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Both Tea And No Tea - Updated Hitchhiker's Game

Posted by timothy on from the cream-and-sugar-please dept.

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!"

48 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. THAT game by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Funny

    # Look around

    There's nothing to see. You're lying on your back.

    # Get up

    I don't understand.

    # Get out of bed

    You get out of bed.

    # Look around

    You see nothing. The lights are off. ...

    Your house is demolished by a bulldozer. You have died. Would you like to play again? (y/n)

    I really hate that game. Feel free to frustrate yourself here.

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
    1. Re:THAT game by neurojab · · Score: 3, Informative

      >You see nothing. The lights are off. ...

      Try turning on the light.

    2. Re:THAT game by einTier · · Score: 3, Funny
      There were also lots of unintiutive puzzles, and lots of things that made sense only if you had read the book. Don't forget that the game doesn't exactly follow the book, so reading it will confuse the game for you just as much as if you hadn't read it at all -- just in a different way.

      Then there's the problem with puzzles that require grabbing non-evident things (the dust from under the bed) at the beginning of the game and needing them near the end -- with no way to go back and get them of course, because the house and Earth has been destroyed.

      After typing all that, I realize it's the perfect Hitchhiker's Guide game.

      --
      -------------------------------------------------- $665.95 -- retail price of the beast.
  2. Obligatory Quote - The Babel Fish by romper · · Score: 4, Funny
    No, not this fish.

    The Babel fish is small, yellow, leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
    Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the NON-existence of God.

    The argument goes like this:

    `I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
    `But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
    `Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.
    `Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

    Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, "Well, That about Wraps It Up for God."

    Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

    --
    Right is wrong when left is right.
    1. Re:Obligatory Quote - The Babel Fish by Matthias+Wiesmann · · Score: 5, Funny
      Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.
      Maybe this explains the poor quality of the other fish, it is not that machine translation does not work, but a valiant effort to prevent wars caused by better understanding.
    2. Re:Obligatory Quote - The Babel Fish by Tackhead · · Score: 4, Funny
      > Replace "Babelfish" with "human" the next time you're arguing with a creationist though, and watch their head explode.

      We're small and leechlike, some of us are yellowish, we may be the oddest thing in the Universe, but there's no way you're slipping something like "mind-bogglingly useful" past me. Nuh-uh.

    3. Re:Obligatory Quote - The Babel Fish by xgamer04 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Maybe you missed the memo, but creationism and evolutionism are not necessarily mutually exclusive. There do exist Christians/Jews/Muslims/etc who believe a mix of both.

      --
      When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
  3. Another generation of frustration by jandrese · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
    1. Re:Another generation of frustration by g_adams27 · · Score: 4, Informative


      > Seriously, this was probably the most annoying Infocom game ever published

      Oh, I don't know about that. I still don't follow the logic behind the 2-piles-of-cubes puzzle in Spellbreaker. And have you tried "Suspect"? Man!

      Well, Ok, you're right about the first 1/3 of HHGTTG. If you haven't gotten everything you need off Earth before it blows up, then you're in trouble (although if you failed to feed the dog, there is a second chance for you later in the game!). And if you don't get the Babel fish before you're hauled off to the poetry slam, then too bad for you.

      But once you make it to the Heart of Gold, you're pretty much free to explore without time constraints. Yes, you can "die" in many of the scenarios you'll teleport to with the Improbability Drive, but all that does is send you back to the H.O.G. Then you just try it again.

      Best Puzzle: "You can't see anything, smell anything, taste anything, or feel anything..." (etc.) Brilliant. :-)

      Worst Puzzle: "put junk mail on satchel". Ok, maybe the three previous steps for getting the fish were somewhat logical, but the "confuse-the-upper-half-of-the-room-robot" step was ridiculous!

    2. Re:Another generation of frustration by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 5, Interesting

      (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. :-)

      --
      Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
    3. Re:Another generation of frustration by tuffy · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Worst Puzzle: "put junk mail on satchel". Ok, maybe the three previous steps for getting the fish were somewhat logical, but the "confuse-the-upper-half-of-the-room-robot" step was ridiculous!

      I was able to deduce the babel fish puzzle back when the game first came out. Once one remembers the last item the Rube Goldberg-style sequence stops at, it's not hard to figure out what part of your limited inventory to use next.

      But "enjoy poetry" was one thing I never figured out until I found a guide to the game.

      --

      Ita erat quando hic adveni.

    4. Re:Another generation of frustration by Mondoz · · Score: 4, Funny

      I remember a comic in one of the old Infocom newsletters showing a guy at his PC, with the devil standing next to him.
      The devil is holding a contract in one hand, and he says "Still haven't gotten the bable fish, eh?"

      --
      /sig
    5. Re:Another generation of frustration by DunbarTheInept · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

      --

      Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.

    6. Re:Another generation of frustration by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

      Odd. I just finish playing it-- and "take common sense" worked fine.

  4. Great News! by CommanderData · · Score: 4, Funny

    Now I can finally prove my intelligence to that *$&#@& door on the Heart of Gold so it will open for me!

    --
    Urge to post... fading... fading... RISING!... fading... fading... gone.
  5. Rod Lord's graphics are fun by Gopal.V · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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

    --
    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
  6. Remember by BlightThePower · · Score: 4, Informative

    Pick up the junkmail. I remember this because it was one of the most frustrating moments of my young life when I finally realised where it was needed. Of course I get more frustrated than that on the drive to work every morning alone, but I still remember it.

    --
    Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
    1. Re:Remember by peatbakke · · Score: 3, Informative

      You think that's frustrating?

      Don't feed the dog a sandwich.

      That really blew my stack, about thirty hours later ...

    2. Re:Remember by Otto · · Score: 3, Informative

      You think that's frustrating?

      Don't feed the dog a sandwich.

      That really blew my stack, about thirty hours later ...

      That one wasn't actually fatal, as getting eaten by the dog merely thru you back into the DARK prematurely. From the dark, there were 5 possible exits, and if you waited for the one where you became Ford Prefect, you could feed the dog a sandwich in that scenario, and then go do the warship scenario and this time you wouldn't be eaten by the dog.

      There were actually only a few unrecoverables, and all of them were very early in the game.
      -Get crushed in the house.
      -Don't follow Ford's directions and get blown up with Earth.
      -Forget to get the junk mail and you could not get the Babel Fish, or try too many times on the Babel Fish Dispenser and it ran out. And then you got killed because you couldn't understand what was being said by the Vogon later.

      But once you find the "dark" after being ejected from the Vogon's ship, you're essentially in the clear. Everything else is doable from that point onward, as long as you have your gown and your towel. Dying means that you go back into the "dark", and you can replay any of the failed scenarios by merely waiting until the right moment before exiting the dark.

      --
      - Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
  7. Game tip: by El_Smack · · Score: 4, Informative


    Take the mail from your (Mailbox? Front step?) It will come in very helpful when you need to get a fish in your ear.
    Mods: if you don't get this, just ignore it, OK? It's on topic, I swear.

    --


    There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
  8. The influence of Adams on Internet culture by Nakito · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  9. Been A While by ackthpt · · Score: 4, Insightful
    It's been a while, but I don't remember Agrajag being in the HHGG game I played on a C64. I do remember being aboard the Heart of Gold, something to do with the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast, entering my own head, but I don't recall Agrajag being in there. Sounds like it's been expanded a bit.

    Certainly has taken a while for the sequel, I don't even wear a digital watch anymore! :-)

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  10. wicked.. by radarsat1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    i wish text adventure games would come back. this is going to be great! command-line gaming at its best. hey, i've heard rumours that production levels across the nation dipped visibly when Adventure first came out, is that true?

    1. Re:wicked.. by UserGoogol · · Score: 4, Funny

      As you refresh, you see that there is a new article loaded. "New Star Trek Movie by John Waters." No posts have yet been posted.s

      #Click on Star Trek

      "Ain't it cool news has reported that John Waters has said at an interview in Entertainment Weekly that he is 'very interested' in making a Star Trek movie." I wouldn't mind at all, says michael.

      There are no posts.

      #post "frist psot"

      You fail it.

      While posting that utterly brilliant article, a grue has broken into your parents' basement. He is currently chewing on your leg. An ambulance is headed for your house, but it gets stuck in traffic.

      Would you like to restart? (y/n)

      --
      "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
  11. You think the GAME was frustrating? by xmuskrat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...)

    --
    activestudios web design
  12. Beyond user-friendly... by DeadVulcan · · Score: 4, Funny

    "the first game to move beyond being 'user friendly'"... "It's actually 'user insulting' and because it lies to you as well it's also 'user mendacious,'" he said.

    Best. Software project. Ever.

    What I would have given to work on such a program. I bet they had programmers offering to work for free. Heck, I would have paid them...

    "Please, just one printf, one insult, that's all I ask!"

    --
    Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
    Power in the hands of the accountable.
    1. Re:Beyond user-friendly... by blair1q · · Score: 4, Funny

      > because it lies to you as well it's also 'user mendacious,

      Wait. You mean Windows is based on the HHTTG text-adventure game?

      (Ah, just mod me -1 karma whore...)

  13. This game is EVIL!!! by kjones692 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I never managed to get past the bit where Ford comes and talks to you, then leaves to go to the pub... but, then again, this game is pretty much representative of all text-based adventure games.

    "Get flask"
    "You can't get ye flask!"
    And you're stuck there wondering why on earth you can't get ye flask...

    --

    Love the Third Amendment?
    1. Re:This game is EVIL!!! by Deep+Fried+Geekboy · · Score: 4, Informative

      The secret is not to take the towel.

      --

      I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.

  14. Re:Whales and petunias ... by LWATCDR · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually it was the the bowl of petunias that said "No not again".
    The Petunias was a soul that kept comming back to after Aruthor Dent kept killed it time and time again.

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  15. Best Infocom Game Quote by dcigary · · Score: 5, Funny

    ..for ME, anyhow...

    While playing Zork I, in the caves, I said:

    # get leaflet
    Picked up leaflet
    # get tube of glue
    Picked up tube of glue
    # glue leaflet to wall
    And you must put spinach in your gas tank, too.

    Not a nice thing to do to a sleepy 17 year old at 3:30 in the morning.

    --
    ...my Karma ran over your Dogma...
  16. It's not that bad! by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny
    I'll hand in my nerd ID card if you so deem it necessary, but I for one amd damn tired of anything related to HHGTTG.

    Just wear your Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses until the article goes away.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  17. ob quotation by betelgeuse-4 · · Score: 4, Funny

    It is very dark... You are likely to be eaten by a Grue.

    --
    Decode these
  18. Anyone? by Guano_Jim · · Score: 4, Funny

    Anyone have a babelfish translation of the article?

    --
    3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
  19. I got karma to burn... by Metallic+Matty · · Score: 5, Funny

    Forty-second post.

  20. Where do I put all my stuff??? by g_adams27 · · Score: 3, Informative


    You know that thing your aunt gave you that you don't know what it is? Put your stuff in it. All your stuff. It'll fit! (well, except the really big stuff). Then throw it away. It'll show up in your hands, your pocket, or at your feet a few moves later.

    Voila! No more accursed "Your load is too heavy" message.

    Man, what I wouldn't give for something like that!

    1. Re:Where do I put all my stuff??? by Thedalek · · Score: 3, Funny

      Actually, I think in one version you could put your bathrobe in "the thing your aunt gave you and you don't know what it is," and then put TTYAGYAYDKWII in the pocket of your bathrobe. It even listed in your inventory that both were inside each other.

      I thought it should have just ended the game right there, saying something along the lines of, "Okay, fine. You win. You've done something sillier than anything else we had planned. Happy?"

      --
      Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
  21. Play the old version here. by fireboy1919 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
  22. Text adventures... by monkeyfarm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    What I don't know I just fake...
  23. the Google answer by loqi · · Score: 5, Funny

    All your search engines are belong to Douglas.

    --
    If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
  24. H2G2 like the internet - not by TintinX · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  25. Share & Enjoy by fahrvergnugen · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ah yes, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation text adventure revival machine. When the page is accessed, the machine automatically analyzes the thought patterns and intelligence quotient of the player, in order to figure out exactly which precise combination of interesting prose and obtuse logic puzzles will provide the most mentally stimulating and pleasing gaming experience for the individual.

    However, no-one quite knows why it does this, as it invariably spits out a boring graphical clickfest that is almost, but not entirely, unlike a text adventure.

    --
    Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
  26. Downloadable doesn't have the best part by red+floyd · · Score: 3, Funny

    The old Infocom boxed game came with a pair of Joo-Jaglan Peril Sensitive Sunglasses!

    --
    The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
  27. My favorite story about that game.. by Zaphod-AVA · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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

  28. Re:nerd ID card by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'll hand in my nerd ID card if you so deem it necessary, but I for one amd damn tired of anything related to HHGTTG.

    As the article submitter, please accept my sincerest apologies. If there are any other topic that you, or anyone else, would not like aired, please let me know and I will not post articles relating to them in the future.

    Best regards,

    Ford Prefect ;-)

    --
    Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
  29. Douglas Adams' Other Interactive Fiction by Feneric · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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".

  30. "Offtopic" by mrchaotica · · Score: 4, Funny

    Hey, this is the Guide we're talking about here! How is it possible for anything to be off-topic?!

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  31. Re:/. Icon by Tim+Browse · · Score: 4, Informative
    I can't let that one go by...Douglas hated that mascot - absolutely hated it.

    I'd go for a 'Don't Panic' icon.