We talked with the designer behind games such as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, A Mind Forever Voyaging and Leather Goddesses of Phobos.
American game designer Steve Meretzky startet his career at Infocom, where he created some of the great adventure classics of the eighties. For instance, it was he who got the task of making the official Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game together with author Douglas Adams, a game that became a massive bestseller and is still remembered for its great jokes and devilish puzzles.
A Mind Forever Voyaging is much overlooked IMO because it's less of a puzzle game. But it has some of the best writing of the Infocom games. Hitchhiker's is hard--maybe too much so but then I mostly struggled with Infocom games a bit absent over the phone hints from Steve :-)
The Infocom-oriented cut of @textfile 's Get Lamp documentary is worth a watch. (As is the original cut of course.)
There was a time where I played that game for days with "Jazz Impressions of New York" by Dave Brubeck (another underrated masterpiece) playing in the background. This was many many years ago, and still the feeling of that time is very present in my mind.
FWIW, when you submit an article, you can now also immediately comment on it; that's what the text field is for. (But no need, I think, to copy & paste the first two paragraphs from the article.)
American game designer Steve Meretzky startet his career at Infocom, where he created some of the great adventure classics of the eighties. For instance, it was he who got the task of making the official Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game together with author Douglas Adams, a game that became a massive bestseller and is still remembered for its great jokes and devilish puzzles.