This is accurate gameplay from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy text adventure that INFOCOM made with the help of Douglas Adams in 1984.
I thought people would find it interesting to see the way a game would creatively do a demo in print in the 1980s since doing it other ways was either too expensive or not very useful from a marketing perspective.
More info on the game- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_(video_game)
It was very challenging. I never got all the way through it. Amazingly, it only covers a small portion of the first book despite taking hours and hours to play.
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I actually shelled out for the invisible-ink “strategy guide” (i.e. cheating instructions) just to finish the damn thing. I suspect the guide was written by Adams as well, because it was almost as entertaining as game itself. Halfway through the section on how to get the Babel fish—the single toughest puzzle I’ve ever encountered in a game—it tells you that “it is at this point that grown men begin weeping uncontrollably.”
I remember working that one out with my brothers. Every step you take just leads to further problems getting the fish. It was easy to figure out to put the towel over the perfectly towel-sized grate and hang your robe on the hook. Blocking the cleaning robot access panel with Ford’s satchel also seemed to make sense as well. But when we put the stack of junk mail on the satchel and it actually worked? Well holy shit, were we ecstatic. It opens up some of the best parts of the game, though I would argue not as much as figuring out how to get the spare improbability drive to work. I think one of my brothers bought that same guide book long after we retired the C64, so though he knew how to finish it, I don’t think any of us ever did. I remember getting to Magrathea and not ever being able to figure out the proper tool bit. Tried taking the proper tool, and storing another tool in the thing your aunt gave you, but never seemed to work.
Hmm… I definitely had at least one of those for an Infocom game… Maybe I had that one? But I don’t remember getting to the end of the game. It was so long ago, I don’t remember. I just remember it was basically a FAQ where you had to use a special marker to reveal the answer.
This was an exceptionally difficult game from the very first scene. You were particularly hard pressed to even make it off earth if you hadn’t read the book.
After that, it didn’t necessarily coincide with the book, so you had to put yourself into a Douglas Adams mindset for the duration, and that was no easy task.
I think I may have gotten through roughly a third of it before moving on to other games.
Zork was the other game I never did particularly well with. I think I got a little further in it than hitchhikers though.
I got so frustrated getting killed over and over that I typed:
Fuck Fordinto the prompt. The game responded with:
This is a family entertainment game, not a video nasty.Which is how I found out that was British slang for
porn.graphic horror films, apparently.There were at least five Zork games I can think of that were purely text (graphical ones came later): Zork, Zork II, Zork III, Beyond Zork and Zork Zero.
I had one two and three but don’t recall playing the latter two. By then I’d moved on to the greatest game released in the mid-eighties - Autoduel.
Then it was on to the original Bard’s Tale.
I played both of those to completion then figured out how to cheat on both by finding character stats with a sector editor.
I didn’t even get out the house
INFOCOM: We make games that nobody ever finished!
In the era of arcade games, finishing it wasn’t intended
Unlike many video game adaptations, Douglas Adams was substantially involved in the game design and writing the text. I believe he shares the authorship credit with an Infocom programmer.
Adams wrote most of the text of the game. He also created another INFOCOM game, Bureaucracy, which was basically impossible. And if you don’t believe me, check out a walkthrough sometime. There are multiple points where you’ll say, “well how would anyone ever think of that?” Especially when it gets to the airplane.
Oh yeah, I’m not sure I ever got past the first room or two with that one.
The BBC released this in html5 for an anniversary, you may need to faff around with sky player if you don’t have a BBC license, though.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-game
I never got far in this game because I was too young. I’d love to give it another go.
I spent days on it. I did finally get the Babel Fish. I think with help by talking about it with friends who had solved other parts of the puzzle… but it got even harder after that!
spoiler
First you had to put together the improbability drive, then you jumped into different characters’ bodies and had to survive in their bodies AND bring back the items you need to make it an infinite improbability drive and I didn’t get past that, but apparently after that, you land on the planet Magrathea and you have to figure out how to get the door open and that’s where the game ends.
I couldn’t find this one, but if you’re interested in playing vintage games, Archive.org has a pretty good list. They also had a way to play some of these in-browser, but I can’t find it now.
