market and publish their own titles.

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An extremely rare piece, this version of Zork was published before Infocom was formed, by the same company which published VisiCalc, the first computer spreadsheet program. Sometimes referred to as 'Barbarian Zork' for obvious reasons, it was released only for TRS-80 and Apple II. As far as I know the game is the same as the Zork I later published by Infocom, only much much rarer.