The Last Express

The Last Express, a computer game by Jordan Mechner and Smoking Car Productions, is a real-time adventure game and one of the most expensive and innovative ever made. The project took nearly four years to complete and included a month-long blue-screen filmshoot and a round-the-clock staff of up to 50 animators, artists, asset wranglers, and programmers, and according to one of the team members was tightly run. The Last Express won many awards but was not a commercial success.

Set on the Orient Express in 1914, the player takes the role of Robert Cath, an American on the train's final journey from Paris to Constantinople before World War I. The game has 30 characters representing a cross-section of European forces at the time, including Serbian terrorists, a German arms dealer, Russian aristocrats, an Austrian spy posing as a concert violinist, a British secret agent, and an mysterious art collector. As the train races east, the player must stay alive while interacting with these characters: eavesdropping on conversations, sneaking into compartments, defusing a bomb, getting attacked, and so on. 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 an extraordinary 800 pages long.

The 3 CD game was published on a combined Mac and PC disc in April 1997. Following a bidding war between all the major game publishers, Broderbund, Softbank, and GameBank split the worldwide distribution rights for various platforms. There are six languages spoken in the game (which are subtitled for languages that Cath understands), and dubbed versions of Express were soon released in French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese.

The Last Express received rave reviews 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 Games Domain.

But the game only remained in stores for a few months. Broderbund'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 Express. As a final ironic blow, Broderbund was acquired by The Learning Company, which was only interested in their educational and home productivity software. The Last Express was out of print long before its first Christmas season and nearly a million units shy of breaking even.

Given the high development costs, and the odds against a first-person adventure selling one million units, it is unlikely that the Last Express would have made a profit, even had it remained in print. However, by dropping their support of an already completed game, Broderbund and Softbank most likely increased their losses.

In 2000, the game publisher Interplay bought the lapsed rights and began quietly selling the game. Fortunately, unlike a 3D shooter which seems dated six months after coming out, The Last Express looks as beautiful today as it did in 1997. Unfortunately, Interplay soon stopped selling it, so the game is once again out of print.

External links

• The Last Express (http://www.lastexpress.com/). Official Website.de:The Last Express