LucasArts history by The Digital Antiquarian

[Udvarnoky]

I want to bring some attention to Jimmy Maher’s superb and ongoing interactive entertainment chronicle at The Digital Antiquarian. Though the articles devoted to LucasArts represent only a selective fraction of his overall exploration of game history, they amount to a superior work of scholarship about our favorite subject, replete with rare photographs and can’t-be-found-anywhere-else anecdotes.

 

I get the sense Maher’s achievement hasn’t been as trumpeted as it should have been, so as a public service here’s the full list of all the LucasArts-relevant pieces he’s published so far:

 

A New Force in Games, Part 1: Fractal Dreamers July 10, 2015
A New Force in Games, Part 2: A Habitat in Cyberspace July 17, 2015

A New Force in Games, Part 3: SCUMM July 24, 2015

The 14 Deadly Sins of Graphic-Adventure Design (or, Why Ron Gilbert Hated Adventure Games) July 31, 2015

Loom (or, how Brian Moriarty Proved That Less is Sometimes More) February 18, 2017

Monkey Island (or, How Ron Gilbert Made an Adventure Game That Didn’t Suck) March 10, 2017

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (or, Of Movies and Games and Whether the Twain Shall Meet) September 28, 2018

Day of the Tentacle June 7, 2019

Sam and Max Hit the Road June 21, 2019
The Second Coming of Star Wars February 5, 2021

Full Throttle July 2, 2021

The Dig July 23, 2021

Jedi Knight (Plus, Notes on an Expanded Universe) April 5, 2024

The Curse of Monkey Island April 19, 2024

 

[elTee]

Yes I second this. It's always a pleasure when a new entry goes live, especially when it's a game I remember! 

[Lagomorph01]

Good reads! I read the Monkey Island one and am now plowing through Fate of Atlantis. Thanks for sharing!

[Udvarnoky]

The first LucasArts-dedicated article in a few years has turned up, this one about Jedi Knight.

[dognut]

glad this was bumped. stumbled upon his site a year ago and have been consuming it all ever since. great stuff. including the Dark Forces piece.

[Niemandswasser]

And today he covered Curse!

 

I really can't say enough good things about Jimmy Maher. He makes this stuff so compelling, really weaving all these disparate strands into a cohesive narrative about not just how the industry grew and changed in its formative years, but why, and what each development meant. I sometimes disagree with his takes on individual games, but rarely with his reasoning for them.

[Udvarnoky]

Yeah, Jimmy's a good writer and brings the receipts, and he's also capable of a hot take that prevents him from being boring, like his dissenting view of LeChuck's Revenge. He and Frank Cifaldi had a nice conversation about The Dig once, and as I recall Frank slipped in his dislike of Fate of Atlantis. The point being, there's a little bit of this thread inside every human heart.