Z-machine
| Designer | Infocom |
|---|---|
| Bits | 16 |
| Introduced | 1979 |
| Version | 1.1 (2014) |
| Design | CISC |
| Endianness | Big |
| Open | Yes |
The Z-machine is a virtual machine that was developed by Joel Berez and Marc Blank in 1979 and used by Infocom for its text adventure games. Infocom compiled game code to files containing Z-machine instructions (called story files or Z-code files) and could therefore port its text adventures to a new platform simply by writing a Z-machine implementation for that platform. With the large number of incompatible home computer systems in use at the time, this was an important advantage over using native code or developing a compiler for each system.