Lucasfilm Games
Lucasfilm Games is an American video game licensor, former video game developer and publisher, and a subsidiary of Lucasfilm. It was founded in May 1982 by George Lucas as a video game development group alongside his film company; as part of a larger 1990 reorganization of the Lucasfilm divisions, the video game development division was grouped and rebranded as part of LucasArts. LucasArts became known for its line of adventure games based on its SCUMM engine in the 1990s, including Maniac Mansion, the Monkey Island series, and several Indiana Jones titles. A number of influential game developers were alumni of LucasArts from this period, including Brian Moriarty, Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, and Dave Grossman. Later, as Lucasfilm regained control over its licensing over the Star Wars franchise, LucasArts produced numerous action-based Star Wars titles in the late 1990s and early 2000s, while dropping adventure game development due to waning interest in the genre.
Lucasfilm was wholly acquired by The Walt Disney Company in December 2012, and by April 2013, Disney had announced the shuttering of LucasArts in all but name, keeping the division around to handle licensing of Lucasfilm properties to third-party developers, primarily Electronic Arts, and having any in-house development transferred to Disney Interactive Studios. Disney has, since 2021, revitalized the Lucasfilm Games brand as the licenser of all Lucasfilm-related properties.
History
Early history
In 1979, George Lucas wanted to explore other areas of entertainment and created the Lucasfilm Computer Division in 1979, which included a department for computer games and another for graphics. The graphics department was spun off into its own corporation in 1986, ultimately becoming Pixar.The Lucasfilm Games Group originally cooperated with Atari, Inc., which helped fund the video game group's founding, to produce video games. Though the group had spun out of Lucasfilm, the video game development license for Lucasfilm's Star Wars was held by Atari at the time, forcing the group to start with original concepts; Ron Gilbert, one of the group's first employees, believed that if the Lucasfilm Games Group had the rights for Star Wars from the start, they would have never branched into any new intellectual property.
The first products from the Games Group were Ballblazer and Rescue on Fractalus!, developed in 1984 for the Atari 5200 console and Atari 8-bit computers. Beta versions of both games were leaked to pirate bulletin boards exactly one week after Atari had received unprotected copies for a marketing review, and were in wide circulation over a year before the original release date. Planned to be released in the 3rd quarter of 1984 under the Atari/Lucasfilm label, the games were delayed when Warner Communications sold the assets of the consumer division of Atari, Inc. to Jack Tramiel in July of that year, and were ultimately picked up by publisher Epyx and released by May 1985. Lucasfilm's next two games were Koronis Rift and The Eidolon. Their first games were only developed by Lucasfilm, and a publisher would distribute the games. Atari published their games for Atari systems, Activision and Epyx would do their computer publishing. Maniac Mansion was the first game to be published and developed by Lucasfilm Games.
The early charter of Lucasfilm Games was to make experimental, innovative, and technologically advanced video games. Habitat, an early online role-playing game and one of the first to support a graphical front-end, was one such title. It was only released as a beta test in 1986 by Quantum Link, an online service for the Commodore 64. Quantum Link could not provide the bandwidth at the time to support the game, so the full Habitat was never released outside of the beta test. However, Lucasfilm Games recouped the cost of development by releasing a sized-down version called Club Caribe in 1988. Lucasfilm later licensed the software to Fujitsu, who released it in Japan as Fujitsu Habitat in 1990. Fujitsu later licensed Habitat for world-wide distribution, and released an updated version called WorldsAway in 1995. The latest iteration of Habitat is still called WorldsAway, which can be found at MetroWorlds.
Initially, the Games Group worked from Lucas' Skywalker Ranch near Nicasio, California. In 1990, in a reorganization of the Lucas companies, the Games Division of Lucasfilm became part of the newly created LucasArts Entertainment Company, which also comprised Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound. Later ILM and Skywalker Sound were consolidated in Lucas Digital Ltd. and LucasArts became the official name of the former Games Division. During this, the division had moved out of Skywalker Ranch to near-by offices in San Rafael, California.
Also in 1990, LucasArts started to publish The Adventurer, their own gaming magazine where one could read about their upcoming games and interviews with the developers. The final issue was published in 1996.
In the same year, Lucas Learning was created as a subsidiary of LucasArts, providing educational software for classrooms.
iMUSE
iMUSE is an interactive music system used in a number of LucasArts video games. It synchronizes music with the visual action in the game, and transitions from one musical theme to another. iMUSE was developed in the early 1990s by composers Michael Land and Peter McConnell while working at LucasArts. The iMUSE system is patented by LucasArts, and was added to the SCUMM game engine in 1991. The first game to use iMUSE was Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge and it has been used in all LucasArts adventure games since. It has also been used for some non-adventure LucasArts titles, including Star Wars: X-Wing, Star Wars: TIE Fighter, and Star Wars: Dark Forces.Action side-scrolling games
Lucasfilm Games also released several side-scrollers during the Lucasarts era, focusing primarily on run and gun gameplay. A trilogy of games under the name of Super Star Wars for the SNES, with each game based on each of the three films from the Star Wars original trilogy: Super Star Wars, Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. An Indiana Jones game based on the first three films of the franchise titled Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures was developed alongside Factor 5, the first of many joint collaborations between the two studios.They also released some games not based on their existing IPs. Zombies Ate My Neighbors and its sequel Ghoul Patrol were overhead run and gun side-scrollers inspired by classic 1950s Horror B-movies. A spiritual successor called Herc's Adventures was released in 1997 and was inspired by Greek mythology. Metal Warriors, a side-scroller inspired by mecha anime, and Big Sky Trooper were also developed using the same engine as Zombies Ate My Neighbors. Though these games sold poorly, they later garnered a cult following and are now considered to be Cult Classics from the 16-Bit era.
Adventure games
The first adventure game developed by Lucasfilm Games was Labyrinth in 1986, based on the Lucasfilm movie of the same name. The 1987 title Maniac Mansion introduced SCUMM, the scripting language behind most of the company's later adventure offerings. The adventures released in the following years, such as Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders in 1988, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure in 1989, and the 1990 titles Loom and The Secret of Monkey Island helped Lucasfilm Games build a reputation as one of the leading developers in the genre. The original five adventure games created with SCUMM were released in a compilation titled LucasArts Classic Adventures in 1992.LucasArts was often referred to as one of the two big names in the field, competing with Sierra On-line as a developer of high quality adventures. The first half of the 1990s was the heyday for the company's adventure fame, with classic titles such as Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge in 1991, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis in 1992, Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max Hit the Road in 1993, and the 1995 titles Full Throttle and The Dig.
In the latter half of the decade, the popularity of adventure games faded and the costs associated with game development increased as high-resolution art and C.D.-quality audio became standard fare. The PC market wanted titles that would show off expensive new graphics cards to best effect, a change replicated in the home console market as the 3D capabilities of the PlayStation, Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64 dictated the nature of the majority of games produced for those platforms. The adventure genre failed to find popularity with the masses of new gamers.
Despite their declining popularity, LucasArts still continued to release adventure titles. In 1997, The Curse of Monkey Island, the last LucasArts adventure game to retain traditional two-dimensional graphics and point-and-click interface, was released. This was followed by Grim Fandango in 1998, LucasArts' first attempt to convert a 2D adventure to a 3D environment. The highly stylised visuals, outstanding soundtrack, superb voice acting and sophisticated writing earned Grim Fandango many plaudits, including GameSpot's Game of the Year award. Escape from Monkey Island, the fourth installment in the Monkey Island series, featured the same control scheme as Grim Fandango, and was generally well received. It is the last original adventure game the company has released.
Two sequels to existing franchises, Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels and Sam & Max: Freelance Police, were announced to be in development but these projects were cancelled, in 2003 and 2004 respectively, before the games were finished. When the rights to the Sam & Max franchise expired in 2005, the creator of Sam & Max, Steve Purcell, regained ownership. He then licensed Sam & Max to Telltale Games to be developed into an episodic game. Telltale Games was made up primarily of former LucasArts employees who had worked on the Sam & Max sequel and were let go after the project was canceled.
LucasArts halted adventure game development for the next five years, focusing instead on their Star Wars games. They remained silent and did not rerelease their old games on digital distribution platforms, as other studios were doing at the time. However, in 2002, the company pledged that at least 50% of its releases would have nothing to do with Star Wars. It was not until 2009 that they returned to the genre. On June 1, 2009, LucasArts announced both The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition, a high-definition remake of the original game with revised graphics, music and voice work, and Tales of Monkey Island, a new episodic installment in the Monkey Island series that was developed by Telltale Games.
Then, on July 6, 2009, they announced that they would be rereleasing a number of their classic games, including Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and LOOM, on Steam. The rereleases were, for the first time, native versions built for Microsoft Windows. This was the first time in many years that the studio had offered any support for its classic adventure titles.
The second game in the Monkey Island series also received a high-definition remake, entitled Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge Special Edition in 2010. Both Monkey Island special edition games were released in a compilation, Monkey Island Special Edition Collection, exclusively in Europe in 2011.
The release of the unofficial SCUMM virtual machine, ScummVM, has led to something of a resurgence for LucasArts adventure games among present-day gamers. Using ScummVM, legacy adventure titles can easily be run on modern computers and even more unusual platforms such as video game consoles, mobile phones and PDAs.