LucasArts adventure games
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Before concentrating almost exclusively on Star Wars titles, LucasArts was known for their point-and-click adventure games, nearly all of which received high scoring reviews at the time of their release. Their style tended towards the humorous (often irreverent or slapstick humour), with a few exceptions. Their game design philosophy was that the player should never die or reach a complete dead-end, although there have been exceptions to the former (such as Maniac Mansion, both Indiana Jones games and one in The Secret of Monkey Island that can be considered an easter egg).
Common features between the games include in-joke references to both other LucasArts games and Lucasfilm productions, including the number 1138, quotes such as the phrase "I have a bad feeling about this", as well as other running gags (obligatory Chuck the Plant and Sam & Max cameo appearances among them) that spanned numerous games. Another feature, used in several of the games, was to allow the player to control more than one character, often being able to switch between them at will. For example, in Maniac Mansion the player has control of a group of three kids with complementary skills and weaknesses, while in Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis the player gets to play as both Indiana Jones and his partner, Sophia Hapgood.
This page contains a complete list of LucasArts adventure games, from 1986 to the present. It is believed that after the cancellation of Sam & Max 2 and Full Throttle 2, the adventure game era of LucasArts had officially ended.[citation needed]
For more detailed information about the company's history, see the main LucasArts article.
[edit] Adventure games by LucasArts
- Labyrinth (1986)
- Maniac Mansion * (1987)
- Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders * (1988)
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure * (1989)
- LOOM * ** (1990)
- The Secret of Monkey Island * (1990)
- Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (1991)
- Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992)
- Day of the Tentacle (Maniac Mansion 2) (1993)
- Sam & Max Hit the Road (1993)
- Full Throttle (1995)
- The Dig (1995)
- The Curse of Monkey Island (1997)
- Grim Fandango (1998)
- Escape from Monkey Island (2000)
- * These games were later re-released with enhanced graphics.
- ** LOOM was also re-released on CD, once with a full digital score and a second time with voice-overs (but very little music).
The SCUMM game engine was used to design all the games from Maniac Mansion to The Curse of Monkey Island, while the GrimE engine took over from Grim Fandango onwards. For those people who own the original MS-DOS versions of the SCUMM games and have found that these no longer work on modern computers, it is possible, using the original data files, to play the games on modern platforms using the ScummVM interpreter.
In the year 2002 The Dig, Day of The Tentacle, Full Throttle and Sam & Max were re-released as windows-playable versions in 640x480 resolution only.
Recently, LucasArts have re-released some of these titles as 'Classics'. Titles released in this form have been updated and modified so that they can run off of the CD without installation and saving is done into the users documents. Titles confirmed to be in this series are Grim Fandango and Sam & Max Hit the Road
