mechner founded independent developer smoking car productions in 1993, where he led the production of the cd-rom adventure game "the last express". smoking car grew to sixty people, a huge game development team for the mid-1990s, and the game took longer to finish than anticipated. when finally released in 1997, it was positively reviewed but sold poorly. "the last express" was re-released in 2012 by french publisher dotemu for mobile and other platforms.