POSTED BY

Brandon Boyer

AT 9:31 AM
Monday March 9, 2009

PCRetro

Jordan Mechner's The Last Express remixed as animated film

Continuing his terrific work fully archiving -- in diary and video form -- the process that led to the release of his landmark original Prince of Persia game, Jordan Mechner has remixed the entirety of his later, less well known, CD-ROM adventure The Last Express as a 75 minute cartoon.

He explains:

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).

The Last Express Remixed [Jordan Mechner, Vimeo playlist]

Previously:
Mechner talks film, game, graphic novel storytelling - Offworld

2 Comments

bdjsb7

#1 – 11:08 AM March 10, 2009

Just... wow.

This was one of my favorite games. Everything happened, more or less, in realtime. Snippets of conversation could be overheard if you were in the right place at the right time. Small chunks of each supporting character's story could be missed, lending to interesting replay possibilities. The game would even end in a variety of different ways based on how you play.
I've still got my copy, but haven't played it since I first tried getting it to run in XP.

JadedLion

#2 – 6:05 PM March 10, 2009

Wonderful soundtrack, I'll have to track it down.

Leave a comment