I tried so damn hard to beat the game...but in the end, I needed the Invisiclues guide. I was also 9 years old, but I got pretty far (missed the vector plotter puzzle and the end one with Marvin). Even so, it's one of my more proud achievements. :)
Exactly the same game. All of Infocom's text adventures ran under a bytecode interpreter, with the bytecode being shared across all platforms that a game was released on. There are a number of modern interpreters for that format, too; you don't need to emulate an Apple II to play those games (unless you really want to, of course).