The Making Of: Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy

Retro Gamer talks to Steve Meretzky about adapting Douglas Adams' classic story for Infocom

It began with a radio comedy, and then it became a book, a towel, a TV series, an argument (regarding how to spell its title), and, in the early Eighties, interactive fiction. We are, of course, talking about The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (‘Hitchhiker’s’ from here), Douglas Adams’ seminal story about the luckless Arthur Dent, whose world isn’t so much turned upside down as obliterated one morning when he wakes to find his house about to be demolished, that one of his friends is an alien researcher for an intergalactic encyclopaedia (and not an unemployed actor from Guildford, as he claimed), and a race of alien bureaucrats are about to demolish the Earth.

Humorous, irreverent, engaging and tremendous fun, Hitchhiker’s would prove a challenge to adapt for home computers. The challenge fell to Steve Meretzky, who worked in tandem with Douglas, turning his unique story into a game for Infocom, then undisputed kings of the text adventure. “I have a degree in construction project management, and that was the ideal background for getting into games design, because it convinced me that I wanted to actually do something that involved at least a slight bit of amusement and job satisfaction,” says Steve. After sharing an apartment with Mike Dornbrook, Infocom’s first tester, Steve took over the role when Mike departed for business school. “I liked the literate nature of Infocom’s games, and on top of that, the puzzles added an amazingly compelling aspect to the play,” explains Steve. “All adventure game players have experienced that middle-of-the-day epiphany – ‘Of course! I need to wear the Cloak of Doom and release the ferrets before I use the frob on the foozle!’ – and can’t wait to rush home to try it.”

With Hitchhiker’s, it was Douglas who made the first move. When the prospect of a game arose, during talks with his publisher and agent, Douglas was insistent Infocom develop it. “He was an Infocom fan, and saw its games as a step above the level of others being produced at the time,” recalls Steve, who also believes that Marc Blank (who worked on Zork and Deadline) was Douglas’s preferred partner in crime.

“But Marc was busy, so he asked if I’d be interested, partly because my first game, Planetfall, had a similar humour/sci-fisensibility to Hitchhiker’s, and partly because I was the only implementer as tall as Douglas, and therefore would be able to see eye to eye with him. I wrestled with the question for two or three milliseconds and said ‘yes’.” Upon starting work on the game, it was clear the process wouldn’t be the same as past projects. “First, there was the collaborative aspect. Companies were adapting literature for adventure games, with no involvement of the original authors, but we wanted full collaboration,” says Steve. “This was because authors know more about their work than us, but we knew more about the development environment and the rules and possibilities of text adventures than an author could pick up in a reasonable time frame.” Additionally, the very prospect of adaptation came with its own problems. “We had to create a puzzle-intensive game that a fan of Hitchhiker’s wouldn’t find trivial, and that someone unfamiliar with the story wouldn’t find impossible. I think we did a good job changing the story and situations just enough so existing fans found it familiar but didn’t know the solutions to all the puzzles,” says Steve.

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