Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Virgin/Mastertronic RRP œ9.99
                   (Text only adventure)

There can't be many people about who haven't come across Douglas
Adams' hilarious Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (HHGTTG) in
one of its many forms; the book, the radio series, the records,
tv series and, finally, the adventure game from Infocom.

For those who have read the book or whatever, the story will be
familiar but in case you haven't (where have you been?) here is a
brief resume.

You play Arthur Dent, a perfectly normal Earthman, living a
perfectly normal, boring life - until one morning when you wake
up to find a council worker complete with workman and bulldozer
preparing to knock down your home. Reasoning with the man doesn't
work; his orders say "knock it down" and that's what he plans to
do. It doesn't matter that you didn't know about the proposed
bypass being built and that your house is in the way, hence the

demolition; orders are orders and this guy is going to carry them
out, no matter how much you rant and rave.

Only the imminent arrival of your friend, Ford Prefect, will help
to save the situation. A little while later and you and Ford are
in the pub, relaxing, when you realise your plans have gone
astray. You hear the unmistakeable sound of your house being
demolished!

Returning to the building, events take a strange course as you
discover two things. One, your friend Ford is not what he seems.
He is not really an out-of-work actor from Guildford; he is, in
fact, an alien from the planet Betelgeuse.

Two, not only is your house being demolished to make way for a
bypass, Earth itself is being demolished to make way for a
hyperspatial express route through the star system. If you are
not to be blown to smithereens in the process, you must find a
way to get off the planet and who knows what adventures you will
then have?

Part of that description is taken from the computer game and part
from the book, because the game follows the book pretty closely
in parts but, naturally, can't go into the same detail. It is
worth reading the book as it will help with some parts of the
adventure - of course, it's well worth reading the book anyway
as it is so terrifically funny. But I think that even though
the game is standard level, certain bits would be quite tricky
to solve without the benefit of reading the book first.

In case you had wondered where the title of the adventure comes
from, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is an electronic book
carried by all good hitchhikers. It is full of useful and
interesting facts for anyone travelling the galaxy, such as that
space is big.....really big; with a lung full of air, you can
survive in a vacuum for 30 seconds; your chances of being picked
up by a ship in this time are 2 to the power of 267,709 to 1
against; the best way to get a drink from a Vogon is to stick
your fingers down his throat.

At various times during the game, a footnote will appear in the
text and if you read this footnote, you will get some information
from the Guide.

Once you have left Earth, and solved one especially sneaky
problem that took me quite a while to solve, you will enter the
main part of the game and meet some more characters, notably
Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed president of the Galaxy and his
companions Trillian, a young earthwoman and (my favourite)
Marvin, the paranoid android.  During small sections of this part
of the game, you will in fact have to become each of these
characters and solve problems.

There are not a great number of locations in the game, even
though it is split into various scenarios. The main features of
the game are its humour and puzzles.  For this reason, it is hard
to give any more detail of the game without giving too much away.

The game is standard level, therefore generally fairly easy
(especially if you have read the book) and has recently been
re-released by Virgin/Mastertronic at the budget price of œ9.99.
I haven't seen the Virgin packaging but I gather it is more
basic than the original from Infocom which I played which had an 
inset booklet describing the Guide itself and "goodies" included
in the box - a ball of fluff, a badge with the famous "don't
panic" logo, demolition orders for both your home and your
planet, a pair of peril-sensitive sunglasses, a bag containing a
microscopic space fleet and (so they say) some no tea (which will
only make sense if you've read the book or played the game).

I am a great fan of Douglas Adams so I enjoyed HHGTTG a lot. The
only thing I didn't enjoy about it was the scoring. All the way
through the game, you get odd 5, 10, 15 or 25 points for solving
different puzzles, the total to score being 400. I was on 250
points, trundling happily through the game when I did one thing
and - wham! - 100 points!! Oh, only 50 points left to score. A
few moves later and you've got the other 50 points and finished.
So, it was rather disappointing to find that when I thought
that I was only just over half-way through the game, I had, in
fact, almost completed it.

This game is a must for HHGTTG fans, especially at its new,
bargain price. But if you haven't experienced any of Adams'
writing, play this adventure and you will find it will open a
whole new world to you - in more ways than one!

                                         Sue