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Hitchhikers Guide was one of the first PC games I ever got. I had no idea it was a “text adventure.” Nor did I understand it was based on a book. My dad got it

Hitchhikers Guide was one of the first PC games I ever got. I had no idea it was a “text adventure.” Nor did I understand it was based on a book. My dad got it for me used from The Computer Club in downtown Lake Oswego, Oregon. I picked it out largely due to the green guy on the front of the box. I remember being delighted by all the weird stuff it came with, including a small packet of fuzz, and other artifacts from the story. I didn’t know why they were in the box but it was weird and that appealed to me. Even though I was raised by Nintendo games like RC Pro AM, I spent many hours trying to figure out how to advance in HG. Often starting over from scratch. Eventually, I got the book, read it and attempted the game again, and though the context made it more fun, I think I still got stuck somewhere around where you put the Babel fish in your ear.

jerf 8y ago
It is an extremely difficult game. In theory, I know the answer to all the puzzles, however, there are so many ways to lose without realizing it that I've never managed to string together a single play session in which I do it correctly. Though I've also long since stopped trying. :) For instance, there are subareas where you must collect various tools. Many of these are themselves rather fragile affairs, easy to ruin. At the end of the game, to open a door, you will be asked for a certain random tool. However, this is not a matter of collecting 8 out of 10 tools and having an 80% chance at the end; if you are missing even a single one, the game will draw its random selection from the tools you do not have. IIRC this is also after a point-of-no-return. The Babel fish puzzle is another example of the evilness of the game. While this one is possible to complete without a guide, it isn't possible to complete it on your first attempt. There is a machine that will vend the Babelfish. It will fail in various ways, such as vending the fish into areas you can't get to if you don't block that direction. You have a limited number of tries before the Vogons come to get you and it's a game over if you don't have the fish at that point. However, the amount of time you have is not sufficient to go through the loop of trying the machine, fixing the problem it reveals, trying the machine again, fixing the next problem, etc. There are simply too many problems and not enough time. You have to simply memorize/write down the solutions once, then next time directly implement them in what would appear to be a psychic manner next game. (There's also an early "silent failure" state here; if you did not pick up the junk mail from your house, you lose here.) If you wrote down an objective standard to measure an adventure or text game by, such as "should not have unlabeled no-win situations", or "should be solvable on the first play (even if hard)", or other such things, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text game would flagrantly fail most of them. Whether it's a bad game, I leave that to the reader, but it certainly breaks a lot of rules.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  Frankly, this sounds like terribly punishing game design. Why did so many players put up with it? Was there really nothing better?
  - mcv 8y ago
    Figuring this stuff out is part of the challenge. These days you're supposed to experience the story and hard challenges shouldn't be getting in the way of that. Standards were different then.
  - maxfurman 8y ago
    First, the game is funny and entertaining from moment to moment. Second, games were a lot harder back then, so players expected to fail repeatedly - although Hitchhiker's Guide is particularly sadistic
  - mrkstu 8y ago
    It was kind of the point. His other Infocom game was called Bureacrary, so you can see the theme developing... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy_(video_game)
    - FabHK 8y ago
      An infamous scene in Bureaucracy was when you had to order some food in a diner, and you'd spend 10 minutes on that (How do you want the burger, rare, medium, or well done? With fries or onion rings? Small, medium, or large? Coke or Fanta? Regular or light? etc. etc., really drawn out), and then the waiter comes back and explains that the computer crashed and you had to go through the whole tedious process again... Come to think of it, why did we put up with it?? :-)
      - FireBeyond 8y ago
        There was a similar scene in Leather Goddesses of Phobos (think Leisure Suit Larry on an alien planet, in text form): You're on a barge in a river, and in the distance is something that "looks like a giant naked lady, breasts pointing to the sky". So you sail down the river towards it, and it gets bigger and bigger over the next ten pages. And then the river turns, and it fades away, but is still there. So you keep sailing. "Getting bigger. You must be getting closer now". You keep sailing. "Sunlight is gleaming on the statue, and it feels so close you could touch it". You keep sailing. "You turn around another bend in a river, and there's... nothing there. You look around. Nothing. It was all a mirage. And the barge can't go any further." So you sail all the way back...
logfromblammo 8y ago
One of my major hangups on that puzzle was that it required you to think of your character's clothing as inventory items, whereas in previous games, clothing was just part of your character's description. It was also the first game I ever saw that had multiple possible solutions to a puzzle. If you can figure out the thing your aunt gave you, you can skip over a significant chunk of the game.
pavlov 8y ago
A very thorough review of the game on the Digital Antiquarian, including photos of the packaging: https://www.filfre.net/2013/11/hitchhiking-the-galaxy-infocom-style/ https://www.filfre.net/2013/11/hitchhiking-the-galaxy-infoco... On the same site, an exquisitely detailed account of how the Hitchhiker's game came to be: https://www.filfre.net/2013/11/the-computerized-hitchhikers/ https://www.filfre.net/2013/11/the-computerized-hitchhikers/
- bredren 8y ago
  Whoa! This is the “fuzz” I remember! I had this box! The cover opened on it, it was so cool.
codingdave 8y ago
I loved it, too - really enjoyed the puzzles, and had gotten through most of the game as a kid. I never quite finished it, and found out later that there was a timing component whereby you had to make the tea and get to the exit while Marvin was in the right place, (or something like that), and if you missed the chance, it never told you the game was in an unwinnable state, so you could play forever. Nevertheless, I fondly recall solving the babel fish puzzle, just one step at a time, reading a clue, trying something new, getting one step further. Thinking it was almost solved, then having to go back and get some missing item from the first room of the game, etc. I find strong parallels to that puzzle and debugging code, and never did quite enjoy any other Infocom game quite as much. (Although Lurking Horror came close.)
- jiveturkey 8y ago
  > timing component wow. I also nearly finished but not quite. I bet most people got this far. Now to burn the next 40-80 hours ...
jandrese 8y ago
I played that game so many times on the C64 and never got past the Heart of Gold. The Babelfish puzzle took a ridiculous number of guesses to figure out, and the parser was extremely picky. I want to go back to it now with a walkthrough to see just how much of the game I missed due to the insane difficulty level.
vanderZwan 8y ago
> I remember being delighted by all the weird stuff it came with, including a small packet of fuzz, and other artifacts from the story. I had no idea that the beach sand joke in the Look Around You satire segment about computer games was based on something that once happened in reality. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn82s7KAHvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn82s7KAHvo
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
moomin 8y ago
Okay, I’m going to be all hipster on everyone here but seriously has no-one ever heard the original radio series? The original and better than a) the books b) the TV series and c) the movie. They’ve all got their moments (except the TV series, that’s kind of a waste of time).
- hulahoof 8y ago
  I realised I had not after reading your comment, I found them here: https://archive.org/details/hhgttgall6 https://archive.org/details/hhgttgall6
- tialaramex 8y ago
  The TV series is awesome because it does all the computer animation effects from the Guide by hand-drawing them, because at the time actual computer animation would have been ludicrously expensive. It's also better than the books because it stops, instead of carrying on well after the joke ceases being funny.
dthrown 8y ago
I sought out the books for hints on the game too, originally. Now, typing this into a smartphone, I realize that Douglas Adams was right; possibly about everything.
caymanjim 8y ago
> I remember being delighted by all the weird stuff it came with, including a small packet of fuzz, and other artifacts from the story. I didn’t know why they were in the box but it was weird and that appealed to me. These were called "Feelies", and they were there as an awesome form of copy protection. They provided hints that were necessary to win the game. Often the hints were subtle (what exactly was that fuzz for?) and were puzzles in themselves. Sometimes they were completely obvious (a paper map revealing the room with a secret door, a translation guide). You'd usually realize when you needed them. This was an awesome and creative way to copy-protect the games. Many people who pirated them found the games impossible to complete, and it was often because they didn't have the feelies to provide critical clues. Even with them, most of the games were very hard. Infocom games are timeless. The writing is better than anything today. They're creative and challenging. How many companies today would release a game that most of the purchasers would be unable to complete?

jerf 8y ago

It is an extremely difficult game. In theory, I know the answer to all the puzzles, however, there are so many ways to lose without realizing it that I've never managed to string together a single play session in which I do it correctly. Though I've also long since stopped trying. :) For instance, there are subareas where you must collect various tools. Many of these are themselves rather fragile affairs, easy to ruin. At the end of the game, to open a door, you will be asked for a certain random tool. However, this is not a matter of collecting 8 out of 10 tools and having an 80% chance at the end; if you are missing even a single one, the game will draw its random selection from the tools you do not have. IIRC this is also after a point-of-no-return. The Babel fish puzzle is another example of the evilness of the game. While this one is possible to complete without a guide, it isn't possible to complete it on your first attempt. There is a machine that will vend the Babelfish. It will fail in various ways, such as vending the fish into areas you can't get to if you don't block that direction. You have a limited number of tries before the Vogons come to get you and it's a game over if you don't have the fish at that point. However, the amount of time you have is not sufficient to go through the loop of trying the machine, fixing the problem it reveals, trying the machine again, fixing the next problem, etc. There are simply too many problems and not enough time. You have to simply memorize/write down the solutions once, then next time directly implement them in what would appear to be a psychic manner next game. (There's also an early "silent failure" state here; if you did not pick up the junk mail from your house, you lose here.) If you wrote down an objective standard to measure an adventure or text game by, such as "should not have unlabeled no-win situations", or "should be solvable on the first play (even if hard)", or other such things, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text game would flagrantly fail most of them. Whether it's a bad game, I leave that to the reader, but it certainly breaks a lot of rules.

Wowfunhappy 8y ago
Frankly, this sounds like terribly punishing game design. Why did so many players put up with it? Was there really nothing better?
- mcv 8y ago
  Figuring this stuff out is part of the challenge. These days you're supposed to experience the story and hard challenges shouldn't be getting in the way of that. Standards were different then.
- maxfurman 8y ago
  First, the game is funny and entertaining from moment to moment. Second, games were a lot harder back then, so players expected to fail repeatedly - although Hitchhiker's Guide is particularly sadistic
- mrkstu 8y ago
  It was kind of the point. His other Infocom game was called Bureacrary, so you can see the theme developing... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy_(video_game)
  - FabHK 8y ago
    An infamous scene in Bureaucracy was when you had to order some food in a diner, and you'd spend 10 minutes on that (How do you want the burger, rare, medium, or well done? With fries or onion rings? Small, medium, or large? Coke or Fanta? Regular or light? etc. etc., really drawn out), and then the waiter comes back and explains that the computer crashed and you had to go through the whole tedious process again... Come to think of it, why did we put up with it?? :-)
    - FireBeyond 8y ago
      There was a similar scene in Leather Goddesses of Phobos (think Leisure Suit Larry on an alien planet, in text form): You're on a barge in a river, and in the distance is something that "looks like a giant naked lady, breasts pointing to the sky". So you sail down the river towards it, and it gets bigger and bigger over the next ten pages. And then the river turns, and it fades away, but is still there. So you keep sailing. "Getting bigger. You must be getting closer now". You keep sailing. "Sunlight is gleaming on the statue, and it feels so close you could touch it". You keep sailing. "You turn around another bend in a river, and there's... nothing there. You look around. Nothing. It was all a mirage. And the barge can't go any further." So you sail all the way back...

logfromblammo 8y ago

One of my major hangups on that puzzle was that it required you to think of your character's clothing as inventory items, whereas in previous games, clothing was just part of your character's description. It was also the first game I ever saw that had multiple possible solutions to a puzzle. If you can figure out the thing your aunt gave you, you can skip over a significant chunk of the game.

pavlov 8y ago

A very thorough review of the game on the Digital Antiquarian, including photos of the packaging: https://www.filfre.net/2013/11/hitchhiking-the-galaxy-infocom-style/ https://www.filfre.net/2013/11/hitchhiking-the-galaxy-infoco... On the same site, an exquisitely detailed account of how the Hitchhiker's game came to be: https://www.filfre.net/2013/11/the-computerized-hitchhikers/ https://www.filfre.net/2013/11/the-computerized-hitchhikers/

bredren 8y ago
Whoa! This is the “fuzz” I remember! I had this box! The cover opened on it, it was so cool.

codingdave 8y ago

I loved it, too - really enjoyed the puzzles, and had gotten through most of the game as a kid. I never quite finished it, and found out later that there was a timing component whereby you had to make the tea and get to the exit while Marvin was in the right place, (or something like that), and if you missed the chance, it never told you the game was in an unwinnable state, so you could play forever. Nevertheless, I fondly recall solving the babel fish puzzle, just one step at a time, reading a clue, trying something new, getting one step further. Thinking it was almost solved, then having to go back and get some missing item from the first room of the game, etc. I find strong parallels to that puzzle and debugging code, and never did quite enjoy any other Infocom game quite as much. (Although Lurking Horror came close.)

jiveturkey 8y ago
> timing component wow. I also nearly finished but not quite. I bet most people got this far. Now to burn the next 40-80 hours ...

jandrese 8y ago

I played that game so many times on the C64 and never got past the Heart of Gold. The Babelfish puzzle took a ridiculous number of guesses to figure out, and the parser was extremely picky. I want to go back to it now with a walkthrough to see just how much of the game I missed due to the insane difficulty level.

vanderZwan 8y ago

> I remember being delighted by all the weird stuff it came with, including a small packet of fuzz, and other artifacts from the story. I had no idea that the beach sand joke in the Look Around You satire segment about computer games was based on something that once happened in reality. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn82s7KAHvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn82s7KAHvo

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

moomin 8y ago

Okay, I’m going to be all hipster on everyone here but seriously has no-one ever heard the original radio series? The original and better than a) the books b) the TV series and c) the movie. They’ve all got their moments (except the TV series, that’s kind of a waste of time).

hulahoof 8y ago
I realised I had not after reading your comment, I found them here: https://archive.org/details/hhgttgall6 https://archive.org/details/hhgttgall6
tialaramex 8y ago
The TV series is awesome because it does all the computer animation effects from the Guide by hand-drawing them, because at the time actual computer animation would have been ludicrously expensive. It's also better than the books because it stops, instead of carrying on well after the joke ceases being funny.

dthrown 8y ago

I sought out the books for hints on the game too, originally. Now, typing this into a smartphone, I realize that Douglas Adams was right; possibly about everything.

caymanjim 8y ago

> I remember being delighted by all the weird stuff it came with, including a small packet of fuzz, and other artifacts from the story. I didn’t know why they were in the box but it was weird and that appealed to me. These were called "Feelies", and they were there as an awesome form of copy protection. They provided hints that were necessary to win the game. Often the hints were subtle (what exactly was that fuzz for?) and were puzzles in themselves. Sometimes they were completely obvious (a paper map revealing the room with a secret door, a translation guide). You'd usually realize when you needed them. This was an awesome and creative way to copy-protect the games. Many people who pirated them found the games impossible to complete, and it was often because they didn't have the feelies to provide critical clues. Even with them, most of the games were very hard. Infocom games are timeless. The writing is better than anything today. They're creative and challenging. How many companies today would release a game that most of the purchasers would be unable to complete?