Archive
The IF Archive
A repository for freeware and shareware IF games, authoring systems, interpreters, library modules, and related material. This does not include Infocom products and other games for which the rights still belong to a business, unless permission has been granted to distribute them.
The IF Archive was founded in 1992 by Volker Blasius, with assistance from Dave Baggett, and was originally hosted at gmd.de. Baggett and David Kinder assisted Blasius in maintaining it. In 1999, Andrew Plotkin and Paul Mazaitis founded IFArchive.org as a mirror of the gmd.de archive. In 2001, it became the archive's official home. Brass Lantern published an article about the move. Plotkin and Mazaitis were the new archive's technical maintainers, while Kinder and Stephen Granade were responsible for maintaining the contents.
In early 2009, an informal competition called The IF Archive CSS Competition was held to update the visual look of the archive. The winning design, Chartist by Chris Klimas, was adopted on February 17, 2009.
In 2017, IFTF assumed stewardship of the archive.
Links
- Interactive Fiction Archive - though the archive is relatively easy to use if you know exactly what you're looking for, it is difficult to browse.
- A list of HTML mirrors of the archive, including some with FTP access.
- Baf's Guide to the IF Archive.
- Parchment. Play any Z-Code or Glulx game from the IF Archive in Parchment, a web interpreter. No plugins needed.
- The SPAG Interview with Volker Blasius and David Kinder - SPAG #26, September 26, 2001.
- GMD is Dead; Long Live IFArchive, from Brass Lantern.
- Celebrating 25 years of IF Archive, from IFTF.
Other Archives
- ADRIFT has a section for games written with ADRIFT. Click on "Adventures" in the main navigation bar. (See also the Delron and the Shadow Vault sites for ADRIFT games.)
- Home of the Underdogs is a large archive of many computer games, including IF. Click "Interactive Fiction" in the Genre navigation bar.
- World of Spectrum is a large archive of anything to do with the Spectrum including text adventure games written for it.
- The 8-bit Adventure World is a modest collection of old adventure games.