Running Zork and Z Machine Games on an Adafruit ItsyBitsy M4 Express @cogliano #RetroGaming #ItsyBitsy #VintageComputing

Running Zork on an Adafruit ItsyBitsy M4 Express

Dan Cogliano aka Dan the Man has done some remarkable work porting the classic PDP-10 game Zork and other Infocom Z Machine games to the Adafruit ItsyBitsy M4 Express.

Zork was originally developed in the late 1970’s on a DEC PDP-10 computer at MIT using a descendant of the LISP language. There was also a FORTRAN version that was translated to the C language. When the development moved to a commercial endeavor through the startup company Infocom, Zork was rewritten in two parts: An interpreter and a story file read by the interpreter.

This allowed Zork to run on many different computers, where there were quite a few in the 80’s. The same story file could be used on any computer, only the story interpreter had to be created for that computer. This also allowed new stories and sequels to be created that could run using the same interpreter. The name for the interpreter was called the Z Machine. There are several open source Z Machine implementations available. My goal was to implement a Z Machine on an [microcontroller] that allows playing Zork and other compatible interactive fiction games.

From PDP-10 to Adafruit ItsyBitsy M4

The original Zork story file is about 90KB in size, which leaves plenty of room in the M4’s 192 KB of RAM for the Z Machine. The 2MB SPI FLASH provides enough storage for plenty of Z Machine games and save files.

The A2Z Machine supports Z Machine files version 3 and version 5 (usually “.z3” and “.z5” extensions). You can find other compatible games and resources on the internet including these sites:

The Interactive Fiction Database
Z-Machine Matter

From mainframe to a board smaller than your thumb. Lots of fun and great work Dan! See Dan’s whole article here along with the related tweet.

See our previous article on Zork on the PDP-10 and translations.

Do you like Retro Gaming? Remember Infocom games? Post in the comments below!


Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards

Join Adafruit on Mastodon

Adafruit is on Mastodon, join in! adafruit.com/mastodon

Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.

Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.

Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!

Join over 36,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord

CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org


Maker Business — “Packaging” chips in the US

Wearables — Enclosures help fight body humidity in costumes

Electronics — Transformers: More than meets the eye!

Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: Silicon Labs introduces CircuitPython support, and more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi

Adafruit IoT Monthly — Guardian Robot, Weather-wise Umbrella Stand, and more!

Microsoft MakeCode — MakeCode Thank You!

EYE on NPI — Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey

New Products – Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! — #NewProds 7/19/23 Feat. Adafruit Matrix Portal S3 CircuitPython Powered Internet Display!

Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at AdafruitDaily.com !



No Comments

No comments yet.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.