I don't think so, considering that the rights to Sam & Max belong to Steve Purcell and not LucasArts, and besides, most of the ideas used in that game have been in Season 1, so no.
More games in the Grim Fandango universe would be OK, but a direct sequel featuring the same characters would do nothing but diminish the original and should be left alone. Except Glotis. You could just about get away with having Glotis in a semi-sequel.
If they only do one thing with the inevitable Lechuck's Remake, they need to fix the PC controls. That was my biggest problem with the Secret SE - I'd have been willing to overlook the other flaws if they'd not screwed that up - and I make no secret of that. If this really is a new and better LucasArts, they'll learn from their mistakes.
It works fine, I don't think that I had more than one or two crashes when I replayed it couple of months ago. There are plenty of games which need much more tweaking to get them to work properly.
I would like to see either a prequel which tells how Manny got his lousy job or a game which happens at the same time as GF but which tells the story of Salvatore Limones and his resistance movement.
I disagree. Grim Fandango looks really dated - the old school 3D stuff and backgrounds that don't blend with the characters at all is not okay by today's standard. As an old school adventure gamer I can appreciate Grim Fandango, but it's hard to introduce it to friends who aren't gamers.
Also, the controls could use 'a bit' of tweaking.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I find the graphics still pleasing. GF costs practically nothing these days, so if you expect to get latest high quality graphics when you buy old game with few € then there's something wrong with your expectations.
I love the graphics in GF, I think the game looks really nice.
I don't like the controls much, though... that goes without saying, pretty much everyone dislikes those. So that part of it could use a remake.
I'm not sure how they would remake the graphics... perhaps they could use the same backgrounds, only in higher resolution and add even more detail, and use higher poly 3D characters.
i think grim fandango, cmi and countless others could be given the SE treatment - spruced up a bit and adapter for porting to xbla, psn, steam, etc. wiiware is out of the question though.. Unless nintendo totally revamp their system.
We'll just have to wait and see what they do. Mi:2 is obviously going to be out fairly sharping, but i do hope they do cmi and maybe even emi on all our new formats of today!
I can just imagine having all the monkey islands on my xbox hard drive. I would be over the moon!
Well, that almost confirms MI2:SE, and if that happens it will probably render the MI2 Speech Project moot. Personally, I just want LucasArts to release the whole back catalogue on Steam, applying tweaks/ScummVM/the newer Windows version of SCUMM and I'll be happy.
Personally, I just want LucasArts to release the whole back catalogue on GOG.com, applying tweaks/ScummVM/the newer Windows version of SCUMM and I'll be happy.
Hmm.. CMI updated for higher resolutions = original artwork, high res. That would be something.
Seriously, isn't that something companies usually do in patches? I wouldn't pay 10€ just for higher resolution graphics, if the artwork and voices would be the same. I could pay perhaps 2€ for a patch. IMO only non-talkie games can benefit from SE, because you will get voice acting and pixel graphics of those games are pretty outdated these days.
Seriously, isn't that something companies usually do in patches? I wouldn't pay 10€ just for higher resolution graphics, if the artwork and voices would be the same. I could pay perhaps 2€ for a patch. IMO only non-talkie games can benefit from SE, because you will get voice acting and pixel graphics of those games are pretty outdated these days.
There's no reason to change the artwork or the voices since they're both perfect, and the only improvement to make is to increase the resolution (which is a lot harder than just flipping a switch, especially if they don't have high res assets of the original art)
If they do have high res assets, then it should be pretty simple, right?
Anyway, I'd love to see sequels to Loom, but that'll never happen.
Well, scaling things up that weren't designed to scale can be kind of annoying as far as making sure everything renders where it is supposed to be and reacts properly to clicks.
It's still not as simple as just flipping the resolution higher though.
Personally, it's just an opinion that there shouldn't be a Grim sequel or SE. But there is also the opinion there should be, and if Telltale also has that opinion, I'll play it anyway in the end.
Excellent news. Its about time they went back to these games after all most of them made LA the developer that it is today. And yey to the sequels, finally something non-Star Wars.
This is really great news, but an even better prospect would be new, original graphic adventures produced with a large budget, in the same spirit as the classic LA games. As much as I love Sam and Max, Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, etc., how about something new? What made those games great in the first place was their originality.
I'm hoping that they remake all of their games that didn't have talkies (Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (although the classic version is on Steam so this one is unlikely ), and Monkey Island 2). Any other remake would be icing on the cake.
I'm really sick of "living in the past" in terms of LucasArts and Sierra adventures. Constantly re-making the Golden Age without actually pushing ahead with the values that made the golden age actually golden.
I'll be MUCH happier with a new game that oozes with originality. These games had their chance to shine, and they did so brilliantly, but now it's time to give new ideas a spin.
I'm really sick of "living in the past" in terms of LucasArts and Sierra adventures. Constantly re-making the Golden Age without actually pushing ahead with the values that made the golden age actually golden.
I'll be MUCH happier with a new game that oozes with originality. These games had their chance to shine, and they did so brilliantly, but now it's time to give new ideas a spin.
I think they're warming up to this. They're trying to get people re-acquainted with their legacy, but it seems like part of a longer term plan to revive the Lucas brand as more than just the keepers of Star Wars and Indy.
I think they're warming up to this. They're trying to get people re-acquainted with their legacy, but it seems like part of a longer term plan to revive the Lucas brand as more than just the keepers of Star Wars and Indy.
@RD, how can you not be thrilled? You may call it living in the past, but it looks more like they're embracing their past and facing the future. It's not like it takes a whole lot of resources to rerelease their old games. And if it means gaining interest in what they used to do they'll move forward with newer games in the same vein. I think it's brilliant. I just hope it pans out. By the looks of things it seems like LA has seen quite a response to what they've done already and with their plans to do more it's a very exciting prospect indeed.
And how can you deny people who missed out on these great classics the chance to play them?
I am seriously up for a SE of Grim Fandango for the Wii.
They'd never be able to squeeze it into a small enough file for the Wii's downloadable stuff... it'd have to be a physical release. It'd work really well though.
I'm really sick of "living in the past" in terms of LucasArts and Sierra adventures. Constantly re-making the Golden Age without actually pushing ahead with the values that made the golden age actually golden.
I'll be MUCH happier with a new game that oozes with originality. These games had their chance to shine, and they did so brilliantly, but now it's time to give new ideas a spin.
Of course a new game would be great but it's nice that they're giving some attention to the old games too.
They'd never be able to squeeze it into a small enough file for the Wii's downloadable stuff... it'd have to be a physical release. It'd work really well though.
Who said it had to be for the wiiware? I was talking about a Wii release.
I think they're warming up to this. They're trying to get people re-acquainted with their legacy, but it seems like part of a longer term plan to revive the Lucas brand as more than just the keepers of Star Wars and Indy.
@RD, how can you not be thrilled? You may call it living in the past, but it looks more like they're embracing their past and facing the future. It's not like it takes a whole lot of resources to rerelease their old games. And if it means gaining interest in what they used to do they'll move forward with newer games in the same vein. I think it's brilliant. I just hope it pans out.
If it's more of a re-introduction of the public to their past before bringing out a lot more new things, then I'm fine. And hey, we're already getting Lucidity from them, so maybe my fears and issues are dead on arrival already. But still, LucasArts is a rather large corporation, and I've noticed that "soul" and "creativity" are resources that can be cut from the budget to pave a new future of lucrative mediocrity and re-uses of the old resources, often to great acclaim.
From the past few years worth of experience with LucasArts, it's hard to have an optimistic view of their future.
By the looks of things it seems like LA has seen quite a response to what they've done already and with their plans to do more it's a very exciting prospect indeed.
I just hope what they've learned isn't "Our margins are so much higher on these remakes...this is what the adventure community wants! Throw some coal into the Remake Machine, we're going to print money!"
And how can you deny people who missed out on these great classics the chance to play them?
I can't, don't, and never have. I've actually introduced three new people to these classics in the past year. Somehow, by forces unknowable, what was fun 20 years ago is actually still fun now.
These games never stopped existing. People can still play them. And frankly, if someone NEEDS the games to have these enhancements for them to start enjoying it, then I don't really think their opinion matters.
I just hope what they've learned isn't "Our margins are so much higher on these remakes...this is what the adventure community wants! Throw some coal into the Remake Machine, we're going to print money!"
Of course Lucasarts are hoping to profit from these remakes and special editions, but that is also the case with pretty much any game you'll ever play. I really don't see what the alternatives to these games being done for profit are - either short-term or long-term. In any case, they are not doing these remakes simply to be nice.
There is a financial plan behind doing special editions of old adventure games. Either Lucasarts management is hoping to turn a nice little profit per game, or they are looking at the oppurtunity to reenter the adventure game market, and needs to test the financial waters for these games and give their staff expertise in working on adventure games.
However, while the managment of a company looks at games from a financial view, the developers, artists, writers and coders working on the game can have a much more artistic and creative view on the project they are working on. The way I see it, nothing negatve can come from this. Worst case-scenario is that Lucasarts does a couple of flawed remakes of old adventure games before returning to doing Star Wars games, and the best case-scenario is a full fledged return of Lucasarts as a creative powerhouse doing new adventure games. We're probably landing somewhere in the middle.
These games never stopped existing. People can still play them. And frankly, if someone NEEDS the games to have these enhancements for them to start enjoying it, then I don't really think their opinion matters.
If LEC had just released MI1 on XBLA completely unaltered, no one who has never heard of MI would have ever tried it. They'd have looked at it and said "Ew what a disgustingly ugly game, no way am I paying money for this" It's sad, but it's true.
People are always going to judge a book by its cover, so if LEC wants new fans (which they do, and I think we all want adventures to be profitable), they pretty much have to make sure the games don't look like crap to newer generations of gamers who have never known anything worse than PS2.
Shallow? Yes. Graphics whores? Yes. That's the way of things. You know and I know that good game > graphics, but there are people who are dumb enough to get that equation mixed up, and Lucasarts wants their money just as much as they want ours, and hey, if it works, good for them, they deserve money from idiots and people with common sense alike.
I've seen that LucasArts has released SNES "Super Star Wars" on Wii's Virtual Console, and they plan to release the other two episodes. It would be nice, on their classic games revision policy, that they release on Wii Virtual Console their Nintendo 64 games, such as "Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire", "Star Wars: Rogue Squadron" or "Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine"
I've seen that LucasArts has released SNES "Super Star Wars" on Wii's Virtual Console, and they plan to release the other two episodes. It would be nice, on their classic games revision policy, that they release on Wii Virtual Console their Nintendo 64 games, such as "Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire", "Star Wars: Rogue Squadron" or "Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine"
Of course Lucasarts are hoping to profit from these remakes and special editions, but that is also the case with pretty much any game you'll ever play. I really don't see what the alternatives to these games being done for profit are - either short-term or long-term. In any case, they are not doing these remakes simply to be nice.
Everyone who creates and sells a product expects to(or at least WANTS to) make money. This reality isn't lost on me, but there's something more "mechanical" about a corporation the size of LucasArts than...say, a company the size of Telltale or the dozens of developers smaller than Telltale.
There is a financial plan behind doing special editions of old adventure games. Either Lucasarts management is hoping to turn a nice little profit per game, or they are looking at the oppurtunity to reenter the adventure game market, and needs to test the financial waters for these games and give their staff expertise in working on adventure games.
However, while the managment of a company looks at games from a financial view, the developers, artists, writers and coders working on the game can have a much more artistic and creative view on the project they are working on. The way I see it, nothing negatve can come from this. Worst case-scenario is that Lucasarts does a couple of flawed remakes of old adventure games before returning to doing Star Wars games, and the best case-scenario is a full fledged return of Lucasarts as a creative powerhouse doing new adventure games. We're probably landing somewhere in the middle.
It's not a detrimental thing if LucasArts only pumps out a few shallow remakes. But it's hardly something to be extremely excited for in my eyes. Unlike other genres, adventures aren't something you can really play through again until you've sufficiently forgotten enough aspects of the puzzles. You're not really "playing" it if you know what's going to happen, after all, since a good 80%* of the gameplay is in your head. So I don't get much value there, I don't get anything new.
Also, I have a more grim view of the worst-case scenario. The LucasArts remakes could be mediocre, and siphon money from the indie adventure game market, effectively suffocating and killing the market of creative games that I've been enjoying for years.
People are always going to judge a book by its cover, so if LEC wants new fans (which they do, and I think we all want adventures to be profitable), they pretty much have to make sure the games don't look like crap to newer generations of gamers who have never known anything worse than PS2.
I'd like adventures to be SUSTAINABLE, but I'd rather it not make heaps of money. That has ruined pretty much every genre of game and film already, but I've played plenty of great adventures since the "Great Fall of LucasArts". Granted they've been fringe titles, but I as a consumer really don't have to care how many people bought the same thing as I did, my only concern is that what I get is good. And I've played many great games that were obviously made because they wanted to make something incredible, and not because graphs, charts, and spreadsheets fed the latest financial trends decided that X+Y=$ because certain elements are "in season".
Now, again, I only care that the product is good. So if the result of bureaucratic mingling in the arts produces something good, I'm not going to complain. But my list of modern mainstream games that have been good in recent years is smaller than my list of good indie games in the past year, so at least there's a trend there. It's not an idealism thing so much as it is I think the indie market fuels the kind of creative environment that produces what I want. And LucasArts has proven to be so turbulent and unreliable in both the Star Wars and Adventure departments due to that type of mechanical logic that I can't be excited for this sort of thing from them. Lucidity has my attention far more than, say, Game #54:Special Edition.
Shallow? Yes. Graphics whores? Yes. That's the way of things. You know and I know that good game > graphics, but there are people who are dumb enough to get that equation mixed up
First of all, that's not an equation. An equation includes an "=" sign, what you have there is an inequality.
Secondly, graphics are PART of what make the game good. I care more about style and can tolerate the technical limitations of older machines far better than some, but I'd rather not play a game in which every graphical asset was replaced with random blobs, and my interest in the games "Machinarium" and "Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet" is based almost SOLEY on graphics, I love the look of "World of Goo", and one of my big issues with Curse of Monkey Island is the art and animation for characters.
A mechanic can make up for graphics, and to a lesser extent vice-versa.
and Lucasarts wants their money just as much as they want ours, and hey, if it works, good for them, they deserve money from idiots and people with common sense alike.
I don't WANT the industry to get their money. We all know what THEIR vote does to a product, what the popular consensus demands.
Comments
Hyeah, if you call less than 1% "most"...
:rolleyes:
It works fine, I don't think that I had more than one or two crashes when I replayed it couple of months ago. There are plenty of games which need much more tweaking to get them to work properly.
I would like to see either a prequel which tells how Manny got his lousy job or a game which happens at the same time as GF but which tells the story of Salvatore Limones and his resistance movement.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I find the graphics still pleasing. GF costs practically nothing these days, so if you expect to get latest high quality graphics when you buy old game with few € then there's something wrong with your expectations.
I don't like the controls much, though... that goes without saying, pretty much everyone dislikes those. So that part of it could use a remake.
I'm not sure how they would remake the graphics... perhaps they could use the same backgrounds, only in higher resolution and add even more detail, and use higher poly 3D characters.
We'll just have to wait and see what they do. Mi:2 is obviously going to be out fairly sharping, but i do hope they do cmi and maybe even emi on all our new formats of today!
I can just imagine having all the monkey islands on my xbox hard drive. I would be over the moon!
Fixed. :-)
Seriously, isn't that something companies usually do in patches? I wouldn't pay 10€ just for higher resolution graphics, if the artwork and voices would be the same. I could pay perhaps 2€ for a patch. IMO only non-talkie games can benefit from SE, because you will get voice acting and pixel graphics of those games are pretty outdated these days.
Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken might fare better, since they weren't great looking games to start with.
There's no reason to change the artwork or the voices since they're both perfect, and the only improvement to make is to increase the resolution (which is a lot harder than just flipping a switch, especially if they don't have high res assets of the original art)
Anyway, I'd love to see sequels to Loom, but that'll never happen.
Well, scaling things up that weren't designed to scale can be kind of annoying as far as making sure everything renders where it is supposed to be and reacts properly to clicks.
It's still not as simple as just flipping the resolution higher though.
I just hope they come out on the 360 too or something. I can't use Steam or any PC games, blargh.
I'm really sick of "living in the past" in terms of LucasArts and Sierra adventures. Constantly re-making the Golden Age without actually pushing ahead with the values that made the golden age actually golden.
I'll be MUCH happier with a new game that oozes with originality. These games had their chance to shine, and they did so brilliantly, but now it's time to give new ideas a spin.
I think they're warming up to this. They're trying to get people re-acquainted with their legacy, but it seems like part of a longer term plan to revive the Lucas brand as more than just the keepers of Star Wars and Indy.
And Thrillville. Don't forget Thrillville!
And how can you deny people who missed out on these great classics the chance to play them?
They'd never be able to squeeze it into a small enough file for the Wii's downloadable stuff... it'd have to be a physical release. It'd work really well though.
Of course a new game would be great but it's nice that they're giving some attention to the old games too.
It definitely deserves a Wii release but I don't imagine they'd go for it. I hope I'm wrong!
Not that I'm aware of, no. It is not. Not for hand-drawn 2-D games, at least.
From the past few years worth of experience with LucasArts, it's hard to have an optimistic view of their future.
I just hope what they've learned isn't "Our margins are so much higher on these remakes...this is what the adventure community wants! Throw some coal into the Remake Machine, we're going to print money!"
I can't, don't, and never have. I've actually introduced three new people to these classics in the past year. Somehow, by forces unknowable, what was fun 20 years ago is actually still fun now.
These games never stopped existing. People can still play them. And frankly, if someone NEEDS the games to have these enhancements for them to start enjoying it, then I don't really think their opinion matters.
Of course Lucasarts are hoping to profit from these remakes and special editions, but that is also the case with pretty much any game you'll ever play. I really don't see what the alternatives to these games being done for profit are - either short-term or long-term. In any case, they are not doing these remakes simply to be nice.
There is a financial plan behind doing special editions of old adventure games. Either Lucasarts management is hoping to turn a nice little profit per game, or they are looking at the oppurtunity to reenter the adventure game market, and needs to test the financial waters for these games and give their staff expertise in working on adventure games.
However, while the managment of a company looks at games from a financial view, the developers, artists, writers and coders working on the game can have a much more artistic and creative view on the project they are working on. The way I see it, nothing negatve can come from this. Worst case-scenario is that Lucasarts does a couple of flawed remakes of old adventure games before returning to doing Star Wars games, and the best case-scenario is a full fledged return of Lucasarts as a creative powerhouse doing new adventure games. We're probably landing somewhere in the middle.
If LEC had just released MI1 on XBLA completely unaltered, no one who has never heard of MI would have ever tried it. They'd have looked at it and said "Ew what a disgustingly ugly game, no way am I paying money for this" It's sad, but it's true.
People are always going to judge a book by its cover, so if LEC wants new fans (which they do, and I think we all want adventures to be profitable), they pretty much have to make sure the games don't look like crap to newer generations of gamers who have never known anything worse than PS2.
Shallow? Yes. Graphics whores? Yes. That's the way of things. You know and I know that good game > graphics, but there are people who are dumb enough to get that equation mixed up, and Lucasarts wants their money just as much as they want ours, and hey, if it works, good for them, they deserve money from idiots and people with common sense alike.
if they were going to redo loom they wouldnt have rereleased the classic version
Unless they wanted to see how well it sold without modifications?
I wouldn't be surprised.
It's not a detrimental thing if LucasArts only pumps out a few shallow remakes. But it's hardly something to be extremely excited for in my eyes. Unlike other genres, adventures aren't something you can really play through again until you've sufficiently forgotten enough aspects of the puzzles. You're not really "playing" it if you know what's going to happen, after all, since a good 80%* of the gameplay is in your head. So I don't get much value there, I don't get anything new.
Also, I have a more grim view of the worst-case scenario. The LucasArts remakes could be mediocre, and siphon money from the indie adventure game market, effectively suffocating and killing the market of creative games that I've been enjoying for years.
*Statistic completely made up.
I'd like adventures to be SUSTAINABLE, but I'd rather it not make heaps of money. That has ruined pretty much every genre of game and film already, but I've played plenty of great adventures since the "Great Fall of LucasArts". Granted they've been fringe titles, but I as a consumer really don't have to care how many people bought the same thing as I did, my only concern is that what I get is good. And I've played many great games that were obviously made because they wanted to make something incredible, and not because graphs, charts, and spreadsheets fed the latest financial trends decided that X+Y=$ because certain elements are "in season".
Now, again, I only care that the product is good. So if the result of bureaucratic mingling in the arts produces something good, I'm not going to complain. But my list of modern mainstream games that have been good in recent years is smaller than my list of good indie games in the past year, so at least there's a trend there. It's not an idealism thing so much as it is I think the indie market fuels the kind of creative environment that produces what I want. And LucasArts has proven to be so turbulent and unreliable in both the Star Wars and Adventure departments due to that type of mechanical logic that I can't be excited for this sort of thing from them. Lucidity has my attention far more than, say, Game #54:Special Edition. First of all, that's not an equation. An equation includes an "=" sign, what you have there is an inequality.
Secondly, graphics are PART of what make the game good. I care more about style and can tolerate the technical limitations of older machines far better than some, but I'd rather not play a game in which every graphical asset was replaced with random blobs, and my interest in the games "Machinarium" and "Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet" is based almost SOLEY on graphics, I love the look of "World of Goo", and one of my big issues with Curse of Monkey Island is the art and animation for characters.
A mechanic can make up for graphics, and to a lesser extent vice-versa. I don't WANT the industry to get their money. We all know what THEIR vote does to a product, what the popular consensus demands.