You might want to try a special Z-Code interpreter for these games. You can get windows ports here. Can't help with the problem with DOSBox, as i've never played a Z-Machine game with it, Sorry.

I never heard of this behaviour, maybe somebody can confirm this

Sounds like an display problem to me.

Are you using DosBox in a window or fullscreen?

Just in a window... I'll try fullscreen out and see if that makes any difference. Once I get home from work, that is... approx 1 hour.

Okay, so here's the scoop:
The ">" *does* appear in the following games the I just tried: Hitchhiker's, Zork 2, and Enchanter... Don't know why that is...

However, it does not show up on Zork 1, or Wishbringer... in fact, the first thing I see in Zork is :

ORK I: The Great Underground Empire

and then no ">"...

I'm not sure why this only appears on some of the games... I'll try and download a few more and see if I can pinpoint any thing.

p.s. oh yeah, and the full-screen toggle has no effect whatsoever.

Okay, my version of Zork works just fine but Wishbringer exhibits the same behavior.

This is using the .com file from 1985 that came with the game. (IBM/MS-DOS 2.0 Interpreter Version L)

Using DOS Frotz with the WishBringer DAT file works fine.

DosBox 0.63,DosBox 0.70 and 6-6-2007 CVS exhibit the same behavior.

Hmmmm... I've got an archive on an Infocom collection CD that was released awhile back. Zork I and Wish Bringer appear to work fine there. I'll have to break out the actual CD before I'll be able to tell you if the intepreter version those games are using is any newer however since my file dates are mangled lots of copies between various operating systems over the years.

Here is a great page to tell which version of the game(s) you have:

http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/games.html

The wishbringer I have is version 68 (the first version). Strangely enough, the version 23 appears to be the newest version, with a version 69 released somewhere in between.

I wonder if the different versions behave different in DOSBox...

Edit: I forgot mention that you can see the version number either when you first start the game, or by typing the command "VERSION"

Well, IIRC the versions are just the data files...not the interpreters (the executables that run the games).

I'm not up on the differences of the interpreters between all of the systems that the Infocom games were released for or heck even the DOS versions.

It's common knowledge to just use DOS Frotz if you want to play the Infocom games in DOS. If you want to play them in Windows then you use the port for Windows, for linux the same, etc etc.

I have ver 68 and 69. Haven't bothered to test 69.

If you don't want to use Frotz then we'll have the original version working....eventually.

Also ver 68 works fine in Windows XP as far as I can tell.

Worth a topic on the broken games forum. there is one more old game that misses specific characters (amulet of yendor). perharps they are related

The last original DOS interpreter for Infocom games for the V3 Z-Machine is Version N, which you can find e.g. in "Leather Goddesses of Phobos". This interpreter can be made to run all the V3 games, just rename it and hex-edit the game data file name into it. Start it with parameter /W to get color (e.g. "ZORK1 /W"). In V3 games, the Interpreter version number is only shown if you give a $VERIFY command, not at VERSION.

The last version for the V4 Z-Machine is E (from "Nord & Bert"), for V5 it's J (from "Sherlock" or some "Solid Gold" re-release, not sure), and for V6 it's 6.71 (From "Arthur"). All can be hex-edited to work with all games of that Z-Machine Version. These games display the Interpreter version when you say VERSION. "Interpreter 6" just stands for the MS-DOS release as opposed to Apple, C64, Amiga..., it's not a version number as such.

V4 and V5 ask you if you want color so you need no parameter. For V6, you might want to use /DM to get MCGA/VGA graphics instead of the default EGA.

<plug>I'd recommend using my font patch which you can find in the forums, so that letter combinations like mm or WW don't "stick together".</plug>