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Lucasart's Afterlife
- thaumasiotes 18d ago> Lucasfilm, at one time had a gaming subsidiary called Lucasarts I am given to understand that this was always the setup; the gaming subsidiary was always called LucasArts. But the games suggest something different. Early games are branded "Lucasfilm". The first Monkey Island game to have LucasArts branding is the third in the series.
- burai 18d agoThe brand used before "Lucasarts" was "Lucasfilm games"
- darkwater 18d agoI have memories of MI2 already showing the LucasArts logo? (/me goes to check YT videos) Yes I'm right, see https://youtu.be/6lTz2nkPNXA?t=32 https://youtu.be/6lTz2nkPNXA?t=32
- chronogamous 18d agoAs far as I remember, they were called LucasArts, except their first title (Labyrinth, 1986) was published and distributed by Activision. Everything else, from Maniac Mansion (1987) to Escape from Monkey Island (2000), was published by LucasArts. /edit I stand corrected... I just checked the intro on the c64 version of Maniac Mansion, and it does indeed state Lucasfilm Games, not LucasArts. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM8ot8bJS3Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM8ot8bJS3Q)
- schlauerfox 17d agoIt changed in 1990. There was a logo with both names briefly.
- gxd 18d agoHaven't thought about this game in ages. I remember seeing it in ads but never played it. It's odd that it became so obscure considering it was released by a major, even if then declining, game company.
- otikik 18d agoYou can change some words in this article and conclude that Hell is just suburbia.
- rsynnott 18d agoSee “The Good Place”.
- layoric 18d agoI love this game. The whole design, the voice acting, humour and frustratingly hard game play as you get further into the game. If you like other Lucasarts games, highly recommend just playing through the tutorial at the very least.
- TomGarden 18d agoThis is so nostalgic! Side note, Lucasarts' games rewired my kid brain to expect humor and (good) voice acting in games. It's really guided (and limited) what games I'm able to enjoy
- Liuser 18d agoAmen. Sam and Max Hit the Road has a special place in my childhood. So much encouragement of exploration and humor.
- gustavorg 18d agoBecause of my poor English, I thought this post was about life at LucasArts after the sale. I was disappointed. I never had time to play LucasArts games: Leisure Suit Larry, Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals and similar games took up all my time.
- auto 18d agoI've got good enough English as a native speaker and I thought the same thing, don't worry. That said, still an interesting article about a game I managed to never hear of before, despite being immersed in exactly those sorts of games at the time.
- glandium 18d agoLeisure Suit Larry was Sierra, not LucasArts.
- jawilson2 18d agoI think they meant they were NOT playing LucasArts games because they were playing other games.
- theandrewbailey 18d agoIt's not your English proficiency. I didn't know this game existed, so before clicking, I expected it was about LucasArt's legacy on the games industry, or what former people there are doing now.
- davidsojevic 18d agoI bought a copy of Afterlife from one of the Scholastic catalogues when I was in primary school after already having had a blast with Sim City 2000. I absolutely loved the graphics and the theme and everything, but as it turns out, I had absolutely no idea how to play it and never got far enough into it to really appreciate its gameplay. I should probably give it another go as an adult who has a bit more patience for reading through instructions than I did as a kid.
- washadjeffmad 18d agoI played it summer of 2005, the same year I binged Douglas Adams' complete non-HHG works (including 'Last Chance to See' on CD-ROM and the interactive fiction game, 'Bureaucracy'). Afterlife is wonderfully fun and satisfying to experience to completion for the first time, and what it might lack in replayability it more than makes up for with humor and design.
- designium 18d agoI still play once a year. But now I can reach full omnibulges and love domes in less than an hour. But I remember spending months to survive until I discovered the cheat code (btw if you use too much, it triggers something that I can’t remember, it can mess up the game as a punishment). The I figured out to let the planet evolve and grow it’s population because then, your afterlife has high demand thus more money, that detail solves the hardest part of the game! The other insight which came much much later, the better capacity per area is given by the top 2x2 and 4x4 multi color. 3x3 top buildings are badass looking but they offer smaller max capacity for souls, we are aiming in reaching 1 billion souls using the least amount of area so you always have free space to build as demand explode.
- robertlagrant 18d agoI'd recommend this. As kids my brother and I could never complete a game on the BBC Micro called Imogen[0]. It was amazing for the time in that your character could transform into three modes (wizard / cat / monkey) and on one screen a fourth mode, and the transformation looked smooth even back then. However - we never completed it. As an adult I found it again and while I completed it fairly easily, it was a nice memory. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imogen_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imogen_(video_game)
- singularity2001 18d agoTangential: After 3 Weeks Claude finished Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken in my little RL harness.
- neonnoodle 18d agoThe music from this game is still in my regular rotation.
- N_Lens 18d agoI miss the old lucasarts era of games, it was a magical time!
- runmanny 18d ago[dead]
- SamBam 18d agoIndiana Jones, Monkey Island, Sam & Max, The Grim Fandango. Such a big part of my childhood and teen years.
- schlauerfox 17d agoHave you played Psychonauts or it's sequel? or anything from Double Fine Productions. Tim Schafer runs that studio. Also Ron Gilbert does games too under Terrible Toybox including a more recent Monkey Island.
- NOTanAlagent 18d ago[dead]
- Razengan 18d agoI still remember the intro of this game lol
- hliyan 18d agoDoes anyone remember a Windows game called Yoda Stories? I had such fond memories of it that I tried to find the game or an emulator version multiple times. No luck. It was an elegant game from a more civilized time where resolution, shading, texture and frame rate did not define how good a game was. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJT4sdifLXM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJT4sdifLXM
- lvbyte 18d agoThe game came with LucasArts Archives Vol. IV: Star Wars Collection II. It's in the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/thelucasartsarchivesvolivstarwarscollectioniiusa https://archive.org/details/thelucasartsarchivesvolivstarwar...
- trashb 18d agoIt is supported by the DREAMM emulator. And the image is on archive.org, have fun!
- dcist 18d agoI remember it fondly. My family had a lower-end 486 and it couldn't run a lot of games but it ran Yoda Stories great! Loved that game as a kid. LucasArts really was a gem (loved Grim Fandango, Dark Forces, Jedi Knight, Full Throttle, etc.).
- twodave 18d agoI loved Jedi Knight. There still isn’t anything quite like logging into the Zone and having light saber battles where the saber model is replaced with a full size star destroyer :)
- schlauerfox 17d agoTim Schafer of Grim Fandango, Full Throttle and Day of the Tentacle runs Double Fine Productions, newly released from Xbox Game Studios to independant status. They're running a kickstarter to extend their runway right now around their 2 week internal gamejam "Amnesia Fortnight" and documentary. (not fortnite related at all). https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doublefine/amnesia-fortnight-2026-indie-reboot https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doublefine/amnesia-fort... They could really use some support if you're a fan of his work.
- BiteCode_dev 18d agoFun game, but very hard, and teaches you the danger of debt quite early in life. But the 2 advisers were so funny!
- red369 17d agoI've just remembered whichever version of Sim City I played as a kid used to have the option (and encourage?) to take on debt. I found the interest a killer. I don't envy politicians having to run a country, knowing that 10% + of all government spending is just going towards interest payments for past spending. As with all debt, you hope that it was used to buy assets that are earning more than the interest cost, and not just on a consumable. There are high numbers here that must be difficult: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-government-expenditure-going-to-interest-payments https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-government-expen... Thinking about it, I wonder if this doesn't capture the whole picture. It is the percentage of spending, but doesn't capture whether that total spending denominator is itself more or less than the government is earning. Suppose one year, a government spent twice as much as it earned. Even if the interest payments stayed the same, wouldn't the "interest payments as a share of expenditure" halve that year?
- rsynnott 17d agoProbably Simcity 2000. I think most of them had a debt mechanic, but 2000 was particularly insistent on it.
- zehaeva 18d agoI loved playing this game as a kid! I am really saddened that it's never had a follow up or even a second look. The humor really stuck out to me. I am surprised to hear that people felt this game was hard! Maybe it was because I was younger when I played it but I thought it was a lot of fun. I do recall trying to get a "legit" copy of this game several times over the years and it's availability has been either nonexistant or barely there.
- booty 18d agoWow, this is wild. I'd never even heard of this game. Based on the linked article, this seems exactly like the kind of game that would have had an AMAZING sequel. You know the type of game I mean. The first game breaks all types of new ground with a bunch of innovative ideas and is fun, but also has a lot of jank and rough edges because they were trying so many new things at once. And then the sequel is where it all really comes together. The ideas that didn't work are fixed or discarded, everything else gets polish, and a few new ideas are introduced. Too bad it never got one...
- danvayn 18d agoThese are my favorite kinds of blogs. Irrelevant knowledge formed from notes; even if I’m interested in game development or retro games it has little use for me to peruse, but it’s fun to play the observer and read into people’s human digest or solutions to abstract issues. I wish there were more blogs like this. Thanks for sharing.