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.
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.
the only harder text based adventure game of that era was Steven Kings’ The Mist. That game was fucked! I cannot tell you how many times my friend and I tried to survive the god dam grocery store!
Total war Warhammer 3, been playing with a group of 6 in a campaign. Mainly just been doing beastmen and empire. But been getting into some DLC races so they’ve been a lot more challenging.
Yup. As I recall it was kind of a school-wide effort, with kids relaying solutions of various puzzles to each other until we had enough to complete the game. I do recall working out the Babelfish puzzle on my own, though I also neglected to feed the dog at the beginning of the game soft-locking myself on at least one playthrough.
That was the most frustrating part of the game- finding out that you should have done something else ages ago and now you can never finish even though it let you keep going.
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.
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.”
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.
There were a number of books back then like that (mysteries and such), with the idea that you only revealed the answers to things you couldn't figure out.
As for the game itself, the one part that I have a continued memory about is where you could press the button labeled "Do Not Press". Only doing it a few times gave you the same "nothing happens" message, but being persistent got a different one. Infocom games were so great and full of humor, even the non-Douglas Adams ones.
Yes! I remember that too! And yes, I was a huge Infocom fan. I think the only one I got all the way through without help was Wishbringer, but I can’t remember one I didn’t enjoy playing.
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.
This tickled a half-forgotten memory. I was into a few "ASCII" "game engines" when I was a kid, ZZT and MZX. There was definitely a Hitchhiker's game on one of those. Doubt it was official, of course.
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!
spoilerFirst 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.
Honestly, if you like text adventures, despite the difficulty, it’s one of the most entertaining ever. Douglas Adams himself wrote most of the text, so even if you don’t get very far, it’s all funny.
I haven’t read the novel, but I have played the game. When I played it, it was new, and it was really slow to load levels, which made it kind of a pain to play, but I did restore a good 3/4 of the ship robot thingy’s face.
Warframe has been consuming basically all of my game time. It took a long time of playing off and on for it to really click with me like it has now where Ive stuck with it. I’m actually a bit glad though because it’s left this ocean of different things in the game I can do and it’s been great.
I would have been playing baldurs gate 3 with my buddy who is on vacation and has only his mac book, but because of the differing versions, because mac version is behind by two weeks, and steam needing to have the up to date version of the game, we can’t…
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