Releases on original media

What the boxes actually shipped, one section per title.

This is a different question from the de-facto builds, which names the one build the community treats as each game’s version of record and says which compilation to get it from. That page is for deciding where to play a game. This one is a record of what has been read first hand off original diskettes: which build each platform’s box carried, verified against the disc rather than against a catalog. The two disagree more often than you would expect, which is the point - several boxes shipped builds that no compilation carries and no leaked repository holds.

Those builds are not unknown to the world, and this page does not claim to have rescued them. Andrew Plotkin’s Obsessively Complete Infocom Catalog documents every release listed here and hosts a copy of each. What these discs add is provenance rather than preservation: a build read off the physical media it shipped on, with the flux kept and the checksum verified, and the platform-level detail that a single archived copy cannot show.

Every build below was read with a Greaseweazle from the physical diskette, extracted, and checked against its own Z-machine checksum; the checksum column is the declared value, confirmed by recomputing it over the story body. Where a build is byte-identical to a copy from another source, that is stated, because agreement between independent witnesses is the strongest evidence available that a reconstruction is right. Method is in floppy-imaging.md.

The part number is recorded exactly as printed on the diskette label, since it is the one identifier on the physical media itself and how releases are told apart without reading them. A dash means it has not been recorded yet, not that the disk lacks one.

These are Infocom Order Codes: a Product Code for the game plus a System Code for the platform, as set out in Doherty’s Fact Sheet - so IS4-IB2-FD1 is Hitchhiker’s (IS4) for IBM/MS-DOS (IB2), and IZ1-AP2-FD1 is Zork I (IZ1) for the Apple Macintosh (AP2). After the Activision merger the platform half switched to Activision’s codes, which is why Planetfall’s later disk reads PD-IS3G-04 - PD being IBM/MS-DOS - with the Solid Gold edition marked by the G in IS3G. Beware two traps: Hitchhiker’s Solid Gold shares the plain release’s IS4 rather than taking a G code, and a code alone does not always settle which edition is in the box.

Carried by no compilation in this catalog and by no leaked repository: Wishbringer r68.850501, Enchanter r10.830810, Sorcerer r4.840131, Sorcerer r6.840508, Beyond Zork r49.870917, Trinity r11.860509, Enchanter r16.831118 and Bureaucracy r86.870212 - eight builds on eight boxes, with Sorcerer alone accounting for two of them on two platforms. Spellbreaker r63.850916 and Zork I Solid Gold r52.871125 reached no compilation either but do survive in the leak, and in both cases the retail disc matches Infocom’s archived build byte for byte.

Checked against the Obsessively Complete Infocom Catalog. All 21 stories extracted here were compared with its hosted copies: 14 are byte-identical, and the other 7 differ only in the two or three platform header bytes at 0x01, 0x04 and 0x05 - flags1 and the base of high memory - which sit below the checksummed region at 0x40, so both copies compute the same Z-machine checksum. That is an independent confirmation in both directions, and it is how the Sorcerer disk’s protected-track decode was verified: 560 sectors recovered by breaking the protection, yielding a story that matches an externally archived copy to within those header bytes.

A Mind Forever Voyaging

Beyond Zork

Border Zone

Bureaucracy

Deadline

Enchanter

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Solid Gold)

Two printings of this edition are held, and their disks are byte-identical across the whole 368,640-byte image - boot sector, FAT, directory and unused space included, not merely the payload files. Everything that differs is on paper:

Three things worth taking from that. The second package lists the Infocom and Activision schemes side by side, which is the behavior Doherty describes and the reason Hitchhiker’s Solid Gold appears under the plain IS4 in one place and IS4G in another. The disk and the box carry different numbers - PD-IS4G-04 on the media against PD-IS4G-07 on the package - so a citation should say which was read. And the stated memory requirement rose from 128K to 192K between printings while the software did not change by a single byte, so a requirement printed on a box is a claim about the package, not a fact about the program.

Leather Goddesses of Phobos

The dual-media grey box

The 3.5” disk above is one of two in a single grey box, bought from a seller in Australia, and the package carries codes that the standard references do not:

Two things follow, and the box is the evidence for both because it is a controlled comparison - one product, one package, two media.

T marks the 3.5” disk. Both disks carry PD-IC1-04; only the 3.5” one adds a T, and the package code PD-IC1T2 carries it too. PD-IC1-04 is documented in collector listings as the IBM release; PD-IC1-04T appears nowhere searchable.

IB3 is an undocumented system code. Doherty’s Fact Sheet lists IB1 for IBM and 100% compatibles and IB2 for IBM and MS-DOS compatibles, and stops there - IB3 is absent from it, and from search results generally. A third IBM code on a package that ships both media sizes suggests IB3 denotes exactly that, which would make the Fact Sheet’s table incomplete rather than wrong. One box is not proof; a second dual-media package would settle it.

The arrangement itself is not unique - the 1989 Zork Zero box also shipped both media - but that box put different graphics renditions on each, so whether these two disks carry the same software is a real question rather than a formality. The 5.25” disk from this box has not been read yet.

Leather Goddesses of Phobos (Solid Gold)

The Lurking Horror

Planetfall

Planetfall (Solid Gold)

Sorcerer

Spellbreaker

Stationfall

Trinity

Wishbringer

Wishbringer (Solid Gold)

Zork I, II and III

Zork I (Solid Gold)

Zork Zero