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Old 10-27-2006, 03:06 PM   #5
Once A Villain
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Dallas, TX
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Originally Posted by Arkay View Post
Its truly amazing how talented Jordan Mechner is. Its also equally shameful that his greatest masterpiece's commercial failure likely ended his game developing career.

So many hack developers announce ambitious games, with features and design elements so innovative and ingenious that the gaming public is swept away by the promises...and much more often than not, very few of the promises are ever fully kept, very few ambitions truly met.

But The Last Express set out to do everything it the technology of the time and the limits of human imagination would allow, and did so as magnificently as interactive entertainment has ever been able to.

Hopefully something will come in the future that will define a genre and create a unique experience as brilliantly as Last Express did. I only wish I'd bought it when it was first released, if only to support Mechner.
I failed Mechner when the game was originally released too. This is why I always buy games now when they are NEW. I refuse to be one of those people who complains about the state of the adventure genre, but then fails to pay full price for the quality releases that the genre still provides. There aren't many these days, but when there are, I buy them.

However, my failure to purchase The Last Express when it was new wasn't entirely my fault. I don't remember the game being advertised well at all. I mean, I was very much into adventure games back then. I remember salivating over the Christmas release of Gabriel Knight 2, and that was in 1995. I truly believe I would have purchased The Last Express had I known much about it at all, instead of picking it up on Ebay years later. The Last Express was the game that Blade Runner claimed it was going to be. Blade Runner failed to come through on those promises, while a much less hyped adventure managed to do so. Wish I had bought the less hyped one instead of the big blockbuster...
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