Starship Titanic
Encyclopedia
Starship Titanic is a computer adventure game
designed by Douglas Adams
and made by The Digital Village
. It was released in 1998. It takes place on a starship of the same name which has undergone "Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure" (S.M.E.F) and crash landed on Earth
on its maiden voyage (in an allusion to the 1912 disaster involving the real-world RMS Titanic).
The player acts the part of a human (whose house the starship crashed into) who goes aboard to help fix the ship, and must solve puzzles to collect the parts of the sabotaged onboard computer, Titania.
The Spookitalk engine was developed exclusively for the game by creator Douglas Adams
and several programmers from The Digital Village
, the company working with Adams to develop the game. The engine incorporates over 10,000 different phrases, pre-recorded by a group of professional voice actors. The recorded phrases would take over 14 hours to play back-to-back.
A feature of the game and the starship itself is the "Succ-U-Bus", a communications system which moves physical containers through a network of tubes by vacuum. Messages and objects can be placed in the containers, and the system is used to deliver items to the player from other locations. The name of the system is a play on the word "succubus
". Similar systems called pneumatic tube
s exist in the real world; for example, those used by supermarket
s to offload cash from tills to a secure area.
Among the voice actors for the game are former Monty Python
members Terry Jones
as the Parrot, and John Cleese
(under the pseudonym of Kim Bread, itself an in-joke as this was the nickname John Cleese wished to be credited as when appearing in a Doctor Who serial written by Douglas Adams) as the Bomb. Adams is the voice of the Succ-U-Bus, and plays the part of the ship's creator, Leovinus, in one of the closing scenes. If you turn on the television
in the prologue of the game, Douglas Adams will appear and tell you to get on with the game.
style in its architectural design, as well as in the design of its robotic characters and ship components. Much of the stylized concept art is credited to Oscar Chichoni
, an Oscar-winning Argentine illustrator who specializes in highly-detailed, mechanical subject matter, and Isabel Molina, a registered British
architect. The two formed a creative design partnership in 1994, and served as the concept and design directors for the game.
. The book follows a group of three humans who are taken aboard the Starship when it crashes on Earth
and returns to the planet Blerontin where it was launched, with various subplots including an on-board bomb, a love-triangle between the characters, and an attempt to commit insurance fraud by the investors in the ship.
The Starship Titanic and "existence failure" were first mentioned in Life, the Universe and Everything
, the third book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"trilogy". This may suggest that the game takes place in the same fictional universe as the Hitchhiker's Guide stories. However, details regarding the ship's construction in Life, the Universe and Everything do not match those in the novel Starship Titanic. If a player in Starship Titanic mentions characters or quotations from the Hitchhiker's Guide series, the game will accuse the player of mixing up different universes.
Prior to the game's release, the publishers launched a web site purporting to be that of an intergalactic travel agency called Starlight Travel, which in the game is the Starship Titanic' s parent company. The site combined copious amounts of Python-esque writing (by Michael Bywater
) with methods commonly associated with alternate reality game
s to generate interest in the site, and in the game, long after the initial site visit. A typical example of this occurred when a site visitor filled out a personal information form, including email address and "favorite frog" (from a convenient and long, drop-down list). Approximately one week later, a spam email for something other than Starlight Travel would arrive, and would include a reference to the specific frog that the visitor had selected. Another example involved a series of three emails; the first called the reader's attention to a password-protected area of the Starlight Travel site, the second urged the reader to delete unread, any future emails received, as confidential information was being erroneously emailed, and the third revealed the confidential password for the restricted site: "1".
Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...
designed by Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...
and made by The Digital Village
The Digital Village
The Digital Village was a digital media company based inCovent Garden, London WC2 in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1994. The science fiction/comedy writer Douglas Adams was one of the founding members, along with Robbie Stamp, who is the Executive Producer of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the...
. It was released in 1998. It takes place on a starship of the same name which has undergone "Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure" (S.M.E.F) and crash landed on Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
on its maiden voyage (in an allusion to the 1912 disaster involving the real-world RMS Titanic).
The player acts the part of a human (whose house the starship crashed into) who goes aboard to help fix the ship, and must solve puzzles to collect the parts of the sabotaged onboard computer, Titania.
Gameplay
One of the most significant parts of the game is the conversation engine (dubbed "Spookitalk") used to interact with the robot staff on board the ship. Players type what they wish to say into the Personal Electronic Thing (PET) at the bottom of the screen. The robots' responses appear as text in the PET and are also spoken. The conversation engine works by interpreting user input and selecting relevant pre-recorded speech responses.The Spookitalk engine was developed exclusively for the game by creator Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...
and several programmers from The Digital Village
The Digital Village
The Digital Village was a digital media company based inCovent Garden, London WC2 in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1994. The science fiction/comedy writer Douglas Adams was one of the founding members, along with Robbie Stamp, who is the Executive Producer of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the...
, the company working with Adams to develop the game. The engine incorporates over 10,000 different phrases, pre-recorded by a group of professional voice actors. The recorded phrases would take over 14 hours to play back-to-back.
A feature of the game and the starship itself is the "Succ-U-Bus", a communications system which moves physical containers through a network of tubes by vacuum. Messages and objects can be placed in the containers, and the system is used to deliver items to the player from other locations. The name of the system is a play on the word "succubus
Succubus
In folklore traced back to medieval legend, a succubus is a female demon appearing in dreams who takes the form of a human woman in order to seduce men, usually through sexual intercourse. The male counterpart is the incubus...
". Similar systems called pneumatic tube
Pneumatic tube
Pneumatic tubes are systems in which cylindrical containers are propelled through a network of tubes by compressed air or by partial vacuum...
s exist in the real world; for example, those used by supermarket
Supermarket
A supermarket, a form of grocery store, is a self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise, organized into departments...
s to offload cash from tills to a secure area.
Among the voice actors for the game are former Monty Python
Monty Python
Monty Python was a British surreal comedy group who created their influential Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series...
members Terry Jones
Terry Jones
Terence Graham Parry Jones is a Welsh comedian, screenwriter, actor, film director, children's author, popular historian, political commentator, and TV documentary host. He is best known as a member of the Monty Python comedy team....
as the Parrot, and John Cleese
John Cleese
John Marwood Cleese is an English actor, comedian, writer, and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report...
(under the pseudonym of Kim Bread, itself an in-joke as this was the nickname John Cleese wished to be credited as when appearing in a Doctor Who serial written by Douglas Adams) as the Bomb. Adams is the voice of the Succ-U-Bus, and plays the part of the ship's creator, Leovinus, in one of the closing scenes. If you turn on the television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
in the prologue of the game, Douglas Adams will appear and tell you to get on with the game.
Visual style
Starship Titanic features a predominantly Art DecoArt Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
style in its architectural design, as well as in the design of its robotic characters and ship components. Much of the stylized concept art is credited to Oscar Chichoni
Óscar Chichoni
Oscar Chichoni is an Argentine illustrator of comic books and science fiction magazines and books.-Biography:Chichoni was born in a desolate hamlet in Corral de Bustos, province of Córdoba, and is self-taught in art...
, an Oscar-winning Argentine illustrator who specializes in highly-detailed, mechanical subject matter, and Isabel Molina, a registered British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
architect. The two formed a creative design partnership in 1994, and served as the concept and design directors for the game.
Related media
A novel entitled Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic, based on the game, was written by Terry JonesTerry Jones
Terence Graham Parry Jones is a Welsh comedian, screenwriter, actor, film director, children's author, popular historian, political commentator, and TV documentary host. He is best known as a member of the Monty Python comedy team....
. The book follows a group of three humans who are taken aboard the Starship when it crashes on Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
and returns to the planet Blerontin where it was launched, with various subplots including an on-board bomb, a love-triangle between the characters, and an attempt to commit insurance fraud by the investors in the ship.
The Starship Titanic and "existence failure" were first mentioned in Life, the Universe and Everything
Life, the Universe and Everything
Life, the Universe and Everything is the third book in the five-volume Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy science fiction series by British writer Douglas Adams...
, the third book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy series created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, and over several years it gradually became an international multi-media phenomenon...
"trilogy". This may suggest that the game takes place in the same fictional universe as the Hitchhiker's Guide stories. However, details regarding the ship's construction in Life, the Universe and Everything do not match those in the novel Starship Titanic. If a player in Starship Titanic mentions characters or quotations from the Hitchhiker's Guide series, the game will accuse the player of mixing up different universes.
Prior to the game's release, the publishers launched a web site purporting to be that of an intergalactic travel agency called Starlight Travel, which in the game is the Starship Titanic
Michael Bywater
Michael Bywater is a British writer and broadcaster.-Biography:He was educated at Nottingham High School, an independent school...
) with methods commonly associated with alternate reality game
Alternate reality game
An alternate reality game is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions....
s to generate interest in the site, and in the game, long after the initial site visit. A typical example of this occurred when a site visitor filled out a personal information form, including email address and "favorite frog" (from a convenient and long, drop-down list). Approximately one week later, a spam email for something other than Starlight Travel would arrive, and would include a reference to the specific frog that the visitor had selected. Another example involved a series of three emails; the first called the reader's attention to a password-protected area of the Starlight Travel site, the second urged the reader to delete unread, any future emails received, as confidential information was being erroneously emailed, and the third revealed the confidential password for the restricted site: "1".
See also
- Tale of the fate of the Starship Titanic
External links
- Official Site
- Starship Titanic Construction Intranet
- Douglas Adams on Infinite MHz - Douglas Adams Interview from 'Infinite MHzInfinite MHzInfinite MHz was a TV show from the mid 90's to early 2001 about PC games. It primarily aired on Public-access television cable TV in New England, and was based out of Cape Cod, MA. It only held out for a brief period on national cable television....
' - Artwork of Oscar Chichoni
- Internet Archive archived copy of Simon & Schuster marketing website for Starship Titanic