Secret history of Infocom's abortive sequel to The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy text adventure, Milliways
Link1. It seems natural to include a scene in the restaurant, Milliways. Could be a bit of fun: strange parties, unctuous compere, self-introducing food. Perhaps there's an object there that you need to get. (It could be a SPORK, a spoon with sort of forky tines on the end. Or would that be a FOON?) It could be a vehicle from the car park -- Marvin has the keys. If you manage to re-enter Milliways at another time (oops! on another occasion), you will not meet yourself, "because of the embarrassment that usually causes." What about a visit to the Big Bang Burger Bar?
2. Given point 1, you must have a means (or several meanses) of time travel. In fact time travel instead of space travel could be the primary method of changing scene. In the original, the party got to Milliways by accident: in the radio version, a "hyperspatial field generator" overheated; in the book version, Zaphod's great-granddaddy screwed up the works of Eddie, the Heart of Gold computer. Maybe your trip to Milliways would require info from an anti-piracy device in the game package. Once at the restaurant, you can steal a timeship and go anywhen you want.
3. Given point 2, it seems natural for the "best ending" of the game to be your arrival on Earth before it's destroyed, which is the ending of both the first radio series and the second (namesake) book. The original route to this ending was an accidental landing on Golgafrincham Ark B, with its cargo of telephone sanitizers, marketing consultants, etc. (the ancestors of Earth's humans!). I rather like this bit, and hope we can work it into the game.
4. Okay, so what about the beginning of the game? The easy answer: take up the story where the "Hitchhiker's" game left off, namely the arrival on Magrathea. But in the original this arrival is followed by a travelogue of Magrathea and a flashback to the Deep Thought v. philosophers' union story (including the introduction of the "42" joke) and the joke about the true nature of mice. All funny bits, but I have a hard time envisioning how they can be made into interesting interactive versions. Perhaps you could time-travel to Deep Thought and interact with it yourself. The Magrathean catalog of planets on Sens-O-Tape could be useful.
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Very strange.Just woke up got my mail,A large(unsolicited)package containing The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy Infocom game.No info,no return address Post mark illegible. Verrry strrrange...made a coffee rolled a smoke opened up BB and now this - coincidence control center seems to be working overtime.and I is freaked.
fnord.
I know someone who worked on 'Starship Titanic' and the story was much the same. Getting DNA to deliver his books on time was a feat that required management, cajoling and threats: to get him to work in an environment where requirements changed on the fly was nothing short of a miracle. I think 'Titanic' was finally released about four years behind schedule.
I had the pleasure of working with Steve Meretzky at WorldWinner.com (fellow game designers) and to this day he apologizes for the babelfish puzzle.
Also, Steve is about 200 cm tall and Douglas Adams was no little guy -- so they must have seen eye-to-eye.
I loved the "Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy" books.
It was difficult changing mental gears when I went to read something else afterward.
I was given Starship Titanic and truly tried to get through it.
Gorgeous visuals, but all the details just bogged me down and eventually I gave it back to my brother.
Brilliant stuff to be sure, however I think I just wasn't bright enough for the game.
There's a lengthy, excruciatingly sarcastic essay at oldmanmurray.com (http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html) about the death of adventure games that made me feel a lot better about wimping out on the first h2g2 text game; it's written by the same guys who worked on Portal.
@wgmleslie: I'm glad to hear he apologizes for the babelfish puzzle.
I'm surprised no one has heard of Douglas Adams's other, other Infocom game, Bureaucracy. I think I have a version on a CD somewhere.
My favorite part of the game (and I never got that far into it) was a point at which you go to a burger restaurant, go through a very elaborate menu selection, and no matter what you choose, you get the same crap burger thrown at you.
I just realized that the Space Quest Sierra games that I played when I was younger were ... ahem... inspired by the H2G2 series. There is one in which you steal a time machine and fly around to different times. I seem to remember another one with lots of bureaucrats, but I can't remember the storyline.
Aww, I loved all those old Infocom offerings, the H2G2 one was such fun. Although now in my dotage I find that the various games have become completely jumbled up in my head, to the extent that I largely just remember one very extended undertaking in which I wandered around in my bathrobe (after taking my buffered analgesics, of course) in this weird cave system under this white house where I ended up after the Soviets nuked London, but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't save poor little Floyd from sacrificing himself for me. Also, there were platypi.
Good times, good times ...
The game information in the article was interesting, but the more controversial meat of it seems to be Baio’s including of company memos and emails. A fascinating discussion is going on about it in the comments, including participation by a good chunk of people that were discussed in the article! Former Infocom employees and Michael Bywater himself.
Hidden in there is debate about the journalistic integrity of going live with the e-mails and memos without seeking comment from those involved. I highly recommend going back and reading through the emotional and reflective comments, it’s crazy.
I also worked for WorldWinner for a bit (not directly, for a company that was outsourced to do their techsupport) and met Steve.. very approachable guy. He even signed my copies of Hitchhiker's and Bureaucracy.
I was thrilled to read all this stuff but find myself agreeing with the commenter (not here, on the original site) who was a bit peeved to see his private emails posted for the world to read
I loved that game. Played it in college on a buddies computer (my computer had an 8" floppy drive and the game we had was on 5", so had to use his)
I seem to remember reading that Douglas Adams actually hated those green smiley alien thingies. Perhaps another image would be more suitable? A still from the recent movie would be recognizable to a subset of readers, for example.
Also, in before Takuan :-)
The ongoing discussion with the creators is fascinating.
Oh....wow. My highschool roomie and I played H2G2 'til our eyes bled (friggin' babelfish). I'm drooling reading this background stuff. I almost don't want to play the prototype; it seems unreal!
+1 for this post, Cory. Thanks.
I met Douglas Adams as a kid, at a poorly-attended autograph session at an American chain bookstore in a shopping mall (which in and of itself should have been unbelievably absurd to me at the time, but sadly, wasn't), and I effused to him about — among other things — the Infocom Hitchhikers' game, having spent hours baffling out how to just get a damn fish out of a machine (among other baffling things).
I asked him if there would be a sequel game, and he told me that indeed there would. I probably effused some more, but my young mind quickly ran out of things to say to an adult whose books (and radio shows, and TV shows, et al) would turn out to have a lasting effect on the evolution of my young sense of humor and indeed my whole way of viewing the universe.
Much later, when the new Douglas Adams game was announced by Infocom, it was called Bureaucracy, and it didn't really seem to have anything to do with the Hichhikers' Guide nor any of the characters. I was confused by this until now.
By the way, the Infocom game still features prominently among my Douglas Adams collection, and I still have my Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses and Microscopic Space Fleet. And the pocket fluff too, of course — can't ever get rid of that stuff.
One big reason I knew I had to ask my wife out when we first met is she could still play the HHGTTG game from memory.
We even named one of our dogs RBBBOT (pronounced: ribbit) because of his tendency to chew up anything he could get his teeth on. Oh, and our laptops' hostnames are "heartofgold" and "bistromath"...
I guess we're dorks... oh, well.