Both Tea And No Tea - Updated Hitchhiker's Game

Ford Prefect writes "To coincide with the new radio series of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the BBC will be reviving the old Infocom Hitchhiker's text adventure game, to appear on Radio 4's website. It's not just a straight port, either - apparently 'the new version of the game will be illustrated by Rod Lord, who won a BAFTA for his graphics for the original Hitchhiker TV series.' Hoopy!"

Comments

Another generation of frustration

[jandrese]

Alright, now a whole new generation can get frustrated and give up on this game before making it a tenth of the way through. Seriously, this was probably the most annoying Infocom game ever published, and I doubt I would have ever made it through without a guide I found on the net years later. There were so many ways to kill yourself in this game that you basically had to write out a script of actions that you must follow precisely in order to survive. Later on in the game it does branch out, but it is very easy to overlook a tiny detail and totally screw yourself over later in the game. The whole thing was an exercise in frustration for most players, especially ones who hadn't read the books or heard the radio broadcasts for several years.

If they're really going to redo the game, I hope they rework some of the more obtuse puzzles to make them a little less frustrating to the general populace.

Re:Another generation of frustration

[Ford Prefect]

(NB: Yes, I'm the article submitter. Go me!)

If they're really going to redo the game, I hope they rework some of the more obtuse puzzles to make them a little less frustrating to the general populace.

They could easily have destroyed the game, but somehow it didn't. When the babel-fish twanged off into the wrong place for the umpteen billionth time, or you didn't know how to get the Vogon captain to recite the second verse of his magnum opus, it was your fault. It truly showed what it was like to be Arthur Dent, with what appeared to be the entire universe ganging up against him for some utterly arbitrary reason...

I originally discovered an illicit copy of the game many years ago on a bunch of old floppy disks being thrown out of a cupboard at my father's workplace. I never knew of its official Douglas Adams roots until years later, but from playing it I knew it was something special. I managed to get a lot of the way through - the version I had found didn't have any hints, which I suppose was quite impressive. More recently, a friend lent me another, um, copy which did have hints, and I finally got round to finishing it.

Annoying ending, but an excellent, if mind-breakingly difficult, game. :-)

Re:Another generation of frustration

[DunbarTheInept]

In the copy of the game I played way back when (Commodore 64), the text description of the events surrounding the Babelfish machine made it impossible to logically figure out how to solve the puzzle. The problem was that the panel out of which the floor cleaning robot emerged was described incorrectly as being "by" the floor, which makes you think it's on the wall, when it is actually "IN" the floor, like a trapdoor. This small difference made it impossible to put the satchel where it belonged. I understood that blocking the panel was a good idea, but the thing is, I kept trying to block the panel by putting things "in front of", or "next to" the panel when I was supposed to be putting them "on top of" the panel - all of this was because the description put the panel in the wall instead of in the floor. And the nature of the error messages coming back never help inform you as to the nature of the misunderstanding - that the problem was with the prepositional phrase, not the rest of the command.

So I eventually broke down and looked at a hint book. When I found out what the solution was, I got really mad. The game had stymied me due to what was a simple one-word error in one of the descritptions.

The really annoying thing I found about the game, though, came later on. On the Heart of Gold, there are a number of different tools with random sounding names. Any attempt to ask the game what the tools look like gave you no information whatsoever, instead just telling you that you don't know what they do. Therefore there is no way to tell what to do with them, and no way to form any visual picture as to what these objects actually are. But one of them was necessary to "remove the common sense portion of my brain", and there was no way at all to clue you in as to (1) that such a task was even possible, and (2) that one of the unknown random tools laying around is related to this task in some way.

That game was the funniest text adventure ever made, but it was also the least playable one ever made. It sucked as a game. It was great as a good read if you use the hint book.

Rod Lord's graphics are fun

[Gopal.V]

Especially the one with Dolphins on one side and Soldiers (with Guns) on the other ... from blue to dark red .. saying intelligence more <===> less . Also the meringue Margathean planet, the cone headed babel fish and all the other stuff ...

Though I hope the colors look better this time around :)

PS: I run it as a slideshow screensaver

The influence of Adams on Internet culture

[Nakito]

I always liked the fact that AltaVista named their translation service "Babelfish." It would be interesting to catalog other examples of how Adams has left his mark on the Internet.

You think the GAME was frustrating?

[xmuskrat]

You should have bought the hintbook for it. In order to get an obscure clue, you had to highlight it with a special marker. Unfortuantely, there were far more clues then ink in the marker. There was a rumor you could develop the answers with lemonade, and I guess that wasn't a bad idea to try (since if you wanted the answers you had to buy a new hintbook anyway for a new marker...)

Play the old version here.

[fireboy1919]

Actually, I've got a lot of my old inform (the name of the interpreter) favorites up on my site (all of these are freeware now afaik).

I signed the applet myself. If you accept write permission, then you can save the state of the game to your hard drive and restore from it.

Text adventures...

[monkeyfarm]

It would seem that in 30 years of Natural Language processing advancements and so forth, that it would be possible to revive text adventure type games.

Personally I loved the things, but hated the frustration of being locked into typing EXACTLY what the command processor/ parser wanted.

I would hazard a guess that if a larger publisher backed the development of a professional quality text adventure, that on a percentage ROI basis, it would be very worthwhile from a business standpoint.

Especially if it was marketed and promoted in a way that Myst was years ago. I mean Myst got a lot of non-gamers to play a "game" (actually Myst was basically a powerpoint presentation with cheesy 3D graphics, not actually a game).

Compare the development cost and time frame of a quality text adventure with something like DoomIII. The potential market is thousands of times bigger because you could run the game on pretty much anything with a screen and input device cable of text entry and the processing power to handle a REALLY robust parser and command interpreter. There's no need for 4-6 years of R&D. Success is driven by creativity, etc. rather than eye-candy.

Sure it's not for everyone, but if you eliminate the frustration normally associated with parsers, have a quality product, market it properly, it could be a very good business opportunity.

That is if game publishers weren't complete lemmings.

H2G2 like the internet - not

[TintinX]

I think I actually love DNA.
I've just come back from holidays where I re-read the full 5-part H2G2 trilogy that, despite being extremely familiar with, I enjoyed hugely.
Douglas should go down in the annals of literature because reading his stuff is as much about enjoying his words as it is about enjoying the story. You could read it 100 times and still smirk at his amazing sense of humour and wordplay.
Like a good wine, it's not just about getting merry.
To (mis)quote an excellent and early example:
"The jump through hyperspace is like being drunk."
"What's so bad about being drunk?"
"Ask a glass of water."
Absolute bloody genius, the like of which I don't think we've ever seen before or will ever see again.
I had the pleasure of hearing and meeting Douglas back in 1998 when I was studying at Oxford and he did an evolution lecture with Richard Dawkins (there was an evening!). He was a really, really lovely guy with loads of time for the geeks around him. Mention your love of the Mac to him and he was yours for the night!
I still miss him loads.

My favorite story about that game..

[Zaphod-AVA]

It's fun to tell people how I was stuck for 6 months on one part. I didn't know that while I was Ford, I was supposed to get Arthur drunk and give him my satchel fluff.

That game is hilarious, and evil. Modern game design simply doesn't delight in killing you nearly as much, or stranding you with no outs without restarting the game from scratch.

Personally, what I would like is a complete rip of all the text from the game.

-Z

Douglas Adams' Other Interactive Fiction

[Feneric]

I'm glad the IF version of "Hitchhikers' Guide" is coming back. I hope they take it further and bring back some of his other IF titles. "Bureaucracy" is deserving, and I've not had the opportunity to try "Starship Titanic".