Lucas Arts™ nostalgia

[HappyTree]

Possibly the best adventure game developer or producer or whatever the name is for some company that makes games. Fond memories of Lucas Arts™ welcome here.

I have never played Sam & Max, I must get those games some time. I was looking for them on Xbox Arcade and they don't have the original title, but have the later episodic ones. Grim Fandango is another one I missed out on, and Full Throttle. I think I'll get them for my PC soon.

But I did play Day of the Tentacle, that was amazing for its day. First time I remember there being "proper" cartoon graphics. And of course Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis was a masterpiece. It's still the only game I've ever completed multiple times (I got bored halfway through my rerun of Mass Effect).

I had never played the ultimate in iconic adventure games, Monkey Island. I bought it and the sequel for the iPod Touch, but I find that I get bored very quickly with games in that format. The touch controls are not easy enough, the screen is too small and the battery life inadequate.

So I decided I'd just go for it and buy Monkey Island for Xbox Arcade. Played it all last night. Wonderful! This is what gaming is all about: no stress. I get stressed in games where you have to fight people, and I don't find that much fun.

[Incandenza]

You haven't played Grim Fandango? Good lord sort it. An absolute masterpiece. Full Throttle great fun too, and Sam and Max. The point and click adventures were always my favourite games as they had...plot!
Not Lucasarts but also see Broken Sword 1&2 and Beneath a Steel Sky.

[I accept the terms of the]

Yeah, I was going to suggest Beneath a Steel Sky. I even had to check if it was LucasArts or not, because it could easily be. I would also give a big yes to Broken Swords 1 & 2.

In that screenshot above, I prefer the pixellated artwork. How do other people feel about this? I wonder if it's an age thing, but I just feel that every one of those pixels means something, whereas the newer one looks like a skilled artist's large brushstrokes in front of a circle, which are nice but not delicately hand-crafted and special.

The Longest Journey isn't LucasArts and couldn't pass for it, but is bloody good. Available on Steam for pennies, I think.

[The Boston Crab]

Completely agree re: screens. I also think that the art style in the new versions is a little too, ahem, 'stylised'. The characters have been given a skinny, chinny overdub which I find quite ugly. The games themselves are full of imagination and humour, I feel like having a playthrough myself. Love the relaxed pace.

I won't, though.

[small_world]

In that screenshot above, I prefer the pixellated artwork. How do other people feel about this? I wonder if it's an age thing, but I just feel that every one of those pixels means something

Totally.
Like this...

Every time I go back to this game I'm amazed that only a few hundred pixels can be turned into something that looks so human.

[HappyTree]

I played Steel Sky at the time it came out, yes it was great. Would love a replay. Gabriel Knight, the voodoo one, that was really atmospheric too. Have played Broken Swords, all 4 of them.

The Longest Journey is my number 1 all-time favourite game ever in the universe.

But Lucas Arts had a feel all to itself. I too loved the pixel graphics, but I feel that you're all attached to them because that's how you saw the games when you first played them. I never played Monkey Island so this is the first time I'm seeing it and I think the special edition graphics and voice-overs are great. I certainly don't want to switch over to the old style.

Drat, I'm now stuck. How do I get the tankard of grog from the kitchen all the way to the prison so I can free the prisoner? Either I have to reinforce the mug or find a quicker way to get there. Or use something else. Hmm. The safe in the old guy's shop is grog-proof, that would suggest I need something from in there perhaps. But how do I get in there?

[I accept the terms of the]

I too loved the pixel graphics, but I feel that you're all attached to them because that's how you saw the games when you first played them.

Nope, I now genuinely believe that the new ones are objectively worse, and that it's people who aren't used to the style and default to the more accessible new style who are wrong. It's a bit like comparing an incredible pointillism masterpiece to a make-do piece of commercial illustration.

[Consignia]

I love Lucasarts adventures. I would rank Fate of Atlantis as one of my favourite games ever. It was so detailed, and there were lots of nice little touches, like the solutions to puzzles changed each time you played through. I even put an entry into the top 1000 games because I like it so much.

I agree that the best way to play them is the original graphics, but I will play the talkies if available, so I'm not that much of a purist.

I was thinking of going through Day of The Tentacle again sometime soon, maybe if the SCUMMVM pulls it's socks up and works on Android 3.1.

[mikeyg27]

I played Steel Sky at the time it came out, yes it was great. Would love a replay.

Well luckily for you it's free to download on the ScummVM site. ScummVM is the best way to play the old Lucasarts p&c games on yer modern machines. They haven't fully developed the Grim Fandango emulator yet.

On Steam, the only old Lucasarts p&c games available are Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Loom and The Dig. Seems to me that they're missing most of the good ones (isn't The Dig the most 'meh' one?). They do have the Monkey Island remakes but not the originals.

Green Tentacle cowering at Purple Tentacle is my laptop's background image.

[Consignia]

Seems to me that they're missing most of the good ones (isn't The Dig the most 'meh' one?). They do have the Monkey Island remakes but not the originals.

The originals are in the remakes, aren't they? So I guess they count.

[Zero Gravitas]

Why can't they use something like hqx which turns this:

into this:

[HappyTree]

Well luckily for you it's free to download on the ScummVM site.

Whoohoo, excellent, thanks! Up and running. Let the retro feast commence!

[madhair60]

I think the only Lucasarts adventure I really enjoyed was Full Throttle.  I don't find any of them funny in the slightest, their style of humour is extremely wearing and laboured to me.  Grim Fandango might be the best game ever but it has appalling controls that entirely destroy any fun I could have ever had with it.

Prefer Sierra.

Note: I've not played Fate of Atlantis, but I'd probably like it more since it seems less likely to be reliant on excruciatingly unfunny writing.

[HappyTree]

Looked up a FAQ for the corrosive grog conundrum. DOH! Now I think about it, it was pretty obvious.

[tygerbug]

Sam & Max is a classic. Day of the Tentacle of course, Fate of Atlantis ... Monkey Island, the original, is still probably the best.

I never played Grim Fandango! I'm on a Mac so I'd need to get that sorted somehow. I think I have discs for it somewhere.

[Phil_A]

Why can't they use something like hqx which turns this:

into this:

Oh god, no. Why would you want that?

"Last Crusade" was an early Lucasarts title, and I while I do have some good memories of playing it, in retrospect it was full of poor design choices that Lucasarts games generally avoided. I think basically it suffered from trying to be all things to all gamers, but the arcade-style bits feel really awkwardly implemented in the SCUMM engine and are not much fun. And giving Indy an energy bar that depletes during every fight and doesn't replenish itself afterwards was just a big load of bullshit. It was actually possibly to screw yourself over if you tried to cross the German border without completing a certain sequence of events first, because the only alternative was to fight your way through all the border guards, which was impossible.

Loom I think is probably the most underrated Lucasarts game. It's quite short and not very difficult, but it's just a beautiful little thing. I suppose you could call it their arthouse film. It still makes me a little sad that there just wasn't enough interest to greenlight Brian Moriarty's proposed sequels, which would've expanded on the original game considerably.



Apparently someone asked Telltale if they were interested in developing any Loom games and their response was basically just "Nah." I mean, I understand it probably wouldn't be a massive commercial hit, but I was surprised how dismissive they were of the idea.

[I accept the terms of the]

Oh god, no. Why would you want that?

Yeah, that's just baffling. I don't understand why people are so disgusted by seeing large pixels that they consider a computer's bad, simplistic attempt at filling in the gaps better. The artist didn't draw those images with the hope that one day technology would be able to do a shitty job of filling in the gaps.

[Consignia]

IIRC, they spent an absolute fortune on Loom to less that stellar sales. It was meant to be trilogy, or something, but they couldn't get around to it because of it's performance.

I can't say I was too enamoured with it, myself. It was rather obtuse as I remember, and it felt quite short. I suppose for the musical chaps among us, playing it on hard would have been fun, but I'm no muso.

[Phil_A]

IIRC, they spent an absolute fortune on Loom to less that stellar sales. It was meant to be trilogy, or something, but they couldn't get around to it because of it's performance.

I can't say I was too enamoured with it, myself. It was rather obtuse as I remember, and it felt quite short. I suppose for the musical chaps among us, playing it on hard would have been fun, but I'm no muso.

Obtuse? Not by the standard of most adventure games of the time, surely. In fact the easiness of Loom was the subject of a gag in Space Quest IV, in which you discover a flyer for a game called "BOOM", which boasts that it contains "No conflict, no puzzles, no interface and no chance of dying."

Attempting to play through the King's Quest series a while back made me appreciate exactly what Lucasarts did for the adventure genre. That entire series seems to be one long exercise in gaming masochism.

[Consignia]

Obtuse? Not by the standard of most adventure games of the time, surely. In fact the easiness of Loom was the subject of a gag in Space Quest IV, in which you discover a flyer for a game called "BOOM", which boasts that it contains "No conflict, no puzzles, no interface and no chance of dying."

I think the "no interface" part was what I found obtuse. Like there's a bit where you have create a storm by playing the spell that opens things on the sky. It wasn't hard, I agree, but I didn't get on with it's different paradaigm.

[Mister Six]

I think the only Lucasarts adventure I really enjoyed was Full Throttle.  I don't find any of them funny in the slightest, their style of humour is extremely wearing and laboured to me.  Grim Fandango might be the best game ever but it has appalling controls that entirely destroy any fun I could have ever had with it.

Prefer Sierra.

Christ on a stick. You are the anti-me and I claim my five pounds.

I utterly loathed the Sierra games, which seemed to take a perverse, possibly sexual, delight in fucking the player over at every turn. I remember being utterly furious at King's Quest V, which I struggled through manfully until I got to a screen where I needed to give meat to a wolf or something, but couldn't because I'd fed it to a hungry vulture about two hours previously. The vulture existed solely to deprive the player of something they would need further down the line, but with no indication that it was a trap. Ludicrous! What kind of a cunt thinks that is at all a good design idea?

The LucasArts games, however, were made by people who wanted to be the player's friend; folks who wanted you to have a good time all the time, and while the puzzles were occasionally ludicrously obscure or based on something that only works inside the designer's head (oh, 'monkey wrench'... right...) they were never unfair. Also, Sierra always seemed to be more interested in shit pastiches (Kings' Quest, Space Quest) or replicating lazy, tired subjects (Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry) than being genuinely creative. Can't imagine Sierra making an adventure game about pirates, or post-apocalyptic bikers, or however the fuck you would describe Day of the Tentacle.

LucasArts games were like going to the pub with your hilarious best mate, a guy who's open to a bit of back-and-forth banter but always has a good gag up his sleeve when you think you've caught him out. Sierra's like being stuck in a shit wine bar with a mouthy cunt who takes a particular delight in ripping the piss out of you at every turn and hides your umbrella when you go to the toilet.

Just to join in the heresy, though, I have to say that I'm not a fan of Fate of Atlantis (too little to do, stretched too thin - replay it three times? I couldn't be arsed to play it through once!) or Grim Fandango (glorious visuals, great script, stellar idea, but runs out of decent puzzles about halfway through). And the Schafer-free Monkey Island sequels (Curse/Escape) are atrocious.

[Incandenza]

Cannot BELIEVE the Anti-Fandango outrage occurring in front of my very eyes. YES it had clunky controls, and maybe the more exciting puzzles dry up a bit, but only because the plot becomes a lot more complex and involving and it essentially turns into a film towards the end, which I'm fine with.

I love Sam + Max, but it's the only game I had to play through almost constantly looking at the walkthrough as all the solutions were insane - Use the fish anus on the bag of pop rocks to open the door? OF COURSE!

[mcbpete]

Why can't they use something like hqx which turns this:

into this:

If you use ScummVm you can do exactly that. It supports 2X, TV2x, AdvMAME2x, 2xSAI, Super2xSAI, SuperEagle, HQ2x, DotMatrix, 3X, AdvMAME3x & HQ3x

[madhair60]

I utterly loathed the Sierra games, which seemed to take a perverse, possibly sexual, delight in fucking the player over at every turn. I remember being utterly furious at King's Quest V, which I struggled through manfully until I got to a screen where I needed to give meat to a wolf or something, but couldn't because I'd fed it to a hungry vulture about two hours previously. The vulture existed solely to deprive the player of something they would need further down the line, but with no indication that it was a trap. Ludicrous! What kind of a cunt thinks that is at all a good design idea?

The LucasArts games, however, were made by people who wanted to be the player's friend; folks who wanted you to have a good time all the time, and while the puzzles were occasionally ludicrously obscure or based on something that only works inside the designer's head (oh, 'monkey wrench'... right...) they were never unfair. Also, Sierra always seemed to be more interested in shit pastiches (Kings' Quest, Space Quest) or replicating lazy, tired subjects (Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry) than being genuinely creative. Can't imagine Sierra making an adventure game about pirates, or post-apocalyptic bikers, or however the fuck you would describe Day of the Tentacle.

LucasArts games were like going to the pub with your hilarious best mate, a guy who's open to a bit of back-and-forth banter but always has a good gag up his sleeve when you think you've caught him out. Sierra's like being stuck in a shit wine bar with a mouthy cunt who takes a particular delight in ripping the piss out of you at every turn and hides your umbrella when you go to the toilet.

All your Sierra criticisms are entirely reasonable, well-founded and true.  They're shocking examples of games, by certain standards.  I just don't find them as annoying as, say, Sam and Max, with its bafflingly abstract puzzles and boring "zany" dialogue.  Yeah, the likes of the oldest King's Quests don't hold up so well, but they have buckets of charm, the text parser is just fun for me, and King's Quest VI is pure class.  And... well... I like save scumming.  I like getting fucked over in Police Quest by something I did 2 hours ago.  I like losing the game because I ate a pie that the game insists is delicious and encourages you to eat at every opportunity.  I like getting caught out by the game and going "oh, you fucker".

I recommend Paw's retrospective King's Quest series, watchable here (start with Quest for the Crown and work up), to see just how fucking cruel (and awesome) these games can be.

I just don't find the Lucasarts games funny - at all - and that's about 90% of what they have to offer.  The actual puzzling is so rudimentary to me.  Day of the Tentacle is clever, but that's it, it's just clever.  Not fun to play.  Not for me.

If GOG.com were to release Grim Fandango I would be all over that shit, incidentally.  Would really like to give that another go.  Even if Tim Schafer is a horrible cunt.

[Lt Plonker]

Nope, I now genuinely believe that the new ones are objectively worse, and that it's people who aren't used to the style and default to the more accessible new style who are wrong. It's a bit like comparing an incredible pointillism masterpiece to a make-do piece of commercial illustration.

The new art work is bloody horrible to look at, I agree. Nothing reads clearly on those in-game, revamped characters - the facial features especially. Everything about the pixellated characters is designed to read in the clearest way possible; there's no ambiguity.






The revamped covers are very poor copies of the original Steve Purcell paintings. They're over airbrushed, poorly staged and the poses and expressions are off.

 

I mean, there's no competition, is there? Guybrush's expression looks as though it's been put through a 'Dreamworks' filter, the cannibals all but disappear into the foliage, the colours are vamped up to cartoon levels and the whole tone of the original painting is lost. What separates the first two games from it's sequels, for me, was how creepy they could become. The world felt threatening and sinister despite the lunacy that occurred. The later games never had that. I love the design of CMI, but that dark edge was missing. LeChuck never felt a threat.

So ner.

[Lt Plonker]

Christ on a stick. You are the anti-me and I claim my five pounds.

I utterly loathed the Sierra games, which seemed to take a perverse, possibly sexual, delight in fucking the player over at every turn. I remember being utterly furious at King's Quest V, which I struggled through manfully until I got to a screen where I needed to give meat to a wolf or something, but couldn't because I'd fed it to a hungry vulture about two hours previously. The vulture existed solely to deprive the player of something they would need further down the line, but with no indication that it was a trap. Ludicrous! What kind of a cunt thinks that is at all a good design idea?

Don't forget the bit where you have 4 seconds to throw a boot at a cat to save the mouse, and if you didn't have the boot or didn't think to throw the boot at the cat, you were fucked once you got locked in the cellar. I only began enjoying that game once I started following the walkthrough.

[madhair60]

The Lucasarts games all look beautiful, of course.  Lovely pixel art.

The special editions are floaty as fuck, with weird controls.  Do not want. 

Spoiler alert

Already own.

[close]

[I accept the terms of the]

Is there a ScummVM-style piece of software for the Sierra games? A great feature would be an autosave chronology after every action you did, summarised in a big long list ("gave Dairylea Dunker to Ant King"). The saves would be put in a special section and would happen automatically after any action at all.

I had Monkey Island 2 for the Amiga, on 602 disks. I didn't realise that I was missing out on half of the game by choosing the easy version (I thought it would just make some minor gameplay tweaks, not cut out half of the game). That was actually quite good, because I got to play the full game later on and see all of the stuff I missed out on.

[I accept the terms of the]

Also, I never, ever want to hear a line of spoken dialogue in Monkey Island 1 or 2. That would spoil it. I like spoken dialogue in other games, but I guess that playing Monkey Island without it made it more magical. I doubt that Discworld would be half as good without voice acting, though. Weird, isn't it?

[Lt Plonker]

Oh! If you've got an hour to spare, here is a talk given by Ron Gilbert on the making of Maniac Mansion.