Titanic: An Interactive Exploration (CD-i)

I know, I know, I lied before. But since I got CD-i emulation working, and today marks 112 years since the beginnning of the Titanic's maiden voyage, I could hardly pass up this opportunity for an impromptu software review.

"Titanic: An Interactive Exploration" - not to be confused with "An Interactive Journey" - is just one of a number of educational titles made for the Philips CD-i format and consoles. I first heard of it through the Video Game Critic and I told myself I'd like to have a good look at it when the technology became available for it. I eventually found that the best way to do it is with the Same CD-i library in RetroArch. Don't bother trying to run it in CD-i Emulator, it doesn't work. It hangs as soon as you make your first menu choice.

The biggest pull of this CD-i is that it's narrated by Patrick Stewart, whose bold dulcet tones really bring it to life. Among the extensive library of period pictures and illustrations on display is a selection of paintings by Titanic artist Ken Marschall, whose work decorated much of Titanic media in the 80s and 90s. Among the film footage is an extensive interview with Walter Lord, author of "A Night to Remember", as well as interviews with living survivors at that time. If your player had a Digital Video Card (DVC), some of these would be displayed in full-screen, but I guess Same CD-i doesn't really have that. Or I haven't configured it. I understand that it can be done in MAME, but I haven't figured out how to load discs in that... embarrassing, I know.

You can click through each topic and listen to everything at your own pace, or you can watch the three guided tours. The tours, however, have several glaring omissions, including, but not limited to: Titanic's stop at Cherbourg; the rescue efforts of the Carpathia; the involvement of the Californian; Molly Brown. Clicking through the topics in order is the way to get the full experience, as I do in the recording.

One key area is a cross-section of the ship. Here, you can highlight a selection of the rooms and listen to a brief description of them. This is paired with a diagram of the wreck site, in which you can highlight where the same rooms would be, either buried under tons of rusting iron, or sampling pieces of debris from those places.

The software also has on-screen deck plans to peruse, but inexplicably, E and G Decks are omitted. Besides, not every room is labelled. But it looks nice.

In the "Passengers & Crew" section, you can choose to view sequences of a handful of the same, playing only the scenes in which they appear. It's not the most balanced selection - there's three crew, five First Class, three Second Class, and only one Third Class - but between the body count and those few willing to speak about the disaster, what can you do?

Besides the ship and the disaster itself, there's a section about its rediscovery in 1985 and '86. It's somewhat brief; it'd only been about seven years since it was found, but it goes over some of the equipment that was used.

The epilogue features a "where are they now" segment with the interviewed survivors - all of whom have since passed on. Also here is an interactive passenger list and bibliography. At this point I should point out that this disc really benefits from a mouse, because every screen uses a cursor. If you're operating it with a normal D-pad, as I did, it's very slow and cumbersome. CD-i Emulator had this feature, but not Retroarch. Maybe there's a way to set it up, I don't know.

Tying all this together is an interactive timeline which sorts most events into chronological order, in large picture icons, as well as a few events not directly related to the Titanic.

As you tour this disc, take what it says with a pinch of salt; it represents the early 90s' understanding of the story. This was before "Adventure Out of Time", before James Cameron's blockbuster and his later dives and examinations, before even "Honor & Glory". Back then, we all inferred Thomas Andrews drowned in the First Class Smoking Room, that Margaret Brown liked to be called "Molly" (before even the musical called her that), that the central propeller had four screws instead of three, and that, based on the findings of the Titanica IMAX dive, faulty steel was partly to blame for the disaster. "Adventure Out of Time" played with this theory too, but really, this is not a road you want to go down.

That notwithstanding, this is a nice little piece to watch and/or listen to, if you can get your hands on it. It has a few little gems of information you might not have realised before, as well as titbits you'll be fascinated by. In the intro, for example, Walter Lord draws a parallel between the Titanic and the Challenger space shuttle disasters, which is something I never thought of myself, but now he brought it up, it's easy to see why.

(Speaking of space shuttles, there's another space-related multimedia package I'd like to take a look at that's also narrated by Patrick Stewart, called "Nine Worlds". Yeah, remember when Pluto was a planet!?)

Anyway, this is arguably the kind of thing that the CD-i was best at. Obviously it had its share of games, including the tacky Link and Zelda and Hotel Mario, as well as the gem that is Burn Cycle, and indeed there were quite a lot of games, some full-motion video games, but few actually discuss the multimedia products. Those things were big before the Internet, and yes, I am a sucker for multimedia.

Similarities can be drawn between this and "James Cameron's Titanic Explorer", which not only expands the historical aspects with clips from the movie, but also features QuickTime VR tours of the sets built for the same.

See, the CD-i is already proving to be very interesting. Might do more of these at some point!

Addendum: I think it's also worth pointing out that this disc appears to have been optimised for widescreen TVs, which were not at all common in 1992. If you have a widescreen TV which can only zoom the picture to fill the screen, all the menus would still be useable since none of the options would be cut off at either the top or bottom. Was this a way of future-proofing this disc? Did other CD-i titles do this? I guess I'll have to find out for myself.