We won't sink! This is the 20th century!

Titanic: Adventure Out of Time marks its 30th anniversary this October. It's been over 20 years since I played it for the first time. Either way, that's a chunk of change.

When I was starting out in middle school, I somehow got myself interested in the history of the Titanic. It was really just a ship that sank on its maiden voyage, but it was a pretty big deal, because the Olympic and the Titanic were two of the great ocean liners. With its quiet elegance and ostentation, the Olympic class liner was a true queen of the sea, which may have been forgotten if not for the terrible tragedy that befell the Titanic.

Anyway, the DK Eyewitness book features some promotional screenshots of what was simply referred to as "a 3D video game". Being a computer buff at the time, I was eager to learn more, and after some searching, I identified the game as "Titanic: Adventure Out of Time" and bought a copy.

At first, I stuck to the section of the program that allows you to tour the ship. Certainly, it was pre-rendered 3D, and you were restricted to areas that serve a purpose in the actual game, but it was remarkable all the same. I was able to find the tour guides and add them to the game as well. The way the characters were animated was certainly unusual, but it worked well, lending it a distinctive style. Eventually I graduated to playing the game proper, dissecting it based on what I could glean from other players, but it wasn't until later on that I fully appreciated the story, set in a backdrop of pre-war political intrigue, similar to The Last Express, though unlike that game which runs in real time, this one goes at a more sedate pace. And unlike that game where it's too late to stop the Great War breaking out, your eventual goal here is to stop it from happening entirely, along with other events which threaten the peace. While it may be somewhat unlikely that those events would've happened independently of World War I, there is much catharsis to be found in breaking the chains that cause them anyway.

Of course, everything you see in this game was based on the limited knowledge we had of the Titanic in the 90's. Nowadays, there are more historically accurate productions like "Titanic: Honor & Glory" which demonstrate the opulence of one of the finest ships in the world in more detail than I ever could've dreamed as a middle school kid - but "Adventure Out of Time" will always be that game that links me to that frozen landscape of the past. I'm always interested to learn more about the game that I've never known before, and to see others play it for themselves. I'm still pretty bummed that I missed Brutalmoose play this game by mere days. If only the past could be changed, right?

Update: Now I think about it, I think this may be the first game I actually completed, at least legitimately. Later, when replaying the game, I found out that you can save Georgia while getting the painting back from Zeitel. But whether Georgia lives or dies has no effect on the ending, so I wouldn't have known at first, but at least this time I know I've earned a happy ending.