The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (computer game)

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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Studio Infocom
Publisher Infocom
Senior Developer Douglas Adams , Steve Meretzky
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 1984
platform Amiga , Apple II , Atari 8-bit , Atari ST , Commodore 64 , Commodore 128 , Mac OS Classic , MS-DOS , MSX , Schneider CPC , TI-99 / 4A
Game engine Z-machine
genre Text adventure
Subject Science fiction
Game mode Single player
control keyboard
medium diskette
language English
copy protection Enclosure referencing

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a text adventure , whose content is the novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams oriented. The game was developed by Adams and Infocom designer and programmer Steve Meretzky and published for a wide variety of computers in 1984. It was the company's 14th game.

action

The game roughly reproduces the plot of the television series . The player takes on the role of Arthur Dent, a resident of a suburb of London, whose best friend, which Arthur does not know, is an alien and who saves him at the last second from the impending destruction of the earth by an alien race on board an alien spaceship. After being rescued from space by the Hearts of Gold and figuring out how to activate the Infinite Improbability Drive, the player will be flung through space and time, taking on the roles of Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox and Trillian at certain times. For most of the game, however, the player represents Arthur Dent.

The goal of the game is to find the legendary lost planet Magrathea . While the other characters in the game relax in the Sauna of the Hearts of Gold , Arthur has to complete a series of tasks: he has to collect a collection of bizarre tools and four different types of lint before the Hearts of Gold can get anywhere near the planet Magrathea . When the characters of the game finally land on Magrathea, the game ends with the never-fulfilled promise of a sequel.

Game principle and technology

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a text adventure, which means that surroundings and events are displayed as screen text and the actions of the player are also entered as text via the keyboard and processed by a parser .

A virtual version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy built into the game explains a number of people, objects and terms from the television series such as the pangalactic thunder gurgler or the babel fish .

The problem of getting a grip on the ever-growing collection of objects can be solved with the help of an object called “That thing your aunt gave you which you don't know what it is” (German: “Das Ding, das dir dein Tante that you do not know what it is ”). This object has two important properties: an almost limitless capacity for additional objects, as well as the habit of reappearing in the player's possession after it has apparently been lost.

Production notes

The contact between Douglas Adams and Infocom came about because Adams had become aware of the 1983 published game Planetfall, written by Steve Meretzky . Both sides signed a contract with six games after Infocom Hitchhiker could produce -Bezug. Adams' collaboration was only part of the contract for the first game. Since Adams was not familiar with the technical requirements of the Z-machine , Steve Meretzky, an experienced writer at his side, wrote parts of the script and programmed the game from the script. The game's production took significantly longer than originally planned. According to Meretzky, this was due to the way Adams worked, which delayed the production process several times. In parts of the script that Meretzky wrote, he imitated Adams' writing style so well that, according to Meretzky, the latter could no longer say who had written which parts of the script.

Infocom published its games mostly with so-called "Feelies", small additions made for the respective game, which made allusions to the respective game and were often referenced in the game, which was an effective copy protection. The following "Feelies" were part of this game:

  • A button with the inscription "Don't Panic!"
  • A plastic bag with a pocket fluff (a small cotton ball) in it
  • A printed instruction for the demolition of Arthur Dent's house
  • A printed instruction for the destruction of the earth (in Vogon)
  • An official microscopic space fleet (an empty plastic bag)
  • "Peril Sensitive Sunglasses" (sunglasses made from opaque black cardboard)
  • How Many Times Has This Happened to You? , an advertising brochure for the fictional travel guide "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

A sequel to the game, known internally by Infocom as a restaurant , was planned but never realized. One of the main reasons that work on Restaurant was delayed was the adventure Bureaucracy , also written by Adams, which took over four years to produce. With the liquidation of Infocom in 1989, the plans for restaurants were buried.

reception

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was economically very successful; a total of 250,000 copies were sold. The game was so popular that Infocom produced and distributed t-shirts that related to a specific puzzle within the game.

In German game reviews of the 1980s, “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” was described as a “must” for every adventure gamer and a “highlight” of every adventure collection. The extraordinary wit and the irony of the plot were particularly emphasized.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has also been featured in studies of computer game history and theory . Nelson (2001) judged the adventure on the one hand to be attractive, but on the other hand criticized the inadequate depth of the game (“solidly mediocre, charming but insubstantial”). Maher (2006) also came to a differentiated assessment: positive are the precise language, the great humor and the provocative disregard of the typical game principles of interactive fiction (“the game is required playing even today for its sharp writing, great good humor, and general subversion of sacred IF principals ”). On the other hand, the large number of illogical game puzzles and the sometimes incomprehensible course of action have a negative impact in his opinion. In the German net culture magazine Telepolis , the game was retrospectively referred to as "one of the most famous text adventures ever".

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Heise.de: Douglas Adams and Infocom. Retrieved November 3, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Information on sales at Graham Nelson: Inform Designer's Manual . Dan Sanderson, 4th ed. 2001, hardcover: ISBN 0-9713119-3-5 , paperback: ISBN 0-9713119-0-0 (§ 46: A brief history of interactive fiction online edition ).
  3. ↑ Filfre.net: Ten Great Adventure-Game Puzzles. Retrieved November 3, 2018 .
  4. ^ Boris Schneider-Johne : The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy . In: Happy Computer . Games special issue 3 (1985).
  5. ↑ Helga Baars, Petra Wängler: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy . In: Happy Computer . Issue 4/1985, p. 141.
  6. ^ Heinrich Lenhardt : 7 class adventures in one go . In: Happy Computer . Issue 9/1985, p. 147.
  7. ^ Graham Nelson: Inform Designer's Manual . Dan Sanderson, 4th ed. 2001, hardcover: ISBN 0-9713119-3-5 , paperback: ISBN 0-9713119-0-0 (§ 46: A brief history of interactive fiction online edition ).
  8. ↑ See Jimmy Maher: Let's Tell a Story Together. A History of Interactive Fiction . Senior Honor's Thesis, University of Texas, Dallas 2006 (Chapter 5 The Infocom Canon - Infocom and Douglas Adams: Hitchhiker's and Bureaucracy ) .
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams


The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy  • The restaurant at the end of the universe  • Life, the universe and all the rest  • Take care and thank you for the fish  • Rupert and back  • And something else, by the way… (posthumously by Eoin Colfer )