This is accurate gameplay from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy text adventure that INFOCOM made with the help of Douglas Adams in 1984.
I thought people would find it interesting to see the way a game would creatively do a demo in print in the 1980s since doing it other ways was either too expensive or not very useful from a marketing perspective.
It was very challenging. I never got all the way through it. Amazingly, it only covers a small portion of the first book despite taking hours and hours to play.
This was an exceptionally difficult game from the very first scene. You were particularly hard pressed to even make it off earth if you hadn’t read the book.
After that, it didn’t necessarily coincide with the book, so you had to put yourself into a Douglas Adams mindset for the duration, and that was no easy task.
I think I may have gotten through roughly a third of it before moving on to other games.
Zork was the other game I never did particularly well with. I think I got a little further in it than hitchhikers though.
the only harder text based adventure game of that era was Steven Kings’ The Mist. That game was fucked! I cannot tell you how many times my friend and I tried to survive the god dam grocery store!
There were at least five Zork games I can think of that were purely text (graphical ones came later): Zork, Zork II, Zork III, Beyond Zork and Zork Zero.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you’re submitting before posting to see if it’s already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don’t share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don’t want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
This was an exceptionally difficult game from the very first scene. You were particularly hard pressed to even make it off earth if you hadn’t read the book.
After that, it didn’t necessarily coincide with the book, so you had to put yourself into a Douglas Adams mindset for the duration, and that was no easy task.
I think I may have gotten through roughly a third of it before moving on to other games.
Zork was the other game I never did particularly well with. I think I got a little further in it than hitchhikers though.
the only harder text based adventure game of that era was Steven Kings’ The Mist. That game was fucked! I cannot tell you how many times my friend and I tried to survive the god dam grocery store!
Interesting. I had never heard about that game! I’m going to have to check it out now.
say no more friend!
https://archive.org/details/msdos_Stephen_Kings_-_The_Mist_1985
Thanks!
I didn’t even get out the house
I got so frustrated getting killed over and over that I typed:
into the prompt. The game responded with:
Which is how I found out that was British slang for
porn.graphic horror films, apparently.I’m not sure if I’m missing something here…but what did you think “fuck” meant? Lol
more likely he thought ‘video nasty’ was slang for porn (unless of course it was a joke)
Lmao yes, you’re absolutely right. That’s what I missed.
I still like my misinterpretation though, ahaha
Just about anything
Fuck the fucking fuckers.
The only English word that can be used as an infix…
It’s truly beauti-fucking-ful!
It’s absobloodylutely not the only one
Can’t bebloodylieve I forgot bloody.
Wait, yes I can, I’m Canadian and we don’t use that.
Thanks for the correction!
Unbe-cunting-lievable.
Video nasty was slang for graphic horror movies, not porn. Not heard anyone say it since the 80s though.
Ahh, TIL. Thanks!
There was another Adams game called something like Starship Titanic. That one went beyond challenging into absurd. It as my first rage quit game.
Close- Adams made two games for Infocom. This one and a ridiculously hard to the point of impossibility game called Bureaucracy.
Then he made Starship Titanic some years later for The Digital Village.
There were at least five Zork games I can think of that were purely text (graphical ones came later): Zork, Zork II, Zork III, Beyond Zork and Zork Zero.
I had one two and three but don’t recall playing the latter two. By then I’d moved on to the greatest game released in the mid-eighties - Autoduel.
Then it was on to the original Bard’s Tale.
I played both of those to completion then figured out how to cheat on both by finding character stats with a sector editor.