The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A mismanaged gem

By Allen J. Buckner
April 30, 2020

Studying a variety of popular culture topics like sports teams, hip hop artists, and even video games can give us a great understanding of both the culture of that time, as well as the technological capabilities of that time. Text based games like “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, although simple and reasonably straightforward can provide us with insight about what things were like in the social world, as well as the technological world.

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” was a popular media franchise written by Douglas Adams and Steve Meretzky, including books, movies, TV shows, and finally a video game. The Hitchhiker's Guide video game was first released in 1984 ¹ ., a time when personal computing was rapidly growing in the technological industry. The computers that could run “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” were not at all like the computers of today. There were no graphics, no internet connection, and in some cases the computer did not even make use of a mouse (keyboard only). 

Although this popular series was written by Adams and Meretzky, the task of designing a game around the series was brought into fruition by a tech company titled Infocom. The following few years after The Hitchhiker’s Guide was released, Infocom slowly ran into the ground. Although being relatively groundbreaking and ahead of its time, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” did not have the success it was expected.