The Last Express
Encyclopedia
The Last Express is a video game created by Jordan Mechner
and Smoking Car Productions
, published in 1997. It is an adventure game
that takes place on the Orient Express
, days before the start of World War I
. It is noted as being one of the few video games that attempts to realistically simulate real time
. The game was a commercial disappointment, despite receiving highly positive reviews and a positive post-release response.
in 1914, the player takes on the role of Robert Cath, an American
doctor on the train's final journey from Paris
to Constantinople
(modern Istanbul
) before World War I
. Cath, already wanted by French
police as he is suspected of the murder of an Irish
police officer, is contacted urgently by his old friend Tyler Whitney, to join him on the Orient Express, gateway to the East
, and a possible exit from all his troubles. Cath boards the train via a motorcycle and looks for Whitney, who is already on board. However, from the moment he steps onto this luxurious train, Cath becomes involved in a maelstrom of treachery, lies, political conspiracies, personal interests, romance and murder.
The game has 30 characters representing a cross-section of European forces at the time, including Serbian
freedom fighters, a German
arms dealer, a Russian
anarchist, a suspicious Austrian
concert violinist, a Persian eunuch
and his private harem
, a mysterious art collector and others. As the train races east, the player must stay alive while interacting with these characters, which includes eavesdropping on conversations, sneaking into compartments and defusing a bomb. The story is non-linear
, with the player's actions (and failures to act) determining the course of the story; as a result, the game's script is 800 pages long.
Tyler Whitney: An American gentleman who seems to have traveled extensively as he is known by many characters in the train. His social contacts vary from Serbian military to German industrialists. Whitney invites Robert Cath to the Orient Express for them to take a journey to Jerusalem where Whitney claims to have found something interesting for Cath (which later turns out to be a manuscript). Tyler Whitney's personal agenda for being on the Orient Express is a three-way business transaction: He possesses an antique egg which he wants to sell to a certain Prince Kronos for a hefty amount of gold which he would then turn over to the German arms dealer August Schmidt to purchase military equipment to support the Serbian "Black Hand" for their liberation campaign in the Balkans. Unfortunately, Whitney turns up dead before the journey even starts, leaving Cath in a very delicate and dangerous position.
August Schmidt: A wealthy German industrialist and an arms dealer. He plans to sell his weaponry to Tyler Whitney. Along the way, he meets Anna Wolff, an Austrian violinist and socialite to whom Schmidt is seemingly quite attracted. However, after the acquisition of the guns "Tyler" bought for them, Serbians hijack the train and subsequently Schmidt is left inside the sleeping car to which he was evacuated.
Anna Wolff: An Austrian socialite. One of the porters in the train refer to her as "having made more journeys on the Orient Express" than the porter himself. After discovering Tyler's corpse, Cath finds a scarf with the monogram "W" upon it which puts Wolff under some suspicion. Later in the journey, it is revealed that Anna Wolff is actually working for Austria as a spy, tracking August Schmidt's arms deal. Anna becomes Robert Cath's eventual love-interest. After reaching Constantinople and learning that the war has broken out, she leaves Cath to join the war effort, promising to return after the war is over.
George Abbot: A British gentleman who boards the train in Vienna, Abbot appears as a talkative and ordinary man who converses with practically everyone he comes across. After the murder of the young Dolnikov, he reveals to Cath that he was aware of his true identity, along with his exploits concerning the Irish incident and his impersonation of Whitney and offers him to work with the British government for the upcoming European crisis. He is one of the few characters who actually make it to Constantinople.
Alexei Dolnikov: A Russian nobleman who disdains his aristocratic roots. Alexei espouses anarchism and the abolishing of all authority. He and Tatiana Obelensky are childhood friends and Alexei asks her to elope with him. When she refuses, he attempts to plant a bomb and kill Count Obelensky whom Alexei considers as a relic of Tsar's oppressive rule. In his confrontation with the Count, Alexei is stabbed to death by the delirious elder aristocrat.
Count Vassili Alexandrovich Obelensky & Tatiana Obelensky: Tsar's cousin and a former Russian ambassador, Count Obelensky takes her young granddaughter Tatiana, who spent several years in Paris back to Russia. The Count is rather senile at first, with occasional seizures which Cath treats with herbal medication. During a confrontation with his granddaughter's lover Alexei, the Count, in his delirium, stabs the young anarchist to death. Tatiana, wracked by guilt and shocked by Alexei's death, assumes an almost catatonic state. Even during the Serbian hijacking attempt, they do not move from their table in the dining car. The Count displays a certain aspect of what might be called clairvoyance as he claims that those who were evacuated to the sleeping cars will never reach Constantinople. In the end, as the train reaches its final destination, Tatiana opens the gun cache and blow them up with what seems to be Alexei's lighter.
Prince Kronos: Rumored to be a prince in exile, Kronos is a wealthy art collector who travels with his private car along with his bodyguard Kahina. He seems to know Cath's secrets and wishes to carry on with Whitney's transaction. He never leaves his car unless one time when he invites Anna Wolff for a duet, as he plays the piano. In the end, he turns out to be the main antagonist of the game, as he returns to the train in Constantinople to take Robert and Anna hostage to acquire the "egg".
Milos: A Serbian military officer and a member of the "Black Hand" who assassinated Prince Ferdinand. Apparently, the Serbian High Command gave Tyler Whitney an antique to liquidate and buy them military equipment. Milos and his comrades, Vesna, Ivo and Salko board the Orient Express to get the weapons from Munich and then hijack the train through Austria into Serbia. During the attempt, Cath kills the subordinates after which Anna Wolff shoots Milos to death.
The Firebird: The object that forms the main story arc of the entire game, the Firebird is a jeweled egg with a world map engraved upon it. The egg is accompanied by a whistle both of which are lost in the beginning. It turns out that after finding Tyler's dead body, Anna Wolff took the egg and later she gave it to the unsuspecting Tatiana for safekeeping. The whistle turns up in the hands of the French boy, François. Cath recovers both items and hides the egg in the luggage car while keeping the whistle. A recurring reference is made for the Firebird: Tyler Whitney (in Cath's nightmare), Count Obelensky and finally Kronos all refer to the bird's "singing". In the climax, Kronos holds Cath at gunpoint to open the egg. Cath opens the jewel by the virtue of the Russian fairytale he found in Tyler's luggage, referencing various locations on the world, forming some sort of combination. As the egg opens, it turns into a mechanical predatory bird. At Kronos' demand, Anna plays the violin and the bird sings. However instead of closing the egg, Cath blows the whistle, launching the creature first on Kahina then on Kronos. As the bird's claws tear and shred at Kronos, Cath finally sees how Tyler met his end.
, albeit accelerated by a factor of six. The player can also rewind and occasionally fast-forward time at will. The game begins at 7:14 p.m. on July 24, 1914, and ends at 7:30 p.m. on July 27 (if the player has reached the proper ending). The only events during which the game does not proceed in real-time are times when Cath is sleeping or unconscious, as well as a few cutscenes. One of the game's most notable uses of this technique during a concert
, in which two of the non-player character
s perform a piano
/violin
duet that lasts approximately twenty minutes of real-time: the player character
is free to sit down and enjoy the music, or move as he pleases. The game's some thirty characters have their own artificial intelligence
and individual agendas, moving around to accomplish their goals, or changing their plans due to player intervention. In this way, the game has a higher replay value
than a similar-length linear game, with no two playthroughs exactly alike. Additionally, the game features multiple endings; about thirty are "fatal", in which Cath is killed or arrested, and four are "non-fatal" endings, of which only one is considered to be the proper ending.
The game is notable for its unique art style, with characters illustrated in the "art nouveau
" style popularized by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
that was in style in 1914, the year the game's events take place. Since illustrating a game of this magnitude by hand would most likely take an exorbitant amount of time, the look was achieved by using rotoscoping, a process that Mechner had used to a lesser extent in his earlier games. During a 22-day long live-action video shoot, every action by every character in the game was photographed by actors wearing distinctive makeup and costumes against a bluescreen on 16mm film and digitized. From this, a limited number of frames were selected and put through a patented process developed in house, where the frames first had all colour removed. Then, a powerful computer program created black-and-white line drawings of the frames, which were then coloured in by hand. The finished product has 40,000 frames in total.
, Mac OS
, and DOS
. Following a bidding war between several major game publishers, Brøderbund
, SoftBank
, and GameBank split the worldwide distribution rights for the game. Dubbed versions of the game were released in French
, German
, Spanish
, Italian
, Russian
and Japanese
.
for The Last Express was published by Intrada in 2000, but is no longer in print. It was composed, orchestrated and conducted by Czech composer Elia Cmiral
, who later composed the scores for Ronin
and Stigmata
. Consisting of a mix of dominant synth instruments and occasional solo violin, the score was recorded at Forte Muzika Studios in Los Angeles. The lone exception is the Sonata for Violin and Piano in A major
by César Franck
featured in the game's concert scene.
s both in print and online. Newsweek
called it "exquisite" and "thrilling" and MSNBC
said "the mystery and characters are very fascinating" and "this game is definitely for everyone". Games Magazine declared it the Best New Adventure and Role Playing Game, and it received Editor's Choice awards from PC Gamer
, Computer Gaming World
, Next Generation, and dozens of game websites, including a gold medal from GamesDomain.
However, the game only remained in stores for a few months. Brøderbund's marketing department quit just weeks before the game was released, resulting in virtually no advertising for it. Softbank pulled out of the game market, dissolving its subsidiary GameBank and canceling several dozen titles in development, including the nearly finished PlayStation
port
of The Last Express. As a final blow, Brøderbund was acquired by The Learning Company
, which was only interested in their educational and home productivity software. The Last Express was out of print within a year.
In 2000, the game publisher Interplay
bought the lapsed rights and began quietly selling the game as a budget title. A short time later, Interplay went bankrupt, so the game was once again out of print. The game can, however, still be found on various online stores. In 2006, the American subscription-based game service GameTap
began offering the game on its network. In 2011, Good Old Games and DotEmu
began selling a downloadable version as well that included the Original Soundtrack, a Making Of video, and a few other bonuses.
In 2010, the game was included as one of the titles in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die
.
's Movies Blog posted an excerpt from a recent interview with Dutch film director Paul Verhoeven. In the interview, Verhoeven is quoted as saying, "I am working on a movie now that is...situated in 1914. Basically, Indiana Jones
-ish you could say, but also Hitchcockian
." He also states that the source material is a video game, and that "the writer of the video game has asked me to keep [the identity of the game] secret until he has a script." Subsequently, several other websites speculated that the video game in question is The Last Express, considering the relative dearth of games set in 1914, as well as Jordan Mechner's work on the film version of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
.
In October 2011, Verhoeven confirmed that he is working with Mechner to develop a film adaptation of the game. The film would most likely be filmed in 3D, although it may not be Verhoeven's immediate next project.
Jordan Mechner
Jordan Mechner is an American video game designer, screenwriter, author, and filmmaker, best known for creating the Prince of Persia video game franchise.- Life and career :Mechner was born in New York City...
and Smoking Car Productions
Smoking Car Productions
Smoking Car Productions was a video game developer founded by Jordan Mechner to create the computer game The Last Express.The company was located in San Francisco from 1993–1997 and at its peak had sixty full-time employees.- Staff :...
, published in 1997. It is an adventure game
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,...
that takes place on the Orient Express
Orient Express
The Orient Express is the name of a long-distance passenger train service originally operated by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. It ran from 1883 to 2009 and is not to be confused with the Venice-Simplon Orient Express train service, which continues to run.The route and rolling stock...
, days before the start of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. It is noted as being one of the few video games that attempts to realistically simulate real time
Real-time (media)
Real time within the media is a method of narratology wherein events are portrayed at the same rate that the audience experiences them. For example, if a movie told in real-time is two hours long, then the plot of that movie covers two hours of fictional time...
. The game was a commercial disappointment, despite receiving highly positive reviews and a positive post-release response.
Story
Set on the Orient ExpressOrient Express
The Orient Express is the name of a long-distance passenger train service originally operated by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. It ran from 1883 to 2009 and is not to be confused with the Venice-Simplon Orient Express train service, which continues to run.The route and rolling stock...
in 1914, the player takes on the role of Robert Cath, an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
doctor on the train's final journey from Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
(modern Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
) before World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. Cath, already wanted by French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
police as he is suspected of the murder of an Irish
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
police officer, is contacted urgently by his old friend Tyler Whitney, to join him on the Orient Express, gateway to the East
Eastern world
__FORCETOC__The term Eastern world refers very broadly to the various cultures or social structures and philosophical systems of Eastern Asia or geographically the Eastern Culture...
, and a possible exit from all his troubles. Cath boards the train via a motorcycle and looks for Whitney, who is already on board. However, from the moment he steps onto this luxurious train, Cath becomes involved in a maelstrom of treachery, lies, political conspiracies, personal interests, romance and murder.
The game has 30 characters representing a cross-section of European forces at the time, including Serbian
Kingdom of Serbia
The Kingdom of Serbia was created when Prince Milan Obrenović, ruler of the Principality of Serbia, was crowned King in 1882. The Principality of Serbia was ruled by the Karađorđevic dynasty from 1817 onwards . The Principality, suzerain to the Porte, had expelled all Ottoman troops by 1867, de...
freedom fighters, a German
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
arms dealer, a Russian
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
anarchist, a suspicious Austrian
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
concert violinist, a Persian eunuch
Eunuch
A eunuch is a person born male most commonly castrated, typically early enough in his life for this change to have major hormonal consequences...
and his private harem
Harem
Harem refers to the sphere of women in what is usually a polygynous household and their enclosed quarters which are forbidden to men...
, a mysterious art collector and others. As the train races east, the player must stay alive while interacting with these characters, which includes eavesdropping on conversations, sneaking into compartments and defusing a bomb. The story is non-linear
Linearity (computer and video games)
A video game with nonlinear gameplay presents players with challenges that can be completed in a number of different sequences. Each player sees only some of the challenges possible, and the same challenges may be played in a different order. A video game with linear gameplay will confront a player...
, with the player's actions (and failures to act) determining the course of the story; as a result, the game's script is 800 pages long.
Characters
Robert Cath: A young American doctor and the protagonist of the game. Seemingly ostracized by the American medical circles due to his tendencies to the occult, Cath moved to Europe. During this period, he had a run-in with Irish nationalists and he seemingly have gotten in a firefight with British police along with an Irishman named Reilly. The fight resulted with the death of a British policeman and the injury of Reilly. Cath escaped to the continent and retreated to Paris where he was contacted by his old friend Tyler Whitney with whom he seems to have a grudge about "what happened in Cuba". Cath is depicted to be a capable character in social circles (he speaks French and Russian and seems to understand German, judging by the subtitles which are absent when he overhears Arabic or Serbian)Tyler Whitney: An American gentleman who seems to have traveled extensively as he is known by many characters in the train. His social contacts vary from Serbian military to German industrialists. Whitney invites Robert Cath to the Orient Express for them to take a journey to Jerusalem where Whitney claims to have found something interesting for Cath (which later turns out to be a manuscript). Tyler Whitney's personal agenda for being on the Orient Express is a three-way business transaction: He possesses an antique egg which he wants to sell to a certain Prince Kronos for a hefty amount of gold which he would then turn over to the German arms dealer August Schmidt to purchase military equipment to support the Serbian "Black Hand" for their liberation campaign in the Balkans. Unfortunately, Whitney turns up dead before the journey even starts, leaving Cath in a very delicate and dangerous position.
August Schmidt: A wealthy German industrialist and an arms dealer. He plans to sell his weaponry to Tyler Whitney. Along the way, he meets Anna Wolff, an Austrian violinist and socialite to whom Schmidt is seemingly quite attracted. However, after the acquisition of the guns "Tyler" bought for them, Serbians hijack the train and subsequently Schmidt is left inside the sleeping car to which he was evacuated.
Anna Wolff: An Austrian socialite. One of the porters in the train refer to her as "having made more journeys on the Orient Express" than the porter himself. After discovering Tyler's corpse, Cath finds a scarf with the monogram "W" upon it which puts Wolff under some suspicion. Later in the journey, it is revealed that Anna Wolff is actually working for Austria as a spy, tracking August Schmidt's arms deal. Anna becomes Robert Cath's eventual love-interest. After reaching Constantinople and learning that the war has broken out, she leaves Cath to join the war effort, promising to return after the war is over.
George Abbot: A British gentleman who boards the train in Vienna, Abbot appears as a talkative and ordinary man who converses with practically everyone he comes across. After the murder of the young Dolnikov, he reveals to Cath that he was aware of his true identity, along with his exploits concerning the Irish incident and his impersonation of Whitney and offers him to work with the British government for the upcoming European crisis. He is one of the few characters who actually make it to Constantinople.
Alexei Dolnikov: A Russian nobleman who disdains his aristocratic roots. Alexei espouses anarchism and the abolishing of all authority. He and Tatiana Obelensky are childhood friends and Alexei asks her to elope with him. When she refuses, he attempts to plant a bomb and kill Count Obelensky whom Alexei considers as a relic of Tsar's oppressive rule. In his confrontation with the Count, Alexei is stabbed to death by the delirious elder aristocrat.
Count Vassili Alexandrovich Obelensky & Tatiana Obelensky: Tsar's cousin and a former Russian ambassador, Count Obelensky takes her young granddaughter Tatiana, who spent several years in Paris back to Russia. The Count is rather senile at first, with occasional seizures which Cath treats with herbal medication. During a confrontation with his granddaughter's lover Alexei, the Count, in his delirium, stabs the young anarchist to death. Tatiana, wracked by guilt and shocked by Alexei's death, assumes an almost catatonic state. Even during the Serbian hijacking attempt, they do not move from their table in the dining car. The Count displays a certain aspect of what might be called clairvoyance as he claims that those who were evacuated to the sleeping cars will never reach Constantinople. In the end, as the train reaches its final destination, Tatiana opens the gun cache and blow them up with what seems to be Alexei's lighter.
Prince Kronos: Rumored to be a prince in exile, Kronos is a wealthy art collector who travels with his private car along with his bodyguard Kahina. He seems to know Cath's secrets and wishes to carry on with Whitney's transaction. He never leaves his car unless one time when he invites Anna Wolff for a duet, as he plays the piano. In the end, he turns out to be the main antagonist of the game, as he returns to the train in Constantinople to take Robert and Anna hostage to acquire the "egg".
Milos: A Serbian military officer and a member of the "Black Hand" who assassinated Prince Ferdinand. Apparently, the Serbian High Command gave Tyler Whitney an antique to liquidate and buy them military equipment. Milos and his comrades, Vesna, Ivo and Salko board the Orient Express to get the weapons from Munich and then hijack the train through Austria into Serbia. During the attempt, Cath kills the subordinates after which Anna Wolff shoots Milos to death.
The Firebird: The object that forms the main story arc of the entire game, the Firebird is a jeweled egg with a world map engraved upon it. The egg is accompanied by a whistle both of which are lost in the beginning. It turns out that after finding Tyler's dead body, Anna Wolff took the egg and later she gave it to the unsuspecting Tatiana for safekeeping. The whistle turns up in the hands of the French boy, François. Cath recovers both items and hides the egg in the luggage car while keeping the whistle. A recurring reference is made for the Firebird: Tyler Whitney (in Cath's nightmare), Count Obelensky and finally Kronos all refer to the bird's "singing". In the climax, Kronos holds Cath at gunpoint to open the egg. Cath opens the jewel by the virtue of the Russian fairytale he found in Tyler's luggage, referencing various locations on the world, forming some sort of combination. As the egg opens, it turns into a mechanical predatory bird. At Kronos' demand, Anna plays the violin and the bird sings. However instead of closing the egg, Cath blows the whistle, launching the creature first on Kahina then on Kronos. As the bird's claws tear and shred at Kronos, Cath finally sees how Tyler met his end.
Real-time
The Last Express is unique for taking place in almost complete real-timeReal-time (media)
Real time within the media is a method of narratology wherein events are portrayed at the same rate that the audience experiences them. For example, if a movie told in real-time is two hours long, then the plot of that movie covers two hours of fictional time...
, albeit accelerated by a factor of six. The player can also rewind and occasionally fast-forward time at will. The game begins at 7:14 p.m. on July 24, 1914, and ends at 7:30 p.m. on July 27 (if the player has reached the proper ending). The only events during which the game does not proceed in real-time are times when Cath is sleeping or unconscious, as well as a few cutscenes. One of the game's most notable uses of this technique during a concert
Concert
A concert is a live performance before an audience. The performance may be by a single musician, sometimes then called a recital, or by a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra, a choir, or a musical band...
, in which two of the non-player character
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
s perform a piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
/violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
duet that lasts approximately twenty minutes of real-time: the player character
Player character
A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...
is free to sit down and enjoy the music, or move as he pleases. The game's some thirty characters have their own artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
and individual agendas, moving around to accomplish their goals, or changing their plans due to player intervention. In this way, the game has a higher replay value
Replay value
Replay value or replayability is a term found in combination with video games, but it may be also used to describe other kinds of games, movies, music, or theater plays. In video games, the term replay value is used to describe the entertainment value of playing a game more than once...
than a similar-length linear game, with no two playthroughs exactly alike. Additionally, the game features multiple endings; about thirty are "fatal", in which Cath is killed or arrested, and four are "non-fatal" endings, of which only one is considered to be the proper ending.
Art production
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
" style popularized by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or simply Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, and illustrator, whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of fin de siècle Paris yielded an œuvre of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern...
that was in style in 1914, the year the game's events take place. Since illustrating a game of this magnitude by hand would most likely take an exorbitant amount of time, the look was achieved by using rotoscoping, a process that Mechner had used to a lesser extent in his earlier games. During a 22-day long live-action video shoot, every action by every character in the game was photographed by actors wearing distinctive makeup and costumes against a bluescreen on 16mm film and digitized. From this, a limited number of frames were selected and put through a patented process developed in house, where the frames first had all colour removed. Then, a powerful computer program created black-and-white line drawings of the frames, which were then coloured in by hand. The finished product has 40,000 frames in total.
Publishing
After five years of development, the game was released on a multi-platform 3 CD set that covered WindowsMicrosoft 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...
, Mac OS
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
, and 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...
. Following a bidding war between several major game publishers, Brøderbund
Brøderbund
Brøderbund Software, Inc. was an American maker of computer games, educational software and The Print Shop productivity tools. It was best known as the original creator and publisher of the popular Carmen Sandiego games. The company was founded in Eugene, Oregon, but moved to San Rafael,...
, SoftBank
SoftBank
is a Japanese telecommunications and internet corporation, with operations in broadband, fixed-line telecommunications, e-Commerce, Internet, broadmedia, technology services, finance, media and marketing, and other businesses....
, and GameBank split the worldwide distribution rights for the game. Dubbed versions of the game were released in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
and Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
.
Soundtrack
Running thirty-nine minutes, the soundtrackSoundtrack album
A soundtrack album is any album that incorporates music directly recorded from the soundtrack of a particular feature film or television program. In some cases, not all the tracks from the movie are included in the album; however there are rare cases of songs in the trailers that do not appear in...
for The Last Express was published by Intrada in 2000, but is no longer in print. It was composed, orchestrated and conducted by Czech composer Elia Cmiral
Elia Cmiral
Elia David Cmíral is a film composer. He was born in Czechoslovakia and emigrated to Sweden, moving to the United States in 1987. There, he attended the University of Southern California and scored for an independent film entitled Apartment Zero...
, who later composed the scores for Ronin
Ronin (film)
Ronin is a 1998 action-thriller film directed by John Frankenheimer and written by J.D. Zeik and David Mamet. It stars Robert De Niro and Jean Reno as two of several former special forces and intelligence agents who team up to steal a mysterious, heavily guarded suitcase while navigating a maze of...
and Stigmata
Stigmata (film)
Stigmata is a 1999 supernatural horror film directed by Rupert Wainwright and starring Patricia Arquette as a hairdresser from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who is afflicted with the stigmata after acquiring a rosary formerly owned by a deceased Italian priest who himself suffered from the phenomena...
. Consisting of a mix of dominant synth instruments and occasional solo violin, the score was recorded at Forte Muzika Studios in Los Angeles. The lone exception is the Sonata for Violin and Piano in A major
Violin Sonata (Franck)
The Sonata in A major for Violin and Piano by César Franck is one of his best known compositions, and considered one of the finest sonatas for violin and piano ever written...
by César Franck
César Franck
César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck was a composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life....
featured in the game's concert scene.
Release
The Last Express received highly positive reviewReview
A review is an evaluation of a publication, a product or a service, such as a movie , video game, musical composition , book ; a piece of hardware like a car, home appliance, or computer; or an event or performance, such as a live music concert, a play, musical theater show or dance show...
s both in print and online. Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
called it "exquisite" and "thrilling" and MSNBC
MSNBC
MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...
said "the mystery and characters are very fascinating" and "this game is definitely for everyone". Games Magazine declared it the Best New Adventure and Role Playing Game, and it received Editor's Choice awards from PC Gamer
PC Gamer
PC Gamer is a magazine founded in Britain in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future Publishing. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games magazines in their respective countries...
, Computer Gaming World
Computer Gaming World
Computer Gaming World was a computer game magazine founded in 1981 by Russell Sipe as a bimonthly publication. Early issues were typically 40-50 pages in length, written in a newsletter style, including submissions by game designers such as Joel Billings , Dan Bunten , and Chris Crawford...
, Next Generation, and dozens of game websites, including a gold medal from GamesDomain.
However, the game only remained in stores for a few months. Brøderbund's marketing department quit just weeks before the game was released, resulting in virtually no advertising for it. Softbank pulled out of the game market, dissolving its subsidiary GameBank and canceling several dozen titles in development, including the nearly finished PlayStation
PlayStation
The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000...
port
Porting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
of The Last Express. As a final blow, Brøderbund was acquired by The Learning Company
The Learning Company
The Learning Company is an American educational software company, founded in 1980. It produced a grade-based system similar to Knowledge Adventure's JumpStart series. The products for preschoolers through second graders feature Reader Rabbit, and software for more advanced students features The...
, which was only interested in their educational and home productivity software. The Last Express was out of print within a year.
In 2000, the game publisher Interplay
Interplay Entertainment
Interplay Entertainment Corporation is an American video game developer and publisher, founded in 1983 as Interplay Productions by Brian Fargo. The company had been a quality developer until they started publishing their own games in 1988, like Neuromancer and Battle Chess. The company was renamed...
bought the lapsed rights and began quietly selling the game as a budget title. A short time later, Interplay went bankrupt, so the game was once again out of print. The game can, however, still be found on various online stores. In 2006, the American subscription-based game service GameTap
GameTap
GameTap is an American online video game service established by Turner Broadcasting System . Dubbed by TBS as a "first of its kind broadband gaming network", the service provides users with classic arcade video games and game-related video content...
began offering the game on its network. In 2011, Good Old Games and DotEmu
DotEmu
DotEmu is a French video game company created in 2007 by Xavier Liard and Romain Tisserand, with its headquarters in France. This company initially dedicated to B2B adaptation and emulation of old games and now provides a B2C distribution service on dotemu.com.Distribution service: Users can...
began selling a downloadable version as well that included the Original Soundtrack, a Making Of video, and a few other bonuses.
In 2010, the game was included as one of the titles in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die
Quintessence Editions Ltd.
Quintessence Editions Ltd. is a publishing company based in London which is the originator of the "1001 Before You Die" series. Typically, the titles in this series are intended as reference books. They are illustrated books authored by multiple contributors...
.
Film adaptation
On April 13, 2010, MTVMTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
's Movies Blog posted an excerpt from a recent interview with Dutch film director Paul Verhoeven. In the interview, Verhoeven is quoted as saying, "I am working on a movie now that is...situated in 1914. Basically, Indiana Jones
Indiana Jones
Colonel Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr., Ph.D. is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Indiana Jones franchise. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg created the character in homage to the action heroes of 1930s film serials...
-ish you could say, but also Hitchcockian
Hitchcockian
Hitchcockian is a general term used to describe film styles and themes similar to those of Alfred Hitchcock's films.-Characteristics:Elements considered Hitchcockian include:*The cool platinum blonde....
." He also states that the source material is a video game, and that "the writer of the video game has asked me to keep [the identity of the game] secret until he has a script." Subsequently, several other websites speculated that the video game in question is The Last Express, considering the relative dearth of games set in 1914, as well as Jordan Mechner's work on the film version of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (film)
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a 2010 sword-and-sorcery action film written by Jordan Mechner, Boaz Yakin, Doug Miro, and Carlo Bernard; directed by Mike Newell; produced by Jerry Bruckheimer; and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures...
.
In October 2011, Verhoeven confirmed that he is working with Mechner to develop a film adaptation of the game. The film would most likely be filmed in 3D, although it may not be Verhoeven's immediate next project.
External links
- Official Link To The Last Express on Jordan Mechner's Website
- Official game website (1997) (mirror) - includes a downloadable demo of the game
- Nick Bousfield's review of The Last Express nine years later (2006)
- Games Domain interview with Mark Moran (1997)
- Mark Moran's history of The Last Express and Smoking Car
- Gamespot - The Last Express
- Ars Technica: A truly graphic adventure: the 25-year rise and fall of a beloved genre - Express train to nowhere