The Universal Hint System, better known by the

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

UHS, is a form of

strategy guide Strategy guides are instruction books that contain hints or complete solutions to specific video games. The line between strategy guides and walkthroughs is somewhat blurred, with the former often containing or being written around the latter. Str ...

used for

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

s, created by Jason Strautmann in

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. The system is designed to provide hints for solving specific parts of games without including premature

spoiler Spoiler is a security vulnerability on modern computer central processing units that use speculative execution. It exploits side-effects of speculative execution to improve the efficiency of Rowhammer and other related memory and cache attacks. Ac ...

s. The strategy guides are primarily distributed in a UHS

file format A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free. Some file formats ...

, readable using a UHS reader program.

Readers

Since the system's creation, UHS readers have been made available for various platforms, including

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicatio ...

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and

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. The current versions of the official readers are

proprietary software Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and int ...

products. An official Internet website, UHSWeb went online in 1998, allowing access to UHS guides via web browsers, including text-based web browsers such as

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. In 2006, a platform-independent

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

reader written in

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

, OpenUHS, began development. As of 2008, it fully supports all hint formats. As of March 2022, the Nice Game Hints website can be used as a UHS reader. The hint file is uploaded and can then be read in the browser.

Reception

Chuck Miller of ''

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through ...

'' in 1993 called UHS "a nifty gaming utility that I wish would receive greater, perhaps even ''universal'', support in the gaming community", stating "I heartily recommend the ''Universal Hint System'' as an adventurer's resource par excellence".

Current status

The latest additions to UHS database are hints from year 2015 about

Blackwell (series) ''Blackwell'' is a series of five graphic adventure video games from independent game developer Wadjet Eye Games, created by Dave Gilbert. The plots of the games generally focus on Rosangela Blackwell, a spiritual medium, and her spirit guide Jo ...

. In March 2021 Meghann O'Neill wrote a Gamasutra article about low-spoiler hints for adventure games. In the article, she briefly mentions UHS and states that it is not active anymore.

Nice Game Hints

There is a spiritual successor for UHS available called Nice Game Hints. It contains more modern games but lacks older titles found in UHS. Nice Game Hints (NGH) is purely web-based and does not provide offline reader capability as UHS did.

References

External links

*
Universal Hint System: Not your ordinary walkthrough. Just the hints you need.Nice Game Hints
Video game culture {{Videogame-terminology-stub