The Last Express

Robert Cath hastily jumps off a speeding motorbike onto the Orient Express, as it departs from Paris on the evening of 24 July 1914. He's been invited to join the train by his friend Tyler Whitney, who apparently has made a remarkable deal and wants to tell Robert all about it. But as soon as Robert enter Tyler's cabin, he finds him on the floor... murdered!

Those are the opening scenes of The Last Express, a 1997 first-person adventure game directed by Jordan Mechner (Karateka, Prince of Persia). What follows is a story of early 20th century mystery drama, all set on the Orient Express as it continues its voyage across Europe to Constantinople, using an interesting rotoscoped visual style and with voice actors speaking German, French, Serbian and Russian besides English.

Joining hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") to discuss this very unique game are veteran DOS Game Club members Richard ("Pix") and Esko ("firefyte"). We also got a voice message from Jozef ("yozy") who actually interviewed his mum for this!

So what's the game like? Does it hold up? Who murdered Tyler Whitney? Listen to find out!

[ download mp3 ] (126 mins, 145 MB)

RELEVANT LINKS:

* UK magazine reviews scanned by Pix

* Making of The Last Express (1997) from Jordan Mechner's YouTube channel

* Interview by Gamasutra with two members of the development team originally posted in 2008, served through The Wayback Machine

* Obituary by Jordan Mechner for Tomi Pierce who co-wrote The Last Express and sadly passed away in 2010