Retro Review: The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

Reviewed Platform: PC

Release Year: 1984

Arthur Dent: a confused and bewildered human dressed in pyjamas and a bathrobe is thrust into intergalactic hijinks with his alien friend Ford Prefect after the destruction of Planet Earth by the officious Vogons.  Armed with only his wits, a towell and the electronic guidebook “The HitchHiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”, Dent must traverse many dangers in the search for the lost planet of Magrathea and the ultimate question, to go with the ultimate answer.

Gameplay centres around you sitting (or indeed standing) with a towel and a cup of tea at your gaming station (a PC, or some old masheen, I played it on PC, cause you know, I’m cool like that) which has one of these new-fangled keyboard input interfaces.  The screen comes up with prompts and you type out (in English) a coherent response that the game recognises.  There are no visual clues, so all the information you need comes from the on-screen text, and whatever knowledge you have of the phenomenon (and you need a lot of that to even play the game).

Sounds like hard work, doesn’t it?  Thank yourself lucky you little cretins: this is what your dad played when he was your age, and he enjoyed it, because it was funny and smart and you had to use your brain.  Not every game came with a hand-holding mode and had every control and nuance explained to you in a conveniently placed tutorial.

As you adventure through the 30+ rooms in game, you must solve logic puzzles, which can often be fiendishly hard to do and can render the game unwinnable (see the Babel Fish puzzle for just such an example).  You must also pick up and use any objects you might find on the quest to make the game winnable.  Failure in a puzzle or to pick up items may not necessarily mean in-game death, but it will render your efforts moot as the game will be unwinnable at some point.

Graphics – what graphics?  It’s text on a screen.  Gordon Bennet, I don’t know.  Kids these days thinking everything has to be aesthetically pleasing to be of any worth. The typing input effect is perfect, accurately portraying what you’re saying and the text contrasts well with the background.  It’s crisp and clear so there’s no confusion about what’s happening. This is a bring your own soundtrack game.  Ideally something spacey, or maybe just Journey Of The Sorcerer by Eagles (well, essentially just Bernie Leadon) playing constantly.  And I mean constantly.

What more is there to say?  It’s a text adventure game that happens to be hilarious.  Go play it!  You can find the original on Douglas Adams’ website, and the BBC has an updated version with a nice interface and some visual clues, but it’s the same game.