hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy
Latest
Infocom's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy playable for free online
The BBC has released a free online version of Infocom's classic PC text adventure The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, commemorating the 30th anniversary of the game's initial release. Designed by "Hitchhiker's Guide" author Douglas Adams, Infocom's game mixes humor, sci-fi, and frequent player death for an experience many regard as a high point in the text adventure genre. The BBC's latest adaptation follows up on a previous 20th anniversary re-release, and boasts improved in-game navigation along with a virtual keyboard suited for touch screens. If you plan to play through this one, remember to save frequently. That bulldozer is a killer. [Image: Infocom / BBC]
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy app coming to the iPad, Don't Panic decal not included
Canadian indie developer Hothead Games is producing a Hitchhikers Guide app, aiming to replicate the titular guide itself (rather than the novels). When it arrives this fall, we can expect beautifully animated sequences describing the Babel Fish and Vogon Poetry -- but just a single word about planet Earth (the addition of the word "Mostly" should come in a second, more sinister update). Visit the holding page and you'll hear the unmistakably honeyed tones of Simon Jones who played Arthur Dent in the original TV and radio series. If he's voicing the guide then this will be a must-have for fans, taking over a role made famous by Peter Jones, and later Stephen Fry in the movie. As the app is iOS only, Android users should probably still panic -- or make a trip to their local laser etching station.
Hothead's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy app coming this fall
Hothead Games is working on an interactive version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for iPhone and iPad, available this fall. This isn't an adaptation of the beloved series by Douglas Adams, mind you, but of the guide itself. Meaning, attorneys from Megadodo Publications -- the established publisher of the original guide -- should be sending a cease and desist letter through an interdimensional portal at any moment to stop the app's production. There are those who will argue that such a legal maneuver would be impossible, given the fictitious existence of the publisher, but we'd posit that such a tactic is merely improbable and, therefore, likely to happen. The developers plan to take "the standard repository for all knowledge and wisdom" and make it available to the mostly harmless masses of Earth. We, at Joystiq, would like to warn all those reading that if humanity gets its hands on this device, it will accelerate the question to the answer of 42. Therefore, we advise nobody panic. Simply grab your towel and find the first alien you can with transport off this rock before the Vogon construction fleet shows up.* *Yes, we understand that there is a correlation vs. causation debate to be had here, but would you rather argue the point or grab a drink at The Restaurant at the End of the Universe?
Hothead working on Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy project
Nothing goes better with our morning Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster than a surprise, and this is a neat one: Hothead Games says it's working with the well-respected and completely fictional Megadodo Publishing to create a new version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy available for the very first time here on primitive, mostly harmless Earth. The announcement stopped short of saying if this was an actual game based on the Douglas Adams series or even what platforms it will appear on, but we're sure the end result will be positively hoopy.
TV's Lost is most requested Telltale adventure game project
We've all got our own dream projects we'd like adventure game studio Telltale to make, heaven knows we've fanned those flames ourselves. But as for the most requested project, you need look no further than your nerdy friend's Tuesday night Twitter feed, according to company boss Dan Connors. "You know it's funny, because I have a survey with the actual requests on it, or the actual things that people that we surveyed said they would like to see," Connors told us in an interview you'll see in full soon. "If I can recall correctly I think Lost was number one. I think that Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was number two ... or maybe number three. And I know that Dexter was in there somewhere. And of course the LucasArts stuff was in there as well." Lost as adventure game makes perfect sense, especially since The Island is one of the few places where making a mustache out of cat hair, masking tape and syrup makes perfect sense.
Splashing through the MUD and the MUSH
Before forum trolls complained of bad graphics or crappy voice acting, there was text-based gaming. Progressing from the success of games like Zork and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the multi-user dungeons (MUDs) and multi-user shared hallucinations (MUSHes) were our best methods of roleplaying and interacting with other people from across the globe. Without these original text-based experiences, we would not have any of the MMOs we have today.To pay homage to this fact, Kaila Hale-Stern at Gawker's io9 writes a telling narrative of the old days in MUDs and MUSHes. PernMUSH, a MUSH based on Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series was (and still is) an extremely popular online hub for roleplayers. This story tells of Kaila's experiences with PernMUSH and how magical they were "for a sixteen year-old with a 36kbps modem and a family phone line." Be sure to check out the pages of comments as well, as they each tell their own memories of the birth of online gaming and roleplaying.
First impression: buying a movie from the iTunes Store
First off let me say that I'm glad Apple finally changed the name of the store to something 'music neutral.' With that said, how is the movie buying experience on the iTunes Store? Pretty good. Thanks the the 'CoverFlow' implementation I was able to look through the 75 movies available and find one I was interested in (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I am a geek after all, plus it was only $9.99).Buying it was just like purchasing music from the iTunes Store, though the downloading took about an hour. However, I was able to start watching the movie after about 10 minutes. The video looks pretty darned terrific on my 20 inch iMac (thanks, Apple, for fixing the dog that was video playback in iTunes) and the sound is great.One thing to note, movies downloaded from the iTunes Store do have chapter markers, as pictured above. A more detailed picture of the chapter markers themselves after the jump.
