Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic Crashes Into GOG

[Fanghawk]

Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic Crashes Into GOG

Starship Titanic, the long-lost adventure game created by Douglas Adams, has been re-released on GOG.com.

Douglas Adams was best known for his iconic <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/132486-Hitchhikers-Guide-to-the-Galaxy-Returns-For-30th-Anniversary>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, but he didn't work solely <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/136633-Douglas-Adams-Dirk-Gently-Series-Heading-to-TV>on books and radio serials. Back in 1998, he took a throwaway paragraph from Life, the Universe and Everything about an ill-fated space voyage, and expanded it into a video game called Starship Titanic. Sadly, compatibility issues - not to mention Adams' untimely passing - meant Starship Titanic faded away before it could appear on modern systems. Until today, that is. GOG.com has just re-released Starship Titanic, making the game compatible with Windows XP, 7, 8, and 10.

Starship Titanic takes place on a spacecraft of the same name, a majestic alien vessel resembling "the Ritz, the Chrysler building, Tutankhamen's tomb and Venice". But on the maiden voyage, a hyperspace accident causes it to crash-land into your house - and shortly after you board, it launches back into space. Now you must navigate the massive craft and communicate with its robotic crew, upgrading your way to first class while uncovering a way back to Earth.

Outside of Douglas Adams' credentials, Starship Titanic was known for its "SpookiTalk" system. Once a cutting-edge language parser, SpookiTalk let players have natural conversations with NPCs, incorporating 10,000 pre-recorded phrases in response to text prompts. (In fact, if you played them all back-to-back, <a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Titanic>you'd be listening for 14 hours.) Starship Titanic also had a notable voice cast: Monty Python's John Cleese played a sentient bomb, while Terry Jones was the game's talking parrot. Adams himself also voiced multiple characters, including Leovinus, Starship Titanic's creator.

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Sadly, I never could find a copy Starship Titanic to play, but I did read the novel adaptation written by Terry Jones. If the original game even closely resembles its humor and style, I suspect it's well worth trying out. You can buy it today from GOG.com for $5.99.

Source: <a href=http://www.gog.com/news/release_starship_titanicGOG.com

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[Rastrelly]

Ofmygawd wannawannawanna!!!1111 Fawkin' crisis ... I'll get this stuff later in any case.

 

[Webb Myers]

Keep the hint page [http://www.uhs-hints.com/uhsweb/stitanic.php] queued up in the background. Between the intentionally quirky parser, being a 90's adventure game, and Adam's hilariously twisted logic, you'll probably need it. That said, it's a brilliant and funny game.

 

[busterkeatonrules]

I never did get to try out the game - but the sight of an imported copy of that book on a shelf in my local bookshop is why I decided to learn English in the first place!

Yeah. Rather that than wait for it to come out in Norwegian. (Incidentally, I don't think it ever did.)

Suffice to say, it was well worth the effort!

Now to read it again - and imagine the bomb's dialogue in the voice of John Cleese! Yeah. I didn't know to do that the first few times around.

 

[ritchards]

I always wondered why no-one resurrected this. Given DNA's fame, how has it taken so long?

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Lovely game from the time period and the only work of Douglas Adams I don't still own a copy of. So thank you GOG for releasing that.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

I was wondering why this game sounded familiar. Apparently I have the book adaptation of it sitting in my library. The things you find at massive book sales. Why I've yet to read it is completely beyond me.

Now for the important question: Should I read the book or play the game first?

 

[Bobular]

This was one of my favorite games growing up, I'm defiantly going to pick this up and go back through it.

I wonder how far I can get without having to resort to a guide.

 

[Fanghawk]

I was wondering why this game sounded familiar. Apparently I have the book adaptation of it sitting in my library. The things you find at massive book sales. Why I've yet to read it is completely beyond me.

Now for the important question: Should I read the book or play the game first?

Only read the book so far, but back in high school it had me in uncontrolled fits of laughter that disrupted quiet reading time for my class. Make of that what you will.

From what I hear, the game has that same 90s adventure game issue of trying to figure out what the creator expects you to do. But if that logic is anything like Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Bureaucracy text games, the side effects of not figuring out puzzles are hilarious and worth losing your mind over.