Both Tea And No Tea - Updated Hitchhiker's Game 314
Ford Prefect writes "To coincide with the new radio series of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the BBC will be reviving the old Infocom Hitchhiker's text adventure game, to appear on Radio 4's website. It's not just a straight port, either - apparently 'the new version of the game will be illustrated by Rod Lord, who won a BAFTA for his graphics for the original Hitchhiker TV series.' Hoopy!"
THAT game (Score:5, Funny)
There's nothing to see. You're lying on your back.
# Get up
I don't understand.
# Get out of bed
You get out of bed.
# Look around
You see nothing. The lights are off.
Your house is demolished by a bulldozer. You have died. Would you like to play again? (y/n)
I really hate that game. Feel free to frustrate yourself here. [douglasadams.com]
Obligatory Quote - The Babel Fish (Score:4, Funny)
The Babel fish is small, yellow, leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the NON-existence of God.
The argument goes like this:
`I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.
`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, "Well, That about Wraps It Up for God."
Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.
Great News! (Score:5, Funny)
Beyond user-friendly... (Score:5, Funny)
"the first game to move beyond being 'user friendly'"... "It's actually 'user insulting' and because it lies to you as well it's also 'user mendacious,'" he said.
Best. Software project. Ever.
What I would have given to work on such a program. I bet they had programmers offering to work for free. Heck, I would have paid them...
"Please, just one printf, one insult, that's all I ask!"
This game is EVIL!!! (Score:4, Funny)
"Get flask"
"You can't get ye flask!"
And you're stuck there wondering why on earth you can't get ye flask...
Best Infocom Game Quote (Score:5, Funny)
While playing Zork I, in the caves, I said:
# get leaflet
Picked up leaflet
# get tube of glue
Picked up tube of glue
# glue leaflet to wall
And you must put spinach in your gas tank, too.
Not a nice thing to do to a sleepy 17 year old at 3:30 in the morning.
It's not that bad! (Score:5, Funny)
Just wear your Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses until the article goes away.
ob quotation (Score:5, Funny)
Anyone? (Score:5, Funny)
Douglas Adams was wrong about Vogon poetry (Score:2, Funny)
Freddle your gruntbuggly!
Hot and plurdled gabbleblotchits waiting for you
Refinance your foonting turlingdromes
Earn that crinkly bindlewurdle you've always dreamed of...
Re:wicked.. (Score:2, Funny)
Kind of like Slashdot?
Re:Game tip: (Score:1, Funny)
I played that game on my C-64 when I was a kid. I hadn't even thought about it for probably the past decade. I never did get past the point of getting the fish into my ear, and I never realized why. Thanks.
Of course you realize now that I'm going to try it out, and subsequently burn the next 3 weeks getting stuck at another point.
Jackass.
I got karma to burn... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This game is EVIL!!! (Score:1, Funny)
The real question is... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Obligatory Quote - The Babel Fish (Score:1, Funny)
the Google answer (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Anyone? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:wicked.. (Score:5, Funny)
#Click on Star Trek
"Ain't it cool news has reported that John Waters has said at an interview in Entertainment Weekly that he is 'very interested' in making a Star Trek movie." I wouldn't mind at all, says michael.
There are no posts.
#post "frist psot"
You fail it.
While posting that utterly brilliant article, a grue has broken into your parents' basement. He is currently chewing on your leg. An ambulance is headed for your house, but it gets stuck in traffic.
Would you like to restart? (y/n)
Re:Beyond user-friendly... (Score:5, Funny)
Wait. You mean Windows is based on the HHTTG text-adventure game?
(Ah, just mod me -1 karma whore...)
Share & Enjoy (Score:5, Funny)
However, no-one quite knows why it does this, as it invariably spits out a boring graphical clickfest that is almost, but not entirely, unlike a text adventure.
Downloadable doesn't have the best part (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Where do I put all my stuff??? (Score:4, Funny)
I thought it should have just ended the game right there, saying something along the lines of, "Okay, fine. You win. You've done something sillier than anything else we had planned. Happy?"
Re:Another generation of frustration (Score:5, Funny)
The devil is holding a contract in one hand, and he says "Still haven't gotten the bable fish, eh?"
Re:Obligatory Quote - The Babel Fish (Score:5, Funny)
Re:nerd ID card (Score:5, Funny)
As the article submitter, please accept my sincerest apologies. If there are any other topic that you, or anyone else, would not like aired, please let me know and I will not post articles relating to them in the future.
Best regards,
Ford Prefect
What? How? (Score:2, Funny)
"the new version of the game will be illustrated..."
How do you Illustrate a Text Adventure game???
ASCII art??
Old games don't have so much an afterlife... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Obligatory Quote - The Babel Fish (Score:5, Funny)
We're small and leechlike, some of us are yellowish, we may be the oddest thing in the Universe, but there's no way you're slipping something like "mind-bogglingly useful" past me. Nuh-uh.
Re: Close but no cigar (Score:2, Funny)
Yes, that's right, I never found the pyramid. Leave me alone.
Re:THAT game (Score:4, Funny)
Then there's the problem with puzzles that require grabbing non-evident things (the dust from under the bed) at the beginning of the game and needing them near the end -- with no way to go back and get them of course, because the house and Earth has been destroyed.
After typing all that, I realize it's the perfect Hitchhiker's Guide game.
Re:THAT game (Score:3, Funny)
When I was in highschool during the late 80s (God I'm old) I wrote a text adventure (in basic - shudder) for my computer class. At the time, Oliver North was on trial, so I decided to base it on the iran-contra affair.
Basically you could wander around a house and do some basic things. I added a random timeout, so after a few turns it came up with:
Three men with machine guns burst into the room!
You are dead!
Never double-cross the Iranians
I got an A.
"Offtopic" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obligatory Quote - The Babel Fish (Score:3, Funny)
I disagree. http://www.nportman.com/ [nportman.com]