The Longest Journey

1001 Video Games

The Longest Journey appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

April Ryan

The publisher of The Longest Journey, Egmont Interactive, actually tried to turn April Ryan into a pop icon to match Lara Croft. To that end, they cast a real-life model for April -- 23 years old psychology student Katja Koopmann of Bremen, Germany -- and toured the major magazine and newspaper offices with her, dressed up like April and sputtering lines like “I find April sympathetic” with a somewhat forced smile. Once the PR machine runs, even mediocre game sales can’t stop it. On her way to media star, the virtual April next recorded a song -- a dance remix of the 80’s Depeche Mode tune The Balance -- and Katja lend her voice. Egmont spiced April’s image up with exceptionally stupid PR blurb like “I want everything! Above all, I want to show the people of your world something of the life here!” Generally ignored by the public, the song entered the stores on April 14th ‘00, and stayed there. The corresponding video clip was never played on the music channels, the song didn’t appear in the radio shows, and nobody bought the CD.

Dreamweb

The main character's name is April Ryan, just like Ryan in the game Dreamweb, also published by Empire Interactive Entertainment. And the plots of both games have some things in common (the hero who suffers from nightmares and must save a world he/she didn't even know existed in the first place).

References

• A reference to the Monkey Island series: April's pet toy is called Constable Guybrush. And yes, it's a monkey.
• There are lots of references to sci-fi movies and fantasy themes. Most prominent are the references to Brazil, for instance, which takes place on a red tape-clogged insensitive world much like stark. Take a look at the lobby of the Church of Voltec, it's an exact replica of the Information Retrieval building on Brazil. Also the whole repairmen puzzle where they refuse to work on the grounds that it would require a specific form for them to do so is a spoof of the "Central Services" sequence in the movie. They are even dressed in the same way! There are many more, some more subtle than others.
• Want Star Wars references? check out that strange metal ball on the entrance to The Fringe Café. It says "Death Star" click on it and April will spout famous lines related to it, like "Let's blow this thing and go home!" and she even tries to imitate the voices!

Sales

The Longest Journey was originally made only to be released in Scandinavia, but it then grew with the sales to cover Europe and the U.S. By June of 2001, The Longest Journey had sold 250,000 copies worldwide, 90,000 of which were in America.

Version differences

In order to preserve his foreigner condition, Cortez had his nationality changed from Spanish to French and was renamed "Corthez" in the Spanish version.

Voice acting

• The character Marcus, who only appears in the first chapter near the Fringe cafè, and only has two lines, was voiced by Ragnar Tørnquist, the director/lead designer of the game for the English release.
• In the German pre-release demo version, April was voiced by German pop singer T-Seven known from the, at the time, successful Eurodance group Mr. President. In the final game, April was voiced by Stephanie Kindermann.

Awards

• Computer Gaming World
  • April 2000 (Issue #201) - Adventure Game of the Year
• Gamespy
  • 2000 - Adventure Game of the Year
• PC Gamer
  • 2000 - Adventure Game of the Year

Information also contributed by -Chris, Agent 5, jeremy strope, Karthik KANE, kelmer, Stargazer and Zovni