# If you like text adventures... **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 1, 2006, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-like-text-adventures/374856 "2006-10-01T18:13:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Just\_Some\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ad7895/32.png) [@Just\_Some\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Some_Guy)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2006, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-like-text-adventures/374856/1 "2006-10-01T18:13:12Z")
For those who like their text adventures (or just want to try some unique little games) the 2006 Interactive Fiction competition is now in its judging period. Every year dozens of amatuer game designers and writers put together text adventures and send them out into the world to be judged. People download them, play them for two hours, and then rate them on a scale of one to ten. There’s a lot of junk in the competition but there’s always one or two gems hidden in there too. The games are available at: [http://ifcomp.org](http://ifcomp.org) Even if you don’t want to judge, check it out! ---
**Author:** ![Eureka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/74df32/32.png) [@Eureka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eureka)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2006, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-like-text-adventures/374856/2 "2006-10-01T18:40:15Z")
I have little interest in text adventures, but one of my friends competed in 1996 (and did very well in the competition). So, it’s kinda neat to see that the competition is still going strong. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2006, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-like-text-adventures/374856/3 "2006-10-01T20:19:33Z")
So how the heck do I run a .z8 file? ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Some\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ad7895/32.png) [@Just\_Some\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Some_Guy)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2006, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-like-text-adventures/374856/4 "2006-10-01T21:10:35Z")
The WinInterpreters.exe link on [ifcomp.org](http://ifcomp.org) has the interpreters for all of the formats as part of it. These days most people like a program such as Spatterlight ([Spatterlight : Interactive Fiction for MacOS](http://ccxvii.net/spatterlight/)) for the Mac or Gargoyle for Windows ([Gargoyle : Interactive Fiction](http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/)) which include software to run all of the popular formats. Most text adventures these days are done as code for a virtual machine so that they’ll run on any platfrom from a Commodore 64 to a supercomputer. The two most popular are Z-machine (such as the z8 you found), is based on Infocom’s system and TADS which is it’s own beast. If you’re not using a Mac or Windows, then you’ll want to download an interpreter for your platform from [http://www.ifarchive.org](http://www.ifarchive.org) . The most popular Z-machine one is Frotz and it’s been ported to pretty much everything and it’s section of the archive is at [Index: if-archive/infocom/interpreters/frotz](http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXinfocomXinterpretersXfrotz.html) . ---
**Author:** ![Talon\_Karrde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Talon\_Karrde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Talon_Karrde)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2006, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-like-text-adventures/374856/5 "2006-10-02T02:11:02Z")
I remember playing some amateur IF games a few years ago. Some of them are great. The past winners can be found [here](http://wurb.com/if/award/1). If anyone’s interested I can recommend some of the specific games I really liked.