Archiving Deity Jason Scott has released the Infocom Kraken

[dudeslife]

The Infocom Cabinet: Binders and Folders of Infocom, Inc. (1981-1987)

A collection of digitized scans from a large cache of documents related to the game publisher Infocom, Inc. of Cambridge, MA. Assembled by Steven Meretzky of Infocom.

 

His post is here: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4834

 

The archives are here: https://archive.org/details/infocomcabinet

 

 

[DanBoris]

I stated looking through some of these today, and there is some really cool stuff in there.

[dudeslife]

I was hoping to snag stuff like this off of eBay one day.... damned preservationists, giving it to Stanford..

[DanBoris]

I love this document from the Sorcerer file.

 

It is interesting how much debate there was over the title of this game. Maybe it's just because I am used to it, but I always thought Enchanter, Sorcerer, Spellbreaker were good names for the trilogy.

 

 

 

Date: 9 Nov 1983 1104-EST
From: David G. Anderson <DA at ZORK>
Subject: Re: Z5 and G/R
To: SEM
In-Reply-To: Your message of 9-Nov-83 1024-EST

 

********* D/A RESEARCH REPORT ********
After interviewing every man, woman, child and all other life
forms on earth, our research suggests: All six names totally and
compeletely suck. Selected excerpts from interviews:

 

"Spellbreaker sucks."
Bob Thompson
Computerland, Middle, Va.

 

"The name Spellsaver reminds me of lifesaver, and I'm one to fidget
when I play Infocom games. ..so that name sucks the big one."
Rudy Boggs
Swampland Software, Swampland TN

 

"Damn it Jim, they can't use Transporter. That's ours. Besides, it
sucks."
Dr. "Bones" McCoy
S. S. Enterprise, Space

 

"Spellstalker reminds me of the television show Nightstalker, so
it's been used. And that show sucked just like the name
Spellstalker."
Freddie Silverman
Former president, ABC TV

 

"Nobody knov/s anyone is Possessed until the end. That name really
sucks. I wouldn't even use it."
Scott Adams
Adventure International, Florida

 

"...except for the fact there is no reference to sorcerer, it sounds
okay with me. With one exception, the name sucks."
Turtle, Enchanter

 

There you have it. A random sampling of responses from our survey.
We look forward to serving you again in the future.

 

Enclosed please find 1 invoice.

D/A INVOICE
ITEM QUANTITY PRICE
Interview with every man, woman, 1 $857 Trillion
child and all other life forms
on earth.

 

Approved, DA

 

Note: We checked with cross-town rivial G/R on this price. They quoted us a price of 858 Trillion.

[TPA5]

That's really neat, I love things like this. Even reading the run-of-the-mill stuff that would be boring in the moment seems interesting now.