Sting All This Time CD-ROM Review

STING “All This Time” is a CD-ROM adventure containing mystical artwork, video interviews and musical performances by Sting. He appears throughout the CD and gives his perspective on his music, life and career. The 3D scrolling landscape contains numerous musical environments to explore where hidden tarot cards may be collected. Once all the cards are found, you are rewarded with a personal tarot card reading by Sting himself. This webpage provides an outline of what can be found in the realm of “All This Time” along with many clues and hints. Although the two disk CD-ROM set was released by Starwave in 1996, it was greatly ahead of its time. Sting's "virtual world" may still be found on eBay.

Hints

Hints to find the Hidden Tarot Cards in the various song environments.

• You are given a free Tarot card when you start the CD ROM adventure.
• Gothic Cathedral: Click the monk with the habit as he walks past the right side near Stonehenge.
• Cemetery Crypt: Click the small statue on the gravestone on the far right.
• Alchemical Laboratory: Click the microscope slide “Shape of my Heart”.
• Fortress: In the room with the fireplace, click the book entitled “Book of Thoth”.
• Amnesty Room; "Dancing Shadows on the wall": click the woman on the right furthest away; she is wearing a red and yellow dress.
• English Pub: Click the jukebox to the left of Sting’s head and the card appears just beneath the television.
• Clam Shell: ‘Theatre’: Click the mask with the red eyes above the theatre curtains.
• Door to the Sea: ‘Newcastle upon Tyne’: Click the seagull on the right hand side on the pier. You may need to click a second time.
• Seer’s Room: After you collect all the tarot cards but one, click on the door and the last card will appear on the sign with the palm and eye. Now you may enter the Seer’s Room for a Tarot Reading by Sting.

Shortcuts

• To enter the Seer’s Room without collecting all of the Tarot cards, simply click the Palm & Eye sign near the door while holding Control + Shift down.
• Click the deck of cards on the table for a new tarot reading.
• Remember to “save” your position for future games by right clicking the mouse. You may load your saved game at the start of your next visit.
• Control clicking an area sometimes provides a shortcut to a random video clip: control click the Theatre curtain (Louie Louie clip) and control click Sting in Newcastle upon Tyne River area (a clip of a speech about "love for a bleak, northern, industrial town").
• An "Easter egg" may be found by control-clicking the back door in the pub. A large photograph of the developers of the "All This Time" CD-ROM is then revealed with a little write-up on each member of the team.
• In the Seer's Chamber, control-clicking Sting makes him lean back in a relaxed manner.
• In the Gothic Cathedral, control-click the stained glass window to see Sting sing "Spread a little happiness" while dressed as a priest. In the yoga area of the cathedral, control-click the butterfly in the wall mural and see comedian Dennis Leary joke about the release of "Ten Summoner's Tales".
• In the Laboratory, control click the bottom slide and Sting reads a funny Tabloid article about himself.
  

Hints:

• In Sting’s Piano Room, to hear an acoustic version of “Message in a Bottle”, click the bottles on the piano in the following order: blue, brown, green.
• If one of the top windows of the pub is red, click it and Sting will sing out the name “Roxanne”. Keep on clicking the red window until the red light turns off and a ghostly image of Sting will walk past you.

General Landscape Music Notes

• “Island of Souls” Northumbrian Pipes at the Introduction
• “The Dream of the Blue Turtles” riff when you click the Blue Turtles
• “Nothing Bout Me” plays during the credits after you quit the game.

Cemetery Crypt

• “Venezuelan Waltz” -acoustic instrumental performance with Dominic Miller (they shake hands afterwards)
• “Fragile” -acoustic vocal performance with Dominic Miller (with lyrics)

Alchemical Laboratory

• “When We Dance” -acoustic performance with Dominic Miller (with lyrics)

Song Explanations with audio and images on a virtual microscope:

• I burn for you
• If you love somebody, set them free
• Be still my beating heart
• The secret marriage
• Mad about you
• Shape of my heart
• Fields of Gold
• Love is stronger than justice
• When we dance

Fortress

• “Fortress around my heart” video (with lyrics) and clips from a live performance at Mogador Theatre, Paris 1985.

Paintings with audio commentary

• William the dog
• The Annunciation; "Fra Angelico"
• Agnes (Grandmother)
• Rose (Grandmother’s sister)
• Sumner Family Name

Books with audio commentary

• James Joyce: Ulysses
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Quentin Crisp: The Naked Civil Servant
• Arthur Koestler: The Ghost in the Machine
• E.F. Schumacher: Small is Beautiful
• William Shakespeare: Sonnets
• Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita
• Robert Louis Stevenson: Treasure Island
• Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (The Summoner’s Tale)
• T.S. Eliot: Selected Poems
• Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses
• Paul Bowles: The Sheltering Sky
• Aleister Crowley: The Book of Thoth (the Tarot Card Deck used on the CD ROM)
• Carl Jung: Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle
• Buckmaster Fuller: Critical Path
• Anne Rice: Interview with the Vampire
• Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan

Synclavier Computer Demo Player

• All this time
• If I ever lose my faith in you
• Money
• Love is stronger than justice (74767)
• Why should I cry for you?
• Three
• The Soul Cages
• They Dance Alone
• I miss you Kate
• When we dance
• The National Anthem of Chad
• Epilogue: Nothing Bout Me

Music Room Acoustic Performances
with a 100-year-old German Double Bass, Grand Piano, & Classical Guitar

• Down So Long
• Message in a Bottle

Short Song Demo

• If you love someone, set them free
• Englishman in New York

Amnesty Room

• They dance alone video (with lyrics)
• 1990 Amnesty Concert in Chile
• Amnesty Hour article from the New Republic December 17, 1990
• Footage of Chilean Mothers dancing with Sting

English Pub

Musical Influences with audio & video:

• Gil Evans
• Beatles
• Sergei Prokofiev; Romance from Lieutenant Kijé Suite
• Bob Dylan
• Joni Mitchell
• Branford Marsalis
• Antonio Carlos Jobim
• Ray Brown (Sting’s Jazz Bass Instructional Book)
• Jimmy Hendrix
• Miles Davis
• James Taylor
• Otis Redding’s (Dock of the Bay)
• Weather Report

Television Clips

• Saturday Night Live skit
• BBC Television Comedy Skit
• The Simpsons: cartoon Sting sings “We are sending our love down the well” with Krusty the Clown

Clam Shell: Theatre

Film Clips with audio commentary

• 3 Penny Opera
• Radio On
• Stormy Monday (filmed in Newcastle)
• Titus Groan & Gormenghast
• The Grotesque
• Quadrophenia
• Dune
• The Bride
• Plenty

Playbill Film Textual Information:

• Dune
• Plenty
• Radio On
• The Bride
• Julia & Julia*
• Quadrophenia
• The Grotesque
• 3 Penny Opera
• Stormy Monday
• Baron Munchausen*
• Bring on the Night*
• Brimstone & Treacle*
• Titus Groan & Gormenghast

*audio descriptions along with text

Newcastle upon Tyne

• “All this time” video
• “All this time” concert at the Buddle Arts Centre in Wallsend 1991

Hometown Slides with audio commentary

• Newcastle upon Tyne
• Tyne Bridge
• Wallsend
• Newcastle Shipyard
• Tynemouth Castle
• St. Cuthbert’s School
• The Guildhall
• The Gosforth Hotel
• Bingo
• Castle Keep

Gothic Cathedral

• Ambient music (Gentle Mary)
• “If I ever lose my faith in you” video with lyrics
• Marilu Henner with Sting on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno
• “The Mystery and Religion of Music” commencement speech given by Sting May 15, 1994 at the Berklee College of Music in Boston
• Ashtanga Yoga: demonstration video
• The Rainforest Foundation video
• Video: "Spread a Little Happiness".

Seer’s Chamber

• Sting reads your Tarot cards in a traditional Celtic Cross Spread.
• Thoth tarot cards are used in the reading
• Acoustic guitar performance by Sting; “Alone with my thoughts…”

All This Time CD-ROM: Minimum system requirements

• System Software: Windows 95
• Processor: Intel 486/66MHz
• CD-ROM drive: 2X that delivers 300K bytes per second
• Sound Card: 16-bit stereo
• Video Card: 15-bit (32,768 colors) at 640x480 on a VESA (Local Bus) or PCI
• Mouse: Windows-compatible mouse
• Memory 8 Mb available to Windows 95
• Hard Drive: 7 Mb free for installation of ALL THIS TIME
• 50 Mb available for Virtual Memory