Halfway through the third book of the
Hitchhiker's Guide series, there is
a throwaway reference to a doomed starship, one whose incredible splendor was matched only by the cosmic absurdity of its maiden-day annihilation.
But the story didn't end there. Unbeknownst to many fans, this small piece of Adamsian lore was the inspiration for an ambitious and richly-detailed side-story: a 1998 computer adventure game called
Starship Titanic.
Designed by Douglas Adams himself, the game set players loose in the infamous vessel, challenging them with a maddening mystery laced with the devilish wit of the novels.
The game was laden with extra content, including
an in-depth strategy guide,
a (mediocre) tie-in novel by Terry Jones,
a whimsical First Class In-Flight Magazine, and even a pair of 3D glasses for one of the more inventive puzzles.
Key to solving these puzzles was the game's groundbreaking communications system -- players interacted with
the ship's robotic crew through a natural language parsing engine called SpookiTalk, whose 10,000+ lines of conversational dialogue spawned
16 hours of audio recorded by professional voice actors, including
John Cleese,
Terry Jones, and even Douglas Adams himself in
several cameos (spoiler cameo). Want to experience the voyage for yourself? Then watch this narrated video playthrough (
intro (ads) -
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9? 10 11 12 13) ...or click inside for a information on how to run the game for free on Windows, Mac, and Linux (along with a bunch of other goodies!).
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Dec 22, 2010 -
109 comments
The Goon Show was a highly popular and immensely influential radio show on the BBC in the 1950s featuring Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan. They would sometimes do live readings of episodes, here's a video recording of The Whistling Spy Enigma (parts
1,
2,
3) and a much later recording of Tales of Men's Shirts (parts
1,
2,
3). The first features Ray Ellington, musical director of the Goon Show, and the second John Cleese, who, like his fellow Pythons, was a huge fan of The Goon Show growing up. In the 50s BBC turned The Goon Show into a TV show with puppets, called Telegoons. A number of shows exist online: The Lurgi Strikes Britain (
1,
2), The Nadger Plague (
1,
2), Captain Seagoon RN (
1,
2), Tales of Montmartre (
1,
2), The First Albert Memorial to the Moon (
1,
2), The Hastings Flyer (
1,
2), The Affair of the Lone Banana (
1,
2), The Africa Ship Canal (
1,
2), The Booted Gorilla (
1,
2), The Ascent of Mount Everest (
1,
2), The Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler of Bexhill on Sea (
1,
2), Fort Knight (
1,
2), The Terrible Revenge of Fred Fu Manchu (
1,
2), The Lost Colony (
1,
2) and, finally, back where we first began, the Telegoons version of The Whistling Spy Enigma (
1,
2).
posted by Kattullus
on Mar 8, 2010 -
43 comments
Bob Claster was a DJ on KCRW in Los Angeles. In the 80's he had a comedy show called Funny Stuff and he would interview comedians. He has many of these interviews online as mp3s. He interviewed
Tom Lehrer,
Douglas Adams,
Danny Arnold (a.k.a. Barney Miller),
Peter Cook,
Terry Jones, two interviews with John Cleese,
one solo and
another with Michael Palin,
Emo Philips,
Billy Connolly,
Mort Sahl,
Quentin Crisp,
"Brother Theodore" Gottlieb,
June Foray and Bill Scott (a.k.a. Rocky and Bullwinkle and an epic
five-part interview with Stan Freberg, the subject of my
last post.
posted by Kattullus
on Mar 27, 2009 -
7 comments
