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I'm new. Long story short... - Gespenster2 - 28-07-2026
Hi, I'm Gespenster. I do stuff in 8 bit. Right now, what I am looking to do is to port .z3 adventure game / story files to Game Boy. The program for that is INFGMB via https://problemkaputt.de/infgmb.htm if someone is interested. (Before that I did similar for Game Boy Advance, but now, I wanna be even more 'lo-fi'.) Anyway, I think that might turn out max. cozy. All of this is for my own personal use, nothing about this is commercial.
Well, and it seem that you have a bunch of .z3 files. Hoping I may have some.
(You have them in/due to your adventure floppy compilations. For maybe that is not something many people recall or are interested in.)
(I was born in central Europe, so all we ever had at home were two C64 and an Amiga.)
Kind Regards,
RE: I'm new. Long story short... - Gespenster2 - 29-07-2026
Ey, strides were made.
I read through the release posts of some of these compilation floppies, thinking what I would find interesting, and easy - and legal - to source somewhere else. That led me to getting Hibernated 1 - This Place is Death (Director's Cut). It is available on itch.io https://8bitgames.itch.io/hibernated1 for a multitude of home computers and also as bare z5 and z3 (the one I need) files. Big comprehensive bundle, wonderful.
And, it's a game that is promised to be high quality and the right level of difficulty (I don't care about games that are Wizardry levels of hard and grind-y for no discernable purpose).
Then making the rom is really easy, thanks MS Power Shell.
Then I learned how to correctly edit the ROM header so that it contains the game's name. Certainly tidier than - and it almost seems "NOCASH INFGMB" is a title that wants editing out. You will only ever see this edit when reading the ROM externally, for flashing or dumping, but it is neater, yes.
Another big thing was to improve on the pre-programmed parser commands.
When there is no keyboard, and you otherwise have to input words letter by letter, these are extremely helpful. So, having words like 'get', 'open' or 'save' accessible in a clever, improved order was next. Changed what was provided by the... interpreter (?) from:
Code:
.get .drop .examine .open .get all.restore.save.enter .turn .move .unlock .kill .give .read .$verify.Code:
.get .examine .look .open .unlock .read .i.save.restore.give .push .up.down.enter .drop .ask .wear ..($verify I'd want to include, but this game doesn't use this feature.)
(And, I would put 'examine' before 'get', but examine is such a long word, makes the cursor jolt right so hard, jarring on the eyes. so 'get'-->'examine' it is.)
Took a while to get this right. I don't have much experience with hex editor stuff.
Next part will be easier in that we make a label for its (reflashable) cartridge.
Summa summarum: having a good time. yay.
RE: I'm new. Long story short... - ChickenMan - 29-07-2026
Hi Gespenster and welcome to the forum
Almost all the Infocom adventures come in Z3 format and are all over the net, these were the first we put on disk once a loader was written for the Microbee.
There are many Z3 games at https://search.ifarchive.org/search , worth checking out.
RE: I'm new. Long story short... - Gespenster2 - 30-07-2026
Hello,
True about Infocom, extensive collections of all their games are easily found, on github, other places.
But, perhaps, I'm just not that in love with Infocom. Every time I begin an Infocom game, I don't have a great time, the famous ones are hard like Hitchhikers, the ones that are meant to be funny I don't find funny. I know, they've made - surely - something for me, too, something easy like Wishbringer... maybe some day.
Everyone starts Zork, very few people complete Zork... I've even written my own 'There's a mailbox" game before, via Adventuron. (It was decent, too, according to my students.)
IFDB.org I use sometimes to search... surely they have the goods, maybe just my Search-fu is not good. It reminds me a bit of rpgmaker.net . You tell yourself, the riches that you can find here will make it worthwhile wrangling the UX that's still stuck in its emo phase in 2005.
But yes, thank you, and 'will go search, 'will find more things that fit the bill for sure.
*But, after consideration, I wish to stick with my opinion that .z3, and nothing but that, is not the easiest to find.*
RE: I'm new. Long story short... - ChickenMan - 30-07-2026
*But, after consideration, I wish to stick with my opinion that .z3, and nothing but that, is not the easiest to find.*
Yes Z3 form has not been used recently by anyone so it only older games. We only has a Z3 Loader originally so I had searched the internet far and wide and the ones we have are all I could find. Maybe there are more recent ones about, I havent looked for them in years as we now have a Z5 Loader and that seems to be popular and many writers are saving in that form now.
To access what we have here you need to request access via here https://microbeetechnology.com.au/forum/thread-15.html
RE: I'm new. Long story short... - Gespenster2 - 30-07-2026
Fruit of one's labor. This being my IPS modded Game Boy Pocket. Since it is the sharpest image, it's probably the most ideal for text games. My Game Boy Color (also IPS, same panel actually, panels for old Blackberry Q5s) does pretty well also (and a custom color palette is provided by INFGMB, how nice.). An original screen (also tested) is - well fuzzier - more deliberate, let's say.
![[Image: e0nkez87mbgh1.jpeg]](https://i.redd.it/e0nkez87mbgh1.jpeg)