9 ms·

Why are We Still Talking about LucasArts' Old Adventure Games?

110 points by ttuominen 14y ago

Spooky23 14y ago
Why? Easy. The kids who are now in their early 30s are feeling nostalgia for an institution that meant a lot to them, which is forever lost. I felt the same way about Sierra adventure games from he 80s. Fact is, gaming sucks these days because the audience has shifted to the younger equivalent to the millions if people who watch "NCIS: Kansas" on tv. In the 80s and 90s, the gaming market was this demographic slice that allowed for more creative risk in gaming. Now we have Medal of Honor 12 and whatever version Madden is up to, and the whole industry is imploding because they cannot sustain the movie-like budgets.
- bane 14y ago
  Let's not forget that they were awesomely written. The humor still holds up today. The desire for these games is evident, between ScummVM, the indie scene (e.g. Gemini Rue) and possible comebacks of industry greats (e.g. Replay Games) there's obviously still a market for well written, beautifully crafted interactive novels of this form. The industry switch to 3d killed off most of the adventure game makers and those efforts, but thankfully the industry is finally realizing that 2d is now just as valid a media for crafting games as is 3d.
  - ekianjo 14y ago
    They were well written because they were written by educated people for educated people. The thing that trashed video games the most is that gaming went mainstream and now the whole industry want to reach as large of an audience as possible and that brings down the level to crap.
- yew 14y ago
  Not everyone who's a fan of these games now was around to play them then. I think it has more to do with the 'gamer' demographic growing larger. In my experience, niche stuff often has more emotion behind it, evident even when it's not your niche and not your emotion. Modern 'indie' games, which are often more focused than 'mainstream' fare, have something of the same feel about them.
  - graeme 14y ago
    Good point. I played Grim Fandango and the Monkey Island games long after they were released.
- benihana 14y ago
  >Fact is, gaming sucks these days because the audience has shifted to the younger equivalent to the millions if people who watch "NCIS: Kansas" on tv. I'm calling selective "get off my lawn" bullshit on this one. There are many, many, many brilliant, beautiful, incredibly well written and well executed games being released every year that will have the same effect in 20 years that these games have now. Saying that games today suck because "Now we have Medal of Honor 12 and whatever version Madden is up to" is ridiculously cynical and very selective. Sure those games are being churned out as easy money making machines. But while you're complaining about them, you're forgetting games like Portal and Portal 2, two of the funniest games released in the past 15 years. Games like Shadow of the Colossus and Read Dead Redemption, both of which are regularly used as arguments for why games are art. Magnificent indie games like Braid and Fez and Limbo. To say that gaming sucks these days is to ignore all the wonderful things being done and instead take a dried up, cynical view that is out of touch with reality.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 14y ago
    I think some of us lament the loss of certain genres. Turn based strategy, flight sims, space sims, turn based RPGS. I stopped playing games in the mid 2000. There haven't really been any games in my favourite genres since then.
    - PetitPrince 14y ago
      While there's certainly not mainstream, there are still some quality game (already published or upcoming) that are of "forgotten" genres: - XCOM: Enemy Unknown - turn-based strategy - Star Citizen - space sim lead by Chros Robert (of the Wing Dommander fame) - Project Infinity, Torment Tides of Numerena, Wasteland 2: isometric RPG - Kerbal Space Program - non-combat space sim (it's less of a game and more of an awesome space-nerd sandbox, but I think it should deserve a mention)
      - lobster_johnson 14y ago
        Of those, XCOM is the only game that exists. Star Citizen, Project Infinity, Torment Tides and Wasteland 2 are all Kickstarter-funded games in development. Kerbal is available, but not finished, and as you say, not really a game. Sure, there are some interesting games in development (I'd add the Elite remake and Double Fine's untitled adventure game to the list), but who knows what they will be like. We don't know if they will be "quality".
- jamesrcole 14y ago
  I disagree. I'm in my mid thirties now, and it's not nostalgia for me. If it was nostalgia I'd feel that way about all the games I liked back then. I still think that The Secret of Monkey Island, in particular, was/is something pretty special, yet I don't think this about 99% of the games I liked back then.
danso 14y ago
This is a good question as the answer should be self-evident -- i.e. they were just great, well-written fun games -- but it's not. As pure gaming, they weren't "great" in the classical sense. I mean, after you've finished them, you can't keep playing them over and over because there's nothing really to "play." And story-wise...I would think that today's games should have better writing. I mean, games are a huge industry now, and so, theoretically, the writing talent should be much better (in the same way that game budgets can now bring in big name actors to do voices). So maybe the answer doesn't lie just in the quality of the programming or writing, but in the execution and the way things just fit, despite the limitations of the genre. Hand-drawn cartoons are "limited" in their ability to depict reality, yet the Disney classics will still stand the test of time no matter how good CGI gets. Maybe there's just something innately appealing with how adventure games, designed during the technological limitations in the LucasArts era, clicked in our brain. Limits are often good things, especially when it stretches creator and player alike to imagine things outside the boundaries. Of course, bigger budgets/production quality don't linearly translate to "better" -- Raiders of the Lost Ark vs. Indiana Jones IV (I can't even remember the title of it) is a good example. And there's always the power of nostalgia to exaggerate how good things really were back then...
- TsiCClawOfLight 14y ago
  Most AAA games are so linear nowadays that I'd rather replay old adventure games than recent titles.
  - pilif 14y ago
    These were very linear too though. Sure: some like Monkey Island had a map that gave you the illusion of having a whole world to explore, but there still was a fixed sequence of events that couldn't be broken. None of the decisions you made had any effect for the future or could just flat-out prevent you from finishing the game. Some (Sierra) called that a feature, others (Lucas Arts) a bug. Maniac Mansion 1 and The Fate of Atlantis are the only two Lucas Arts games that provided a little bit of nonlinearity. Maniac Mansion with its different ways to solve the game based on character selection and Indiana Jones with its selection of one of three quite different paths through the game.
exratione 14y ago
For the same reason we still talk about Planescape: Torment - quality writing is quality writing.
- drivers99 14y ago
  I'm not sure if I should mention this here, since it looks like an ad, but that also happens to be on sale this weekend (along with a bunch of other D&D games) at gog.com. It's $1.99. I'm not sure if that's the price for it by itself or if it's in the bigger bundle.
onosendai 14y ago
Because, like a lot of old games which were made in a period with comparatively severe technical limitations, they made more with less. They managed to squeeze emotion out of orders of magnitude less pixels than the standard game today. And you've got to admire that. LucasArts's adventure games in particular were brilliant examples, and I think their defining characteristic is that they never took themselves too seriously. From a guy called Guybrush Threepwood wanting to become a pirate, to time traveling kids trying to stop a mutated tentacle from taking over the world, the settings just kept getting weirder and funnier. They had their more serious games too, like Loom which is unique in its tone and gameplay mechanics, and The Fate of Atlantis which, as far as Indiana Jones goes, beats the tripe Lucasfilm was trying to push a couple of years ago.
- headbiznatch 14y ago
  Anyone who has ever jumped out of the room because of a windshield attack in "Rescue on Fractalus" understands... Manipulate the psyche, not the eyes. (Bonus - at the time LucasArts also manipulated the eyes with their 8-bit fractal landscapes et al. But that was a BONUS.)
- saraid216 14y ago
  > They managed to squeeze emotion out of orders of magnitude less pixels than the standard game today. And you've got to admire that. It always confuses me when people are impressed by low-res graphics having an emotional impact. I read novels. I played text games. Graphics merely seem like yet another genre to me, not something exceptionally challenging.
  - dave_sullivan 14y ago
    Oh, I don't know, there's something neat about building something with so many layers of complexity given such tight constraints. "Making every bit count" I guess. Similar to it being impressive that Pi and Following were made with such small budgets (and casts). I'm not sure what "exceptionally challenging" means exactly, but Lucas Arts was doing something very different from what their contemporaries were doing, and their games still stand as classics twenty years later compared to the much larger budgets and fewer constraints of today.
fiblye 14y ago
LucasArts old games were essentially perfect adaptations of 90s cartoons that never existed. With everything from the exaggerated art and sound effects, to dialogue that caters to both childish and adult humor, LucaArts games perfectly took the feel of 90s animation and packed it into a couple of floppies. I don't think it's unusual that games like Day of the Tentacle are still popular today when people still talk about 90s cartoons like Rocko and the Batman, and 80s action movies like Terminator and Die Hard. Media today tries to emulate that nostalgic feeling, but there's this undefinable element that distinguishes the time period. Years from now, people will yearn for early 2000's FPSes and we'll remember how games like HL2 and CoD defined this period.
ErikAugust 14y ago
Point-and-Click Adventure is my favorite genre... LucasArts made great games but I'd have to hand the crown to Sierra for King's Quest VI.
trotsky 14y ago
The games you played as a kid will always be the best ones.
larrydavid 14y ago
Here is the article on a single page rather than split across 6 pages. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/189899/why_are_we_still_talking_about_.php?print=1 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/189899/why_are_we_stil...
kayoone 14y ago
I remember even the copy protection puzzles of these games! This attention to detail and charm is hardly found anywhere today.
- _ZeD_ 14y ago
  the DIAL-A-PIRATE! I still have it somewhere!
chaostheory 14y ago
I don't even know why people are having this conversation. Most of those guys from Lucasarts' golden age left to form a studio called Double Fine.
- ttuominen 14y ago
  It was just a good excuse to talk about our favorite games. I haven't played any of the Double Fine games yet, but to my knowledge they haven't made any classic point-and-click graphic adventures - before the kickstarter-backed Broken Age that is [1]. I hear the old talent is still evident in the DF games though, and they seem to be story and character based. [1] http://www.brokenagegame.com/ http://www.brokenagegame.com/
  - PetitPrince 14y ago
    While not a point and click, Psychonauts is widely considered to be a worthy successor of the golden age Lucasarts craziness. Let's have a look at the synopsys: a runaway circus boy goes to a summer camp for psychics lead by a international team of superspy. He discovers that a mad dentist is stealing everyone's brain by making them sneeze, and in order to get him he has to travel into the mind of several deranged persons. Certainly on par with the purple tentacle trying to take over the world or the deathly travel agent, if you ask me :) . Also, while not being a point-and-click game stricto sensu, you should really have a try at Stacking. It maybe not as brilliantly written as Psychonauts, it has some pacing issue but it's a really charming adventure (with Matryoshka dolls !) from the start to the end !
    - sesqu 14y ago
      I would not consider Psychonauts a worthy successor, nor do a wide section of people who have tried it. A good deal of the issue seems to be exactly because it's not a point and click - it's actually a 3D platformer with a number of playability issues. Most point-and-clicks have major playability shortcomings as well, but they're such different breeds that the appreciative audiences are distinctly different.
    - 14y ago
varelse 14y ago
All that and no mention of _Rescue at Fractalus_, _The Eidolon_ (An 8-bit FPS 11 years before Doom), _Koronis Rift_, or _Ballblazer_? I'm getting old...
- wolfgke 14y ago
  Koronis Rift and Ballblazer are mentioned on page 5: > http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/189899/why_are_we_still_talking_about_.php?page=5 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/189899/why_are_we_stil... "LucasArts games have always had a special place in my heart; from Loom to Koronis Rift to Ballblazer and the Monkey Island series. [...]"
  - varelse 14y ago
    I post corrected! Still, relating this to storytelling, I continue to believe that the single most terrifying moment in a video game, to this day, occurs in _Rescue at Fractalus_. Everyone I know has literally fallen backwards in their chair at that moment. But since all the people I allude to are now old fogies, it would be interesting to see the reaction of someone a lot younger who went into the game unaware and played up to that point, a point integral to the gameplay, and to see if they instinctively do the right thing to address it. Good times, good times...
- glurgh 14y ago
  Mainly because those were not adventure games, which is what the article/retrospective is about.
christopheraden 14y ago
There was always something very accessible about SCUMM games (not just LucasArts ones, but they certainly had some great ones). The story lines were simple and playful enough for kids to enjoy--even 8 year olds can understand the humor in an evil purple tentacle trying to take over the world, or a talking dog and rabbit solving crimes, or a quiet biker trying to repair his motorcycle. It didn't take an intricate story or fast-paced action to set the LucasArts games apart from the competition. It was how simple, yet outlandish the plots were. 15 years later, I can still remember using a crowbar to remove a coin from the ground that was stuck there by chewing gum in Day of the Tenacle, or Ben Franklin naming a sandwich after a main character (Hoagie). I remember SCUMM games much in the same way I remember the plots of my favorite books I read as a kid. For me, they were much more like interactive novels or comic books than they were like video games. I remember Full Throttle, Dig, Loom, Monkey Island, and Day of the Tentacle in a very different way than I remember the other video games I played at the same age (Final Fantasy, Link to the Past, Super Mario World). If you haven't had a chance to play any of these wonderful titles, I would highly recomend you grab the ScummVM and play some of the freeware titles (even if they aren't LucasArts): http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Where_to_get_the_games http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Where_to_get_the_games.
libria 14y ago
Not mentioned in the article (strangely) was the innovative music system in X-wing, iMuse, where the music dynamically and seamlessly shifted depending on the situation. It's surprising how useful and immersive that was from a game play perspective and it was often my only cue not only that enemies were inbound, but how large the threat was (squadron vs capital ship). I admit there's some nostalgia here, but how often do you play games scored by John Williams? Perhaps not the first time it's ever been done, but their execution of it was amazing. Lucasarts was literally a game changer.
conradfr 14y ago
DOTT sold me to PC games.
dakrisht 14y ago
Going to go and play Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis after reading this post... For the 5th time. Today's game are total crap. Just kids shooting and killing each other, DRM issues and a corporate veil set out to destroy the experience. Bullshit
- endgame 14y ago
  I've been drifting away from electronic games to board/card games for some time now. My cards will still be there if the publisher goes belly-up. I don't need to have a constant internet connection to play, just a few friends and a table.
- StavrosK 14y ago
  Does anyone remember what the "in my time, everything was better" fallacy is called? I forget. Anyway, if you really think today's games are total crap, you haven't played masterpieces like Braid, Fez, Limbo, etc. Stop playing total crap.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
kaoD 14y ago
I'm in a good position to answer this: because they're AWESOME. My girlfriend's never been a gamer, but she's been playing some games recently (specially Minecraft spiked her interest). I finally convinced her to play some Lucasarts classic adventures some months ago. She loved them. Went through the whole Day of the Tentacle in three days on her own! No walkthroughs. I didn't even help her once. She was obsessed with it! Now she's eager to play more adventure games and looking forward to the new release of ResidualVM (Grim Fandango's engine reimplementation) which she left halfway through because she met a nasty blocker bug. Lucasarts adventures are and will be all-time classics because they're genuinely good. The plots are engaging, the dialogues are real fun and they're good intellectual challenges. I play the games regularly, at least once a year (the whole collection!) and I still enjoy them. There's always something left to explore, an action you didn't try, a line you didn't pick... and just like The Simpsons, you can re-experience them several times as you grow older (the funny jokes are not the same when you're 8 then when you're 21).
garry 14y ago
FWIW I've been a huge fan of indie developer Wadjet Eye Games, who have continued to make old-school adventure games in the modern era (all available on Steam). http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/ http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/
- bane 14y ago
  this nothing speaks better about the continuing viability and vibrancy of this genre than this company
- lobster_johnson 14y ago
  Ooh, they are the ones who made Gemini Rue [1], which is great. It's a low-rez game that looks a lot like Beneath a Steel Sky. Impeccable cyberpunk design, interesting story, very well written. (Gemini Rue is for Windows, but it's playable on the Mac via Wine. Happy to explain how, if anyone is interested.) I didn't know about their other games. Edit: Oh, they are a publisher. Gemini Rue was not created by them. Anyway, looks like they have quality stuff. Will be checking out their other games. [1] http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/gemini-rue.html http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/gemini-rue.html
deleted 14y ago
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hobb0001 14y ago
I'm of two minds when it comes to LucasArts. In both graphic adventures and in space shooters, they owned the genres with quality games, which is great. The problem is that because they so totally dominated, all competition left to pursue other branches (mostly to FPS, it seems). When they stopped development in those genres, there was nobody remaining to fill the void. Those genres are now the sad, atrophied remains of what used to be pillars of computer gaming.
- Gravityloss 14y ago
  Sierra was just as big if not bigger in graphic adventures. Same with Origin in space shooters.
xorgar831 14y ago
From the LucasArts final final party tonight: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1u95h9n5y9ytv8j/2013-04-05%2017.20.20.jpg https://www.dropbox.com/s/1u95h9n5y9ytv8j/2013-04-05%2017.20... https://www.dropbox.com/s/1jyp0i5cvpuujhm/2013-04-05%2017.22.20.jpg https://www.dropbox.com/s/1jyp0i5cvpuujhm/2013-04-05%2017.22... https://www.dropbox.com/s/x9j2x7g6wfqavlj/2013-04-05%2017.19.04.jpg https://www.dropbox.com/s/x9j2x7g6wfqavlj/2013-04-05%2017.19...
jamesrcole 14y ago
I think the most interesting bit is on the last page: While other game companies of the 1980s had to rely on the income from their games to survive, we had the unheard-of luxury of taking our time to get our games right, with years to experiment, try new things, push the envelope, and with no pressure from marketing, focus testing, or even George Lucas. We also had time to develop our company culture, starting where the Lucasfilm culture left off. So we’d spend months thinking about our games... brainstorming with the other brilliant designers, refining, reworking, revamping, tossing out the parts that didn’t work (or the entire concept) and starting again. One of our edicts was “don’t ship shit” and we wanted to make sure we never did. Maybe working in a creatively supportive environment like that, one that wasn’t just focused on the bottom line, enabled us to think outside the box, take time to add tons of backstory and detail... tune, tune, and tune again. Until WE felt it was time to ship. Unheard of then and I’m sure even more unusual now (other than with indie games done by people in their spare time).
sdrinf 14y ago
There was an episode on the topic of resurrecting the adventure-game genre (and what exactly made it so special to us) this week on Extra-Credits: http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/raising-the-dead http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/raising-the-dead I highly, and wholeheartedly recommend checking the rest of extra-credits series, for anyone interested in game design, gamification, and the gaming industry in general: http://penny-arcade.com/patv/show/extra-credits http://penny-arcade.com/patv/show/extra-credits And specifically those of you creating experiences: http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/gamification http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/gamification
b0rsuk 14y ago
Here's a provocative thought: RPG games have boomed because they're the descendants of point&click adventure games. I'd like to have the name "cRPG" changed to "Adventure". It describes much better what the game is about, the majority of players doesn't care about role playing, and many cRPG games don't even support that. Diablo is often called Action RPG for some reason despite not offering a choice at all, the story always unfolds in exactly the same way. Anyway, old point&click games were usually about a story. Now cRPG games are the vessel for that. Exploration is also crucial to both genres, I know of no cRPG game which takes place in the same area, where variety comes from changes, events, new people arriving rather than unlocking new zones. Baldur's Gate 2 and Planescape: Torment are a good example of what I'm talking about - both have big cities, but what you're really doing is getting access to new areas within them.
mprinz 14y ago
I was not a Sierra adventure fan (except Gabriel Knight), but I loved EVERY ONE of the Lucasfilm Games. Why? I think they managed perfection in these four areas: ACCESS, FUN, CHARACTERS, DESIGN ACCESS: You fired up the game and could immediately start playing. Most of the games had no or very short intros or cutscenes. Lucasfilm was very strong at telling the story throughout the game. "I'm Guybrush Threepwood and I wanna be a pirate" -> There you go! Controls were also very easy, I think they were even the first games that you could play through by only using your mouse. That's important, because you could just literally lean back and play. FUN Maybe it's just me (obviously not) but Gilbert's and Schafer's writing style, that's my idea of fun! Well written, perfectly executed and timed. Often with very few or no words at all. Sometimes Bernard or Guybrush just turned to you and said nothing…all said! CHARACTERS The teams put a lot of effort in creating unique characters. Why the hell do I know names like Guybrush, Elaine, Stan, Bernard, Hoagie, Laverne, Ben, Bobbin, Manny, Glottis; but I can hardly remember any other adventure game character names. It's because I was emotionally bounded with them. They were mostly struggling with their environment but managed their obstacles often with unorthodox methods. DESIGN Especially Ron Gilbert and Hal Barwood established adventure game design that is still considered standard today. Brought to fame by Ron's article "Why adventure games suck – And what we can do about it" (http://grumpygamer.com/2152210 http://grumpygamer.com/2152210). This article still inspires me today and I'm throughout checking my designs against it.

110 points by ttuominen 14y ago

Why? Easy. The kids who are now in their early 30s are feeling nostalgia for an institution that meant a lot to them, which is forever lost. I felt the same way about Sierra adventure games from he 80s. Fact is, gaming sucks these days because the audience has shifted to the younger equivalent to the millions if people who watch "NCIS: Kansas" on tv. In the 80s and 90s, the gaming market was this demographic slice that allowed for more creative risk in gaming. Now we have Medal of Honor 12 and whatever version Madden is up to, and the whole industry is imploding because they cannot sustain the movie-like budgets.

bane 14y ago
Let's not forget that they were awesomely written. The humor still holds up today. The desire for these games is evident, between ScummVM, the indie scene (e.g. Gemini Rue) and possible comebacks of industry greats (e.g. Replay Games) there's obviously still a market for well written, beautifully crafted interactive novels of this form. The industry switch to 3d killed off most of the adventure game makers and those efforts, but thankfully the industry is finally realizing that 2d is now just as valid a media for crafting games as is 3d.
- ekianjo 14y ago
  They were well written because they were written by educated people for educated people. The thing that trashed video games the most is that gaming went mainstream and now the whole industry want to reach as large of an audience as possible and that brings down the level to crap.
yew 14y ago
Not everyone who's a fan of these games now was around to play them then. I think it has more to do with the 'gamer' demographic growing larger. In my experience, niche stuff often has more emotion behind it, evident even when it's not your niche and not your emotion. Modern 'indie' games, which are often more focused than 'mainstream' fare, have something of the same feel about them.
- graeme 14y ago
  Good point. I played Grim Fandango and the Monkey Island games long after they were released.
benihana 14y ago
>Fact is, gaming sucks these days because the audience has shifted to the younger equivalent to the millions if people who watch "NCIS: Kansas" on tv. I'm calling selective "get off my lawn" bullshit on this one. There are many, many, many brilliant, beautiful, incredibly well written and well executed games being released every year that will have the same effect in 20 years that these games have now. Saying that games today suck because "Now we have Medal of Honor 12 and whatever version Madden is up to" is ridiculously cynical and very selective. Sure those games are being churned out as easy money making machines. But while you're complaining about them, you're forgetting games like Portal and Portal 2, two of the funniest games released in the past 15 years. Games like Shadow of the Colossus and Read Dead Redemption, both of which are regularly used as arguments for why games are art. Magnificent indie games like Braid and Fez and Limbo. To say that gaming sucks these days is to ignore all the wonderful things being done and instead take a dried up, cynical view that is out of touch with reality.
- 2muchcoffeeman 14y ago
  I think some of us lament the loss of certain genres. Turn based strategy, flight sims, space sims, turn based RPGS. I stopped playing games in the mid 2000. There haven't really been any games in my favourite genres since then.
  - PetitPrince 14y ago
    While there's certainly not mainstream, there are still some quality game (already published or upcoming) that are of "forgotten" genres: - XCOM: Enemy Unknown - turn-based strategy - Star Citizen - space sim lead by Chros Robert (of the Wing Dommander fame) - Project Infinity, Torment Tides of Numerena, Wasteland 2: isometric RPG - Kerbal Space Program - non-combat space sim (it's less of a game and more of an awesome space-nerd sandbox, but I think it should deserve a mention)
    - lobster_johnson 14y ago
      Of those, XCOM is the only game that exists. Star Citizen, Project Infinity, Torment Tides and Wasteland 2 are all Kickstarter-funded games in development. Kerbal is available, but not finished, and as you say, not really a game. Sure, there are some interesting games in development (I'd add the Elite remake and Double Fine's untitled adventure game to the list), but who knows what they will be like. We don't know if they will be "quality".
jamesrcole 14y ago
I disagree. I'm in my mid thirties now, and it's not nostalgia for me. If it was nostalgia I'd feel that way about all the games I liked back then. I still think that The Secret of Monkey Island, in particular, was/is something pretty special, yet I don't think this about 99% of the games I liked back then.

danso 14y ago

This is a good question as the answer should be self-evident -- i.e. they were just great, well-written fun games -- but it's not. As pure gaming, they weren't "great" in the classical sense. I mean, after you've finished them, you can't keep playing them over and over because there's nothing really to "play." And story-wise...I would think that today's games should have better writing. I mean, games are a huge industry now, and so, theoretically, the writing talent should be much better (in the same way that game budgets can now bring in big name actors to do voices). So maybe the answer doesn't lie just in the quality of the programming or writing, but in the execution and the way things just fit, despite the limitations of the genre. Hand-drawn cartoons are "limited" in their ability to depict reality, yet the Disney classics will still stand the test of time no matter how good CGI gets. Maybe there's just something innately appealing with how adventure games, designed during the technological limitations in the LucasArts era, clicked in our brain. Limits are often good things, especially when it stretches creator and player alike to imagine things outside the boundaries. Of course, bigger budgets/production quality don't linearly translate to "better" -- Raiders of the Lost Ark vs. Indiana Jones IV (I can't even remember the title of it) is a good example. And there's always the power of nostalgia to exaggerate how good things really were back then...

TsiCClawOfLight 14y ago
Most AAA games are so linear nowadays that I'd rather replay old adventure games than recent titles.
- pilif 14y ago
  These were very linear too though. Sure: some like Monkey Island had a map that gave you the illusion of having a whole world to explore, but there still was a fixed sequence of events that couldn't be broken. None of the decisions you made had any effect for the future or could just flat-out prevent you from finishing the game. Some (Sierra) called that a feature, others (Lucas Arts) a bug. Maniac Mansion 1 and The Fate of Atlantis are the only two Lucas Arts games that provided a little bit of nonlinearity. Maniac Mansion with its different ways to solve the game based on character selection and Indiana Jones with its selection of one of three quite different paths through the game.

exratione 14y ago

For the same reason we still talk about Planescape: Torment - quality writing is quality writing.

drivers99 14y ago
I'm not sure if I should mention this here, since it looks like an ad, but that also happens to be on sale this weekend (along with a bunch of other D&D games) at gog.com. It's $1.99. I'm not sure if that's the price for it by itself or if it's in the bigger bundle.

onosendai 14y ago

Because, like a lot of old games which were made in a period with comparatively severe technical limitations, they made more with less. They managed to squeeze emotion out of orders of magnitude less pixels than the standard game today. And you've got to admire that. LucasArts's adventure games in particular were brilliant examples, and I think their defining characteristic is that they never took themselves too seriously. From a guy called Guybrush Threepwood wanting to become a pirate, to time traveling kids trying to stop a mutated tentacle from taking over the world, the settings just kept getting weirder and funnier. They had their more serious games too, like Loom which is unique in its tone and gameplay mechanics, and The Fate of Atlantis which, as far as Indiana Jones goes, beats the tripe Lucasfilm was trying to push a couple of years ago.

headbiznatch 14y ago
Anyone who has ever jumped out of the room because of a windshield attack in "Rescue on Fractalus" understands... Manipulate the psyche, not the eyes. (Bonus - at the time LucasArts also manipulated the eyes with their 8-bit fractal landscapes et al. But that was a BONUS.)
saraid216 14y ago
> They managed to squeeze emotion out of orders of magnitude less pixels than the standard game today. And you've got to admire that. It always confuses me when people are impressed by low-res graphics having an emotional impact. I read novels. I played text games. Graphics merely seem like yet another genre to me, not something exceptionally challenging.
- dave_sullivan 14y ago
  Oh, I don't know, there's something neat about building something with so many layers of complexity given such tight constraints. "Making every bit count" I guess. Similar to it being impressive that Pi and Following were made with such small budgets (and casts). I'm not sure what "exceptionally challenging" means exactly, but Lucas Arts was doing something very different from what their contemporaries were doing, and their games still stand as classics twenty years later compared to the much larger budgets and fewer constraints of today.

fiblye 14y ago

LucasArts old games were essentially perfect adaptations of 90s cartoons that never existed. With everything from the exaggerated art and sound effects, to dialogue that caters to both childish and adult humor, LucaArts games perfectly took the feel of 90s animation and packed it into a couple of floppies. I don't think it's unusual that games like Day of the Tentacle are still popular today when people still talk about 90s cartoons like Rocko and the Batman, and 80s action movies like Terminator and Die Hard. Media today tries to emulate that nostalgic feeling, but there's this undefinable element that distinguishes the time period. Years from now, people will yearn for early 2000's FPSes and we'll remember how games like HL2 and CoD defined this period.

ErikAugust 14y ago

Point-and-Click Adventure is my favorite genre... LucasArts made great games but I'd have to hand the crown to Sierra for King's Quest VI.

trotsky 14y ago

The games you played as a kid will always be the best ones.

larrydavid 14y ago

Here is the article on a single page rather than split across 6 pages. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/189899/why_are_we_still_talking_about_.php?print=1 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/189899/why_are_we_stil...

kayoone 14y ago

I remember even the copy protection puzzles of these games! This attention to detail and charm is hardly found anywhere today.

_ZeD_ 14y ago
the DIAL-A-PIRATE! I still have it somewhere!

chaostheory 14y ago

I don't even know why people are having this conversation. Most of those guys from Lucasarts' golden age left to form a studio called Double Fine.

ttuominen 14y ago
It was just a good excuse to talk about our favorite games. I haven't played any of the Double Fine games yet, but to my knowledge they haven't made any classic point-and-click graphic adventures - before the kickstarter-backed Broken Age that is [1]. I hear the old talent is still evident in the DF games though, and they seem to be story and character based. [1] http://www.brokenagegame.com/ http://www.brokenagegame.com/
- PetitPrince 14y ago
  While not a point and click, Psychonauts is widely considered to be a worthy successor of the golden age Lucasarts craziness. Let's have a look at the synopsys: a runaway circus boy goes to a summer camp for psychics lead by a international team of superspy. He discovers that a mad dentist is stealing everyone's brain by making them sneeze, and in order to get him he has to travel into the mind of several deranged persons. Certainly on par with the purple tentacle trying to take over the world or the deathly travel agent, if you ask me :) . Also, while not being a point-and-click game stricto sensu, you should really have a try at Stacking. It maybe not as brilliantly written as Psychonauts, it has some pacing issue but it's a really charming adventure (with Matryoshka dolls !) from the start to the end !
  - sesqu 14y ago
    I would not consider Psychonauts a worthy successor, nor do a wide section of people who have tried it. A good deal of the issue seems to be exactly because it's not a point and click - it's actually a 3D platformer with a number of playability issues. Most point-and-clicks have major playability shortcomings as well, but they're such different breeds that the appreciative audiences are distinctly different.
  - 14y ago

varelse 14y ago

All that and no mention of _Rescue at Fractalus_, _The Eidolon_ (An 8-bit FPS 11 years before Doom), _Koronis Rift_, or _Ballblazer_? I'm getting old...

wolfgke 14y ago
Koronis Rift and Ballblazer are mentioned on page 5: > http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/189899/why_are_we_still_talking_about_.php?page=5 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/189899/why_are_we_stil... "LucasArts games have always had a special place in my heart; from Loom to Koronis Rift to Ballblazer and the Monkey Island series. [...]"
- varelse 14y ago
  I post corrected! Still, relating this to storytelling, I continue to believe that the single most terrifying moment in a video game, to this day, occurs in _Rescue at Fractalus_. Everyone I know has literally fallen backwards in their chair at that moment. But since all the people I allude to are now old fogies, it would be interesting to see the reaction of someone a lot younger who went into the game unaware and played up to that point, a point integral to the gameplay, and to see if they instinctively do the right thing to address it. Good times, good times...
glurgh 14y ago
Mainly because those were not adventure games, which is what the article/retrospective is about.

christopheraden 14y ago

There was always something very accessible about SCUMM games (not just LucasArts ones, but they certainly had some great ones). The story lines were simple and playful enough for kids to enjoy--even 8 year olds can understand the humor in an evil purple tentacle trying to take over the world, or a talking dog and rabbit solving crimes, or a quiet biker trying to repair his motorcycle. It didn't take an intricate story or fast-paced action to set the LucasArts games apart from the competition. It was how simple, yet outlandish the plots were. 15 years later, I can still remember using a crowbar to remove a coin from the ground that was stuck there by chewing gum in Day of the Tenacle, or Ben Franklin naming a sandwich after a main character (Hoagie). I remember SCUMM games much in the same way I remember the plots of my favorite books I read as a kid. For me, they were much more like interactive novels or comic books than they were like video games. I remember Full Throttle, Dig, Loom, Monkey Island, and Day of the Tentacle in a very different way than I remember the other video games I played at the same age (Final Fantasy, Link to the Past, Super Mario World). If you haven't had a chance to play any of these wonderful titles, I would highly recomend you grab the ScummVM and play some of the freeware titles (even if they aren't LucasArts): http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Where_to_get_the_games http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Where_to_get_the_games.

libria 14y ago

Not mentioned in the article (strangely) was the innovative music system in X-wing, iMuse, where the music dynamically and seamlessly shifted depending on the situation. It's surprising how useful and immersive that was from a game play perspective and it was often my only cue not only that enemies were inbound, but how large the threat was (squadron vs capital ship). I admit there's some nostalgia here, but how often do you play games scored by John Williams? Perhaps not the first time it's ever been done, but their execution of it was amazing. Lucasarts was literally a game changer.

conradfr 14y ago

DOTT sold me to PC games.

dakrisht 14y ago

Going to go and play Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis after reading this post... For the 5th time. Today's game are total crap. Just kids shooting and killing each other, DRM issues and a corporate veil set out to destroy the experience. Bullshit

endgame 14y ago
I've been drifting away from electronic games to board/card games for some time now. My cards will still be there if the publisher goes belly-up. I don't need to have a constant internet connection to play, just a few friends and a table.
StavrosK 14y ago
Does anyone remember what the "in my time, everything was better" fallacy is called? I forget. Anyway, if you really think today's games are total crap, you haven't played masterpieces like Braid, Fez, Limbo, etc. Stop playing total crap.
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kaoD 14y ago

I'm in a good position to answer this: because they're AWESOME. My girlfriend's never been a gamer, but she's been playing some games recently (specially Minecraft spiked her interest). I finally convinced her to play some Lucasarts classic adventures some months ago. She loved them. Went through the whole Day of the Tentacle in three days on her own! No walkthroughs. I didn't even help her once. She was obsessed with it! Now she's eager to play more adventure games and looking forward to the new release of ResidualVM (Grim Fandango's engine reimplementation) which she left halfway through because she met a nasty blocker bug. Lucasarts adventures are and will be all-time classics because they're genuinely good. The plots are engaging, the dialogues are real fun and they're good intellectual challenges. I play the games regularly, at least once a year (the whole collection!) and I still enjoy them. There's always something left to explore, an action you didn't try, a line you didn't pick... and just like The Simpsons, you can re-experience them several times as you grow older (the funny jokes are not the same when you're 8 then when you're 21).

garry 14y ago

FWIW I've been a huge fan of indie developer Wadjet Eye Games, who have continued to make old-school adventure games in the modern era (all available on Steam). http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/ http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/

bane 14y ago
this nothing speaks better about the continuing viability and vibrancy of this genre than this company
lobster_johnson 14y ago
Ooh, they are the ones who made Gemini Rue [1], which is great. It's a low-rez game that looks a lot like Beneath a Steel Sky. Impeccable cyberpunk design, interesting story, very well written. (Gemini Rue is for Windows, but it's playable on the Mac via Wine. Happy to explain how, if anyone is interested.) I didn't know about their other games. Edit: Oh, they are a publisher. Gemini Rue was not created by them. Anyway, looks like they have quality stuff. Will be checking out their other games. [1] http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/gemini-rue.html http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/gemini-rue.html

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hobb0001 14y ago

I'm of two minds when it comes to LucasArts. In both graphic adventures and in space shooters, they owned the genres with quality games, which is great. The problem is that because they so totally dominated, all competition left to pursue other branches (mostly to FPS, it seems). When they stopped development in those genres, there was nobody remaining to fill the void. Those genres are now the sad, atrophied remains of what used to be pillars of computer gaming.

Gravityloss 14y ago
Sierra was just as big if not bigger in graphic adventures. Same with Origin in space shooters.

xorgar831 14y ago

From the LucasArts final final party tonight: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1u95h9n5y9ytv8j/2013-04-05%2017.20.20.jpg https://www.dropbox.com/s/1u95h9n5y9ytv8j/2013-04-05%2017.20... https://www.dropbox.com/s/1jyp0i5cvpuujhm/2013-04-05%2017.22.20.jpg https://www.dropbox.com/s/1jyp0i5cvpuujhm/2013-04-05%2017.22... https://www.dropbox.com/s/x9j2x7g6wfqavlj/2013-04-05%2017.19.04.jpg https://www.dropbox.com/s/x9j2x7g6wfqavlj/2013-04-05%2017.19...

jamesrcole 14y ago

I think the most interesting bit is on the last page: While other game companies of the 1980s had to rely on the income from their games to survive, we had the unheard-of luxury of taking our time to get our games right, with years to experiment, try new things, push the envelope, and with no pressure from marketing, focus testing, or even George Lucas. We also had time to develop our company culture, starting where the Lucasfilm culture left off. So we’d spend months thinking about our games... brainstorming with the other brilliant designers, refining, reworking, revamping, tossing out the parts that didn’t work (or the entire concept) and starting again. One of our edicts was “don’t ship shit” and we wanted to make sure we never did. Maybe working in a creatively supportive environment like that, one that wasn’t just focused on the bottom line, enabled us to think outside the box, take time to add tons of backstory and detail... tune, tune, and tune again. Until WE felt it was time to ship. Unheard of then and I’m sure even more unusual now (other than with indie games done by people in their spare time).

sdrinf 14y ago

There was an episode on the topic of resurrecting the adventure-game genre (and what exactly made it so special to us) this week on Extra-Credits: http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/raising-the-dead http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/raising-the-dead I highly, and wholeheartedly recommend checking the rest of extra-credits series, for anyone interested in game design, gamification, and the gaming industry in general: http://penny-arcade.com/patv/show/extra-credits http://penny-arcade.com/patv/show/extra-credits And specifically those of you creating experiences: http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/gamification http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/gamification

b0rsuk 14y ago

Here's a provocative thought: RPG games have boomed because they're the descendants of point&click adventure games. I'd like to have the name "cRPG" changed to "Adventure". It describes much better what the game is about, the majority of players doesn't care about role playing, and many cRPG games don't even support that. Diablo is often called Action RPG for some reason despite not offering a choice at all, the story always unfolds in exactly the same way. Anyway, old point&click games were usually about a story. Now cRPG games are the vessel for that. Exploration is also crucial to both genres, I know of no cRPG game which takes place in the same area, where variety comes from changes, events, new people arriving rather than unlocking new zones. Baldur's Gate 2 and Planescape: Torment are a good example of what I'm talking about - both have big cities, but what you're really doing is getting access to new areas within them.

mprinz 14y ago

I was not a Sierra adventure fan (except Gabriel Knight), but I loved EVERY ONE of the Lucasfilm Games. Why? I think they managed perfection in these four areas: ACCESS, FUN, CHARACTERS, DESIGN ACCESS: You fired up the game and could immediately start playing. Most of the games had no or very short intros or cutscenes. Lucasfilm was very strong at telling the story throughout the game. "I'm Guybrush Threepwood and I wanna be a pirate" -> There you go! Controls were also very easy, I think they were even the first games that you could play through by only using your mouse. That's important, because you could just literally lean back and play. FUN Maybe it's just me (obviously not) but Gilbert's and Schafer's writing style, that's my idea of fun! Well written, perfectly executed and timed. Often with very few or no words at all. Sometimes Bernard or Guybrush just turned to you and said nothing…all said! CHARACTERS The teams put a lot of effort in creating unique characters. Why the hell do I know names like Guybrush, Elaine, Stan, Bernard, Hoagie, Laverne, Ben, Bobbin, Manny, Glottis; but I can hardly remember any other adventure game character names. It's because I was emotionally bounded with them. They were mostly struggling with their environment but managed their obstacles often with unorthodox methods. DESIGN Especially Ron Gilbert and Hal Barwood established adventure game design that is still considered standard today. Brought to fame by Ron's article "Why adventure games suck – And what we can do about it" (http://grumpygamer.com/2152210 http://grumpygamer.com/2152210). This article still inspires me today and I'm throughout checking my designs against it.