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Steve Meretzky – Working with Douglas Adams on the Hitchhiker's Guide

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Re: Steve Meretzky – Working with Douglas Adams on the Hitchhiker's Guide

#31

Post by noneeeed »

wazoox wrote: post #6

Other related reading, the excellent piece from the Digital Antiquarian : https://www.filfre.net/2024/07/the-later-years-of-douglas-ad...

That really is an excellent (and rather long) piece.

I've often wondered how much of the original HHGTTG radio series was really John Lloyd his producer, who often had no choice but to take what Douglas had produced and bash it into shape to make a workable script.

I often wonder what could have been produced if Douglas had just had a little more focus, and whether that might have just taken the edge off his work.

Re: Steve Meretzky – Working with Douglas Adams on the Hitchhiker's Guide

#33

Post by ghaff »

madaxe_again wrote: post #23
trevithick wrote: post #5

> Douglas, procrastinator that he was, was already a year past his deadline for delivering the manuscript for So Long And Thanks For All The Fish to his publisher … and he hadn’t yet written a word. Jesus, I feel anxious just reading that.

When you’re a professional procrastinator, you get used to the background hum of anxiety in your mind - it becomes little more relevant than a buzzing fluorescent tube over the kitchen table. An annoyance, but not something you particularly feel the need to do anything about. Generally this arises because you’ve procrastinated on so many matters that resolving any one of them simply won’t make a difference, and you k…

I used to work with someone (back in Palm Pilot days) who would have a list of something like 100s of overdue ToDo items. He was just terrible at starting and completing tasks.

And, yes, you can get to the point where the magnitude of curating and chipping away at your list is so great that it's easier to just put it out of mind.

Re: Steve Meretzky – Working with Douglas Adams on the Hitchhiker's Guide

#35

Post by mwigdahl »

ghaff wrote: post #10
Retrogamingpap wrote: post #2

We talked with the designer behind games such as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, A Mind Forever Voyaging and Leather Goddesses of Phobos. American game designer Steve Meretzky startet his career at Infocom, where he created some of the great adventure classics of the eighties. For instance, it was he who got the task of making the official Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game together with author Douglas Adams…

A Mind Forever Voyaging is much overlooked IMO because it's less of a puzzle game. But it has some of the best writing of the Infocom games. Hitchhiker's is hard--maybe too much so but then I mostly struggled with Infocom games a bit absent over the phone hints from Steve :-) The Infocom-oriented cut of @textfile 's Get Lamp documentary is worth a watch. (As is the original cut of course.)

A Mind Forever Voyaging was way ahead of its time.

Re: Steve Meretzky – Working with Douglas Adams on the Hitchhiker's Guide

#36

Post by jccalhoun »

Minor spoilers for a game released in 1984....

I played the Hitchhiker's game a couple decades ago and I remember getting stuck at the end because I had dropped something down a grate. Turns out, at least according to this walkthrough I found, that the game is programmed to randomly require an item but if you are missing one it will require whatever item you don't have...

Re: Steve Meretzky – Working with Douglas Adams on the Hitchhiker's Guide

#38

Post by Towaway69 »

mattofak wrote: post #9

For it's 30th anniversary, the BBC released a free to play version: https://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2game It is not easy; but there are hints! https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3tmVKGc4dR463kWs0g...

Has anyone attached an AI to the game and tried to get it to solve the game? ;)

Re: Steve Meretzky – Working with Douglas Adams on the Hitchhiker's Guide

#39

Post by RyanOD »

It's difficult to put into works what the Infocom games mean to me (and likely many other 50-somethings). So many great memories curled up in a blanket spending hours mapping these games and working out the puzzles. I still play many of them to this day. Thanks for all the memories and endless hours of fun!
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