I am excited about The Dos Game Club playing The Last Express, and so I wanted to share some links on the making of The Last Express that the club may find interesting:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132255/the_last_express_revisiting_an_.php?print=1
http://www.pcgamesn.com/last-express-jordan-mechner-remembers-different-sort-wargame-centenary-its-departure
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2012/sep/28/last-express-jordan-mechner-interview
and of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Express
Some interesting highlights:
– It got caught up in the sale of Broderbund to The Learning company, which was only interested in educational games. This led to it being pulled from store shelves during the time it was covered by media, which in part led to its extremely poor sales.
– It cost 5 million dollars to make, a massive amount of money for the time. It would have had to have been one of the best selling adventure games of all time to break even.
– Some say its flop led to the end of big budget adventure games.
– It was shot on 16mm film. There are 40k inked and colored frames using a process they designed and patented. It took two years to rotoscope.
– The creator, Jordan Mechner, and French publisher DotEmu reacquired the rights years later and is responsible for the iOS re-releases.
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