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The source files and a precompiled ZMachine storyfile of this adventure were recovered from a salvaged "Infocom hard drive", and made publicly available on GitHub in an effort to preserve them.
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Hollywood Hijinx

by Dave Anderson and Liz Cyr-Jones

Mystery , Treasure Hunt
1986

(based on 29 ratings)
3 reviews

About the Story

Vampire Penguins. A Corpse Line. Meltdown on Elm Street. Who could forget these classic Hollywood movies produced by your uncle, Buddy Burbank? But his greatest masterpiece has yet to be experienced... Hollywood Hijinx, starring you!

Your Uncle Buddy and Aunt Hildegarde have passed away, but their memory lives on in their Malibu mansion, filled with a lifetime of Hollywood memorabilia. And you've inherited it all, with one stipulation - you can only claim your booty if you find the treasures hidden throughout the sprawling beachfront estate. If you can't find the treasures in one night, you lose the whole caboodle.

It's just the sort of thing you'd expect from Aunt Hildegarde and Uncle Buddy. And their home is familiar territory: you spent your childhood summers there with your Cousin Herman. Although some say the house is haunted, you're not fooled. You know that Uncle Buddy, who wore a different polyester leisure suit each day of the week, was always rigging the place with goofy gags and booby traps.

Inside the house, everything is just as glitzy and full of fun as you remember it to be. There's the luxurious private screening room, the gold-plated bathroom faucets in the shape of Oscars, and the wacky props from old Buddy Burbank movies.

The Malibu estate seems like a funhouse at first. But the puzzles you must solve prove that Aunt Hildegarde and Uncle Buddy weren't just kidding around. Claiming the Burbank bundle turns out to be quite a challenge - and it's all in your honor.

Hollywood Hijinx is as zany as its author, "Hollywood" Dave Anderson. It's cram-packed with puzzles that will test the wits and tickle the ribs of both first time and experienced players.

Difficulty: Standard


Game Details

Editorial Reviews

SPAG
Hollywood Hijinx is a late-period Infocom game, with a cheerfully kitsch theme and a premise of unabashed treasure hunting. You stand to inherit a fortune if you are able to discover an assortment of bizarre B-movie props in a very strange Hollywood mansion -- so off you go to hunt. It contains even more than the usual number of references to Infocom, and at no point does it seem to take itself terribly seriously. (Emily Short)

At the end of it all, nothing in Hollywood Hijinx stands out all that much. [...] I think the real problem is that even in 1987, Infocom had progressed far beyond the basic dry puzzle hunt this game provices. (R. N. Dominick)
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SynTax
If you think this is just another simple treasure hunt that you have played many times before, you are in for a big surprise. The game is full of the most intricate puzzles and believe me, some of them take some solving.
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Member Reviews

5 star:
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4 star:
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3 star:
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Number of Reviews: 3
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
Not Infocom's best, but fun, February 20, 2008

Hollywood Hijinx is not one of Infocom's best games on any of several counts: the setting is comparatively mundane, the puzzles are mostly very implausible, and the plot is thin. It's also considerably shorter to play than some of the old standards.

Despite all of which, it remains a solidly entertaining entry in the basic genre of Treasure Hunt in a Relative's Weird, Puzzle-trapped House. (See also: Finding Martin, Letters from Home, The Mulldoon Legacy, Mystery House, etc.) There are a couple of very ingenious set piece puzzles that are worth playing the game for all by themselves; and the tone is upbeat and engaging throughout.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A light and humorous treasure hunt. , May 8, 2019
by deathbytroggles (Minneapolis, MN)

Hollywood Hijinx is one of Infocom’s unsung gems. Your rich aunt has just passed on, and you were the favorite nephew chosen to inherit the large fortune. However, she needs to know if you are clever enough to be worthy of holding the family finances. She has given you twelve hours to explore her mansion and find the ten “treasures,” or leftover props from her husband’s popular B-movies.

The twelve-hour time limit would normally annoy me, but in my first playthrough I just relaxed, created an intricately detailed map, and explored each room leisurely. I ran out of time (and even made the game unwinnable by messing with some props), but once I learned what to do it was a blast to run through it one more time.

Hijinx captures the flavor of the times and the B-movie industry wonderfully, and is funny throughout. Normally I'm one to resort to a walkthrough pretty quickly, but for some reason I found the puzzles here fairly straightforward with only a couple of mind-benders. Regardless of whether or not you find the puzzles challenging or easy breezy, if you’re just looking for a good time and a few good laughs, this game is great.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Long, intricate, mostly fair Infocom treasure hunt set in Malibu house., February 3, 2016
by MathBrush
Related reviews: Infocom

Hollywood Hijinx is long and complex, more so than Zork. You play the nephew of a famous movie producing couple who have died and left you their fortune, on the condition that you are smart enough to find all ten of their movie treasures.

The premise didn't really excite me, but as I read the feelies, I began to be more interested. Also, I had heard many people mention this as a favorite Infocom game. Later, during the game, I began to really get into it, especially with the (Spoiler - click to show)remote controlled model of the Atomic Chihuahua set in Tokyo.

The game is hard. I literally couldn't solve the first problem: getting into the house. I had to look up the invisiclues. The game in general was complex, and I honestly just explored the house once, then relied on the walkthrough to see the rest of the game.

Only a few puzzles seemed really unfair, especially the 'last' big puzzle. But the creativity of this game is outstanding. If I had been looking for a long game to play over a month, this would have been it.

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Hollywood Hijinx on IFDB

Recommended Lists

Hollywood Hijinx appears in the following Recommended Lists:

The Canonical Infocom Games by wfaulk
This is a list of the canonical Infocom games in order of release, as according to the Infocom Fact Sheet.

See the Show by Walter Sandsquish
If adventure games are a performance themselves, then it makes sense for some of them to also be about performers. So, here's a list of games involving performers and their venues.

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I like parser games with easy puzzles that play in a detailed game world. That's two completely different things: I love to dive into a game world, explore its locations, backgrounds, lores and laws, NPCs and their relations. And there...

See all lists mentioning this game

Polls

The following polls include votes for Hollywood Hijinx:

Best mechanical/physics puzzles. by Rovarsson
I had a lot of fun with the underground trolley puzzle in Axe of Kolt by Larry Horsfield. Any other games that feature cool mechanical devices, Rube Goldberg machines or solutions that rely on using the laws of physics (gravity of...

Games where the enemy/game fourth-walls big-picture meta-commands by Andrew Schultz
Which games say something extra for quitting or save/load/restore? I'm thinking largely of parser commands, but Twine is welcome, too. For instance, a "ha ha, you're scared," when facing the big, bad villain, or one of their henchmen. Or...

Solved without Hints by joncgoodwin
I'm very interested in hearing truthful accounts of at least somewhat difficult games (or games that don't solve themselves at least) solved completely without recourse to hints, walkthroughs, etc.

See all polls with votes for this game




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