Vitals

North Atlantic Ocean, April 1912

Game: Titanic: Adventure Out of Time
Release Date: November 20, 1996
Producer: Andrew Nelson
Costume Designer: Stephen Brown

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Today’s post, which I believe is the first time I’ve ever covered a game or animated media, is a true labor of love. BAMF Style readers may recall that the Titanic has been one of my lifelong special interests, partially culminated by Titanic: Adventure Out of Time—a point-and-click computer game from the now-defunct company CyberFlix that I have thought about at least once a day for nearly thirty years.

Set aboard the ocean liner that struck an iceberg 114 years ago tonight on Sunday, April 14, 1912, Titanic: Adventure Out of Time follows British secret agent Frank Carlson on a race against time during Titanic‘s final night afloat. It’s a second chance for Carlson, whom we met thirty years later while contemplating his failed career in a cheap London flat just before he’s vaporized in an air raid… sending him hurtling back in time to his Titanic cabin C-73, just two hours before the fateful iceberg encounter. From there, the player has nearly free reign to explore the ship’s decks and engage with some innovatively—if somewhat creepily—animated NPCs that both help and hinder his mission.

Titanic: Adventure Out of Time was released nearly thirty years ago in November 1996, just over a year before James Cameron’s blockbuster plunged pop culture into Titanic-mania. However, the spirit was cooperative rather than competitive, as the famously meticulous Cameron had contacted CyberFlix to reference their sinking animations for his own film.

Even the protagonist’s rarely mentioned name indicates how deeply the game planners like writer/producer Andrew Nelson did their homework; there was indeed a real Frank Carlson who told author Walter Lord he planned to board the Titanic at Cherbourg with a first-class ticket until his car broke down, preventing him from reaching the ship in time to board, though early newspaper “death lists” still included his name, as he naturally failed to answer the roll call of survivors aboard the rescue ship Carpatha following the sinking… making him the ideal historical enigma for the protagonist whose fate can change each time the game is played. (It has since been established that Mr. Carlson’s yarn was likely fiction, and the gentleman on the death roll was actually Frans Olof Carlsson, a Swedish seaman who sadly did perish during the sinking.)

Though it’s impossible to save the Titanic within the game (turning the ship’s wheel just gets instantly corrected with a firm reprimand), Carlson’s actions can indirectly prevent further world catastrophes, whether it’s securing a valuable necklace or Rubaiyat that would be used to finance the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that ignites World War I, retrieving a notebook of Bolshevik names that would prevent the Russian Revolution, or even rescuing a painting by the young Adolf Hitler that ultimately stops World War II. As the combinations can change, so does the fate of the world, as we when catching up with Carlson again in 1942—which may now be a peaceful world… or one of even deeper chaos.

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What’d They Wear?

Costume designer Stephen Brown outfitted the game’s non-playable characters in a range of styles representing their respective attitudes, activities, and the economically informed class in which they’re traveling aboard Titanic. Proceeding alphabetically by characters’ first names:

Andrew Conkling

Played by Michael Prescott. The successful but corrupt Conkling dresses in a curious blend of a black tuxedo with satin-faced peak lapels, a cream shirt with a spread collar and front placket, and a uniquely tied gold necktie with a swirling black design.

Buick Riviera

Played by Rand Cabus. This beautifully automotive-named gambler is Titanic: Adventure Out of Time‘s sole carryover from CyberFlix’s previous game, Dust: A Tale of the Wired West. Riviera’s flamboyant eveningwear reflects his past from the smoky saloons of New Mexico, lounging in the first-class smoking room in a loud gold smoking jacket patterned with a large-scaled red medallion print and contrasting black-faced cran necker lapels. The rest generally follows black tie standards with his pale-ecru evening shirt, black bow tie, and black formal trousers.

Charles Lambeth

Played by Joe Loesch. This boorish drunkard is your romantic rival, married to Carlson’s former lover Georgia (Biz Lyon), and exemplifying the increasingly popular trend among first-class gentlemen of dinner suits eclipsing full evening dress of white tie and tails for semi-formal occasions. His black single-breasted dinner jacket his peak lapels and his white evening shirt has a wing collar, narrow front pleats, and curiously informal single-button squared barrel cuffs. He completes the look with the requisite black bow tie that gives the dress code its name.

Rev. Edgar Troutt

Played by Ed Wright. Ahhh!! The terrifying Edgar Troutt was always a jump-scare encounter for me, a dynamic that gets worse if you stay on board Titanic long enough to hear his jarring confession just before the ship sinks. Traveling in second class, his attire is a little more mid-20th century than Edwardian, sporting a brown, black, and rust gun club check jacket with narrow notch lapels, paired with a solid brown waistcoat and trousers rather than a full matching suit. His plain white shirt has a front placket with the top button undone along with his loosened black-and-gray downhill-striped tie.

The reverend’s name may have been a reference to Miss Edwina Troutt, a real-life Titanic survivor who also traveled in second class. Having likely left in collapsible D, the last lifeboat officially launched from Titanic, Edwina lived to be 100 years old when she died in December 1984.

Eric Burns

Played by Erik S. Quist. The jilted photographer follows Lord Charles’ example of black-tie eveningwear, right down to the peak-lapel jacket and wing collar, though his shirt’s front bib has much wider pleats.

Henry Gorse-Jones

Played by Stefano Magaddino… not the Buffalo Mafia boss. The diminutive husband of the more domineering Ribeena Gorse-Jones wears a brown lounge suit with a peak-lapel sack jacket, white shirt, and a muted rust bow tie with a single pointed end.

Jack Hacker

Played by Jay Staub. An Irish immigrant traveling in third-class, Jack models a typically hardy—and impressively timeless—steerage style in his dark-navy wool pea coat and slate-gray flannel shirt buttoned to the neck, finished with a navy flat cap tilted on his head.

Third Officer John Morrow

Played by John Mayer… no, not that one. Titanic: Adventure Out of Time seemingly blends the real First Officer Murdoch, Second Officer Lightoller, and mustached Third Officer Pitman into the fictional Third Officer Morrow, a disciplined seaman who softens with some patient, authentic discussion that has him reflecting on moonless nights and the Boer War.

Morrow wears a dark navy wool White Star Line uniform characterized by a stately double-breasted reefer jacket with its two columns of five gilt buttons, though the four gold bands braided over each cuff were exclusively reserved for ship’s captains; chief officers wore three, first officers wore two, and the second officer and junior officers—including third officer—all had a single-striped band. He also wears a white shirt with a stiff point collar, plain black tie, and an officers’ peaked cap with a gilt White Star Line logo shining against the dark navy cover.

Leland Sachem Trask

Played by Phil Campbell. A psychic seer and fan of Oreos, Trask regularly aids Carlson’s mission by providing readings on the various objects collected over the course of your mission. He wears a tan single-breasted tailored jacket with notch lapels, a white shirt, and a red-on-red tonal silk tie fastened in a thick knot. He joins Rev. Troutt as one of the few characters to wear a waistcoat, sporting a brown fancy single-breasted vest that barely contrasts against his taupe trousers.

Max Seidelman

Played by Tom Parkhill. As long as you don’t immediately dismiss him as a cardsharp, the Philadelphia store buyer can be a helpful (if unwitting) ally during your mission. His tacky style matches his loud personality, dressed in an ochre shadow-plaid smoking jacket with a brown velvet collar and fringed cuffs, a cream evening shirt with narrow pleats, a russet bow tie, and brown trousers.

Sasha Barbicon

Played by Kevin Garrett. Described as “an oily sort” by the official walkthrough guide published in 1996, this shady Serbian owner of Barbicon Galleries wears a curious getup of a charcoal-blue frock coat with black velvet lapels and what appears to be a gold-and-tan paisley day cravat that covers his chest, save for a cream shirt collar over it.

Vlad Demonic

Played by Tom Appleton, with a voice provided by the game’s co-progammer Todd Appleton. Vlad’s last name tells you all you need to know about this brutal character, a Serbian stowaway who survived four days belowdecks eating rats. His lean but muscular frame is wrapped in a distressed and oversized brown single-breasted topcoat with wide peak lapels, a two-button front, and three-button cuffs, layered over a plain light-blue crew-neck jersey tucked into brown trousers.

Willi von Haderlitz

Played by Sean M. Allen. This young German protégé to the fearsome Colonel Zeitel dresses appropriately collegiate for his role as a junior professor at the University of Vienna, wearing a brown tweed sports coat, beige shirt, a brown plaid cardigan with cream trim, and a dark micro-dotted tie. He is one of the few characters we ever see dressed in anything else, as he dons fencing foil for a few rounds in the squash court.

Colonel Zeitel

Played by William Benson. The game’s primary antagonist, Oberst E.E. Zeitel is an officer of the Imperial German high command, strutting through the Titanic in his tan safari-like jacket and matching trousers over a black mock-neck jumper. The single-breasted jacket has notch lapels that stop high over a gilt-buttoned front matching the single gilt button closing each scalloped flap of his two patch chest pockets and two bellows hip pockets. He wears a full leather belt over the jacket waist, and he keeps the two epaulet loops over his shoulders free of the shoulder boards that would indicate rank.

I don’t believe this is (nor is meant to be) his uniform jacket, as contemporary German officer tunics buttoned up to the neck with a standing collar, but it still affects an appropriately martial appearance.

Frank Carlson

Played by… you! Last but not least, our protagonist is the only major character not represented by an actor, seen sparingly in cutscene animations to be a generic thirtysomething white man in a black three-piece suit and tie—an appropriately staid look for a serious secret agent. He likely keeps that gold pocket-watch tucked in the pocket of his waistcoat.

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The Gun

All of the gun-carrying characters—including Sasha Barbicon, Colonel Zeitel, Vlad Demonic, and Third Officer Morrow—carry an identical snub-nosed revolver. Though short-barreled revolvers had been commercially produced for decades by the time that the Titanic sailed in 1912, the firearm used in the game appears to resemble a later snub-nosed Colt like the anachronistic Colt Detective Special, not produced until 1927.

Although it may get him out of a few jams, our agent Carlson doesn’t ever carry a firearm. The closest he receives to a weapon is the pen he’s given by his superior, Penny Pringle, which releases knockout gas when activated. The player has the option to use it against Zeitel atop the Titanic‘s fourth smokestack just after the ship hits the iceberg; this avoids getting shot and wounded by Zeitel, but Carlson still gets knocked out by Vlad upon returning belowdecks.

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the game, even decades after it was rendered obsolete by the march of Windows and Mac operating systems, as software engineer Daniel Hobi painstakingly rebuilt it online.

Or, if you’re in the neighborhood, you can stop by. My kindhearted dad, who fed my Titanic obsession in third grade by giving me his dog-eared paperback of Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember and taking me to see Titanic on New Year’s Day, surprised me on my thirtieth birthday by refurbishing a 1990s laptop for the sole purpose of me being able to play my old Titanic: Adventure Out of Time CD-ROMs on it anytime I want!

For fans of the game, I also recommend watching David Beaver’s documentary, The Making of Titanic: Adventure Out of Time. I feel a kindred spirit with David, who shares my sentiment when he says “it’s burned into my memory for being a game unlike any other.”