Cruise for a Corpse is an adventure game from Delphine Software International

Delphine Software International

Delphine Software was a French video game developer company. They were famous for their games Another World and Flashback, which bore a similarity to Prince of Persia, both in gameplay and in utilizing rotoscoped animation...

, made for the Amiga

Amiga

The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...

, Atari ST

Atari ST

The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals...

 and IBM PC

IBM PC

The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981...

.

The game is designed as a murder investigation. The player assumed the role of Raoul Dusentier, a man invited to spend some time on Niklos Karaboudjan's boat. Quickly after arriving, Karaboudjan is murdered, and the investigation begins.

Cultural references

The game, being French, uses many references to the contemporary French and Belgian mythology.
Amongst those:

• Karaboudjan: name of Tintin
  Tintin
  Tintin, Tin-Tin or Tin Tin may refer to:* The Adventures of Tintin , the series of classic comic books created by Belgian artist Hergé...
  
   character Captain Haddock
  Captain Haddock
  Captain Archibald Haddock is a fictional character in The Adventures of Tintin, the series of classic Belgian comic books written and illustrated by Hergé...
  
  's cargo ship in the comic strip
  Comic strip
  A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
  
   The Crab with the Golden Claws
  The Crab with the Golden Claws
  The Crab with the Golden Claws is the ninth of The Adventures of Tintin, a series of classic comic-strip albums, written and illustrated by Belgian writer and illustrator Hergé, featuring young reporter Tintin as a hero...
  
  .
• Just like in The Crab with the Golden Claws, crab cans are used to hide objects (in the album, they contain opium
  Opium
  Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...
  
  , whereas in the game they contain hand grenades).
• The whole plot has an obvious influence from retro murder novels. The fact that the investigation takes place in a closed environment, and that all suspects had a reason for the assassination, is reminiscent of Agatha Christie
  Agatha Christie
  Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
  
  's works such as Death on the Nile
  Death on the Nile
  Death on the Nile is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on November 1, 1937 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence and the US edition at $2.00.The book...
  
  or Murder on the Orient Express
  Murder on the Orient Express
  Murder on the Orient Express is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on January 1, 1934 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year under the title of...
  
  . The old fashioned name of the inspector, Raoul Dusentier, reminds of famous French-speaking inspectors names such as Hercule Poirot
  Hercule Poirot
  Hercule Poirot is a fictional Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie. Along with Miss Marple, Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-lived characters, appearing in 33 novels and 51 short stories published between 1920 and 1975 and set in the same era.Poirot has been portrayed on...
  
   or Joseph Rouletabille
  Joseph Rouletabille
  Joseph Rouletabille is a fictional character created by Gaston Leroux, a French writer and journalist.-Overview:In the first novel, The Mystery of the Yellow Room, Rouletabille solves an attempted murder in a locked room mystery...
  
  .

The MS-DOS version is playable in ScummVM

ScummVM

ScummVM is a collection of game engine recreations. Originally designed to play LucasArts adventure games that use the SCUMM system , it now also supports a variety of non-SCUMM games by companies like Revolution Software and Adventure Soft. It was originally written by Ludvig Strigeus...

 and DOSBox

DOSBox

DOSBox is emulator software that emulates an IBM PC compatible computer running MS-DOS. It is intended especially for use with old PC games. DOSBox is free software....

, while the Amiga version runs on UAE.