Starship Titanic

Posted by Joe Brussel.
First posted on 08 July 1999. Last updated on 07 September 2009.
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Starship Titanic
Fortillian Bantoburn O'Perfluous is the charming BarBot on Starship Titanic.
Starship Titanic
The Parrot is voiced by Terry Jones of Monty Python.
Starship Titanic
This puzzle in the Music Room is among the many puzzles on Starship Titanic.
Starship Titanic
You are a guest on board the luxurious Galacticruiser Starship Titanic.
Starship Titanic
GPP Marsinta Drewbish is Starship Titanic's ultra-efficient DeskBot.

Squak! What are you lookin' at, eh? Think you're going to touch that game, eh? Get your 'ands of it, it's mine! Don't think I'll be missing you anytime soon, don't you think? That's my game, and you aren't touching it! And if you find any chicken, you know where to send it! The parrot lobby, that's where! Squak!

You are just sitting at home enjoying yourself and having a good time. Suddenly, out of the blue, a giant spaceship smashes into your house and effectively reduces it to a pile of rubble. A door opens and a seemingly nice robot walks out to offer you a complimentary cruise on the Galacticruiser Starship Titanic. Once aboard, you realize that this starship has apparently disappeared without a trace on the eve of its maiden voyage. Aside from all the damages it has done to your house, all the commotions it has caused on its home planet of Blerountis, and all of the damages to the paintwork, someone has also planted a bomb onboard--complete with an activation button with the instruction "Press to disarm"! Now, you hold the daunting task of fixing up this broken ship and repairing Titania, the ship's artificial intelligence. Only when you complete this task can you find your way home.

Starship Titanic is written by Douglas Adams, who is best known for his sci-fi novels The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The production value of this game is impressive. The graphics are sharp and are drawn on top of ray traced backgrounds. The over half a dozen beautifully animated robots called Bots show off the artistic prowess of the production artists. This game even features something you do not often see in today's games—a fully functional text parser. Each character is completely interactive. You are able to have meaningful (or not) conversation with the robots by using natural language through a little device called PET or Personal Electronic Thingy. Each character has over 10,000 prerecorded lines of dialog, marking an incredible feat all on its own. When is the last time you have a conversation about the causes of the great Blerountin war with a walking lampshade?

The text parser used in Starship Titanic is a proprietary natural language parser codenamed SpookiTalk. Supposedly, it allows for complex conversations between the player and the game's characters. However, controversy has risen concerning the true merit of this parser. Hacked executables reported by fans suggest that the program simply recognizes a long list of keywords and phrase, most of which are related to obscure references and in-jokes.

The entire starship is a joy to explore. Navigation is frame based, but every step you take is shown with extremely fast pre-rendered walking animation. The sound is terrific with lots of sound effects, along with some great music in between. Some music can be truly tacky at times (not in a bad way though), but these tunes are few and far between and are mostly intentional. Comedic elements are in the satiric style of Monty Python. It is a treat to hear Terry Jones as the voice of the annoying Parrot and Adams as the voice of the robot Succ-u-bus. It is rumored that the voice of the reluctant bomb is that of John Cleese (also of Monty Python), although the official credit is given to a pseudo-name "Kim Bread" in the game.According to the developer, the interior of the starship resembles "a mixture of the Ritz, the Chrylser building, Tutankhamen's tomb and Vencie" and is designed by the Oscar winning design team of Oscar Chichoni and Isabel Molina. The game is released in both CD-ROM and DVD-ROM versions. The DVD-ROM version of the game includes a free strategy book, but otherwise is identical to the CD-ROM version.

The gameplay in Starship Titanic is simply fun. The puzzles are mostly inventory based, but a good dose of other types of puzzles are also thrown into the game. The only major problem is that some puzzles can be extremely illogical. For example, a puzzle requires you to grab a parrot perch from a cage, but when you grab the parrot, the door shuts and locks itself to deny you access. Many puzzles require you to talk to the various robots that inhabit the ship, such as Fentible the forgetful DoorBot, Nobby the war veteran LiftBot, and Krage the BellBot. Interaction with the Bots can be fun or frustrating, as these Bots do not always respond back with anything legible or enlightening. Conversations with some characters, such as the annoying Parrot (complete with its own parrot lobby) and the snotty ReaLife® Superior Class DeskBot, can be a challenge. There are 7 Bots on board the Starship Titanic—Edmund Lucy Fentible the DoorBot, Fortillian Bantoburn O'Perfluous the BarBot, Marsinta Drewbish the DeskBot, Shorbut Sweet the Succ-U-Bus, Nobby the LiftBot, Krage Koyotoal IV the BellBot, and D'Astragar "D'Astragaaar" the Maitre d'Bot. Apparently, these robots are infused with personalities purchased and scanned at enormous expense by Starlight Lines for their exclusive new collection of Bots with Genuine People Personalities! At the beginning of the game, you are only offered a third class accommodation in a SGT (Super Galactic Traveler) suite. It is a tiny closet sized room with tacky plastic furniture that retracts into the wall. Part of the gameplay involves trying to manipulate the DeskBot into giving you an upgrade.

The interface in Starship Titanic is easy to use, employing the same point and click interface used in most other adventure games of today. There are more than 30 decks on the starship to be explored. As you upgrade from third to second to first class passenger status, more of the starship becomes open for exploration. You can inspect each and every one of these rooms. There are a few Full Motion Video sequences which feature Adams himself, although they neither impede nor really assist you with the game. While some puzzles on board the starship can be frustrating, you can never get completely stuck. A few clever puzzles are, in fact, very enjoyable. One puzzle prompts you to locate the ingredients for a drink for the BarBot that requires a smashed television set and a few pureed birds in the process ("no starlings were harmed in the making of this game," proclaims the game). There are a few sound based puzzles, but they are not hard even for those who are acoustically challenged.

Unfortunately, the game has several shortcomings. While the game is extremely funny and even silly at times, the story is a little shortsighted. For those of you who are interested in the finer details of the story, I suggest you check out the novel adaptation of this game bearing the same name written by Jones. Some puzzles are completely illogical or nonsensical, requiring you to perform numerous tedious tasks to accomplish a trivial goal which may or may not further your quest. Some jokes from the Parrot can grow tiresome. In fact, after you have played this game once, you may never want to hear another parrot joke in your life again!

Starship Titanic is a fun adventure game that definitively makes you laugh. It is a must for fans of Adams and Monty Python. The graphics are great and its refreshing gameplay creates a light and enticing gaming experience. The puzzles are entertaining but not too hard. The countless lines of game dialog are all well acted, including both Adams and Jones who have done their parts with great flare. The opportunity to play with a flexible text parser alone is enough incentive to try this game out. Just be quick to solve the puzzles before that incessant Parrot drives you over the edge.

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