The Universal Hint System, better known by the acronym UHS, is a form of strategy guide

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. Strategy guides are often published in print, both in...

 used for computer and video games

Computer and video games

A video game is an electronic game that involves human interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. The word video in video game traditionally referred to a raster display device, but following popularization of the term "video game", it now implies any type of...

, created by Jason Strautman in 1988

1988 in video gaming

-Events:*June — Nintendo releases the last issue of "Nintendo fun club news";*July — Nintendo releases the first issue of Nintendo Power magazine.-Notable releases:*January 8, Konami releases Super Contra....

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

Spoiler (media)

Spoiler is slang for any element of any summary or description of any piece of fiction that reveals any plot element which will give away the outcome of a dramatic episode within the work of fiction, or the conclusion of the entire work. It can also be used to refer to any piece of information...

s. The strategy guides are primarily distributed in a UHS file format

File format

A file format is a particular way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file.Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for...

, readable using a UHS reader program.

Readers

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

DOS

DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...

, Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

. The current versions of the official readers are proprietary software

Proprietary software

Proprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.Complementary...

 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 Lynx

Lynx (web browser)

Lynx is a text-based web browser for use on cursor-addressable character cell terminals and is very configurable.-Usage:Browsing in Lynx consists of highlighting the chosen link using cursor keys, or having all links on a page numbered and entering the chosen link's number. Current versions support...

.

In 2006, a platform-independent open source reader written in Java, OpenUHS, began development. As of 2008, it fully supports all hint formats.