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R.I.P. LucasArts - 10 essential games that need to be rescued from the archives

From Monkey Island to Grim Fandango

R.I.P. LucasArts - 10 essential games that need to be rescued from the archives
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| Grim Fandango

It's a sad day for fans of wannabe pirates, detective dogs, skeletal travel agents, and whip-slinging archaeologists: point-and-click pioneer LucasArts has officially bitten the dust.

The Walt Disney Company, which scooped up LucasArts as part of its $4.05 billion buyout of Lucasfilm in October 2012, says that the few remaining staffers at the games firm will now focus on licensing its brands to third-party studios.

With that in mind, we implore some mobile-friendly developers to ring up the LucasArts hotline and strike a deal to port some of these must-play classics to iOS and Android.

Maniac Mansion

Maniac Mansion is a graphic adventure title that was originally released on the Commodore 64 25 years ago, way back in 1897. The game was subsequently ported to the Apple II, as well as the Atari ST and the NES.

This colourful title follows a young teenager called Dave who enters a strange mansion in search of his girlfriend, who's been kidnapped by a mad scientist.

Day of the Tentacle

Day of the Tentacle is a 2D point-and-click adventure in which you're tasked with preventing an evil purple tentacle from taking over the world.

In this adventure, you take control of three characters (Bernard, and his buddies Hoagie and Laverne), and jump through various timezones in order to complete puzzles and save humanity.

Grim Fandango

This dark comedy neo-noir was primarily written by Tim Schafer, the humour-loving co-designer of the first two Monkey Island games, as well as Day of the Tentacle.

In Grim Fandango, you play as a dead travel agent called Manny Calavera, who must save the soul of a woman called Mercedes Colomar as she travels through the Land of the Dead.

The Curse of Monkey Island

LucasArts's third instalment in the excellent Monkey Island franchise once again sees you step into the boots of lacklustre wannabe pirate Guybrush Threepwood, as he tries to overcome his archnemesis LeChuck.

The Curse of Monkey Island was the last LucasArts game to use the company's SCUMM engine. It was also the first entry in the series to feature voice-acting and cartoonish graphics.

Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures

Indy's SNES adventure from 1994 is an action-packed platformer that allows you to relive the events of Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Last Ark, Temple of Doom, and Last Crusade movies.

Naturally, you can use Doctor Jones' infamous bullwhip to dispatch enemies and swing across chasms. Along the way, you can also pick up guns and a limited numbers of grenades.

Zombies Ate My Neighbors

In case you're not familiar with this Sega Genesis shooter, it tasks you with patrolling suburban neighborhoods, shopping malls, and other areas and laying waste to vampires, werewolves, and giant ants.

Each location in the game is littered with stranded neighbours, which you have to rescue before you can progress onto the next. If you're a slow-coach, monsters will kill the survivors before you reach them.

Super Star Wars

Super Star Wars is arguably one of the best Star Wars games ever to be released. It definitely gives BioWare's Knights of the Old Republic a run for its money.

Anyway, it's a action-orientated side-scrolling platformer that loosely follows the events that unfold in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

It's two sequels, Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Super Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, are also pretty good.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

This Indy-themed point-and-click adventure was originally released in 1992, but was subsequently enhanced with several new features and reissued a year later on CD-ROM. These new features included full voice-acting.

In Fate of Atlantis, you, as you can imagine, take on the role of adventurer and snake botherer Indiana Jones. Your goal is to uncover the legendary city of Atlantis.

Sam & Max Hit the Road

Sam & Max Hit the Road is a story about two freelance police officers called, unsurprisingly, Sam and Max - a dog and a rabbit. This game's story is based on a comic from 1987 called 'On the Road'.

Playing as the two agents, you have to hunt down a bigfoot that's gone missing from a nearby carnival, by travelling between various Americana tourist sites and solving puzzles.

Loom

Loom is very different to many of LucasArts's other graphical adventure games. It features a serious fantasy storyline rather than a tongue-in-cheek one, for example, and does away with the genre's common item-based puzzles.

You take on the role of protagonist Bobbin Threadbare, who can play magical four-note tunes on his trusty distaff. These tunes, which are commonly called drafts, have several effects, such as an 'opening' effect and a 'night vision' effect.

Anthony Usher
Anthony Usher
Anthony is a Liverpool, UK-based writer who fell in love with gaming while playing Super Mario World on his SNES back in the early '90s. When he isn't busy grooming his beard, you can find him replaying Resident Evil or Final Fantasy VII for the umpteenth time. Aside from gaming, Anthony likes hiking, MMA, and pretending he’s a Viking.