BBC Revamps Hitchhiker's Guide Game
 Just as our conversation with Neil Gaiman reminds us that Douglas Adams is the genius Neil looked toward, the BBC celebrates the 30th anniversary of the ground-breaking or at least infamous Infocom text game for computers, in which you play the hapless Arthur Dent, denizen of Earth destined to be sent spinning out into the void armed only with a towel... unless you've been wise enough to pick up strange objects that would seem to have no meaning until suddenly they do.
Hilariously frustrating, the game -- written by Adams himself -- was well-known for its various methods of unexpectedly killing you, which meant both that you had to save the game often, and be extremely creative in your thinking in order to avoid death. But as the BBC still warns, this game will kill you often.
Released in 1984, graphics really were not much of an option. Instead, this was a paragraph by paragraph journey through a loose adaptation of Adams' The HitchHikers' Guide To The Galaxy, though as became de rigeur for different versions of it (radio, TV series, game, comic book, movie, etc.), there's a lot of leeway as it shambles through the basic outline of the plot.
Now the BBC has added some graphics, cheerfully reminiscent of the somewhat primitive effects in the original TV series. Text still dominates through the largest monitor screen, but smaller subscreens show inventory and a visualization of where you are, plus a few other bells and whistles to help you keep your towel about you.
At its heart, though, it's the same game -- witty, devious, and dangerous. You owe it to yourself to give it a whirl.
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