StephenEinbinder: Now that it's pretty much confirmed that the Fantasize spell doesn't work in Version 48 (Lost Treasures version), is it in any way possible to obtain an older version (e.g.: where the wand is not required to win) so I can, for example, see what happens when I'm in the Oddly Angled Room under the Fantasize spell? If not, I'm somewhat frustrated and disappointed.
eriktorbjorn: It's possible in the sense that the files still exist. Legally, I guess it's a gray area, but hey - you already bought the game at least once.
Andrew Plotkin has created an
"Obsessively Complete Infocom Catalog" of all versions of Infocom game files and source code still known to exist. Whether or not all of them work is a different matter. Some were not publicly released, so they may be incomplete, damaged, or otherwise buggy. (For instance, I believe the unreleased version 63 of Zork II tried to reinstate the Fantasize spell, but didn't do it correctly.)
The
Infocom Fact Sheet is another attempt at cataloguing known versions (without including the actual files), but it hasn't been updated in a long while. Still, it may give an idea which versions were official releases and which were not.
Success, sort of. The Fantasize spell works in Version 23. However, nothing unusual seems to happen if, as suggested in a "For Your Amusement" section of the eristic.net Zork II walkthrough, I wander around the Oddly-Angled Rooms while under the influence of the fantasize spell. Mixed eureka and disappointment. Maybe I need to explore an even older version of Zork II to get the oddly angled room fantasy?
Just for fun, I also downloaded and tried the unreleased Version 63. One bug is that it doesn't recognize the word "point", so with some help, I found an alternate verb: "wave" in order to "float" the menhir with the wand.
Update: Nothing happens, in any of the older versions of Zork II, if I'm "fantasize"d in the Oddly-Angled Rooms.