Loom (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Lucasfilm Games

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Release Date:

1990

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Systems:

PC, Mac, Amiga, Atari ST, TurboGrafx-CD, FM Towns

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm writing about Loom, one of the final point and click adventures by Lucasfilm Games (because they became LucasArts later on that year). Lucasfilm Games was actually revived this January, but only as a brand to stick on licenced third-party games, so that's not much to cheer about.

My gimmick for Super Adventures this year is that I'm playing games that have appeared in someone's top ten list, and Loom made it to #8 in IGN's Top 10 LucasArts Adventure Games list (it could've possibly made it higher, but they were listed in chronological order). You might be wondering if LucasArts even released more than 10 adventure games, and they actually did! But only barely. (Spoilers: Zak McKracken and Escape from Monkey Island didn't make their list.)

Loom's maybe not LucasArts' most famous adventure game, in fact I imagine a lot of people only know about it because of the dude with the 'Ask Me About Loom' badge in Monkey Island, but I believe it's fairly well liked. Personally though I don't have an opinion on the game, because I remember almost nothing about it. I've definitely finished it before, played through the whole thing, but I have zero memory of it past the first 10 minutes. Possibly not a good sign, but at least it'll be new to me!

As usual I'm planning to play the first hour or so of the game and then quit so I don't ruin the whole damn thing for people, but I promise you'll get more than your recommended daily amount of screenshots.

Full Throttle: Remastered (PC) - Part 2

Congratulations, you've discovered the second and final part of my epic two-part Full Throttle: Remastered article! If you're looking for the first part, it's right here: PART ONE.

I spent all of part one just getting out of the town at the start, but part two covers the entire rest of the game, so if you haven't played the game before and have any interest in going into it without the plot and puzzles ruined, it's probably best not to read anything below this SPOILER WARNING.

Full Throttle: Remastered (PC) - Part 1

Remastered -	Developer:	Double Fine	|	Release Date:	2017	|	Systems:	Win, PS4, PS Vita
Original Game -	Developer:	LucasArts	|	Release Date:	1995	|	Systems:	MS-DOS, Win & Mac OS

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This week on Super Adventures, it's the legendary LucasArts classic, Full Throttle! Remastered!

It seemed like a good time for me to get around to this one, with the original game's 25th anniversary being just around the corner. It came out on April 20th so I'm a month early, but Super Adventures is taking a break during April (and May) so I'm playing it now.

I've played the classic Full Throttle before, in fact I've beaten the game, but I've forgotten almost everything about it since then. I'm fairly sure I used a guide to get through it, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. I used guides all the time back then, because assumed I wouldn't make it though a game without them.

I do know one thing about the game though: it actually sold pretty well, better than any LucasArts adventure that came before it (but maybe not as well as The Dig), which the company appreciated as it also cost a fortune (though maybe not as much as The Dig). It's possible that all the expensive CD-filling cutscenes were the reason the game was such a big hit for them, though some have theorised it was actually because it had a big explosion on the box art.

Okay, I don't usually do SPOILER warnings on Super Adventures, but I'm going to play through the first third of the game and spoil a big chunk of the puzzles and story, so you might not want to read this if you haven't played through it before.

Escape from Monkey Island (PC)

Developer:

LucasArts

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Release Date:

2000

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Systems:

Windows, Mac, PlayStation 2

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Super Adventures is going on another break (sorry about that), but first I'm going to finally fix a gaping hole in my site. I wrote about Curse of Monkey Island in 2013, two years later I followed it up with Secret and Tales, and then two years after that I played LeChuck's Revenge. Not the recommended order I know, but if I always did what people recommended I wouldn't be playing Escape from Monkey Island at all. It's been another two years since I played a Monkey Island game though, so I have to play Escape now to continue the pattern!

This is the fourth of the games and for the better part of a decade it seemed like it was going to be the last of them. It wasn't though, which is fortunate because it would've been a bit of a depressing note to leave the series on. Not that Escape from Monkey Island is outright hated by fans, in fact it got good reviews, but it's often considered to be the weakest of them.

It's not the only classic adventure game sequel to suffer after the switch to 3D though, as there's also Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, Simon the Sorcerer 3D... actually it'd be quicker to name the ones that pulled it off. Uh, Sam and Max: Save the World maybe? The transition from being the prettiest 2D games to the ugliest 3D games with the worst controls didn't go well for them, but the game design seemed to go downhill in general. Even the reasonably well liked Gabriel Knight 3 gave the world the cat hair moustache puzzle that killed adventure games forever. Or maybe they died off because increasing budgets due to 3D visuals and voice acting made them increasingly unprofitable. Could be a bit of both.

Speaking of things disappearing forever but then actually coming back a while later, Super Adventures is taking the next two months off, so I've given you a few more screenshots than usual to keep you going. If you ration them out, one screenshot a day, it should get you most of the way through. But if you find yourself thinking 'When is this damn post going to end???', then don't worry, I'll shut up just as soon as I've achieved something on the second island.

This will of course mean there'll be SPOILERS for the events up to that point. Oh, and for the earlier games as well.

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (MS-DOS)

Developer:

LucasArts

|

Release Date:

1991

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Systems:

DOS, Mac, Amiga, FM Towns

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This week on Super Adventures I'm playing LucasArts' legendary point-and-click adventure game Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge! Or LeChuck's Revenge: Monkey Island according to that logo up there. Either way around it's still going to screw up your meticulously organised alphabetically ordered game library.

Monkey Island 2 is a game that needs no introduction and to be honest it doesn't need any commentary or reviews either. The game's so famous and has been so thoroughly examined that anything I write about it here will be entirely redundant; I might as well just show off some screenshots and call it a day. But I just managed to find a few thousand words to type about bloody Star Wars the other day for my sci-fi site so now I feel like I can take on anything Lucasfilm can throw at me! Though the game development group had firmly switched over to the name 'LucasArts' by this point, making this the first in the series to have the iconic Golden Guy logo (there's no skit though).

I dug out my old Monkey Island Madness compilation CD for this and I'll be playing the game using ScummVM, because it's awesome. The disc also has a version of Monkey Island 1 on it that's been updated with CD quality music, but Monkey 2 only has the original MIDI soundtrack. Which is good, because it'd only screw up the dynamic iMUSE effect. Who'd even want to explore a pirate town without the music seamlessly shifting to give each area its own theme?

Alright, this is an adventure game, so by writing about the first hour or so of gameplay I'm going to inevitably end up giving SPOILERS for the early puzzles. I won't be ruining that ending for anyone who hasn't beaten it yet though... unless you've read my Curse of Monkey Island post, then I already have. Sorry.

Star Wars: Rebel Assault II - The Hidden Empire (MS-DOS)

Developer:

LucasArts

|

Release Date:

1995

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Systems:

PC, Mac, PlayStation

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It's Star Wars' 40th birthday today and I'm celebrating by playing a Star Wars video game! I was tempted to play the game for Star Wars Day a few weeks ago on May the 4th, but the 40th seems like a bigger deal (plus I'm fond of putting things off as late as I can).

So this week on Super Adventures I'm playing Star Wars: Rebel Assault II - The Hidden Empire, by Vincent Lee. I didn't really notice at the time, but LucasArts were really fond of putting the creator's name on the box back in the 90s.

To give you an idea of where this fits on the Star Wars video game timeline, it came out the same year as Dark Forces, a year after TIE Fighter and Super Return of the Jedi, and two years after the original Rebel Assault. So it was made in the finale years of the pre-Special Edition, pre-Phantom Menace era. I didn't get to play it for a long while though due to my PC being ass. In fact I still remember the shame I felt having to take it back to the shop and buy the first game instead. But hey how I was I supposed to know what the difference between a 486SX and 486DX was before the internet!

You might be wondering why it just says "Rebel Assault" up there without a "II" on it. There is a good explanation for that which I'll reveal if you scroll down to the next picture. Though before you do, I should warn you that there'll be SPOILERS for the original trilogy of Star Wars films down there too.

Day of the Tentacle: Remastered (PC)

Remastered -	Developer:	Double Fine	|	Release Date:	2016	|	Systems:	Win, Linux, OS X, PS4, PS Vita, iOS
Original Game -	Developer:	LucasArts	|	Release Date:	1993	|	Systems:	MS-DOS & Mac OS

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This week on Super Adventures I'm having a quick look at LucasArts' 1993 point and click masterpiece Day of the Tentacle! Though I'm actually playing the 2016 HD remaster by Double Fine, partly because it's the only version you can digitally download, but mostly because I want to.

I played Tim Schafer's latest adventure game the other day, Broken Age, and now I'm going back 20 years to his very first game as project lead! Well, co-project lead, with Dave Grossman. I wish I could say this is all to tie-in with the release of Full Throttle: Remastered today, but honestly I had no idea that'd come out until five minutes ago. The timing's pure serendipity.

Day of the Tentacle is the third of a trilogy of sequels released during the early 90s, back when LucasArts were the gods of adventure games. After a game inspired by a pirate novel and a theme park ride and another inspired by 30s movie serials, this time they went back to 50s sci-fi horror movies with a sequel to 1987's Maniac Mansion. Though you'd have to really squint to spot the name on the box and it's not written at all on the title screen. I'm not sure I even realised that this was a sequel back when I first played it. Well, until I found the original game hidden inside it in its entirety anyway. Hey I wonder if they remastered that Easter egg too.

(Click the screenshots to view them in a slightly more impressive 1280x692 resolution. Which incidentally is the aspect ratio of the original game, minus the box with verbs in it).

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (MS-DOS)

Developer:

LucasArts

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Release Date:

1992

|

Systems:

PC, Mac, Amiga, FM Towns, Wii

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This week on Super Adventures I'm looking at the second Indiana Jones point and click adventure game, Fate of Atlantis, and wondering why they've put a colour cycling effect on the logo. That didn't happen in the movies... did it? I don't own the films so I can't check.

I should make it clear that this is Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis: The Graphic Adventure I'm playing, as like Last Crusade this has a separate Action Game to go along with it. Though unlike Last Crusade this has its own original story, there never was a 'Fate of Atlantis' film, so the Action Game is actually a video game tie-in... to a video game. I'm pretty sure I had a 'Fate of Atlantis' comic book once as well, but it'd take an archaeologist to find the damn thing now.

The game came out after Lucasfilm Games were renamed to LucasArts, so I'm hoping I'll get to see an animation of the Gold Guy logo man doing something at the start.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Lucasfilm Games

|

Release Date:

1989

|

Systems:

Amiga, Atari ST, CDTV, DOS, FM Towns, Macintosh, Windows

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm having a quick look at another one of those Lucasfilm/LucasArts adventures. It wasn't really part of my masterplan to play a pair of Sam & Max games in July then follow them up with a pair of Monkey Islands in September, but seeing as that happened I might as well finish the trilogy with a duology of Indiana Joneses. Uh, bit of a spoiler for the next game there, sorry.

The difference this time though is that I've never played this and I've got no idea what it's like. I don't even know if it's considered to be any good. But one thing I do know is that its full title is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure, as Lucasfilm also developed a multi-platform Last Crusade platformer in the same year called The Action Game and they didn't want gamers to get them confused. That's good responsible labelling, I applaud them.

Weirdly another developer called Software Creations went and made a third Last Crusade game a couple of years later, exclusive to the NES. Which means the console got two entirely different Last Crusade action games. Later Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures and LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures would revisit the movie as well. Not a whole lot of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull games out there though, you'll be shocked to learn.

Tales of Monkey Island (PC)

Developer:

Telltale

|

Release Date:

2009

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Systems:

Windows, OS X, iOS, Wii, PS3

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm jumping from the oldest Monkey Island of ancient Lucasfilm times to the shiny new one from Telltale: Tales of Monkey Island. Well it's relatively new; it's still six years old now.

Telltale Games was actually formed due to LucasArts' belief that adventure games were over, but after they proved otherwise with games like Sam & Max: Save the World LucasArts' new president was willing to lend them the keys to their top pirate-related game franchise. And thus the world was blessed with a brand new Monkey Island adventure! LucasArts managed to release Special Editions of Monkey Island 1 and 2 around the same time as well, before their next change of management led to a renewed focus on Star Wars dance games or whatever. They're owned by Disney now though and they've let Double Fine remaster Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle, so who knows what's going to happen next with Monkey Island.

I'm going to be playing through the whole first episode today, so I'll likely end up spoiling all of it. I’m certain I've finished it before but I hardly remember a thing about it right now so I may struggle a bit. Oh hang on, there are two things I remember: I remember a doctor’s chair puzzle being good and a map puzzle being terrible.

(Click the screenshots to view them at a higher resolution.)

The Secret of Monkey Island (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Lucasfilm

|

Release Date:

1990 (1992 CD)

|

Systems:

DOS, Amiga, Atari ST, FM Towns, Mac, Sega CD

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Today on Super Adventures... I'm sitting here listening to the Monkey Island theme. It's one of the all time greatest video game themes in my opinion and the internet agrees with me on this one. Here now that I've hyped it up, have a YouTube link: Secret of Monkey Island CD - Opening Themes.

By the way, it's The Secret of Monkey Island's 25th birthday this month! Or maybe next month, even creator Ron Gilbert says he doesn't know for sure on his blog. Either way it definitely came out in late 1990, just at the point where Lucasfilm Games was being renamed to LucasArts (it has both logos on the box). I actually only found out today which makes this the second time my site's benefited from anniversary serendipity this year, after I accidentally celebrated the Amiga's 30th birthday a few months back. Fate's not often on my side but it does seem to like my website at least.

The Secret of Monkey Island is about as famous as adventure games get, designed by famous developers Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman, who also gave the world the famous Day of the Tentacle along with the also famous Monkey Island 2. It's so famous in fact that there's nothing I can tell you about it you don't already know, and nothing about it I don't already know, so me showing it off right now is utterly pointless on every level! But stick around anyway, it'll be nostalgic. Plus I made GIFs!

Sam & Max: Hit the Road (MS-DOS)

Developer:

LucasArts

|

Release Date:

1993

|

Systems:

DOS, Mac

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Today on Super Adventures, I'm finally getting a Sam & Max game onto my website! Took me long enough, though to be fair for the first few years of my site I was making more of an effort to stay clear of games I'd played before, and this I have definitely played before. It's probably the first PC game I ever owned in fact.

Sam & Max: Hit the Road is actually a licensed game, as the duo belong to former LucasArts artist Steve Purcell (he did the amazing box art for Monkey Islands both 1 and 2) and they had their own comic long before this. But you'd be forgiven for thinking they were owned by LucasArts, with the amount of sneaky appearances they've made in their earlier games; later games too, they're all over the damn place. I even teamed up with Max for a level in Jedi Knight. But Hit the Road was their very first starring role in a video game, and for a long while it seemed like it was going to be their last.

I'm going to be playing the CD version through ScummVM, which should be pretty much identical to what you'd find on GOG.com these days. There actually was a floppy disk release too, which surprises me because I can't imagine the game without voices, and even more shockingly it only came on seven 3.5" disks! The PC version of Monkey Island 2 came on five and this has to have more than 3MB extra art and animation in it, surely.

Star Wars: Yoda Stories (PC)

Developer:

LucasArts

|

Release Date:

1997

|

Systems:

Windows, GBC

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1997 was a pretty big year for Star Wars, perhaps the biggest since Return of the Jedi hit cinemas 14 years earlier. The original trilogy of films were remastered and rereleased on cinema screens with Greedo now officially shooting first, the mighty engines of Lucasfilm had geared up to produce a new movie with two more promised to follow, Timothy Zahn released another Thrawn novel, Dark Forces got a sequel with lightsabers, TIE Fighter got a sequel with multiplayer… and then there was the other game.

But Masters of Teräs Käsi is going to have to wait, because today on Super Adventures I’m taking a quick look at a ‘desktop toy’ called Star Wars: Yoda Stories. It’s basically meant to sit alongside games like Minesweeper and FreeCell and give you something to do for half an hour while you’re taking a break from work. There is one subtle difference between Yoda Stories and the games bundled with Windows though: this retailed for £20 in Britain back in the day. That was enough to buy you a third of a Donkey Kong Country game!

Star Wars: X-Wing - Collectors' CD-ROM (MS-DOS)

Today on Super Adventures it is my privilege to bore you with my thoughts about the first hour or two of Star Wars: X-Wing: Space Combat Simulator: Collectors' CD-ROM '94! No, no, come back, I've brought gifs as well.

A few months ago I said I was going to bring back balance to the site this year, and this post should finally pull the Star Wars games even with the Star Trek games (in quantity if not quality). Actually I suppose this one should count three times, as LucasArts kept rereleasing it with a new engine and different graphics throughout the 90s. It only ever came out on PC and Mac though for whatever reason (unlike the rival Wing Commander games which made it everywhere).

This was actually the very first Star Wars game developed in-house at LucasArts, by an independent team that later formed Totally Games and went on to make a bunch more X-Wing space sims (plus a Star Trek one) before kinda dropping off the map. After 1999's Freespace 2 bombed there just wasn't as much demand for space combat games like this any more. I can't help but wonder if the genre might have lived longer though if console gamers had gotten to play the best of them.

Star Wars: Rebel Assault (MS-DOS)

Today's 'R' game is Star Wars: Rebel Assault, part of my ongoing efforts to get a few more Star Wars games onto the site so the Trek games can't be so smug.

This may well have been the very first game I ever bought for PC, I honestly can't remember. It was almost certainly this or some other LucasArts game like Sam and Max or TIE Fighter, because back when I got my first rig those guys pretty much defined PC gaming for me. So yeah I think there's a fair chance I'm going to be incredibly biased by nostalgia here, but then again it's been a few years now since this disc has been anywhere near a disc drive.

Wikipedia claims that the game also came out on Mac, 3DO and Sega CD, and I can believe it. This is definitely one of those interactive multimedia kind of action game experiences only possible due to the power of the compact disc (ie. it's got a lot of video in it).

Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Dark Forces II (PC)

Today's 'J' game is Star Wars: Dark Forces II - Jedi Knight, or whatever order those names go in. Either way there's definitely a title beginning with 'J' in there somewhere and that's what's important. As usual I'm going to play it for an hour or so, take some screenshots, talk about how it plays and so on. It'll be cool

Jedi Knight is the second game in the Jedi Knight series (not to be confused with the Gabriel Knight series), coming two years after 1995's Dark Forces. I'm not sure why they dropped the original title for the rest of the games, but I have a theory that it's got something to do with the fact that Star Wars fans are obsessed with lightsabers. In fact I believe it's universally acknowledged that the only objective flaw in the near-perfect TIE Fighter (the greatest of all Star Wars games) is the fact that you can't roll down a window and lean out of the cockpit with a sword, slicing up passing capital ships and space jousting with X-Wings.

Sure people liked being able to run around as more of a Han Solo type as he went across the galaxy blasting things with his blasters, but Han Solo with a lightsaber is what they really wanted. So from this point on LucasArts made certain to put the word 'Jedi' on the covers in big letters, making it absolutely clear to potential customers that yes, you will get to swing one of those glowy swords around in this one.

(Some of the following screenshots will expand if you click them, some won't. It's an exciting mystery!)

Metal Warriors (SNES)

Today I'm taking a quick look at Metal Warriors on the SNES. It... apparently has giant robots in it. Plus that starry background leads me to assume it'll be set in space. I don't know much else about it really.

Ever notice how many title screens feature a shiny metal logo in front of a black background or starfield? Because until this month I had no idea it was so common. For some reason my site's front page has become a sea of chrome and darkness, and every new game I play seems to perpetuate it.

Doesn't matter if it's a classic Japanese fantasy RPG, a cartoony first person shooter, or even an isometric platformer about a snake eating balls, almost everything I've played lately has gotten the shiny text. Manic Miner probably would have had it too, if the game hadn't been created way back before the human race invented metal.

Star Wars: Dark Forces (MS-DOS)

It's strange how few Star Wars games I've played these last few years, considering how many there are out there. It's not like I've been deliberately avoiding them. Allow me to make up for it in some small way by presenting a handful of screenshots from Star Dark Forces Wars, the first game in the Jedi Knight series. I usually play games blind, but I'll admit right away that I've finished the game once before, so it's not entirely new to me.

Dark Forces was LucasArts' first shot at making a first person shooter, made way back in the days when people could still seriously try to argue that new FPS games were just Doom rip-offs. Nowadays of course all games have become first person shooters, with all variety and innovation wiped out in the Great Genre War of the early 21st century, but please forgive me if I end up comparing it to Doom 500 times before I'm done anyway.

Rescue on Fractalus! (Atari 8-bit)

Well there goes the once mighty LucasArts, shifted by Disney from 'internal development to a licensing model' a few months after their acquisition to no one's great surprise. Sure you could argue that not much has changed by this as they've basically just been licensing out Star Wars games for a good while now, though somehow I never lost hope that they could turn it around and recapture some of their former glory (and maybe even make us a damn Star Wars point and click adventure already.)

But nope, three decades after LucasArts' first appearance with Rescue on Fractalus! and Ballblazer for the Atari 5200, the last games with their name attached ended up being Angry Birds Star Wars and Kinect fucking Star Wars. If they'd been the developer for those titles I'd say it was practically a mercy killing, but they were actually busy making the awesome looking Star Wars 1313 when the axe fell. So tragic.

The Curse of Monkey Island (PC)

Curse of Monkey Island is the third in the legendary point and click adventure series, released six years after the previous game. Which was a bloody long gap, considering the first two came out a year apart.

This had new designers, a radically different art style, and voice acting for the first time. And since the original creator, Ron Gilbert, had left LucasArts, the new team had to come up with their own take on the series. Which was all a bit worrying to the fans, especially as the new guys would have to resolve Monkey Island 2's now famous mindfuck of an ending, which I'm going to spoil for you after the next picture. You have been warned.