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Unlikely, but here nonetheless.

<span class="bold">Starship Titanic</span>, a long-lost Douglas Adams adventure, is available now for Windows, DRM-free on GOG.com.

Douglas Adams told a very brief story once, it took up one standard page at most, depending on whatever font was selected for the exact copy you might have stumbled upon at the library, your aunt's place or wherever it is that you browse through assorted bookshelves. This was just one of his very many stories, and while some were told before and some after, it was this particular one that just happened to inspire the proper person who just happened to be born at the right time, the right place, and was presently in the right kind of mood to make a video game.

This is the tale of a glorious, flying monument to humanity's rather presumptuous dominance over life, the universe, and everything. And this, is how the unlikely story of the Starship Titanic was born:






"The designers and engineers decided, in their innocence, to build a prototype Improbability Field into it, which was meant, supposedly, to ensure that it was Infinitely Improbable that anything would ever go wrong with any part of the ship. They did not realize that because of the quasi-reciprocal and circular nature of all Improbability calculations, anything that was Infinitely Improbable was actually very likely to happen almost immediately. The Starship Titanic was a monstrously pretty sight as it lay beached like a silver Arcturan Megavoidwhale amongst the laser-lit tracery of its construction gantries, a brilliant cloud of pins and needles of light against the deep interstellar blackness; but when launched, it did not even manage to complete its very first radio message - an SOS - before undergoing a sudden and gratuitous total existence failure." -- Douglas Adams in Life, the Universe and Everything.






A strikingly similar and perhaps slightly ironic, was the fate of the Starship Titanic - the game - which has also vanished from any understandable plane of existence. Only recently has it been located by a GOG.com user who goes by nothing more, and nothing less than tfishell. Thanks guy, for putting us in touch.

Embark on an improbable adventure aboard the <span class="bold">Starship Titanic</span>, DRM-free on GOG.com.
Very glad to see this game here, many thanks to everyone involved who made it happen.

I actually had a boxed copy of this game signed by Douglas Adams but lost it in a fire. Would eagerly buy the digital replacement here if it actually came with the goodies from the retail release.
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ABH20: Very glad to see this game here, many thanks to everyone involved who made it happen.

I actually had a boxed copy of this game signed by Douglas Adams but lost it in a fire. Would eagerly buy the digital replacement here if it actually came with the goodies from the retail release.
oh, losing a signed copy would be heartbreaking!

There weren't exactly that many goodies with the base retail release. There was the in-flight magazine - for which there is a PDF in this digital release, and red-blue 3D glasses - which isn't exactly a downloadable content.

Some releases included a sample of the bookreading of the Starship Titanic novel, and some had the Strategy Guide, but they weren't included in all releases. They may also have different rights issues compared to the basic game.

The only thing I think they could reasonably have included but didn't was the booklet in the CD case - which is a brief installation/howtoplay/credits booklet, so half redundant now.

Anyway, the game is cheap. Why skip it?
Thank you GoG! What a pleasant surprise to see Douglas Adams' game back alive! You guys are doing a great job digging up old treasures this year!
Very cool! Thanks for this :)
I remember seeing a full-page ad for this game in the Swedish PC Gamer magazine (or possibly one of the others, but I mostly red PC Gamer back then) and I remember the artwork of the ship floating just above what I thought was a deep sea bed being quite scary looking. It gave me a sense of dread and claustrophobia that really fascinated me as an early teenager. I never actually played the game however, but now it is here so on the wishlist it goes for me to remember when I need another game.

Not that I actually need another game with a backlog of about a hundred titles, but we all know what it is like to be a GOGer...
Wonderful and much appreciated release!
I bought the CD version ages ago but never got around to actually playing it and these days most likely wouldn't even get it installed, so it's great so see it here. :-)
Looks nice, probably worth a closer look.
I'm so excited for this! I've spent hours trying to hack together a Mac OS9 emulator machine to run old disc copies of this game and never with much success. Now it's $8.50 AUD for a working, DRM-Free copy. This is one of the many reasons I love GOG! Thanks team!
So is this game similar to Myst?
So...anyone tried this in WINE yet?

It's entry on the AppDB says that it does work, but with some graphical and rendering glitches on a very old (1.1.x) version.
Douglas Adams sounds like a cool guy. Wishlisted.
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IronArcturus: So is this game similar to Myst?
Quite similar; though the puzzles are slightly more straight forward, and the game is a comedic adventure.
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IronArcturus: So is this game similar to Myst?
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frrrrrrunkis: Quite similar; though the puzzles are slightly more straight forward, and the game is a comedic adventure.
Sounds cool! Does it run in a window?
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frrrrrrunkis: Quite similar; though the puzzles are slightly more straight forward, and the game is a comedic adventure.
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IronArcturus: Sounds cool! Does it run in a window?
Yes; however it does not shrink the experience greatly, and the game still looks pretty good in 1080p.
Attachments:
starship.png (239 Kb)
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IronArcturus: Sounds cool! Does it run in a window?
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frrrrrrunkis: Yes; however it does not shrink the experience greatly, and the game still looks pretty good in 1080p.
Can it run in a 1024x768 window?