1984 släppte det brittiska public service-bolaget BBC ett textäventyr baserat på The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, och för att fira 30-årsjubileet finns en version att spela på BBC:s sajt.
Födelsedagsversionen har klätts i modern HTML5-kostym och förärats ett par grafiska element, men i grund och botten är det samma spel som Douglas Adams själv var med och tog fram. Men den här gången har utvecklarna tagit sig vissa friheter och vi låter dem själva berätta vad och varför.
The game is still the same wonderful piece of interactive fiction that Douglas Adams wrote and Steve Meretzky programmed, but in finding it a new home, a few changes needed to be made. The old Flash game would not work on the new servers, and in porting it to a new HTML5 incarnation, several innovations took place. We were able to build in a larger, handier interface, with additional keys and functionality, and build in the ability to tweet from the game.
Then things started to get silly. Having covered the basics, we decided to slip in an ‘Any’ key, just because we could. The $, % and ^ symbols were replaced with new ones for the Altarian Dollar, Flanian Pobble Bead and the Triganic Pu, not because they are needed in the game, but just because we felt like it. We then decided that rather than having a simple functionality where the user could tweet, we would allow the game itself to tweet, based on the actions of users in the game.
The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy sålde i 350 000 exemplar när det begav sig, vilket får sägas vara mycket imponerande.
