Before revealing the complete solution, I thought it may be helpful to
have some tips for those who are stuck and just want a gentle nudge in
the right direction.
The aim of the game is to collect 5 specific items and leave them in the
pub (hence the name, 'Five Artifacts Inn').
The five artifacts are well-known items from 'The Hitch Hikers Guide to
the Galaxy', so you can discount the items you find that are unique to
the game (such as the Alterian coin).
To check if an item is one of the 5 artifacts, drop it in the Inn and
type SCORE. You get 20 points for each object, so your score level will
tell you whether you have got a correct item.
Some of the artifacts are useless, except for scoring purposes, but
others are needed to solve puzzles in the game.
To get the Vogon ship to fly, read the book of poetry in the Vogon
Navigation room (where the poetry is graffitti'd on the wall).
To get the 'Heart of Gold' to fly, drop the rusty old engine in the
control room and push the lever (As the sign says: Don't pull the
lever).
Get the babel fish before giving the Arkleseizure a drink.
Use the coin to buy the chocolate first - don't use it on the Nutrimat
until you have the chocolate.
- - - - - -
2/ HH-64 Walkthrough
[Note: if you prefer the solution to be compacted into fewer lines, just
highlight the text and replace all the line breaks with commas.]
N
N
Get bowl
Drop bowl
Look
Get keys
E
U
N
E
E
Get steak
Get gun
W
S
S
D
W
S
S
S
S
W
On gun
U
Shoot Vogon (or Shoot captain)
[The gun is only used to shoot Vogons. The Vogons appear when you are
on their battle cruiser or Kakrafoon. However, they appear randomly -
sometimes two in a row - so you will need to shoot them each time they
appear. Don't let your input get ahead of the events onscreen, or you
may find yourself blasted into space. Secondly, the gun can overheat
after a certain number of turns, so it is important to switch it off
when you are not under threat from the Vogons.]
Open door
Drop keys
E
N
Get book
S
W
W
Read book
[Kakrafoon]
E
D
N
Drop steak
W
Get coin
E
E
Get device
Look device
W
S
U
W
Read book
[Earth]
E
D
Off gun
Drop gun
E
E
Get engine
Look engine
W
N
N
E
U
N
E
U
Drop engine
Push lever
[Betelguese]
E
Get cheque
W
D
W
S
D
E
E
Drop coin (You receive the chocolate)
W
S
Read book
S
Drop device
N
W
U
Drop chocolate
Get fish
D
E
N
E
Get coin
W
N
N
Drop coin (You receive the cheese-flavoured tea)
W
Drop cheque (You receive the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster)
W
S
U
N
E
U
Push lever
[Earth]
D
S
S
D
W
S
S
S
E
Drop tea
Get mouse
W
S
W
Get gun
On gun
U
W
Read book
[Kakrafoon]
Drop book
E
D
N
W
S
Drop blaster
W
N
D
S
Get stabiliser
N
U
S
S
Get Guide
S
S
E
N
E
S
U
W
Drop Guide
Get book
Read book
[Earth]
Drop book
Get Guide
Off gun
Drop gun
E
N
N
N
W
Drop fish
Drop Guide
E
U
N
N
U
Push lever
[Betelguese]
D
S
S
D
W
N
D
Get towel
Look
Get duck
U
S
S
S
E
Get Marvin
W
N
W
U
N
N
U
Push lever
[Earth]
D
S
S
D
W
Drop towel
Drop duck
Score (You don't even get given a score when you complete the game!)
Drop Marvin
--- End of Game ---
(Is that a disappointing ending, or what?)
- - - - - -
3/ Cosmic Capers
While browsing through the screenshots in James Burrow's excellent
'gamebase 64', I came across an adventure game called 'Cosmic Capers',
which can be found on the 'Blast from the Past' disks (Blast 97, menu
option 9). As soon as I saw the first line ("Hi there, guys, I'm Bugsy,
your lovable computer companion."), I knew it was the same game -
especially since 'Bob Chappell' and 'Supersoft' appear in reverse video
on the screen.
If you play this game, you will see that it is exactly the same game as
HH-64. The only differences are that the reference to Douglas Adams and
Pan Books has been removed, and all the objects and places have been
superficially renamed. However, it is obvious by the names that the
Hitch Hikers Guide version came first: all the Cosmic Capers names keep
the same kind of format (for want of a better term): the 'bowl of
petunias' becomes a 'vase of pansies', the 'Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of
Traal' becomes the 'Barbaric Binge Beast of Bongo', and so on. And it
is unlikely that Cosmic Capers was first with the idea of bad alien
poetry!
So, if you want to solve 'Cosmic Capers', just follow the walkthrough
and use the appropriate nouns (eg, 'SHOOT VERRUCAN rather than SHOOT
VOGON).
- - - - - -
4/ Miscellaneous
I was stuck on this game for a very long time (somewhere between 13 - 14
years, in fact, but this included several years without a C64). I
finally found the solution on a disk of adventure game solutions created
using the Vizawrite 64 word processor. I loaded up "The Hitch Hikers"
file to test the disk, expecting it to be the solution for the Infocom
game, and was bowled over when it turned out to be a walkthrough for the
Supersoft title! Being in an 80 column format (on a 40 column screen),
I had to take two screen dumps and then stick them together in order to
print the solution out. When I got home, however, I found that the
walkthrough missed a number of steps - a fairly common problem when
people write solutions down as they play the game. Having used the
solution to get past my sticking point, I managed to finish the game
with a bit of judicious mapping. I must say that after having waited so
many years, the ending was quite a disappointment!
There is a Spectrum version of this game (HH-64), which states it is (c)
Estuary Software Products. It does not say who the programmer was, or
what year it was made. There is also no reference to whether ESP and
Supersoft are the same software house, or one version was licensed from
the other. I have always wondered whether HH-64 was truly a piece of
commercial software, or if the 'by kind permission' line was just a bit
of fun added to a 'tribute' game by some keen fan. However, it is
strange to find a non-commercial game popping up on two separate
platforms (unless one was just a home-attempt on one platform at
reproducing the commercial version from another platform?).
A post was made on internet news in Nov-Dec 98 by a person who claimed
to have programmed an intro to the game. They were looking for a copy
of the file as they couldn't find it anywhere on the internet. Having
searched both comp.emulators.cbm and comp.sys.cbm, I have not been able
to find a copy of this post either to reproduce it here or obtain the
posters e-mail address in order to get more information from them.
Possibly the question was posted on rec.arts.int-fiction.
Obviously HH-64 had to have been released before Infocom got the rights
to create a HHG game. According to the 'Infocom Fact Sheet VIII:
Chronology' by Paul David Doherty, the Infocom HHG was released in
October 1984. I have a note that I bought my copy of this game in
August 1985 (compiled 21st December 1984, if you're interested). My
preliminary map for HH-64 appears before this entry in my map book, and
it is dated '1st May'. Whether that is 1984 or 1985 I cannot tell.
No information on HH-64 can be found on the Adventure Games List
maintained by Hans Persson and kept on ftp.gmd.de at
if-archive/info/adventure-game-history.
