Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The (HitchHiker-64.txt)
HitchHiker-64 Solution
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By Andrew Williams on 26/12/98
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1/ General hints
2/ HH-64 walkthrough
3/ Cosmic Capers
4/ Miscellaneous
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1/ General hints
Before revealing the complete solution, I thought it may be helpful to have some
tips for those who are stuck and just want a gentle nudge in the right
direction.
The aim of the game is to collect 5 specific items and leave them in the pub
(hence the name, 'Five Artifacts Inn').
The five artifacts are well-known items from 'The Hitch Hikers Guide to the
Galaxy', so you can discount the items you find that are unique to the game
(such as the Alterian coin).
To check if an item is one of the 5 artifacts, drop it in the Inn and type
SCORE. You get 20 points for each object, so your score level will tell you
whether you have got a correct item.
Some of the artifacts are useless, except for scoring purposes, but others are
needed to solve puzzles in the game.
To get the Vogon ship to fly, read the book of poetry in the Vogon Navigation
room (where the poetry is graffitti'd on the wall).
To get the 'Heart of Gold' to fly, drop the rusty old engine in the control room
and push the lever (As the sign says: Don't pull the lever).
Get the babel fish before giving the Arkleseizure a drink.
Use the coin to buy the chocolate first - don't use it on the Nutrimat until you
have the chocolate.
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2/ HH-64 Walkthrough
[Note: if you prefer the solution to be compacted into fewer lines, just
highlight the text and replace all the line breaks with commas.]
N, N, Get bowl, Drop bowl, Look, Get keys, E, U, N, E, E, Get steak,
Get gun, W, S, S, D, W, S, S, S, S, W, On gun, U, Shoot Vogon (or
Shoot captain)
[The gun is only used to shoot Vogons. The Vogons appear when you are on their
battle cruiser or Kakrafoon. However, they appear randomly - sometimes two in a
row - so you will need to shoot them each time they
appear. Don't let your input get ahead of the events onscreen, or you may find
yourself blasted into space. Secondly, the gun can overheat after a certain
number of turns, so it is important to switch it off when you are not under
threat from the Vogons.]
Open door, Drop keys, E, N, Get book, S, W, W, Read book
[Kakrafoon]
E, D, N, Drop steak, W, Get coin, E, E, Get device, Look device, W,
S, U, W, Read book
[Earth]
E, D, Off gun, Drop gun, E, E, Get engine, Look engine, W, N, N, E,
U, N, E, U, Drop engine, Push lever
[Betelguese]
E, Get cheque, W, D, W, S, D, E, E, Drop coin (You receive the
chocolate), W, S, Read book, S, Drop device, N, W, U, Drop chocolate,
Get fish, D, E, N, E, Get coin, W, N, N, Drop coin (You receive the
cheese-flavoured tea), W, Drop cheque (You receive the Pan-Galactic Gargle
Blaster), W, S, U, N, E, U, Push lever
[Earth]
D, S, S, D, W, S, S, S, E, Drop tea, Get mouse, W, S, W, Get gun,
On gun, U, W, Read book
[Kakrafoon]
Drop book, E, D, N, W, S, Drop blaster, W, N, D, S, Get stabiliser,
N, U, S, S, Get Guide, S, S, E, N, E, S, U, W, Drop Guide, Get
book, Read book
[Earth]
Drop book, Get Guide, Off gun, Drop gun, E, N, N, N, W, Drop fish,
Drop Guide, E, U, N, N, U, Push lever
[Betelguese]
D, S, S, D, W, N, D, Get towel, Look, Get duck, U, S, S, S, E,
Get Marvin, W, N, W, U, N, N, U, Push lever
[Earth]
D, S, S, D, W, Drop towel, Drop duck, Score (You don't even get given a
score when you complete the game!), Drop Marvin
--- End of Game ---
(Is that a disappointing ending, or what?)
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3/ Cosmic Capers
While browsing through the screenshots in James Burrow's excellent 'gamebase
64', I came across an adventure game called 'Cosmic Capers', which can be found
on the 'Blast from the Past' disks (Blast 97, menu option 9). As soon as I saw
the first line ("Hi there, guys, I'm Bugsy, your lovable computer companion."),
I knew it was the same game -
especially since 'Bob Chappell' and 'Supersoft' appear in reverse video on the
screen.
If you play this game, you will see that it is exactly the same game as HH-64.
The only differences are that the reference to Douglas Adams and Pan Books has
been removed, and all the objects and places have been superficially renamed.
However, it is obvious by the names that the Hitch Hikers Guide version came
first: all the Cosmic Capers names keep the same kind of format (for want of a
better term): the 'bowl of petunias' becomes a 'vase of pansies', the
'Ravenous
Bugblatter Beast of Traal' becomes the 'Barbaric Binge Beast of Bongo', and so
on. And it is unlikely that Cosmic Capers was first with the idea of bad alien
poetry!
So, if you want to solve 'Cosmic Capers', just follow the walkthrough and use
the appropriate nouns (eg, 'SHOOT VERRUCAN rather than SHOOT VOGON).
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4/ Miscellaneous
I was stuck on this game for a very long time (somewhere between 13 – 14 years,
in fact, but this included several years without a C64). I finally found the
solution on a disk of adventure game solutions created using the Vizawrite 64
word processor. I loaded up "The Hitch Hikers" file to test the disk, expecting
it to be the solution for the Infocom game, and was bowled over when it turned
out to be a walkthrough for the Supersoft title! Being in an 80 column format
(on a 40 column screen), I had to take two screen dumps and then stick them
together in order to print the solution out. When I got home, however, I found
that the walkthrough missed a number of steps - a fairly common problem when
people write solutions down as they play the game. Having used the solution to
get past my sticking point, I managed to finish the game with a bit of judicious
mapping. I must say that after having waited so many years, the ending was
quite a disappointment!
There is a Spectrum version of this game (HH-64), which states it is (c) Estuary
Software Products. It does not say who the programmer was, or what year it was
made. There is also no reference to whether ESP and Supersoft are the same
software house, or one version was licensed from the other. I have always
wondered whether HH-64 was truly a piece of commercial software, or if the 'by
kind permission' line was just a bit of fun added to a 'tribute' game by some
keen fan. However, it is strange to find a non-commercial game popping up on
two separate platforms (unless one was just a home-attempt on one platform at
reproducing the commercial version from another platform?).
A post was made on internet news in Nov-Dec 98 by a person who claimed to have
programmed an intro to the game. They were looking for a copy of the file as
they couldn't find it anywhere on the internet. Having searched both
comp.emulators.cbm and comp.sys.cbm, I have not been able to find a copy of this
post either to reproduce it here or obtain the posters e-mail address in order
to get more information from them.
Possibly the question was posted on rec.arts.int-fiction.
Obviously HH-64 had to have been released before Infocom got the rights to
create a HHG game. According to the 'Infocom Fact Sheet VIII: Chronology' by
Paul David Doherty, the Infocom HHG was released in October 1984. I have a note
that I bought my copy of this game in August 1985 (compiled 21st December 1984,
if you're interested). My
preliminary map for HH-64 appears before this entry in my map book, and it is
dated '1st May'. Whether that is 1984 or 1985 I cannot tell.
No information on HH-64 can be found on the Adventure Games List maintained by
Hans Persson and kept on ftp.gmd.de at if-archive/info/adventure-game-history.
/Andrew.
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