Douglas Adams, a man whose life was devoted to telling good jokes over a variety of mediums and wasting it as pleasurably as possible, had always been -in his infinite wisdom- quite fond of video games (until his untimely death, that is). His classic monolith of a game, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is freely available over at the BBC (as mentioned here ages ago), his hilarious Bureaucracy text-adventure can be glimpsed here and his rather recent Starship Titanic is nowhere to be found (not on this blog at least).The newest addition to the Douglas Adams games though is quite obviously a post-mortem non-Adams project. It also is a collection of 42 microgames, each playable in less than 5 seconds. It's also also free. It's also also also available here, a fun little corner of the science museum.
Related @ Gnome's Lair: Chip's Challenge, Vintage Board games, quirky Half-Life 2 mods, free games archive
Related Tags: Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, BBC, Starship Titanic, Don't panic, Free games, Infocom, Free, Freeware, Bureaucracy, games, game
just to take this oppurtunity to name drop, one of the lecturers/researchers at my Uni is Emma Westecott, who produced Starship Titanic. I loved that game as a kid
ReplyDeletePlease, do tell her its frustratingly difficult to find the game... I remember beeing so hyped up, and then I just never played it...
ReplyDeletenice tiuch Gnome I love Douglas Adams and particularly the 'Guide.
ReplyDeleteBut WTF? I didn't even know he was dead! Last read one of his books this summer about Thor coming back to earth... Sniff! we'll miss him! Oh and surprise surprise... tried playing the HHG game and got nowhere...the Guide couldn't understand any of my questions! DOH!
Now, playing HHG the text adventure requires patience, relaxation, tequila and alkthrough. Oh, and don't ask the game stuff, tell it...
ReplyDeleteRight I'm not drinking so tequila is out of the question , I can't get out of the bloody room and the smug/sarcastic tone of the guide is getting on my nerves as I'm going through smoking withdawal!!
ReplyDeletedamn HHG, DAMN YOU TO HELL!!!!
(looks at the stars in the sky.....)
ReplyDeleteand just to imagine it all started out there somewhere.......
tea anbody?
Yes please Elderly, milk and two valium please...
ReplyDeleteFather, why dont you try standing and leaving your bed? BTW, stop feeding him valiums Mr. Elderly. He's got fairies to chase....
ReplyDeleteThe game on the BBC is the most frustrating annoyingly buggeringly difficult piece of text I've ever come across.
ReplyDeleteAs much as I love the books - never again!!!
Oh, come on now Tom... Just save often and use a walkthrough at key points... It's quite different from the books, but still written by the late Mr Adams himself.
ReplyDeleteBut doesn't a walkthrough defeat the whole object of a 'challenge'?
ReplyDeleteSo what? I mean, it's a game... If you cant enjoy it, why not use a walkthrough.... And trust me, those games were designed in such a way that Hint Books could be sold. HHG is especially difficult but wait till you get to the Babel fish. (Dont use a walkthrough there)
ReplyDelete(enters carrying large tray of tea and biscuits......)
ReplyDeletewalkthroughs are the business......
MMM...indee...crunch...d, all the rage...chomp...they are... wacka-wacka
ReplyDeleteNice biscuits. Wow. Off to get more walkthroughs then... Might even exeriment with strategy guides...
...(hoovers up biscuit crumbs....moves FC hoovers underneath, then move him back in position.....)
ReplyDeleteAll nice and tidy
ReplyDelete:)
I hate to say it, but we actually found a copy of Starship Titanic, and it looks like it would be pretty funny. Unfortunately, we haven't had any luck getting it to run on Windows XP. You can get the game to load up, but the codec that the in-game videos are recorded in (IIRC, it's an early generation Indeo driver) just doesn't work in XP. Win98 mode, emulation layers, Wine in Linux-you name it, we've tried it. Bottom line:somebody's gonna have to port it to XP :/
ReplyDeleteOk, ok.. Let's remain calm then... Ok, here's what... You invite me over to play this one and I'll bring a Win95 Pentium machine... How's that?
ReplyDeleteSeriously though haven't you searched any Indeo related sites?
There's a file fix for XP on the starship titanic website - XP service pack 2 buggered the codecs, so you need an old cinepak one in the same folder as st.exe.
ReplyDeleteAs for linux, just forget it man, it really doesn't like WINE...