Category:Z-Machine

Infocom's first interactive fiction titles originally targeted the TRS-80 personal computer, but their Z-Machine engine allowed rapid ports to a multitude of computer systems of the time. Even long after Infocom folded, standalone interpreters were written for platforms as diverse as the Game Boy, Emacs, and IRC.

Although Infocom's Z-Machine titles can be played with personal computer emulators, using a standalone interpreter such as Frotz is simpler and provides more quality of life features, such as native text copy+pasting, unlimited save capacity, unlimited transcript capacity, native printing, native Windows font rendering, and console customization including color schemes, column width, and accessibility features. Many fanmade interactive fiction titles are only distributed as Z-Code files, and require a standalone interpreter to play. To play an Infocom game with Frotz, you must have the Z-code files, which are most easily extracted from DOS copies of the games.