Games - LucasArts

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	Games - LucasArts

LucasArts Entertainment Company is a video game developer and publisher. The company was famous for its line of point-and-click adventure games and today mainly produces games based on the Star Wars franchise.

Origins

The company had its beginnings in May 1982 in the Games Group of Lucasfilm Ltd., the film production company of George Lucas. Lucas had wanted his company to branch out into other areas of entertainment, and so he cooperated with Atari to produce video games. The first results of this collaboration were unique action games like Ballblazer and Rescue on Fractalus. Beta versions of both games were unfortunately leaked to pirate bulletin boards exactly one week after Atari received unprotected copies for a marketing review, and were in wide circulation months before the original release date. In 1984, they were released for the Atari 5200 under the Lucasfilm Games label. Versions for home computers were not released until 1985, by publisher Epyx. Lucasfilm's next two games were Koronis Rift and The Eidolon.

The Adventure games

Lucasfilm Games released its first adventure game in 1986: Labyrinth, based on the Lucasfilm movie of the same name.

In 1987, the adventure game Maniac Mansion was released as part of the new wave of point-and-click adventure games pioneered with ICOM's Deja Vu. It was followed by more adventures of high quality and in the following years Lucasfilm built a reputation for producing the best games of the genre. Amongst the early LucasArts classics was the much-loved The Secret of Monkey Island (later followed by three sequels), an adventure game notable for the quality of its comedic script, the absurd solutions to many of its puzzles and the invulnerability of its protagonist, which was quite an innovation in a genre where choosing the wrong thing to say could often result in instant death.

Simulations

The company also started producing military simulation games, the first of which were the naval simulations PHM Pegasus and Strike Fleet. In 1988, Battlehawks 1942 was released, later followed by Their Finest Hour and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe. The WW2 Air Combat Trilogy, as it was later called, was created by Lawrence Holland's team, who later founded their own company in Totally Games.

The early 1990s

In 1990, in a reorganization of the Lucas companies, the Games Division of Lucasfilm became part of the newly created LucasArts Entertainment Company, together with 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. The logo was changed from the well-known Lucasfilm to a human silhouette (the Golden Man) on an L-shape.

Even though LucasArts had created games based on other Lucasfilm properties before (Labyrinth, Indiana Jones), they didn't use the most promising Lucasfilm license until the early 1990s: Star Wars action games began appearing on the Nintendo consoles, but were developed by other companies for LucasArts. The first in-house development was the space combat simulator X-Wing, developed by Larry Holland's team, which went on to spawn a successful series.

The CD-ROM-only Star Wars game Rebel Assault became one of the biggest successes of the company and was considered a killer app for CD-ROM drives in the early 1990s. Another game that utilised the new technology of the CD-ROM drive was 1993's Day of the Tentacle, the first LucasArts adventure game to have a full spoken soundtrack available on the game's release rather than relying on text.

The first person shooter

After the unprecedented success of id Software's Doom the PC gaming market shifted towards production of three dimensional first person shooters. LucasArts contributed to this trend with the 1995 release of Star Wars: Dark Forces, a first person shooter that successfully transplanted the Doom formula to a Star Wars setting. The game was well received and spawned a new franchise: the Jedi Knight games. This began with the sequel to Dark Forces, Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II released in 1997; this game reflected the changing face of PC gaming, being one of the first games to appreciably benefit when used in conjunction with a dedicated 3d graphics card like 3dfx's Voodoo range. The game received an expansion pack, Mysteries of the Sith, in 1998 and a full sequel in 2002 with Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. 2003's Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy can be seen as a spin-off from the series, but was less well received by reviewers, who complained that the franchise was becoming formulaic.

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