Britain. Cistercians. Middleeast. Milliways: Infocom's Unreleased Sequel to Hitchhiker's. Backstory Douglas Adams (left) and Steve Meretzky in a promotional photo from 1984.
Written and designed by two legends in their respective fields, game designer Steve Meretzky and sci-fi author Douglas Adams, the first Hitchhiker's Guide game was a tremendous success upon its release in November 1984. It quickly became Infocom's bestselling game, selling over a quarter million copies in the two years after its release. (It ultimately became Infocom's second-biggest seller of all time under Zork.)
Even before they'd finished writing the Hitchhiker's game, Meretzky and Adams were considering two sequels based on the second and third books of the trilogy. A sequel seemed like such a sure thing, they mentioned it in the game's ending. But by May 1985, it seems like Adams lost interest. Without Douglas Adams on board, the future of a Hitchhiker's sequel was in limbo. Developing Milliways Behind the scenes, Marc Blank started working on finding an alternative to Magnetic Scrolls. The Story 1. 1. The DMA History Site. Once Naked For Nirvana, Now A Teen Spirit : NPR Music. The Year in Robots. Last week's announcement of Japan's "Robot of the Year" for 2007—a mechanical arm capable of grabbing 120 items-per-minute from a conveyor belt—marked an anticlimactic end to what has otherwise been a good year in the advancement of artificial intelligence.
The three Fanuc Ltd. assembly-line mechanical arms—which beat out competitors such as Fujitsu's 24-inch-tall (61-centimeter) dancing humanoid HOAP and Komatsu Ltd.'s tank-shaped, fire-extinguishing robot—won for their practicality; they are optimized to work efficiently and accurately on food and pharmaceutical manufacturing lines. Still, 2007 offered plenty of other significant, if less heralded (and immediately useful), developments and pushed robotic technology to new levels, or at least promised to in the near future. The U.S. Department of Defense continued its quest to develop autonomous robotic technology that will eventually take the place of human soldiers in battle. Other robots helped us learn about ourselves. Playing History.
UK Video Game Archive Coming To National Media Museum. Academics at Nottingham Trent University are partnering with the Bradford, UK National Media Museum to launch the country's first National Videogame Archive, to preserve the history of the medium and "recognize the significant contributions made by videogames to the diversity of popular culture across the globe.
" The Archive will not only collect consoles and cartridges, but a "broad range of items from across the industry," documenting games as a cultural phenomenon with ad campaigns, magazine reviews, and artwork. It will be housed and cared for at the museum, and built and researched in collaboration with the University's Centre for Contemporary Play. "We don’t just want to create a virtual museum full of code or screenshots that you could see online," says the Centre's Dr. James Newman. "The archive will really get to grips with what is a very creative, social and productive culture. " 'I have a dream' On 28 August, 1963, Martin Luther King delivered his magnificent "I have a dream speech" on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
Below is the full text of his speech. I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.