H2G2 art box – from Wikipedia
Today, 42 years ago the famous Infocom game The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy got released.
There is a bit of confusion on that date, as the above Wikipedia page mentions November 1984 for the USA and January 1985 for the EU.
Those are the time frames the boxes reached the public, but the actual release on 1984-09-14 is documented in [Wayback/Archive] The Infocom Bugs List: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
I got reminded last year by [Wayback/Archive] Charles Hawn on X: “Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy was released 41 years ago today on Sept 14, 1984. Written by Steve Meretzky and Douglas Adams. It was #Infocom’s 14th game. What a bad day! As the story begins a bulldozer is preparing to level your house. DON’T PANIC! #Commodore64 #Commodore #C64 …” who was lucky to have the original complete box including button, pocket fluff and fleet (see picture below).
I wasn’t so fortunate back in 1984: I had entered secondary education not long ago, my parents didn’t believe in computers at all, I hardly got any allowance and had no idea where you could by software locally.
An original copy of the game (either Apple II or IBM) is still on my wish list, as well as the InvisiClues hint book mentioned at [Wayback/Archive] Charles Hawn on X: “@odinisamu It took me days to finally figure out how to get the babel fish into my ear to translate Vogon to English. It was before the internet and walk through so you just had to keep trying different things or pay $14.95 for the hint book sold by Infocom. I got this a few years ago. …”
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