Starship Titanic

by Simon & Schuster

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000069CCI
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: May 16, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #18,177 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

At the heart of a galaxy of which we know nothing, the greatest, most advanced starship ever known has been built--the Starship Titanic. It is fabulous, beautiful and technologically miraculous. On its maiden voyage it crashes into hyperspace and vanishes.

The first you know of it is when you are sitting at home having a quiet evening in front of the TV and the most fabulous starship in the galaxy crashes into your home. You find your way on board (or not, if you just want to play the two minute version of the game) and are confronted with an interior which resembles a mixture of the Ritz, the Chrysler Building, Tutankhamen's tomb, and Venice.

The ship is inhabited by traumatized robots, a lobotomized cyberintelligence, a frankly unhinged parrot and, as the ship takes off, taking you deep into unknown interstellar space, you realize that life on board as a third class passenger is going to be tough going. You find yourself in the grip of one of the most powerful forces known to modern man--the desire for a free upgrade.

Your task is to discover what has happened here, to reveal the deep conspiracy that lies behind this catastrophic failure, to repair the ship's intelligence and guide the ship back home. To do this you will have to gain the trust of the robots, which you do the same way you would with anybody else--by talking to them. State-of-the-art language technology lets you do this.

Strange characters, stunning environments, wild satire, and a series of puzzles of escalating weirdness all add up to...

Starship Titanic--The Ship That Cannot Possibly Go Wrong.

Product Description

At the heart of our Galaxy, an advanced civilization of which we know nothing has built the biggest, most beautiful starship ever, the Starship Titanic. To begin with, you are a third class passenger, and you quickly find yourself in the grip of one of the most powerful forces known to modern man, the desire for a free upgrade. As you move up to second and at last to first class, more and more of the ship becomes accessible to you, and more and more of its mystery unravels.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars goofy but good., March 25, 2003

By 

Black Cat de La Bear "see that dark shape o'r... (those dark halls) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Starship Titanic (CD-ROM)

This is a fun game, a bit goofy, but that's Douglass Addams. It seems so goofy at times that it doesn't seem like your in space at all, but on a clown barge. Who cares. The characters are quirky and have personality, not "personality" and what I like most is that I can say anything I want to them, for example; flirt to the reseptionist(who looks like a toaster)or threaten her, or tell the broom to go clean the toilet. Or just ask stupid questions to the other beings on the ship. It is a funny and smart game. The bomb is especially funny. You must watch Monty Python to know the answer though.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Quirky and fun but difficult, March 8, 2004

By 

Aussiemystic "aussiemystic" (Sydney, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Starship Titanic (CD-ROM)

I've heard it said elsewhere that "those with a logical mind will hate this game, since it's based on the skewed logic and warped humour of Douglas Adams".

I have a logical mind, but also enjoy Adams' humour. The difficulty comes with meeting the two of them together in a computer game, where you have to think like he does to solve some of the problems. If you ever wanted to know what it might feel like to be a character in an Adams novel, here's your chance. The surrealistic nature of some of the puzzles in this game made them extremely difficult, and I did resort to a walkthrough frequently.

It didn't help that I think there are several story-related glitches in the game. There are a couple of places where you can find yourself stuck - that is, if you do a certain thing before taking adequate notes, or solve puzzle A before puzzle B, you can find yourself unable to solve a subsequent puzzle. This was extremely annoying because sometimes I would know what I needed to do but be unable to do it. In a couple of places this required me to restart the game from a very early save. There were also several puzzles where there were several obvious possible ways of obtaining an item but the game required you to find only one, much more obscure way - always an annoyance of mine in adventure games.

The system whereby you type what you want to say to the various 'bots on the ship harks back to the old text-based adventures, rather than the more usual dialogue trees that we see nowadays in adventure game. It will also remind you of how annoying these can be - you can be saying the right thing but in the wrong way and the game will not respond. Also, to obtain several key items you have to call in one of the 'bots to get it for you, even though the 'bot isn't normally seen in that area.

The game is non-linear. Without spoiling too much, the aim is to collect a number of items scattered throughout the ship in order to regain control of its central intelligence unit and be able to pilot yourself home. Most of these can be collected in any order so if one puzzle is causing you grief you can work on another. Note that some locations around the ship have multiple uses and play a role in more than one puzzle.

The graphics look pretty good - slightly dated now but still quite lush. The voice acting is good (including Adams himself, and Monty Pythons Terry Jones & John Cleese) and although some speeches go on for a long time you can usually skip listening to the whole speech, and the full text appears in a dialogue window.

The version of the game I played came on 3 CDs in a jewel case, although the game installs fully onto your hard drive. There was no manual, although I understand the initial packaging came with a manual that described some of the controls and the original box had a diagram on it that helps solve one of the puzzles (although the same image can be found hidden in the game).

I found it fun to walk around another Adams-designed starship, but at the same time frustrating to have to apply Adams-style absurdist logic to solve a lot of the puzzles.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Starship Obscure, October 16, 2002

By 

Templeton C. Moss "Templeton Moss" (Taylorsville, KY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Starship Titanic (CD-ROM)

After an exhaustive search for this title I suppose it was silly of me not to look at Amazon.com first thing. When it arrived I was on Cloud Nine. See, I'm a huge Douglas Adams fan and have acquired as many of his works as possible. And I heard that this was supposed to be a game unlike any other so I knew I had to have it. And they were right. Unlike any other.

The story is that a huge and luxurious space-liner has crash-landed in your house and it is up to you to fix it. See, the ship has lost its mind and bits of it are scattered all around the ship. it's up to you to find all the bits of Titania, the ships personality, it's spirit if you will, to get yourself home to Earth.

You do this by navigating through the rooms and interacting with robots and things around you. Your first challenge is to upgrade from third to second class, and to do this you must talk to the Deskbot. Type in a simple sentence like "Can I have a free upgrade?" and just like magic, she will say "No."

The graphics are beautiful, done by Academy Award winners. The challenges are difficult, but not too difficult that you couldn't solve them by yourself if you had thirty or forty years to spend on this game and this game alone. Douglas Adams himself appears as the voice of the Suc-U-Bus (a system that transports things throughout the ship) and his face appears as that of Leovinus, the man who designed the ship. The cast also includes a brief, uncredited cameo by John Cleese as an annoying bomb and perhaps the most memorable performance of fellow Python alum Terry Jones' entire career: As a parrot.

Hearing Jones squawk, "Ooh, look who it is! The bringer of chickens, I DON'T think!" is worth the price of the game alone.