The Last Express
A Hitchcockian thriller set aboard the Orient Express on the eve of World War I, Jordan and Smoking Car Productions’ 1997 real-time-rewinding adventure game The Last Express has become a cult classic.
Moving Pixels Rewinds Time
Moving Pixels at PopMatters have posted a great hourlong podcast all about playing (and replaying) The Last Express: “Playing on trains and playing with time.”
You can download it from their blog, or hear it here:
Gamasutra analyzes Last Express
A thoughtful article by Tom Cross on Gamasutra about The Last Express and immersive game worlds:
Unfinished Last Express Prequel
Browsing through my storage room in an attempt to avoid working on my current project, I stumbled across this printout of an unfinished screenplay I’d started, then abandoned, back in 2002.
Entitled Red Serpent, and set in 1904 Paris, ten years before the events of The Last Express, it would have been an early adventure of Robert Cath (still in medical school) and his best/worst friend Tyler Whitney (upgraded in this version to Cath’s half-brother — a change I don’t think I’d make today).
The plot bears a more-than-slight resemblance to The Da Vinci Code, which would be published the following year. No plagiarism was involved. I’d guess that Dan Brown and I had been reading the same pseudo-historical “research,” including Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Baigent and Leigh (who did, in fact, sue Brown for plagiarism, and lost). Whereas Brown treated their theory seriously, my approach was more tongue-in-cheek.
I’ve posted it here in case it interests anyone — as a glimpse into the early, rough-first-draft stages of the creative process. Mostly, the stories we read are ones that survive all the way to completion. This one, for many reasons, didn’t.
Rereading the screenplay fragment today, I can see why I abandoned it. There are things in it that I like, but it’s not really of a piece with The Last Express. It’s more fluffy and lightweight. It can’t quite decide whether it wants to be a movie in the Indiana Jones/Da Vinci Code spirit, or a spoof of that kind of movie. And, while I enjoyed the two main characters, I can’t quite see them growing up to be Cath and Tyler as Tomi Pierce and I originally conceived them.
Also, in 2002, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (the game) was gearing up production at Ubisoft Montreal, and my excitement for that project was growing while my sense of conviction on this one was dwindling. Ultimately, I dropped Red Serpent to give me more time for POP. It was the right decision.
The Last Express Remixed
A couple of years ago, for a fun weekend project, I captured a dozen hours of gameplay footage from my 1997 adventure game The Last Express and edited it down into a single, 75-minute linear narrative.
Other than a walk down memory lane, I’m not sure what it’s good for. It doesn’t work as a movie — the demands of game vs. film storytelling are too different — and the low-res, dissolve-between-still-frames animation looks awfully clunky now. But for anyone who’s interested, here it is (in eight 10-minute segments).
Spoiler alert: If you haven’t played the game, Part 8 gives away the ending.
The Last Express – Part 1 from jordan mechner on Vimeo.
Parts 2-8 are available here.
The Last Express remembered
Gamasutra posted a great interview with Mark Moran and Mark Netter about the making of The Last Express.
I’m writing this from London, where the Prince of Persia movie is shooting now. The Pinewood studios, originally built in the 1930′s, still feel very much of that era, at least to my L.A.-accustomed eyes. The contrast between the dilapidated physical infrastructure, and the state-of-the-art technology being used inside the stages, is striking.
Whereas the state-of-the-art technology we used to make The Last Express is now as quaint and dated as the 1914-era steam locomotives that were still in service when the Pinewood stages were built.
Pinewood is in an industrial park west of London. To get there, you take the A40 highway, which was originally a Roman road. It was already old in the sixth century, when Prince of Persia is set.
Jet lag makes me think about stuff like this.
