Like most kids of my generation

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Watch a demo trailer for The Last Express


I grew up assuming that things like books, video games, music and movies, newspapers and magazines, once published, wouldn’t just disappear. If I ever wanted to revisit that 1981 issue of Softalk magazine, or read The Manchester Guardian‘s front page the day World War I broke out, surely some library somewhere would have a copy?

In reality, cultural artifacts are findable only so long as someone takes on the active responsibility to preserve, catalog and share them. Once gone, they’re gone forever. Historical oblivion is the default, not the exception.

That summer of 1993, as a last resort, we placed a whatsapp number database ad in a French railway enthusiasts magazine: “Seeking information about 1914 Orient Express.” One issue later, our phone rang.

The voice on the other end proposed that we meet in their club, in the basement of Paris Gare de l’Est. We passed through a glass door marked “No Access” to discover a cavern of rooms filled with vintage railway posters, books, and the biggest working model train set I’ve ever seen. Our informants—a pair of retired French railway employees—were waiting.

We explained what we were looking for, and what SNCF had told us. A glint appeared in the two gentlemen’s eyes. The elder of the pair leaned forward. “They think they destroyed the archives,” he said. “We took ‘em home. We’ve got ‘em.”

Resources
Play The Last Express, preserved at Internet Archive and emulated in the browser.
Play Prince of Persia, preserved at Internet Archive and emulated in the browser.
Learn more about Mechner and his body of work at

If you’ve played The Last Express, you know that they came through for us. Our Smoking Car Productions team in San Francisco was able to spend the next four years creating a faithful interactive 3D recreation of the historic luxury train, thanks to two trainmen in Paris who’d preserved a part of their company’s legacy that management didn’t consider worth saving.