C64 Longplay: RMS Titanic (FULL WALKTHROUGH) (Part 1 of 3)
43Part 2 of 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbBR2Tur294&t=3881s
I finally managed to complete this underwater-exploration/puzzle/strategy game from 1986 with the invaluable help of a Stefan Schoenfelder, who had uploaded complete maps and a walkthrough. How on earth he did it I don’t know as this is an immensely complicated and truly painstaking experience, even while following a walkthrough.
I used a number of save-states in order to help me progress. The original unemulated game only allowed you to save your progress to disk/tape, as accessed through the Surface Screen...
Anyway, the goal in the game is to get the Titanic to the surface, achieved by juggling a number of objectives:
The first objective is to keep face with the financiers in order to maintain your balance. 0:05 shows The Finance Room, as accessed from the Surface Screen. The six financiers must be appeased by taking appropriate photographs of the ship’s various relics and also by selling ones you deem valuable (these can be sent to them from below at the deck you entered from The Diving Screen).
Here you may view your current balance and repair costs, or phone any of your backers if you wish to borrow money, though this isn’t always necessary as we shall see…
The second objective is to keep face with the press. The answers you give them will either reflect well or badly. You’ll have to use intuition and common sense. For example, if asked, “Will you be bringing any dead bodies up?”… well, that’s a fairly obvious example, though some aren’t. See 54:13 for example (I may have answered some of these dishonestly or wrongly which possibly reflects badly later on, though doesn’t prevent you from winning the game…)
At 0:10 is The Deck Screen in which you can enter one of five decks (in this case we start with the fifth).
At 22:00 is where you begin in your sub. Third objective here: use the relics you find accordingly to solve puzzles, thus opening doors. Hit "N" to see what room it is and "SPACE" to enter.
The puzzles are fairly logical, e.g. Ace with Pack of Cards, Left Shoe with Right Shoe… and some use related words, e.g. Discharge Papers + Driver with Electric Eel… so it’s a combination of common sense and intuition.
There are 117 movable relics and about 51 fixed ones. You must take the correct movable one to the fixed one in order to open a door in that room (see 1:54 for example), or in some cases another room (like with the Switchboard puzzle…).
You must also keep track of the relics that you have dropped in order to use them again later. This is a bitch and requires a lot of backtracking (save-stating in this case).
Use the Robot Arm to pick up/manipulate relics. You can carry up to four at a time. While holding a relic, you may photograph it. You get six snaps for each time you surface. Be sparing with these as they eventually run out (which, to my horror, I discovered later on…). You can choose to show these to the press later if you wish.
The Whalebone Corset at 2:19 is an example of one such relic you can sell to the financiers. If there’s no sale then it will be returned to the location you sent it up.
You may turn the lights up or dim them accordingly. Dimming them saves power. The lights will eventually dim themselves and go out. If this happens, hit “H” to call for help and you will be returned to The Deck Screen.
The help option is also handy if your sub is damaged due to carelessness (crashing into walls or breaking the Robot Arm).
You may also drop buoys in order to help you track certain locations (shown by the radar screen above the timer) though it wasn't needed in this case thanks to save-states.
At 6:19 you will see that one of the red arrows has turned green. This indicates that you may go down one deck. If both green you may go up or down.
At 11:12 is part of the main objective: you must locate eight of these buttons and activate them in order to set off the flotation bags that finally raise the Titanic. In some cases, such as this one, the Robot Arm will get damaged and cost you some money for repairs. Minimal damages won’t ruin the game, though.
20:22 shows the result of selling the Whalebone Corset.
41:55 shows an example of combining two relics (two key parts, in this case) and sending them to The Lab for repair. These relics will return as a new one 30 minutes later in the same place you sent it up (indicated by a “bleep!”). As with relics you can’t sell, ones inappropriate for the lab will also be sent back.
52:42 shows an example of being recalled to the surface for an interview. Ignoring this is a bad idea.
Overall, RMS Titanic is ingenious and well designed, though can be very plodding and tedious. Not my favourite type of game as it requires a huge amount of patience and concentration though its an “immersive” and atmospheric experience.
You may read the manual/supplement here: https://archive.org/details/RMS_Titanic_1987_Activision
See the next video for more...