1985: Douglas Adams on HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY game | Retro Gaming

1985: Douglas Adams on HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY game | Retro Gaming | BBC Archive

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2 жыл бұрын

You've listened to the radio series, read the novel, watched the TV show, listened to the record, and bought the fluffy merchandise. What next?
Ape descended Islington rate payer Douglas Adams explains why he feels that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a natural fit for computer game adaptation, and why he is especially looking forward to the days when voice recognition and compact disc technology combine to make a truly interactive radio drama.
Originally broadcast 1 July 1985.
You can play the 30th Anniversary edition of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Game here: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/arti...
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Пікірлер: 37

@MLB9000 Жыл бұрын

While I don't have Douglas' talent, height, imagination or success, I do seem to have embraced his attitude to workflow, which is why I am here on KZfaq and not actually writing.

@bahozusa Ай бұрын

how are you doing right now

@gmann6269 2 жыл бұрын

2:04 "Douglas Adams has had a rather short life" Damn, they turned out to be right about that.

@whophd Ай бұрын

Ooof

@liammcooper 23 күн бұрын

yes but he was very, very, very tall.

@karohemd2426 2 жыл бұрын

It's fascinating that voice control of games in the way Douglas Adams envisioned it in that interview never really happened, even 37 years later.

@johnq4951 Жыл бұрын

You have to take a step back and ask yourself why you'd actually want that.

@frinkfronk9198 2 ай бұрын

chatgpt in 2023 saves the day

@Tabletop_Epics 9 ай бұрын

Douglas Adams exposed the absurdity of humanity like no one else. His work prepared me to live in a world such as this, where ridiculous people constantly demand ridiculous things whilst committing ridiculous acts in order to be utterly ridiculous to every other person.

@tachikomakusanagi3744 6 ай бұрын

And it just keeps on getting worse

@livvy94 2 жыл бұрын

This is fascinating! I've never seen this interview before! I found a copy of the game online about 15 years ago and got interested in the hobbyist community that's sprung up around creating brand-new Interactive Fiction games. I haven't been into it in a while, I should check up on what new things have been springing up!

@enfieldjohn101 9 ай бұрын

Douglas' idea about an interactive game that you talked to and talked back to you is just now only beginning to become possible. Amazing, isn't it, that he was so far ahead of his time with his ideas. He came a little closer to that with his Starship Titanic computer game. You still had to type, but the game responded to a larger set of words, so interacting with it felt a bit more natural. It also had wonderful images and animations to it rather than a black screen with green text. I love the ending of the video with its satirical take on authors signing their books. Very funny!

@jefftalbot4522 2 жыл бұрын

The technology is now mature enough for the voice recognition audio game shown at the end. I wonder if anyone's working on that using the Radio series ?

@mrdorf2784 2 жыл бұрын

Man, I remember playing this game when I was a child. It was so frustrating!

@nicktucker4916 2 жыл бұрын

Still such a great fan of this series. I had the original Mac game.

@LouiseBurrows Жыл бұрын

I got stuck on that darned door in the Heart of Gold and couldn't progress, because of course there was no access to look up the solution on the internet back then.

@AlanCanon2222 10 күн бұрын

I played this on the Commodore 64 and it was fiendishly difficult, surely among the most challenging and creative of the Infocom games.

@ianjohnson8419 2 жыл бұрын

The Babelfish puzzle was one of the best (and most exasperating) of any Infocom game.

@mattmid7012 Жыл бұрын

Ah Infocom, spent so many hours playing their adventure games. Deadline was one I never managed to get anywhere with!

@ianjohnson8419 Жыл бұрын

@@mattmid7012 I got all of the way to the end of Deadline, basically solved it, but couldn’t get it to end. I finally got a hint book, and found out that all I had left to do was ask Mr Baxter for a pen, and he would hand me what was the last bit of incriminating evidence. Sometimes when walking around the house and yard I imagine how it would be laid out in an infocomm game, which areas would be a distinct location with its various entrances.

@mattmid7012 Жыл бұрын

@@ianjohnson8419 You got a lot further than me then. I can't recall where I got to now as it must be 30 years since I last played it but it was certainly nowhere near the end. Hope you don't come across the Grue walking in your yard at night haha.

@maciejzamecznik3146 Жыл бұрын

According to some interviews there was suppose to be t-shirt "I got the babel fish" released by Infocom in 1984 as a response to people's complaints on game's difficulty. Don't know if it's true, but it got me thinking to get one for myself... to never meet anyone who gets that reference 😉

@smith952 2 жыл бұрын

Echo, open the exit hatch!

@liammcooper 23 күн бұрын

5:30 genius

@KirillGriferov 4 ай бұрын

Deep Thought said that the Earth project would take 10 million years. Then why does the manual indicate 4.5 billion years in the TV series?

@GlennDavidson 2 жыл бұрын

Plus you can play the text adventure online right now at www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1g84m0sXpnNCv84GpN2PLZG/the-hitchhiker-s-guide-to-the-galaxy-game-30th-anniversary-edition 🐬🌏🤖

@whophd Ай бұрын

Douglas spent a lot of time telling interviewers how technophobic he was. I was in the room when he talked about science and liberal arts, and I literally thought he was going to admit to being a science expert - but no, it shocked me to hear him say “of course I’m an artist, and not an expert in science”. But he taught me enough concepts, or to be accurate, got me hooked into them. He was never the technophobe he claimed to be! Being the first person in England to own an Apple Mac (or the second, better ask Stephen Fry), he was an absolute tech geek that we’d recognize today on KZfaq if he were still around. Just for a moment IMAGINE him reviewing the iPad. Or Apple Vision. I still think of him every time he misses out on a new technology he had already imagined, more vividly than any of us. Then just to prove his assertion completely wrong - he dabbled in computer game DESIGN far deeper than any other writer or author or artist of his stature.

@bentonja668 7 ай бұрын

Hunter S. Thompson 6'3"

@Odessia-ij5ys 2 жыл бұрын

The film came out in 2004

@hoofie2002 Жыл бұрын

Which was utterly dire compared to the original BBC TV series

@Lord-Sméagol 2 ай бұрын

@@hoofie2002The film missed out lots of good content, compressed other good content to a couple of seconds, only to fill that time with stupid extra content! The best part I remember is the Point-of-view gun ... and being invented by a woman! That was a gem of Douglas Adams' humour! I'm sure the film would have been infinitely better if Douglas Adams didn't die so young! The film was as bad compared to the books, radio and TV series as the American pilot episode of Red Dwarf was compared to the UK TV series! Danny John-Jules, when asked what he thought of the US pilot episode, replied: "You're American, what do you think of it?" and the response: "It was crap!" nailed it!