If you have all the items with you and put them in place one at a time as you discover they're needed, the Babel Fish dispenser runs out of fish right on the attempt when you've finally got them all in place and are ready to collect it for real. Evil little game.

[SPOILER]

It gets worse -- there are a bunch of tools you go by throughout the game. If you fail to pick up any of them, that one will be the one you need to open one of the final doors.

In theory, I know the solution to every puzzle in the Hitchhiker's game. In practice, I've solved every one of them that you can solve while missing others (there's a gate right at the end of the game you have to have all of the items you can possibly get to get past)... but I have never strung all these solutions together into one winning game, despite several attempts.

It's a nasty little game, really.

I guess if I were doing it again nowadays I'd be going for a tool-assisted... umm... speedrun isn't really right here, so win-at-all-run.

I feel like Hitchhiker's is meant to be an exception to the rule.