Missed Classic: Hitchhiker’s Guide - Won! And Final Rating

Written by Joe Pranevich

I did it! With your help, I conquered The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy! This has been my fifteenth Infocom adventure and certainly one of the tougher ones, but thankfully Voltgloss and some Invisiclues were around to put me back on track. I leave this game feeling fairly satisfied, especially as I had made it quite near the end before I needed help. You’ll be reading all about that in just a moment.

For this week’s jaunt, I recommend that you get into the mood by a rendition of “Marvin, I Love You”, one of my favorite Hitchhiker’s-related novelty songs. Since this will likely be my last Hitchhiker’s post (unless I do a special one on the canceled sequel down the line), I couldn’t end this without making you listen to it at least once. I’ll have more chances for Douglas Adams love as we later get to Bureaucracy, and (perhaps someday) Starship Titanic. I discovered this tune through Dr. Demento as I doubt the original album was released in the US. The female vocalist on this track is Kimi Wong-O'Brien, better known as the then-wife of Richard O’Brien, the creator of Rocky Horror. There are more than a handful of Hitchhiker’s Guide-inspired songs released over the years. I’d love it if we got a good playlist of them in the comments!

Don’t Panic! It’s time to finally bring this adventure game to a close.

Missed Classic: Hitchhiker’s Guide - Arthur Who? (Request for Assistance)

Written by Joe Pranevich

Let’s mix our time travel metaphors!

If you’ve ever seen Doctor Who, you know that the adventure of the Doctor and his companions are fairly random. They travel from world to world, from time to time, solving problems and having adventures. They also spend a great deal of time running. But during the period that Douglas Adams was a writer and script editor, this was taken to the extreme with the installation of the “Randomizer”. This device mostly prevented the Doctor from deciding where the TARDIS would go next, ensuring that neither he nor the evil Black Guardian (from whom he was fleeing) would know where he was going. Functionally, the show was exactly the same as before, but now there was some technobabble reason why they didn’t know where they were going rather than just the normal not knowing where they were going. Eventually, they dropped the premise and forgot that the Black Guardian was supposed to be chasing them anyway. That’s Doctor Who in a nutshell.

I have to wonder whether Douglas Adams was inspired by the Randomizer when he and Steve Meretzky were working on this segment of the Hitchhiker’s Guide game. That all we have: random mini-adventures in random order. I’m not sure how this is supposed to wrap up. It’s still fun, but they traded the linearity of the earlier part of the game with random side stories. It’s easier to narrate than explain, so read on! I should also mention that at the end, I have no idea what to do next. Suggestions are appreciated.

Missed Classic: Hitchhiker’s Guide - Improbable Mission

Written by Joe Pranevich

Welcome back! Last week, I successfully defeated the Vogons, retrieved the elusive babel fish, and managed to secure an atomic vector plotter before being jettisoned out of an airlock. Not bad for a Thursday! This week, I will be picking up the thread just after passing out for lack of oxygen and very improbably being picked up by a passing spaceship: the Heart of Gold. Thus far, the Hitchhiker’s Guide game has been a lot of fun, if a bit linear. Contrary to my initial fears, Adams and Meretzky have managed to make the game funny without being inscrutable; there is a logic to the puzzles that makes them solvable and gives you a sense of pride for doing so.

I mentioned last week that I am stuck and I remain so, although I have some new things to try. I have decided to pause my own playing for another week or so until the writing catches up. I hope that my re-playing the events will inspire me to find the thing I missed. I think I realized something that I missed even while typing out this post, so I look forward to experimenting. Onward to the adventure!

Missed Classic: Hitchhiker’s Guide - I Got the Babelfish!

Written by Joe Pranevich

What is the most famous puzzle in adventure game history? Is it defeating the snake in Colossal Cave? Sneaking in the back of the white house in Zork? How about something from King’s Quest or Maniac Mansion? In 1984, one of the most famous puzzles (at least according to the marketing department at Infocom) was the babel fish from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The puzzle was so famous that successful players purchased a now-prized t-shirt advertising that fact: “I got the babel fish.” If I had lived in 1984 and played this game, I would definitely have bought the shirt. Why? Because, this week I got the babel fish. I confess that this puzzle probably isn’t that famous considering that I do not remember it from my original playthrough of this game more than twenty years ago, but it was still fun. I’ve received t-shirts for dumber reasons.

Before we begin today, I recommend setting the mood in with “Journey of the Sorcerer”, the theme song to the original series. In a burst of cosmic similarity, I’m going to cover in this post roughly the same ground as the first episode of the radio and television series. I doubt I’ll be able to keep that up as the game will diverge from the source material, but it’s as good as any place to begin.

Missed Classic 57: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1984)

Written by Joe Pranevich

Infocom may have been the masters of text adventures, but they aspired to more. They wanted to be “interactive fiction”, to have the recognition that gaming could be an art form on the same level of a good book. To this end, they pursued authors, most notably up to this point Mike Berlyn (Suspended, Infidel, and Cutthroats) and Jim Lawrence (Seastalker). Even Steve Meretzky, Infocom’s jack-of-all-trades was now a published author. But could they have scored a greater prize in 1984 than Douglas Adams, already admired as one of the all-time greats (and all time weirdest) writers of witty and absurd adventures? Mr. Adams had written and performed with Monty Python. He had produced some of the greatest episodes of Doctor Who to date. He had found seemingly overnight success with his Hitchhiker’s Guide series on radio, albums, television, and books. Now he was coming to work with Infocom to adapt his most famous work to gaming. It would be a tremendous challenge, but if they succeeded it could change the face of Infocom and gaming forever… or at least until someone decided to bet the farm on business productivity software.

This week, we’ll tell his story and start the game that he produced. Can Mr. Adams’s style of humor translate to a good game? Is it even possible to make a good game based on a comedy? I am very eager to find out.