The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Game Set For 30th Anniversary Re-Release

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hitchhikers

2014 isn’t only the thirtieth anniversary of the Macintosh. It’s also the thirtieth anniversary of Infocom’s classic game The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — a title that will likely be fondly remembered by anyone who was gaming in the mid-80s.

To mark the game’s thirtieth birthday, and to coincide with the 36th anniversary of the series’ first radio broadcast, the BBC has announced that on March 8 it will publish a new online version of the game, featuring new high definition graphics, social media support, and smartphone/tablet optimization.

Infocom’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy originally appeared on platforms including the Macintosh and Apple II in 1984, and quickly became a hit. There’s an additional Apple link in the fact that Douglas Adams — the author of the bestselling multimedia series the game is based on — was an early (and enthusiastic) Mac adopter, once noting that:

“What I (and I think everyone who bought [the Macintosh] in the early days) fell in love with was not the machine itself, which was ridiculously slow and underpowered, but a romantic idea of the machine. And that romantic idea has to sustain me through the realities of actually working on the 128K Mac.”

Douglas Adams, pictured with his iMac in the late 1990s.
Douglas Adams, pictured with his iMac in the late 1990s.

In 2004, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy received a twentieth anniversary remake, in which it appeared in two online editions playable on a web browser — ultimately winning the BAFTA award for Best Online Entertainment. That version of the game can still be played here.

Caroline Raphael, commissioning editor for Radio 4 Extra says that, “Douglas [Adams] was a true visionary and in his own glorious way foresaw all the technology we now take for granted. Radio 4 Extra is delighted to host this game alongside the first two series. Hitchhiker’s fans will be rewarded for their loyalty over the years and newer fans have a real, but fiendish, treat in store.”

Source: Kotaku

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