The Infocom
adventure is
rightly remembered as a classic of its time - the mere mention of Babel
Fish or intelligent doors still provokes nervous reactions in those who
regularly stayed up until the early hours trying to defeat the fiendish
puzzles. It was one of the best-selling games of 1985, shifting over
250,000 copies that year alone! It also won many "Game Of The Year"
awards from various magazines and organisations, and is still
remembered as one of the best (if not the
best) pieces of interactive fiction ever produced.
WINDOWS CD-ROM
Arguably
the best
Infocom game ever made, Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy
was an instant hit when it was first released in 1984. So it is no
surprise that it was chosen as one of five games to be updated and
re-released as “Solid Gold” edition in 1987. The
entire
Solid Gold line
was sadly not very well known, perhaps because most people assumed it
was simply a re-release of the original game. This is not the case: the
Solid Gold edition games include Infocom’s
“InvisiClues” hints as an
in-game feature, the game engine (“Z machine”) was
updated
to version 5
(which features a more versatile parser), and most bugs squashed. The
Solid Gold therefore became the best edition of Infocom classics to own
and play.
As
to this particular Solid Gold
release, HHGTTG
needs almost no introduction – if you grew up during the
1980s,
you’ll
bound to have heard of this classic. Graeme Cree sums up the reasons
why the game is a must-play in this review for SPAG:
"The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy was Infocom's first game
based on a novel (Shogun
was the second), and is certainly their most famous product. As such,
it faced heavy expectations both from the text game crowd and from fans
of the book (I saved this game until I had played all of Infocom's 34
other text games, hoping to guarantee finishing with a winner).
Fortunately, the game meets most expectations.
For
those who
don't know, you begin the game as Arthur Dent, a typical Englishman
whose home is about to be demolished to make way for a new highway.
Soon afterward, the earth itself is destroyed to make way for a new
interstellar spacelane, and you must escape the holocaust with your
alien friend Ford Prefect; first to a Vogon warship, and then to the
Heart of Gold, run by Ford's friend Zaphod Beeblebrox. Once there, your
goal becomes to land safely on the lost planet of Magrathea. To do
this, you must search various corners of reality (changing identities a
few times along the way) to acquire several different pieces of fluff,
which when used properly will produce an item that will give you the
clairvoyance necessary to open the hatch and set foot on the planet.
The
writing is some of Infocom's
very best, which is fortunate because the game itself is a little too
short (only The Witness
and Seastalker
have fewer locations). The atmosphere produced is almost exactly like
that of the book, even if specific details of the plot are often
changed. The puzzles (including the legendary Babel Fish puzzle) are
based on a brand of "consistent illogic" that is rather reminiscent of
Lewis Carroll, and make the game one of those few that many will some
day play again even after having solved it once. Hitchhiker's
is one of the more literate text games on the market, as you will often
have to pay more attention to how things are worded than you might in
other games.
...Perhaps
the biggest
disappointment is the
absence of the promised sequel. The story does not really end, it
merely pauses and gives you a "to be continued" message just as you set
foot on Magrathea. Though the sequel was promised many times (such as
in the New Zork Times, and in the crystal ball in Beyond
Zork,
it never materialized. Since Infocom no longer has the rights to
Hitchhiker's, it is unlikely that it ever will. (For those of you
keeping track, the sequels promised by Infocom/Activision that [have
never come out] are: Hitchhikers
2, Journey
2, Leather
Goddesses 3 [and
Planetfall 2:
The Search for Floyd -
Underdogs]). Despite this, Hitchhiker's
plusses massively outweigh the negatives, and the game remains one of
the great classics of interactive fiction." If you enjoy IF games, you
can’t call yourself a fan until you have played this
masterpiece.
And
if you’re not yet a fan, this is the one game that may change
your
mind. A true classic in every sense of the word.
Suitable
for Windows
95/98/ME/2000/XP
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