Let's play H2G2

[mariic]

This is an interactive lp of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. If you don't know what an LP is, then go here

[mariic]

When I said this was an interactive post, then you tell me what to do in the game, ok?

[mariic]

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY
Infocom interactive fiction - a science fiction story
Copyright (c) 1984 by Infocom, Inc. All rights reserved.
Release 59 / Serial Number 851108

You wake up. The room is spinning very gently round your head. Or at least
it would be if you could see it which you can't.

It is pitch black.

[mariic]

To play, type what you want Arthur to do. If you want Arthur to go north, for example, then type down
>Go north

[malachi117]

>Quit playing.

[Squidbit]

This isn't a video game this is a forum game.

[mariic]

Actually, it's originally a text adventure by Infocom based off of the game of the same name, but I wanted you guys to join in, too. Also, I can't put this on the LP Archive because that's reserved for the Something Awful forms.

[phrozonfire]

Thanks for the website, I was unaware of it's existence.

[mariic]

(OK, then this will be just a normal LP.)

>Turn on light
Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light
is now on.

Bedroom, in the bed
The bedroom is a mess.
It is a small bedroom with a faded carpet and old wallpaper. There is a
washbin, a chair with a tatty dressing gown slung over it, and a window
with the curtains drawn. Near the exit leading south is a phone.
There is a flathead screwdriver here. (outside the bed)
There is a toothbrush here. (outside the bed)

[mariic]

>stand up
Very difficult, but you manage it. The room is still spinning. It dips and sways
s little.

[mariic]

>get gown
Luckily, this is large enough to get hold of. You notice something in
the pocket.
>wear gown
You are now wearing your gown.

[mariic]

>open pocket
Opening your gown reveals a thing your aunt gave you which you don't know
what it is, a buffered analgesic, and pocket fluff.
>take buffered analgesic
You swallow the tablet. After a few seconds the room begins to calm down
and behave in an orderly manner. Your terrible headache goes.

[mariic]

>phone home
Who do you think you are, E.T.?
>Take toothbrush
As you pick up the toothbrush a tree outside the window collapses. There is
no casual relationship between these two events.
>Take screwdriver
taken
>S
You make your way down to the front proch.

Front Porch
This is the enclosed front porch of your home. Your front garden lies to the
south, and you can re-enter you home to the north.
On the doormat is a pile of junk mail.

[mariic]

>get mail
You gather up the pile of mail.

>s
Front of House
You can enter your home to the north. A path leads around it to the northeast
and northwest, and a country lane is visible to the south. All that lies between
your home and the huge yellow bulldozer bearing down on it is a few yards
of mud.

Mr. Prosser, from the local council, is standing on the other side of the
bulldozer. He seems to be wearing a digital watch. He looks startled to see
you emerge, and yells at you to get out of the way.
The bulldozer rumbles slowly toward your home.

[mariic]

(it's at this point in the game where everyone who has only played the game of the franchise got stuck, so this is the part where you have to:)
>lie down
You lie down in the path of the advancing bulldozer. Prosser yells at you to
for crissake move!!!

[mariic]

>read mail
There are many pieces of mail. Most are from some computer company
called Infocom which wants you to buy their games. Hidden underneath is
an official letter from the local council, dated some two years ago and
inexplicably not delivered till now, explaining that a demolition order has
been served on your home. The date of demolition is today's date.

The bulldozer thunders toward you. The ground is shaking beneath you as
you lie in the mud.
>enjoy mud
It occurs to you that you've never deliberately lain in any mud before and that
it's actually a pleasant sort of squishy sensation. You let the mud ooze
between your toes. You may be here for some time, so you may as well
make the most of it.

The noise of the giant bulldozer is now so violently loud that you can't even
hear Prosser yelling to warn you that you will be killed if you don't get the hell
out of the way. You just see him gesticulating wildly.

[mariic]

>prosser, what time is it
Prosser shakes the digital watch. "Hasn't worked for months. I keep wearing
it only because I think digital watches are neat."

With a terrible grinding of gears the bulldozer comes to an abrupt halt just in
front of you. It shakes, shudders, and emits noxious substances all over your
rose bed. Prosser is incoherent with rege.

Moments later, your friend Ford Prefect arrives. He hardly seems to notice
your predicament, but keeps glancing nervously at the sky. He says "Hello,
Arthur," takes a towel from he battered leather satchel, and offeres it to you.
>ford, what about my house
"It's not a house, it's a home." (Footnote 2)

Ford glances uncomfortably at the sky. He offers you the towel again.
>footnote 2
Bob Dylan, 1969.
>ford, what about my home
Ford looks startled, the guilty. He starts to say something and stops. He
starts to say something else and stops. Suddenly he seems to see the
bulldozer for the first time, stops starting to say things and starts.

He seems to come to a momentous decision, says he has something of
Earth-shattering importance to tell you, and stresses the importance of a
quick drink at the Horse 'n groom.

Pointing toward Prosser, you exclaim "But that man wants to knock my
house down!" Ford goes off for a quiet word with proser. From where you're
lying, you can't hear what's happening, although they seem deeply
engrossed in conversation.

[mariic]

>APPLAUD
Thank you, thank you.

Ford and Prosser stop talking and approach you. Ford says that Prosser has
agreed to lie in your place so that the two of you can go off to the Pub.
Reluctantly, Prosser steps forward and lies down in front of the bulldozer.
You stand up.
>S
Country Lane
The road runs from your home, to the north, toward the village Pub, to the
west.
>W
Pub
The Pub is pleasant and cheerful and full ofpleasant and cheerful people
who don't know they've got about twelve minutes to live and are therefore
having a spot of lunch. Some music is playing on an old jukebox. The exit is
east.
There is a barman serving at the bar.
Behind the bar is a shelf. It is full of the sort of items you find on shelves
behind bars in pubs.
>Listen to music
The song is "Tie a Yellow Ribbon."

Ford hurries after you.
>listen to music
The song is "Hey Jude" by the Beatles (Footnote 4). It's a particular favorite,
and listening to it calms you down, and cheers you up.

Ford buys lots of beer and offers half to you. "Muscle relaxant..." he says,
impenetrably.
>buy sandwitch
The barman gives you a cheese sandwich. The bread is like the stuff that
stereos come packed in, the cheese would be great for rubbing out spelling
mistakes, and margarine and pickle have performed and unedifying chemical
reaction to produce something that shouldn't be, but is, turquoise. Since it is
clearly unfit for human consumption you are grateful to be charged only a
pound for it.

"Drink the beer," urges Ford. "It will help cushion your system against the
coming shock of the matter transferance beam."
>drink beer
It's a very good beer, brewed by a small local company. You particularly like its
flavour, which is why you woke up feeling so wretched this morning. You
were at somebody's birthday party here in the Pub last night.

You begin to relax and enjoy yourself, so when Ford mentions that he's from
a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, not from Guildford as he usually
claims, you take it in your stride, and say "Oh yes, which part?"
>Drink beer
It is really very pleasant stuff, with a very good dry, nutty flavour, some light
froth on top, and a deep colour. It is exactly room temperature. You reflect
that the world cannot be all bad when there are such pleasures in it.

Ford mentions that the world is going to end in about twelve minutes.
>Drink beer
There is a distant crash which Ford explains is nothing to worry about,
probably just your house being knocked down.
>E
Country Lane
You see the huge bulldozer heaving itself among the cloud of brick dust
which is all that remains of your home. As you start up the lane, a small dog
runs up to you, yapping.

Ford hurries after you.
>give cheese sandwich to dog
The dog is deeply moved. With powerful sweeps of its tail it indicates that it
regards this cheese sandwich as one of the great cheese sandwiches. Nine
out of ten pet owners could happen by at this point expressing any
preference they pleased, but this dog would spurn both them and all their
tins. This is a dog which has met its main sandwich. It eats with passion, and
ignores a passing microscopic space fleet.
>N
You reach the site of what was your home. It is now a pile of rubble. Mr.
Prosser looks sheepishly triumphant, a trick few people can do, as it requires
a lot of technically complex deltoid muscle work.

Front of House
Mr. Prosser, from the local council, is standing on the other side of the
bulldozer. He seems to be wearing a digital watch.

Ford hurries after you.
>prosser, what about my home
Prosser explains the local planning regulations and says, by way of
reassurance, that you will probably be rehoused within a couple of years.
>hit prosser
You muck up all his fancy facial work. This is the last moment of satisfaction
you will experience for some time.

With a noise like a cross between Led Zeppelin's farewell concert and the
eruption of Krakatoa, a huge fleet of Vogon Constructor ships flies overhead
and announces that the Earth will be demolished to make way for a new
hyperspace bypass in "two of your Earth minutes."

In all the turmoil, you drop the thing your ant gave you which you don't
know what it is and it rolls away. It is the least of your worries. Anyway
you've been trying to get rid of it for years.
>wait
Time passes...

The vast yellow ships thunder across the sky, spreading waves of terror and
panic in their wake. The voice of the Vogon Captain slams across the
country, insisting that the planning charts and demolition orders have been
available at the local planning office in Alpha Centauri for fifty years and it's
too late to start making a fuss about it now.

Throughout the noise, Ford is shouting at you. He removes a small black
device from his satchel, but accidentally drops it at your feet.
>Get device
Taken.

Fierce gales whip across the land, and thunder bangs continuously through
the air in the wake of the giant ships. Ford fights to reach you, but the wind is
too fierce. Further announcements from the Vogon Captain make it clear
that demolition will begin in just a few seconds.

Through the blinding rain, you see lights flickering on the small device.
>press green button
Lights whirl sickeningly around your head, the ground arches away beneath
your feet, and every atom of your being is scrambled, an experience you're
probably going to have to get used to. You are in...

Dark
*that's all for today. Come back tomorrow to see what happens to Arthur and Ford*

[idiot-monarch]

The NG Video game forum is a really shitty venue for doing an LP.

[mariic]

At 9/24/11 08:56 AM, idiot-monarch wrote: The NG Video game forum is a really shitty venue for doing an LP.

I'm doing it here because it's cheaper than getting an account for the something awful forums.

[idiot-monarch]

At 9/24/11 02:02 PM, mariic wrote:

At 9/24/11 08:56 AM, idiot-monarch wrote: The NG Video game forum is a really shitty venue for doing an LP.

I'm doing it here because it's cheaper than getting an account for the something awful forums.

Yeah, but I'm pretty sure that no one actually ares about it here.

[mariic]

*when we last left off, our heroes have escaped certain death by using a mysterious black device. Now our heroes are in...*
Dark
>look
Dark
You can hear nothing, smell nothing, taste nothing, see nothing, feel
nothing, and are not even certain who you are.
>relax
You achieve a state of Negative Capability, and are able to be in
uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable searching after fact
and reason (Footnote 1)
>footnote 1
In case anyone is interested, this quotation is from a letter written by John
Keats, and thus he becomes the first major 19th Century British poet to
feature in a computer game.
>shout
You yell as loudly as you can, but no sound emerges.
>wait
There's nothing you can taste, nothing you can see, nothing you can hear,
nothing you can feel, nothing you can smell, you do not even know who you
are.
>smell
(darkness)
You can't hear anything, see anything, smell anything, feel anything, or taste
anything, and do not even know where or who you are or how you
got there.
>wait
You can see nothing, feel nothing, hear nothing, taste nothing, and are not
entirely certain who you are.
>smell
(darkness)
It does smell a bit. There's something pungent being waved under your
nose. Your head begins to clear. You can make out a shadow moving in the
dark.
>feel shadow
The shadow turns out to be a solid object of a Ford Prefect-like nature.

Vogon Hold
This is a squalid room filled with grubby mattresses, unwashed cups, and
unidentifiable bits of smelly alien underwear. A door lies to port, and an
airlock lies to starboard.
Along one wall is a tall dispensing machine.
In the corner is a glass case with a switch and a keyboard.
It looks like the glass case contains:
an atomic vector plotter

Ford removes the bottle of Santragiean Mineral Water which he's been
waving under your nose. He tells you that you are aboard a Vogon
spaceship, and gives you some peanuts.
>eat peanuts
You feel stronger as the peanuts replace some of the protein you lost in the
matter transferance beam.

[mariic]

>take off gown
Okay, you're no longer wearing your gown.
>hang gown on hook
The gown is now hanging from the hook, covering a tiny hole.
>close thing
Come to think of it, you vaguely remember an instruction booklet with
directions for that. You never read it and lost it months ago.

Ford yawns. "Matter transference always tires me out. I'm going to take a
nap." He places sometihng on top of his satchel. "If you have any questions,
here's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (Footnote 14). Ford lowers his
voice to a whisper. "I'm not supposed to tell you this, but you'll never be able
to finish the game without consulting the Guide about lots of stuff." As he
curls up in a corner and begins snoring, you pick up The Hitchhiker's Guide.
>footnote 14
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is also the name of a terrific work of
interactive fiction by Douglas Adms and S. Eric Meretzky. But then again
you must already know that, since you bought one.
>get satchel and towel
Taken
>put towel on drain
The towel completely covers the drain.
>put satchel on panel
Okay, the satchel is lying on its side in front of the tiny robot panel.
>put loose pile of junk mail on satchel
Okay, the loose pile of junk mail is now sitting on the satchel.
>press dispenser button
A single babel fish shoots out of the slot. It sails across the room and hits the
dressing gown. The fish slides down the sleeve of the gown and falls to the
floor, landing on the towel. A split-second later, a tiny cleaning robot whizzes
across the floor, grabs the fish, and continues it's breakneck pace toward a
tiny robot panel at the base of the wall. The robot plows into the satchel,
sending the babel fish flying through the air in a graceful arc surrounded by a
cloud of junk mail. Another robot flies in and begins madly collecting the
cluttered plume of mail. The babel fish continues its flight, landing with a loud
"squish" in your ear.
>press switch
A recording plays: "To open the case, type in the third word from the second
verse of the Captain's favourite poem. WARNING: An incorrect input
will cause the case to explode."
>consult guide about electronic Sub-Etha signaling device
The Guide checks through its Sub-Etha-Net database and eventually comes
up with the following entry:

The Electronic Sub-Etha Auto Hitching Thumb is a wonderful thing, but
should not be mistreated. If used while a ship is near, you will be transported
there. If no ship is in the vicinity, you will place a heavy strain on the Thumb's
logic circuits, which could lead to malfunction. The Thumb carries the usual
Sirius Cybernetics Corporation lifetime guarantees.
>wait
Time passes...

An announcement is coming over the ship's intercom. "This is the Captain.
My instruments show that we've picked up a couple of hitchhikers. I hate
freeloaders, and when my guards find you I'll have you thrown into space. On
second thought, maybe I'll read you some of my poetry first. Repeating..."
>wait
Time passes...

*the announcement from earlier is repeating*
>wait
*same as last one*
>wait
Time passes...

Guards burst in and grab you and Ford, who comes slowly awake. They drag
you down the corridor to a large cabin, where thy strap you into large,
menacing chairs...

Captain's Quarters, in the poetry appreciation chair
This is the cabin of the Vogon Captain. You and Ford are strapped into
poetry appreciation chairs.
The Captain is indescribably hideous, indescribably blubbery, and
indescribably mid-to-dark green. He is holding samples of his favourite
poetry.
*looks like Arthur and Ford are in another tight spot, jack in tomorrow to see if they live*