the insignificant ramblings of a disturbed graphic designer
Friday, July 25, 2008
Bombs away
GiantBomb relaunched Monday, blossoming from a simple video game blog into a full-featured wiki-style site with user-powered content already adding loads of content to the underlying relational database. Alongside the member content are videos, reviews, and podcasts from the small team of mostly ex-Gamespot and -CNETers (you may have heard about Jeff Gerstmann's unceremonious firing from Gamespot last year).
I spent a few hours perusing the site today, mostly watching the videos. They've come a long way since the March soft launch, and the new site boasts magnitudes more features; it's going to be exciting to watch how it progresses, and I'm not even a gamer.
To give you an idea of how powerful the platform is, and how well the user experience has been thought out, watch this how-to video from their Help section.
Posted by espd at 9:08 PM |
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Sunday, April 20, 2008
Unearthing the story of Milliways
Twenty years after the fact, Andy Baio has uncovered the story of "Milliways: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe," the unreleased sequel to Infocom's interactive fiction computer game, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." More interestingly, his post has garnered over 200 comments, including a number by the people described in Baio's article, many of whom debate the appropriateness of releasing personal emails without prior consent. It's a fascinating, if long, read.
I always wondered about that sequel game. I met Douglas Adams as a kid, at a poorly-attended autograph session at an American chain bookstore in a shopping mall (which in and of itself should have been unbelievably absurd to me at the time, but sadly, wasn't), and I effused to him about — among other things — the Infocom Hitchhikers' game, having spent hours baffling out how to just get a damn fish out of a machine (among other baffling things).
I asked him if there would be a sequel game, and he told me that indeed there would. I probably effused some more, but my young mind quickly ran out of things to say to an adult whose books (and radio shows, and TV shows, et al) would turn out to have a lasting effect on the evolution of my young sense of humor and indeed my whole way of viewing the universe.
Much later, when the new Douglas Adams game was announced by Infocom, it was called Bureaucracy, and it didn't really seem to have anything to do with the Hichhikers' Guide, nor any of the H2G2 characters. I was confused by this until now.
By the way, the Infocom game still features prominently among my Douglas Adams collection, and I still have my Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses and Microscopic Space Fleet. And the pocket fluff too, of course — can't ever get rid of that stuff.
Robots playing Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" "LEV the thereminbot and his newly-built pal thumpbot play "Crazy" with help from a 20-year-old MT32 synthesizer. OK, Lev's a bit out of tune, but hey, ROBOTS..." www.youtube.com/watch?v=19RJEnNUg1I
"BBS: The Documentary" Anybody remember dialing up to BBSes before the Web? I guess everybody needs a hobby: Some guy spent four years filming a documentary about BBSes. www.bbsdocumentary.com
"Planet Earth" This is a spectacular series from the BBC. I will second my friend Olya's recommendation too: Get the BBC version featuring David Atetnborough as narrator, not the Discovery Channel version featuring Sigourney Weaver. I mean, I like Sigourney and all, but she ain't no Attenborough. It's available in HD btw. www.amazon.com/Planet-Earth-Complete-BBC-DVD/dp/B000MRAAJW
The Green I wish I had cable so I could watch programming like this. In a poll ten years ago, almost 80% of Americans said they'd call themselves environmentalists. Yet most people do very little to make the environment better or raise awareness. Programming like this makes me optimistic. www.sundancechannel.com
Iggy Pop's entertaining rider A rider is a document that spells out what a band requires a venue to provide for the artist. There have been some legendary strange requests over the years, but this one's just plain fun to read. www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1004061iggypop1.html
Posted by espd at 2:04 AM |
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Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Interactive fiction
Back in the mid-'80s, a then-famous computer game company named Infocom put out a game version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Notice that I called it a "computer game" company, not a "video game" company. This was well before video games took off. Not before they existed, just before they exploded and turned into the huge industry they are now.
Infocom made what they termed "interactive fiction" games. Perhaps you remember (or at least have heard of) Zork. Or, if you're really cool, (or just really old and were a geek like I was when I was 12), you remember the game Adventure, which started on mainframes. Yes. Mainframes. This was pre-personal computers, people. Yes, I'm that old.
I was in high school when the Hitchhiker's game came out. Infocom was huge at the time, and it was huge that they were putting out a Hitchhiker's game. I remember pilfering a copy and playing it with my friend Jim Stickney on his Apple II. Yes, this was pre-Macintosh. Yes, I'm that old.
This was a role playing game. I know some of you have heard of that. You played the role of Arthur Dent, the hapless human whose house gets knocked down at the beginning of the book. And the radio series. And the record album. And the play. And the movie (but more about that later).
Unlike the RPGs of today, there were no graphics in this game. That's right, none at all. It was all ugly green text on a black screen (you did click on the Apple II link, didn't you?), almost as enjoyable to look at as a DOS startup screen. But it didn't need to be good-looking, because it was written by Douglas Adams. And it was brilliant. It contained all of his wit, all of the absurdity of the now well-known novels, and step after step it kept you guessing and anguishing and making mistakes and ending up dead and pulling your hair out (explains a lot, doesn't it?).
You see, the plot of the game, while based on the characters and events in the books, didn't exactly follow the storyline of the books. That's right, as usual, Douglas threw his fans into a tizzy by changing things around again, as he tended to do in each and every iteration of the infamous Hitchhiker's series. So, while it helps a lot to be familiar with the books, it doesn't mean you'll actually win the game.
Jim and I played that game to death. I think we finally solved it, but we certainly had to use the Hint Book (sold separately).
I still have the game and its cool packaging, or most of it anyway (it came with a Don't Panic button, some pocket fluff, and Vogon-signed orders for the destruction of the Earth, among other things). I even have the 5-inch floppy disk it came on, although you'd have a hard time finding anyone who still has a computer that can play it.
But the great thing is, now I don't have to.
The BBC has brought back the game, put it online, and even added a graphical interface so it's actually interesting to look at as well as frustrating as hell and completely and utterly enjoyable to play.
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