Kicking off in 1986, Lucasarts presided over an era (running until around the year 2000) in which they were the adventure game Kings, releasing a string of titles that remain all-time classics even decades later.
This post originally appeared 1/26/16.
Their games were made famous for their innovative use of a graphic interface based on mouse clicks (previous adventure games, including those from competitor Sierra, relied on cumbersome text input), but have endured in peopleās hearts thanks to timeless pixel art andārare for video gamesāa genuine sense of humour.
It was a time of perfect storms, where some of the best technology (the SCUMM engine and iMuse adaptive music system) was married to some of video gamingās smartest (and funniest) designers, from Ron Gilbert to Tim Schafer to Sean Clark.
https://lastchance.cc/how-lucasarts-fell-apart-1401731043%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
The studio, now no more, released its last new adventure game in 2000. In the 16 years since weāve seen re-releases, remasters and new games based on Lucasarts titles from third party developers, but for the purposes of a ranking like this, Iām going to keep things simple by only including adventure games released under the banner of Lucasarts (or, when it came to earlier games before the name change, Lucasfilm).
15. Labyrinth
14. Escape From Monkey Island
13. Zak McKracken
12. Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade
11. Loom
10. The Curse of Monkey Island
9. Maniac Mansion
8. The Dig
7. Grim Fandango
6. The Secret Of Monkey Island
5. Sam & Max Hit The Road
4. Full Throttle
3. Day Of The Tentacle
2. Monkey Island 2: LeChuckās Revenge
1. Indiana Jones & The Fate Of Atlantis
Itās funny, looking up at this list, how little thought I gave to the game when weighing each of these up. Iāve noticed over the years that folks rarely remember the hours of frustration spent with bullshit illogical puzzles, clicking every pixel on a screen to try and force their way through an impasse or enduring busted action sequences that shouldnāt have passed QA.
https://lastchance.cc/fate-of-atlantis-and-movie-techniques-in-games-1697241762%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
What we remember about each game then, and what tends to dominate discussions about them, are their worlds and their stories. Itās like Lucasarts invented all these bizarre locations and memorable locations and justā¦needed something to propel them. And adventure games, with their slow pace and penchant for loads of dialogue, were the perfect fit.
If youāre after some kind of insight into my approach here, know that Iām not that big a fan of Labyrinth (the only game on this which had any kind of serious text interface), and could never stand Zak McKrackenās brand of humour or Monkey Island 4ās complete absence of it. Indeed, take a look at the top half of this list and you can see a pattern emerging, a āgolden ageā for Lucasarts that kicks off with the first Monkey Island and runs through to Grim Fandango, in which pretty much everything the company released was just solid gold, and the games released before (or after) just couldnāt hit the same heights.
It wasnāt pleasant pitting many of my fondest childhood memories against each other, but thereās solace in the fact that like some other rankings Iāve tried over the years, just because a game comes last (or close to it) doesnāt always mean itās bad. It just means that the stuff above it is even better
