Theme of sunk steamboats in pop-culture aren't that popular, at all. Aside from Cameronson movie about boat hitting an iceberg there are not a whole lot about them, but we ain't gonna talk about this one today. There is one somewhat-popular book about liner from Paul Gallico, The Poseidon Adventure, 1969. Don't forget to raik and submarine, hit that bell you fuck.
The Poseidon Adventure 1969
Old cruise liner bouncing on waves in the middle of some ocean. Suddenly, underwater slabs start to move, giant wave rises and flips boat belly up. That's about first 100 pages out of 400. Main difference about Poseidon from Tictoknik is that, the first one faced earth disaster, when second could've been easily saved if people didn't fool around too much. So, about 500 of passangers on the ship, evening, everybody having a diner. We have bunch of main characters: old pair, family, cop with wife, some salesman, drunk couple, billionare and priest, also few crew members. They have somewhat of an introduction to them.
Long story short, wave hits the ship, we upside down and have to get out, now. No one has any idea of what's going on, who's alive, who's dead, who's harmed. Priest calls out folks and builds up a team of survivalists. They start to get out out of the ship. For those who aren't familiar with these vessels, it's like an apartment building. 300m long with water displacement about 80 000 ton. Titanek was 46 000 ton and about 270m long. Tl;DR this is a massive beast, however today we have even bigger boats.
Priest wastes no time and tries to talk everyone out of the ship, cuz if they don't, they'll all drown here. Those, who was on upper decks already dead. I ain't no shipbulider (although I previously worked on one factory), but at some point in history people figured out how to build a ship so that she can arrive at destination point in any given position: upright, on its side, belly up, doesn't matter. But the book is fantasy, and I can't really give a coherent answer about one ship or the other, to tell if it were up to be swimming in such manner or how many time would pass for it to spin under hit of a killer-wave.
Story unfolds in a usual manner: group goes up to the bottom. To get to the part of the bottom where metal is thin and you can make an escape. From time to time they find and lose members of the group. Boat wobbles, or water come up, something like that. All that heavy action comes with tons of tears and nonstop chatter instead of making proper moves to save their lives. They make dumb decidions, refuse from continuing, cry about with no reason and getting down on everyone's nerves. With all that most sane members try to calm and uplift the spirit of whole team.
In the end they get out, those who still alive, and ship is sinking completely. Book from 60's and all about God and God alone. Every one is praying God to save them (very good strategy), no one has any will in them, however God will save them (also very good strategy). There are also few sex scenes and one rape, multiple mutilations, death from every type of hazard. There are also gay people, yeah.
Overall, it's an interesting action book in unique genre. I was able to track down 4 movies and 2 games, based on it. Movies are "based" as "ship is sunk"-level based. Sex and gay included, they cannnot not to add these parts, of course. Some characters from the book appear here and there, but not all of them and not all the time.
Poseidon Adventure 1972
First movie, in my opinion, is best one out of all, however it's loosely based on the book. Bunch of people missing, plot twists aren't the same, death are different, etc. Just like in the book, killer-wave hits the boat. Poseidon itself here is a new ship, not old one. Spoilers ahead: priests goes mad in the book and jumps into a pit. In the movie he was opening the valve, that leads to the last part of the ship, however he got tired and felt into the pit. Ms. Rosen, fat swimmer died in the end of the book, but in the movie she experienced a heart stroke right after the big swim. Small boy got lost and never to be found, but in the all of the movies he is saved. And so on.
Actors may not 100% represent thier book counterparts, still do a p good job, and if you take that movie was done right after the book release - I'd say give it a watch, it's alright.
Beyond Poseidon Adventure 1979
Big-Brain Bounty Hunters decide to rob a sunking ship. Yeah, well she isn't sunk yet, so they try their luck with that. Story is pretty dumb, actors walk around like they on a guide in museum, not a sunking boat, which might go down at any moment. There is some terrorist who wants to take his cargo of plutonium or some shit. This movie is just bad overall.
Poseidon something 2005
In 2005 we are having another based on book movie, however there is a twist. Instead of killer-wave, we have some kinda terrorists who transport bombs in beer barrels. Its around middle-east USA wars timeline, so our villans are some jews and arabs. Movie is 3 hour long, dog gammit, and ship flips only after 1 hour. It's a 2 part movie. So, basically we have all the main characters here, more or less. It's more of a remake of 72 movie, rather than a book itself.
For example, scene with tablecloth and daughter is present in both movies, but not in the book. Its just this movie based in modern day with a new modern liner. Priest here is Rutger Hauver and father of Shelby family is Mahoney from Police Academy. Sadly, movie is pretty bad, nor actors, nor length of the movie saves it...
Poseidon something 2006
Who would've thought, but we have another movie a year after. This one has a bigger budget and only 90 min long. Ship sinks only 20 min in, so its a good start. Bad thing is that you can't really tell who is who, but they team up nonetheless and start to making their way out. Priest is played by Kurt Russel. However, it doesn't really help the movie. 90 min mark helps make it more of an action packed movie outta all of them. There are no terrorists, just the regular killer-wave.
Roles of characters change and swap from one film to the other. It's all surface level and doesn't really make the book justice. From what I found, that's all the movies based on a Poseidon book. Hilarrioussly fast speed of ship turning on its belly changes from half an hour to 30 seconds. However main plot stays the same: group of people trying to get out.
Main idea: no one but us.
Okay, now it's time to talk about games. In the 90s there were two game loosely based on the book. Septentrion (in the west SOS) for Super Famicom (Super Nintendo) and it's sequel-remake Septentrion: Out of the Blue for PS1. Wait, what sequel, isn't ship sunk? Well, it's another ship and it's also sunk. Both are HUMAN titles, you might know them from Clock Tower and Fire Pro Wrestling. That's why in this forum. Suda has nothing to do with these, from what I can tell.
Septentrion (SOS)
Concept is simple: steamboat upside down and we need to get out. Preferably, save as many other people as we can. Kinda like Dead Rising, but 10 years prior. 16-bit title is a platformer, where you need to get out from the ship. We have an hour, a real life hour, before boat is completely sunk. Saving people here is pretty bad - AI works like shit, to say the least (Dead Rising 1 level). First, you need to talk for 5 hours with each fucker in order to make them follow you, if they decide to do it. They get stuck on every platform, so you have to backtrack a lot in order for them to catch up to you.
Sooner or later you gonna fall and knock your head, losing 5 min of time. Sometimes boat vibrates and changes its angle, making it harder for you to progess, or in some extreme cases, you get trapped and have to wait...some time for it to change again. Game has great music and somewhat interesting gameplay. I've managed to escape of 5 or 6 attempt. Alone that is.
Game has western release, so you can play it in English. I dunno, if characters are same as in the book, or the movies, and I don't really care. Ship name is different.
Septentrion: Out of the Blue
Towards the end of its existence, HUMAN released either a remake or a sequel to the game about a steamship. This time in 3D, and you know how good 3D games are on PS1. The controls are rather clumsy, like a tank, but you can get used to it, even if not right away. A fixed camera doesn't help either. Just like in the last game, we are waiting for survivors who do not want to be saved, identical corridors, and a time limit in which if we do not meet it, we will drown. Also, there are 3D platforming too, kinda like Tomb Rider.
We don't have a choice of characters; instead, we play as them one by one. True, I didn’t go far, only to the second man Carter, there I had to pick some guy up from the lower deck, but I still didn’t understand how to get there, I found a fire extinguisher, but how to use it - zero ideas, there are dead ends everywhere and there’s not much else to go to. The ship is also all the same, it is not possible to understand where you are and where you need to go. Probably, if you die 10 times and study the entire plan, then some idea will appear...
Here, by the way, unlike the 16-bit version, you die with one fall, it doesn’t take 5 minutes from your timer. But you can save it in phones that are located in different places. The game has a cool, dramatic soundtrack, and the game itself looks decent. Let the picture burst at the seams in places. In the West, the game does not actually exist, there is not a single guide on gamefaqs, there are a couple of videos on YouTube, but nothing concrete.
Probably, Disaster Report and Dead Rising became the ideological successors of this type of games. Where you need to save yourself and get people out if possible. But for some reason they stopped making games about steamships, although the idea is still worthwhile, and if implemented with the budget of the Uncharted, it would have turned out to be a great thing. Provided that the AI of the survivors was normal and they did not run into walls trying to get out of the ship.
There is something mesmerizing about giant upside-down steamships, which is probably why I was attracted to this topic in the first place.
I'd recommend watching first '72 movie, playing SOS SNES and if you're really curious, trying a PS1 game...but oh boy, good luck with that one.
