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.
But this wasn’t his only success. Games like the sci-fi adventure Planetfall from 1983 and the risque comedy Leather Goddesses of Phobos fram 1986 were very well received by both critics and buyers, and with the fascinating A Mind Forever Voyaging he helped change the ideas of what games could be. After Infocom, he did the well received Spellcasting series as well as the unique role-playing game Superhero League of Hoboken for Legend Entertainment. His final major adventure game was The Space Bar from 1997, which was recently rereleased on Steam and Zoom Platform.
We were lucky enough to get a few words with Meretzky, and asked him about his time at Infocom. Note that this interview was originally conducted in July of 2024. Read it here:
How did you get involved with Infocom?
I went to school (MIT) with some of the founders of MIT. I was working in the construction industry at the time, and not enjoying it, and so when my friends asked me to come on board as a game tester, I was more than happy to make a change.
What was it like working with Douglas Adams on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?
I was a little intimidated at first, but as we got to know each other, it became more of an equal footing. It helped that we were both 6’5 (in metric terms, 195cm). Also, as is well know, he was a huge procrastinator. The game was still far from completely designed, and the big Christmas season as fast approaching. So I was sent over to England to basically camp out on his doorstep until we’d finished the game design. Crazy, but also enjoyable and exciting.
You need to tell us more about this trip!
It was a strange trip. Douglas, procrastinator that he was, was already a year past his deadline for delivering the manuscript for So Long And Thanks For All The Fish to his publisher … and he hadn’t yet written a word. His agent basically exiled him from the distractions of London, to a baronial mansion in the far west of England, which had been converted to a bed-and-breakfast. It still exists.
So I flew over there in May of ’84 to complete the design, flying overnight from Boston and then driving four hours (on the wrong side of the road).
We then spent several days completing the design. But we were stuck on the final puzzle … we had all these pieces of fluff, and various tools, and a computer that needed repair, and we knew we had to land the Heart of Gold on Magrathea, but couldn’t figure out how to tie it all together into a final puzzle and ending. So Douglas said, «Let’s get out of here [Huntsham Court, that is] and go to Exmoor National Park». So he drove us there, specifically to the town of Bossington, where we parked and walked a short distance to the beach. And there, sitting on a big piece of driftwood, surrounded by sheep, we devised the final puzzle.
Anyway, I then flew back to Massachusetts, and in about 3 weeks I completed implementing our design and got the game into testing, in time for a Fall ’84 release.
Here are a few photos from Huntsham Court and Bossington, including Douglas napping on the lawn at Huntsham Court:
(We found this gem on wikipedia) Regarding Leather Goddesses of Phobos, Tom Clancy is said to have remarked, «I’d like to meet whoever wrote that. I just don’t know what asylum to go to.» How did you come up with the idea, and how fun was it to create the game?
Never saw this quote before! It’s actually a funny story. Infocom used to have this giant chalkboard in its main conference room. It was a big grid of games down the side, and PCs across the top. Games were constantly being updated, as players reported bugs and stuff. So you could look at this grid and see, «Oh, Version 36 of Zork II is the version currently being sold for the TRS-80 Model III», or whatever.
One day, Infocom was having a party for the press and other bigwigs at their HQ in Cambridge MA. Shortly before the party, I added a line to the chalkboard: «Leather Goddesses of Phobos», with fake version numbers across all the various PCs. Our president, Joel, spotted it just before VIPs arrived, and erased it, but the name stuck around in company lore, and a couple of years later, I said, «Hey, everyone loves the name, why don’t we actually make it?»
What made you want to create a game with elements that were considered «adults only»? Was there any friction at Infocom about the idea?
Not too much, because the content was going to be more humorous than «adult». Just risque and ribald. A funny story, though … when Infocom was getting acquired by Activision, Activision CEO Jim Levy was visiting Infocom. Al Vezza, Infocom’s CEO (and someone with no sense of humor whatsoever), was showing him around. They got to Infocom’s creative group, which was working on the box cover for LGOP. Jim Levy picked up a mockup and read, «Leather Goddesses of Phobos». Al fell all over himself saying, «Oh, well, of course, we haven’t decided that we definitely going to use that name…» Jim replied, «What? I wouldn’t call it anything else!!!»
A Mind Forever Voyaging is quite unique among both adventures in general and Infocom’s output. Can you tell us a bit about how that one came about and what your thoughts behind it were?
It was just after Ronald Reagan was reelected in a landslide, which horrified me. Adventure games were such an absorbing medium, I thought I might be able to use that power to get people to see what a deficit-exploding, fundamentalist-coddling, rights-trampling jerk Reagan really was. And, of course, the game was so successful, we’ve never had a president like that since then.
What’s with all the mazes in Infocom games and eighties’ adventure games in general? And why did the one in LGoP have to be so evil? (I know it’s a copy protection thing, but aargh!)
I don’t know. I suppose they are pretty easy to code, and don’t take up a lot of executable space compared to the amount of player-time they produce. The original Adventure had one, and so did Zork, and they became kind of … expected?
You created a lot of clever puzzles over the years, do you have any you are particularily proud of?
Probably my favorite is the coal mine/time travel puzzle in Sorcerer, where you travel back in time and meet your younger self (from a few minutes earlier), and give him/her a vital clue that you only learned since you were that younger self. Also interesting about that puzzle is that it involved a timber and rope to stop halfway down the coal-chute … which is the only puzzle from the original mainframe Zork that somehow didn’t make it into any of the micro-computer Zork trilogy games.
One that stands out to me, from Leather Goddesses of Phobos, is the one with King Mitre and the Untangling Cream. It’s so weird, but it still somehow makes sense. Do you remember how you came up with that one?
Actually, that one is a really interesting story! It’s the only puzzle that came to me in my sleep, or more accurately, just as I was waking up and was in the brief weird state between sleep and awake. The entire puzzle … King Mitre, untangling cream, Tee-remover … all was just suddenly there, in my head. And I fortunately had the wherewithal to write it down right away, or it probably would have slipped away like a dream.
Thanks to Steve Meretzky for his patience, and for taking the time to answer our questions.
The featured image is a combination of covers from Mobygames.
While Spillhistorie.no is a Norwegian site, we have a number of articles in English. These include features on classic games and interviews with various people from gaming.
Article by Joachim Froholt with help from Retrogamingpappa.