Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes - Lucasfilm Games

Episode Date: February 4, 2023

From gaming hosts Paul, Michael and Josh, we're bringing you even more gaming content each week.  Gaming Quick Takes are a short series of game recommendations, funny moments, off-topic chat and more. A small dose of gaming to brighten your Saturdays! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, welcome to this Quick Take episode. We're so excited to have you here with us. In the past, these Quick Take episodes actually were only available to those who financially supported the show through Apple subscriptions and Patreon. But due to popular demand, we have decided to shake up the perks for our supporters and we'll be releasing these Quick Takes on Saturdays to everyone, giving you all some extra free content that was previously unavailable to the public. And these Quick Takes are a little more laid back, and they're hosted by just one of us. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this Quick Take episode.

Shazam! Boom! What's going on, everybody? Welcome to this Quick Take episode here. This is Paul. I want to say thank you so much to all of you out there for helping support the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. And for today, I was trying to think about, you know, what's something that I'd like to talk about. We've talked about a lot of games. we've talked about some genres, and today I thought, you know what, let's do a little bit of a blast from the past. I am not going to be talking about any current games today because I'm going to talk about one of my all-time favorite video game developers slash publishers. They are technically still active, but not really. They got bought out and basically

shut down by Disney. It kind of exists only in name only now. But I want to talk about one of the kings of the 1990s, Lucasfilm Games. Now, when I was a kid, I didn't care who developed games. I didn't know who published them. I just played whatever my friends played. I played whatever looked fun. And as I look back on it now as an adult, I realize that like 50% of the games that I played were all made by Lucasfilm Games. And it's not even just the Star Wars games, because obviously they developed all of

those. But so many other properties that they came out with were just staples of my childhood, some of my all-time favorite games to play. So I thought that we would just kind of go back. I pulled up their Wikipedia page. I was looking at the games that they put together. And it actually starts with my very first favorite video game that I ever had. Many of you out there probably have never even heard of it, but my first game that I loved was called Pipe Dream, and it was known, I guess, in some parts of the world as Pipe Mania, but this was a game that was a puzzle game. It was published by Lucasfilm Games. And

basically, it was where you had this slime that would come out of a pipe, and then you would have to click on all of these various tiles and connect all these pipe pieces before that slime would ooze out onto the ground. You'd have to connect it to the endpoint, and then you'd go on to the next level. And my friend, Andrew, owned this game. He was my friend who, he was the first one I knew who had a computer. And so I remember I'd go over to his house, and we would just play Pipe Dream for hours and hours. We would just take turns with the mouse. So it goes all the way back to that. That game, I can't believe it, but it came out on Windows in 1992. And so my very first favorite game done by Lucas did not even know that back then at the time.

All right. My second favorite video game that I ever had was The Secret of Monkey Island, which my friend Jonathan owned. And I would go to his house and play that over there. And Lucasfilm Games made that as well. So all of those Monkey Island games that I love, Monkey Island 1 came out in 91, I believe. Monkey Island 2, I think, was 1992. So I was born in 84. So this is when I was still very young. Before we even had a computer in our home, I was just going to friends' houses and playing them there. Monkey Island, all-time classic. Best point-and-click adventure game ever, in my opinion.

And now you start getting into some of the all-time best Star Wars games. There are just so many good ones. I don't even know which ones to pick or to even talk about. I did end up with a Game Boy that my Aunt Monica and my Uncle Tony bought for me. I don't remember how old I was, but I only had one game for it, and it was Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back. So obviously being Star Wars, it was made by Lucasfilm. That one was great. I played a ton of it.

And then also, it cannot be understated how important the X-Wing and TIE Fighters games were in the 90s. This was at a time when people loved space combat games. They loved air combat games. So you had games like Chuck Yeager's Air Combat and things of that nature. Everyone tried to own a joystick at the time because the 90s were just this time when flying around, maybe it was just that the technology caught up and you started being able to have these 360 degree games in open space. Descent was one of my all-time favorites as well, which takes place in space. So X-Wing and TIE Fighter were really the gold standard. If you

were going to be flying in some kind of spacecraft and doing some kind of dogfighting, those games were incredible. Also, just playing as the bad guys, I don't really remember any games doing that before Lucasfilm Games did. I mean, maybe there were games out there I just didn't know about, but being able to pilot a TIE Fighter and be on that side of things you know star wars also was coming out with games like dark forces where you got to play as a stormtrooper as i remember and so being able to kind of experience both sides of that was just so clever they were all so much fun it was like any star wars game that came out in the 90s was worth playing you

know some were obviously better than others. They weren't all classics, but they were at least worth playing. I mean, they even had the Star Wars arcade game where I remember it being a little bit more expensive and it was one of the bigger ones in the arcade here that we would go to in Peoria, Arizona. But even then, you would pilot the ships and you would do your flybys on Star Destroyers and on the Death Star, and you would just take part in these really cinematic fights. And so even in the arcades, you really had this domination by LucasArts. Another game that not a lot of people know about that i really loved is full throttle full throttle was made exactly in the same vein as monkey island except you were a dude

who roll who uh rode a motorcycle he had like a leather jacket he would end up with these like street gang kind of weapons and i don't remember a whole lot because this game came out in 1995. And I remember it being a game that I owned as a kid. So we got our first home computer, I believe, in 1994. Because I remember we had to upgrade to Windows 95 when that came out. And so Full Throttle was an awesome game. I remember it feeling like a very adult game playing through it as a kid. I mean, they also made the Grim Fandango games, which were classics. They made Star Wars Racer.

I cannot tell you how many hours I sank into that on Nintendo 64. And then the last one that I wanted to talk about, which is a little bit different, and maybe I'm wrong on this, but in my memory, it was one of their last new IPs that was a lot of fun, Gladius. I might have mentioned this on the regular podcast, I'm not sure, but Gladius had some things that were really neat that were really going for it. It was a turn-based combat game set with gladiators. So, you know, this is after the huge smash hit gladiator the movie and so gladius you could actually play up to four person co-op and you controlled a gladiator you would move around on the battlefield you would fight your enemies i remember this game incorporating elevation so if you had the high ground you had had that advantage, which obviously Obi-Wan would appreciate. And so Gladius was really fun.

And so Lucas was still pumping out great games, even if they weren't Star Wars. And after that, I don't really know what happened. So Gladius, I just pulled it up on Wikipedia. It came out in 2003. And then after that, I feel like just more of the games were kind of mediocre. I don't really remember there being a whole lot of buzz after that. I think like The Force Unleashed, I remember there being a lot of buzz. And that was all the way five years later in 2008. And I remember The Force Unleashed being fine. You know, it was fun, but it was relatively short. And then after that, it just kind of fizzled.

And so they got taken over in 2013. And so I think it was just a lot of fun being a kid in the 90s when you were just really at the peak of the Star Wars love. They were coming out with these really fun advanced games and all kinds of genres. I mean, these are games that are, you know, flight combat, adventure, turn-based RPG. You know, they really just handled all of this stuff incredibly well. I guess you could say they were my first favorite developer, even though I didn't know it at the time. And so, you know, they just produced so many great things in my childhood. I'm sure a lot of you guys guys out there if you're in your 30s or 40s you probably remember them fondly as i did and yeah they're my favorite developer back then nowadays i don't even know if i have a favorite developer it kind

of seems like everyone drops the ball at some point whether it's uh cd project red bioware obviously has had a few swings and misses at this point between Anthem and Mass Effect Andromeda so I'm not really sure who it is at this point I know saying Blizzard is not exactly the you know popular company to list at this point but I guess I just don't really trust any developers anymore but back then in the 90s you could definitely trust on LucasArts. All right, well, that's it here for today. End of memory lane. We'll see you guys next time.