Wednesday, May 21, 2008

By nbotti, Wednesday 21 May 2008 at 15:02 :: H2G2 general news Sunday 25th May is of course the Towel Day. So don't forget to bring your towel

Sunday 25th May is of course the Towel Day. So don't forget to bring your towel with you all the day. If you want to get more informations about towel day, here is the official website :

http://www.towelday.kojv.net/

The day before, Saturday 24th May, ZZ9 PLural Z Alpha, the officiel H2G2 fan club, organizes a guided visit in Cambridge : "Cambridge Slouch 13:00 meet at Cambridge Railway Station and we will decide what to do, as it depends on the weather. Recent Cambridge slouches have visited various Douglas Adams related locations in the city (his birthplace, his college, places where he performed in plays and revues), the Botanic Gardens to see the flowering of the Amorphophallus titanum, the Fitzwilliam Museum to see an Egyptian Book of the Dead, gone punting, and had the odd pint in various public houses.'

ZZ9 it's here!

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Milliways: Infocom's Unreleased Sequel to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy !!

Andy Baio, an independent journalist and programmer living in Portland (USA), has just published on his website a detailed article about "Restaurant", the aborted sequel to the Infocom classic text adventure game "The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy".

He gives a lot of details and you can even play an unfinished version of Restaurant!

"From an anonymous source close to the company, I've found myself in possession of the "Infocom Drive" — a complete backup of Infocom's shared network drive from 1989. This is one of the most amazing archives I've ever seen, a treasure chest documenting the rise and fall of the legendary interactive fiction game company. Among the assets included: design documents, email archives, employee phone numbers, sales figures, internal meeting notes, corporate newsletters, and the source code and game files for every released and unreleased game Infocom made.

For obvious reasons, I can't share the whole Infocom Drive. But I have to share some of the best parts. It's just too good.

So let's start with the most notorious — Milliways: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the unreleased sequel to Infocom's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. For the first time, here's the full story: with never-before-seen design documents, internal emails, and two playable prototypes. Sit back, this might take a while."

The article has provoked a lot of reactions from the people involved in the game at the time (Steve Meretzky, Michael Bywater,...).

Andy Baio's Blog is here

Don't miss the article. It's history!

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Douglas in BBC Comedy map of Britain the 17th May

According to Frank Halford, Douglas Adams' former teacher "I have just been told that the BBC programme to which I contributed a minute or so, will be shown on May 17th. It will be included in a series called, "The Comedy Map of Britain."... It merely shows me walking from the playground into the form-room where I taught Douglas". There will be probably other Douglas Adams related content in this episode of the BBC series.

The show is currently being broadcasted on BBC Two each saturday at 9.40pm.

BBC Comedy map mini website

You can now watch the video here , in the "Norwich to Hastings" section.