![]() ![]() He had an obsession with computers he was the first person in the UK to own an Apple Macintosh computer ( Stephen Fry was the second). That would have been a fairly easy thing to achieve, and would surely have been popular you can certainly imagine a shooter in which things turned into whales, or you got 42 points for taking out a bowl of petunias, but that was not what Douglas was out to do.Īdams was convinced that video games were the next big thing. They might have thought that Douglas Adams had simply signed the rights away for a standard Space Invaders style shooter to have a few H2G2 references crowbarred in. On the surface, many would have written this move off as a cheap cash in. Super Mario Bros had only just been released, and prior to this injection of quality into the video game market by Nintendo, any games that tied in with films or a TV series were looked upon grimly, thanks to the infamous ET game scandal of 1982 (the game's reputation of being largely unplayable resulted in an estimated 700,000 unsold/returned copies being buried in a New Mexico desert - several thousand of the fly-tipped games were excavated in 2014, most still in their original boxes).Īnd aside from a series of adverts Morecambe & Wise starred in for Atari (the games console the notorious ET game was created for), there was very little in the video game world for comedy fans.įor a bestselling author, the decision to move into the world of video games would probably have appeared to have been a little odd back then. It was still early days for the video game industry. It was March 1985 when Douglas Adams arrived on the set of Micro Live (a TV programme developed in conjunction with the BBC's Computer Literacy Project) to tell Fred Harris about his latest innovation - a computer game version of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. But the question on many people's lips may be how did this interesting collaboration between two best friends, Douglas Adams and Terry Jones, come about in the first place? To find the answer you have to go back to the start, namely the start of Douglas Adams's fascination with technology and particularly video games. SpookiTalk - next generation conversation engine.The intriguing and altogether bizarre story of The Starship Titanic began life not as many people may have believed as a book written by Douglas Adams, or even a book written by Terry Jones, but as a computer game.Īppropriately, the latest Radio 4 special ( broadcast Sunday 19th December) set in the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy expanded universe stars Michael Palin as the Encyclopaedia Galactica, and Simon Jones (Arthur Dent himself) has a cameo.Stunning cinematic interiors from the Oscar-winning team of Oscar Chichoni and Isabel Malina.All original interactive characters and game design by Douglas Adams, creator of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.What has happened here? What terrible events occurred the night before the launch? Who is the mysterious Titania whose brooding statues dominate the ship? Can you solve a series of increasingly bizarre and surreal puzzles., unlock the central mystery and return to Earth before the parrot drives you finally and irrevocably mad? As you move up to second and, at last, to first class, more and more of the ship becomes accessible to you, and more and more of its mysteries are revealed. To begin with you are a third-class passenger, and you quickly find yourself in the grip of one of the most powerful forces known to man-the desire for a free upgrade. They will listen to you, answer you and, if they happen to feel like it, obey you. You can chat with any of the robot characters-Fentible the distinguished Doorbot, Nobby the hypochondriac Liftbot, or Fortilian Bantoburn O'Perfluous the outrageously convivial Barbot. You discover that you can communicate with them, a feat that is made possible by SpookiTalk, the games proprietary interactive language engine. The ship is inhabited by a crew of malfunctioning robots and a semi-deranged parrot. and collides with your house.īewildered, you find your way aboard, and just as you are gazing at its awe-inspiring interior, the ship takes off again and heads deep into space. Seconds into its maiden voyage it crashes into hyperspace, vanishes. Starship Titanic is a technological marvel. Majestic and luxurious, its interior resembles a mixture of the Ritz, the Chrysler building, Tutankhamen's tomb and Venice. At the heart of our Galaxy, an advanced civilization of which we know nothing had built the biggest, most beautiful starship ever, the Starship Titanic. ![]()
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