Actually, you have to grow the plant from the 4 pieces of fluff, eat the fruit, whereupon you have a vision of the future where Marvin asks you for a tool (different each time you play). When you try to enter the place where Marvin wants to meet you, it tells you the opening is too small for the stuff you’re carrying. You can only bring one thing in, so it better be the tool he asked for in the vision.
I made that mistake too. In my defence it was in the days before I frequented computer game sites and wasn’t in the habit of checking out game reviews before purchasing them.
I have learnt from my mistakes.
One of my finest gaming achievements is doing this. I can attest to that last battle. It’s REALLY hard without the upgraded sword.
You may not be able to beat the game. I could do the same thing, I’ve actually come up in DC, but that’s it. I looked a few years ago for a walkthrough but as of yet haven’t found one that went all the way through. But there is one here but I don’t know if it works or not. And this one says it can’t be beat.
PnP, I was playing Call of Chthulu for the first time in maybe twenty years. My Miskatonic U professor of linguistics – Cholomondeley Featherstonehaugh – had noticed the Bad Guy scribbling in the margins of a big ol’ book that turned out to be the Pnakotic Manuscripts.
Bad Guy wasn’t of much use to us in explaining what was going on (having had both his kneecaps blown off via shotgun), so I told the GM “I’ll just skim through the book.”
It wasn’t until I saw the GM’s eyes light up with glee that I realized what I’d done. :smack:
Fortunately, I wasn’t reduced to a drooling idiot, although there was definately some gibbering. And we really needed the anti-gate spell I’d picked up. Although I never did get to brew any Space Mead. 
I didn’t fully grok the objective of Warsong Gulch in World of Warcraft until well into my fifties on my first character. I mean, I realized you had to capture the opposing team’s flag three times, but I didn’t realize that the capture only counted when the other team was not in possession of your flag. I, uh, voiced some dismay in battleground chat that the flag runner hadn’t capped the flag, thus showing my ignorance. I was shamed. I may eventually get over it.
Concerning Hitchhiker’s, like most text adventures you need to pretty much pick up everything available. There isn’t any “one” item that will render the game unsolveable if you miss it. There are a few.
As far as the dozen or so tools are concerned (i.e. the toothbrush, the rasp, the wrench, etc.) I don’t know if you actually “have” to have all of them available in your inventory or on the Heart of Gold somewhere. I do know that unless you complete the fluff puzzle, whatever tool you happen to take into the hatch access area will be the wrong one. Although, getting all the tools guarantees that the vision will give you one you have.
The towel works in a couple puzzles. You get it first from Ford Prefect when he offers it to you. However, don’t take the towel until you ask him about your home (if you ask him about your house you’ll get a Bob Dylan referencing footnote). This is how you survive the bulldozer, Tengu. After the issue of your home is taken care of, you can get the towel. You will need it to get the babelfish and to survive the Bugblatter Beast. Don’t accidentally leave it behind when you get the babelfish.
Also, when you finish the Beast puzzle, you only have a few turns to get the interface card. (The rasp appears in your inventory automatically.) You cannot return to this point once you’ve solved the puzzle (whereas, as long the bugblatter beast kills you, you can keep returning until you solve it), so you better get the card as soon as possible. You cannot get to the whale without it, and you run the risk of jumping into your mind a second time which leads to death.
But the cheese sandwich is no big deal as long as you feed the dog either as Arthur or Ford. This one you get two chances at.
This guy did it on his ZX Spectrum (or emulator), and it seems like it’s the same game (all the codes are identical), but I can’t seem to follow where he’s going in the tunnels, which is the sticking point. If you know the tunnels you have a better chance.
Not true. You can time travel to get it back.
There is only one Infocom game that can be rendered unwinnable in the first turn of the game. In Enchanter if your first turn is:
FROTZ ME
Then you perminantly become a light source and one of the puzzles requires that you have no light sources.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, I played a wizard in a MUD. At a certain point, I got a new spell, after reaching a new level: Lightning Bolt! Yay! Now all my enemies would taste my WRATH! ™.
Right after doing so, I went to a rather public place, and decided to very publicly demonstrate my newly-acquired powers by blasting some pesky enemy of mine.
Well… Let’s just say that I messed up the syntax and ended up lightning-bolting myself, ok?
I ended up suddenly in the resurrection room of the MUD, and as I ran like hell to where my corpse lay, so that I could try to at least salvage something of my precious belongings, I could read snatches of conversation among some people to the effect of “Have you seen the crazy magician in such-and-such place? He BLEW HIMSELF UP, dude!!”
After that, I was known forevermore as “the crazy wizard” sigh
I have also been witness so weird stuff on the part of players, in table-top RPGs I have game-mastered, but those are stories to be shared later on… 
Just my 2 eurocent!
JoseB
Interesting. I guess I was close, but not close enough. One of those links has a map of the tunnels. And the first one says exactly how to get through, but I don’t know if it’s good or not. I tried to play it about 10 years ago on a much newer PC and the satellites flew around the screen, it was quite funny, except I couldn’t get anywhere.
Well, that’ll teach you to frotz yourself, you perv. “You are bathed in a sickly yellow light, bright enough to read by”.
Was this actually required to solve the next game though, Sorcerer? I forget.
And not to nitpick, but you can certain fail to win Zork (defined as getting a full final score) by entering at your first turn:
KILL ME
Which IIRC Zork will happily do for you, and dock you 10 points to boot.
Back, way back in the day, I played Wasteland on my C64.
I had a particular player character who I’d managed to keep alive the ENTIRE game (you could keep your game going if your entire party didn’t die, so it was fairly typical to have 3 of 4 guys die, go recruit 3 more level 1 characters, have 3 of 4 die again, including the survivor of the previous time, etc…)
That particular time, I’d gotten all the way to the end of the game - Base Cochise, with a guy who I’d started with.
You had to detach characters to be in 4 rooms at once, which I did.
I destroyed the computer or whatever it was, then without thinking, high-tailed it with the character (an NPC- Metal Maniac, I think), out of the base, winning the game, but leaving my bad-ass super survivor player character to get incinerated when the nukes went off in the base.
I was both happy and exasperated at the same time.
I think (and I’m going by faulty memory here) that it was needed in Spellbreaker when you turn yourself into a grue.
In Sorcerer you could extinguish a frotzed item if it mattered, though.
I guess it depends on your definition about making the game unwinnable.
Ah Zork…how I miss thee.
You might find this, from the very funny Brunching Shuttlecocks website, diverting. I wanna get me one of those Amulets of Pretty Much Instant Death: http://www.bookofratings.com/dnd.html
Now an on-topic post.
In a 3.0 D&D campaign a few years back, we were in the second session, and all of us were still level 1. (The first session was mostly plot exposition). Our first monster encounter involved a giant beetle (it was size large–i.e. 2 X 2–IIRC), who was going through the light forested terrain and appeared to be eating the undergrowth. We roll init. The rogue got highest, my wizard got next, the fighter was third, the cleric was fourth, and the monk was fifth. Now, while the rogue and the DM were the only ones with extensive P&P RPG experience, my wizard and the fighter (played by my now ex-wife) had a decent background, and the monk had a bit. The cleric was the only true newbie. The rogue’s action was to move out of the path of this thing. My action was the same. I reasoned that this thing was an herbivore who was simply feeding, and discretion often times being the better part of valor figured I’d prepare for anything, but if it was happy to leave me alone, I was happy to let it. I’m guessing that the rogue had a similar conclusion. The fighter like us moves off, but to the other side. Now, you have three experienced gamers who have all done the same thing in the same encounter. You would expect the newbie player of the cleric would take this as a hint as to the wise course of action. But what does he do instead…?
He takes out his crossbow and shoots at the thing. Naturally, a crossbow bolt fired from a level 1 cleric at a creature with no doubt high natural armor is unlikely to hit. Sure enough, the bolt goes glancing off the creature’s carapace. Of course, this brilliant plan definitely gets the creature’s attention. Apparently, this beetle is an omnivore. The beetle goes up to the cleric, grapples it, and squeezes it in it’s jaws. Our DM rolls somewhere between 8 and 12 d6’s or d8’s. Of course, our DM’s won’t kill first level characters, so he drops the guy down to -9 and stable. The rest of us spend the next round climbing up the trees. Eventually the beetle moves on.
Later on in the same campaign, the rogue and I got an idea to bet on a royal tournament and rig the equipment so that the side we bet on (which was the noble’s from our homeland) would win. Everything went perfectly, except for the NPC who was the bookie (and who was working with us in the sabotage) turned out to be one of the group of people hired to assassinate the heir to the throne of our lands. Our sabotage went off without a hitch and our side was definitely winning. But in the end, it only helped distract the NPC’s who were on security detail and also resulted in us getting framed for the murder. Oops.
One goal of the players is always to throw a monkey wrench into the DM’s plans. Keeps the DM honest and helps prevent railroading. However, the general idea is to have that wrench benefit the party, not to provide the DM with more enemies to throw against them. The DM never let us live that one down.
Back in the day when Chain Lightning was a new arrival in the AD&D world, we refereed it such that the bolt always bounced to the nearest creature to the last one struck - randomly if there was a choice, but otherwise allowed to bounce back and forth between the same targets until it ran out of bolts. This made it quite an effective weapon against a pair of tough creatures who were much closer to each other than to the party.
It also made it an effective weapon against my not-too-bright cleric who psionically teleported himself into hand-to-hand range owing to being a little light on offensive spells at the time. He arrived an instant before the wizard finished casting. Ouch.
On another occasion, some associates released a noble djinni from a lamp. He courteously asked if there was anything they would like to wish for. “Lots,” exclaimed one of the players (not me) “and lots, and lots of things… with big brass knobs on!”. The djinni gave them a quizzical look for a moment, then raised his eyebrows, clapped his hands, and… they got their wish.
Pen and Paper game, at a convention. System and Setting : Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
We were up against Ethan Rayne as the villain, and he was using some unusual magic. He could steal people’s reflections, and use those reflections to make other people look like the person whose reflection was stolen. He could also use magic to influence the minds of someone whose reflection was stolen. Ethan was planning to open the Hellmouth, and there was a big climactic battle at the High School.
The Scooby Gang busts in, and is confronted by an angry-looking group of their loved ones. (Parents, siblings, etc.)
I was playing Xander.
The first thought on everyone’s mind was, of course : Is it really them? Or are they cloaked using stolen reflections?
I shout for Anya’s player to toss me a compact, and I peek at the reflections while we’re holding them off. They don’t show up. A-ha!
Me, as Xander : “It’s really them!”
The GM : grins
Me, as Xander : “…orrrrr Ethan gave their reflections to vampires. Crap. Cross, please?”
They were vampires.
Mistakes? How about this one:
I suck.
I had an Atari 2600 back in the day. All of the kids (and growing up as a geek in a rural area, there weren’t many kids who would play with me) could whip my ass on all of the two-player games. I would invite someone over to play and then end up being bored watching them flip Asteroids three or four times.
I was a regular in the local arcade. Regular sucker. My best game was Galaga. Only once did I top 50,000. In short, I sucked.
I was in college when Tetris hit it big. All of my friends played religiously. Once, my girlfriend played on my Mac and beat my high score by like 10,000 points. A few weeks later we broke up. I spent the rest of my college career trying to beat that high score just to spite her. I never broke it. I still have that Mac LC, and if I ever fired it up again, that high score would still be on the hard drive.
In the 90s, I got on an X-Wing kick. Never destroyed the Death Star.
I bought Grand Theft Auto 3 for my PC. Great game. Never won a single race mission.
Today, my favorite game is Civilization. It’s pretty much the only game I play regularly. I love it. I have played hundreds of hours over the last few years, yet I still can’t win on any level above the third.
To recap, I’m a first generation gamer. I grew up punching buttons and juking joysticks. And yet, I still suck, and I don’t ever get any better.
sobs