SACRILEGE! Hitchhiker's Guide game's back ... and it TWEETS at you We've all heard that things were better back in the day. But when it comes to computer games, El Reg has uncovered concrete evidence that the past was pretty rubbish. The Beeb has re-released an old text adventure based on Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the day it first hit the shops. …
I hadn't, because the last time I was in a McDonalds was in a suburb of Frankfurt in 1992, when all the real restaurants had shut and I realised it would have been better to go back to the hotel and eat all the peanuts in the minibar, also I drank something which called itself a milkshake but I don't think it had ever been near a cow - sorry, flashback there - but yes, it seems highly appropriate.
I'm 40 btw....
But every time I get a screen on an 'Application' that asks if I want to 'Share' my achievement I get a surge of anger and a desire to feed the software firm in question to a Bugblatter beast.
Yes, I just watched a jolly froody film and NO I FSCKING DON'T WANT TO TWEET ABOUT IT you utter BASTARDS.
Say what you like about those old games, but they knew how to put together a proper boxed copy back in those days.
It wasn't just a bunch of disks and a manual. You got that and so much more that made the game seem so real that for a few hours you'd really feel like some kind of adventurer (or an intergalactic hitchhiker).
The best part of the H2G2 game was the ziplock bag containing your very own microscopic space fleet, and the replica demolition orders for Arthur's house and the Earth which differed only in that one was written in Vogon.
Infocom gave the best extras. Planetfall had three bags of scented goo to match the food packets in the game, The Lurking Horror contained your character's student card and Leather Goddesses of Phobos had a scratch and sniff card to use at various points in the game. (OK, maybe not so much that last one, but still.)
What should the program morph hitchhiker to crack computer coder playing to Global Operating Devices? Would the secrets shared there to be aired be too hot for the BBC to handle without politically incorrect involvement and out of the ordinary interference by others aware of such a master pilot proposal?
IT isn't supposed to be secret, is it, and/or not proposed and supported to be a kept secret, is it?
Oh well, .. sorry about that. However, valuable lessons have been earned and positions aired for suitable revelation, which is always uplifting.
YOU TOUCHED THE KEYBOARD. ALL DOORS SLAM SHUT AND WILL ONLY OPEN ON SOME RIDICULOUSLY CONTRIVED WORD PAIRING YOU CAN ONLY GUESS AT.
YOU TOUCHED THE KEYBOARD AGAIN. SOMETHING DROPS FROM ABOVE AND STINGS. YOU ARE DEAD.
YOU HAVE COMPLETED 1% OF THIS ADVENTURE
PLAY AGAIN? Y/N
Don't.
He was born one year later than I was and when he died I had a serious rethink about my life. There were just so many other better qualified candidates for early termination, it just goes to show there is no justice and no purpose to the universe.
Well, he did keep trying to tell us that.
No. Owner of both games. Well, I say "games" but I mean "worthless wastes of time".
My HHGTTG came packaged with A Mind Forever Voyaging and Return to Zork so people could see that not all text adventure games were as much fun as a tax audit.
Starship Titanic is poorly implemented, eschewing the common wisdom of everyone else in the game industry on such matters as where and how hard to block progress and how big to make "hot zones". I suspect it fell afoul of the daft developer politics loudly touted about on The Webz (then rescinded when the obvious to everyone but the team happened and The Money Ran Out).
So 8oP
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