Yet another Hacker News

53 points Bondi_Blue 1 day ago 24 comments

thaumasiotes 4 hours ago | parent

> Lucasfilm, at one time had a gaming subsidiary called Lucasarts

I am given to understand that this was always the setup; the gaming subsidiary was always called LucasArts.

But the games suggest something different. Early games are branded "Lucasfilm". The first Monkey Island game to have LucasArts branding is the third in the series.

burai 4 hours ago | parent

The brand used before "Lucasarts" was "Lucasfilm games"

darkwater 4 hours ago | parent

I have memories of MI2 already showing the LucasArts logo?

(/me goes to check YT videos)

Yes I'm right, see https://youtu.be/6lTz2nkPNXA?t=32

chronogamous 3 hours ago | parent

As far as I remember, they were called LucasArts, except their first title (Labyrinth, 1986) was published and distributed by Activision. Everything else, from Maniac Mansion (1987) to Escape from Monkey Island (2000), was published by LucasArts.

/edit I stand corrected... I just checked the intro on the c64 version of Maniac Mansion, and it does indeed state Lucasfilm Games, not LucasArts. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM8ot8bJS3Q)

gxd 4 hours ago | parent

Haven't thought about this game in ages. I remember seeing it in ads but never played it.

It's odd that it became so obscure considering it was released by a major, even if then declining, game company.

otikik 4 hours ago | parent

You can change some words in this article and conclude that Hell is just suburbia.

rsynnott 4 hours ago | parent

See “The Good Place”.

layoric 4 hours ago | parent

I love this game. The whole design, the voice acting, humour and frustratingly hard game play as you get further into the game. If you like other Lucasarts games, highly recommend just playing through the tutorial at the very least.

TomGarden 4 hours ago | parent

This is so nostalgic!

Side note, Lucasarts' games rewired my kid brain to expect humor and (good) voice acting in games. It's really guided (and limited) what games I'm able to enjoy

gustavorg 4 hours ago | parent

Because of my poor English, I thought this post was about life at LucasArts after the sale. I was disappointed. I never had time to play LucasArts games: Leisure Suit Larry, Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals and similar games took up all my time.

auto 6 minutes ago | parent

I've got good enough English as a native speaker and I thought the same thing, don't worry. That said, still an interesting article about a game I managed to never hear of before, despite being immersed in exactly those sorts of games at the time.

davidsojevic 3 hours ago | parent

I bought a copy of Afterlife from one of the Scholastic catalogues when I was in primary school after already having had a blast with Sim City 2000.

I absolutely loved the graphics and the theme and everything, but as it turns out, I had absolutely no idea how to play it and never got far enough into it to really appreciate its gameplay.

I should probably give it another go as an adult who has a bit more patience for reading through instructions than I did as a kid.

washadjeffmad 3 hours ago | parent

I played it summer of 2005, the same year I binged Douglas Adams' complete non-HHG works (including 'Last Chance to See' on CD-ROM and the interactive fiction game, 'Bureaucracy').

Afterlife is wonderfully fun and satisfying to experience to completion for the first time, and what it might lack in replayability it more than makes up for with humor and design.

designium 3 hours ago | parent

I still play once a year. But now I can reach full omnibulges and love domes in less than an hour. But I remember spending months to survive until I discovered the cheat code (btw if you use too much, it triggers something that I can’t remember, it can mess up the game as a punishment).

The I figured out to let the planet evolve and grow it’s population because then, your afterlife has high demand thus more money, that detail solves the hardest part of the game!

The other insight which came much much later, the better capacity per area is given by the top 2x2 and 4x4 multi color. 3x3 top buildings are badass looking but they offer smaller max capacity for souls, we are aiming in reaching 1 billion souls using the least amount of area so you always have free space to build as demand explode.

robertlagrant 3 hours ago | parent

I'd recommend this. As kids my brother and I could never complete a game on the BBC Micro called Imogen[0]. It was amazing for the time in that your character could transform into three modes (wizard / cat / monkey) and on one screen a fourth mode, and the transformation looked smooth even back then. However - we never completed it. As an adult I found it again and while I completed it fairly easily, it was a nice memory.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imogen_(video_game)

designium 3 hours ago | parent

1. Find a map with the maximum amount of buildable space 2. Start the game with the maximum speed to above 5000 years 3. Build Hell first and only 4. Pause, build the portal already thinking in upgraded form. 5. Build long straight roads, columns spaced 4 from each other, avoid crossing 6. Check the sins demand 7. Usually, the green is the most demanded 8. Don’t touch anything about the planet 9. This is key: using green as example, build 2x2 spaced so the neighbor is diagonal, never adjacent. 10. Build your first wave of buildings, and essentials (dystopias, the trams, etc. I assume you know those things) 11. Open the portal, make a lot of money 12. Upgrade the portal, make more money 13. Max capacity reached, starting to lose souls and money, you adjust the building’s efficiency to white for every building manually until you are rich 14. Buildings start to reach its top version and capacity, lock them 15. Activate the bats , y to their guano are excellent to upgrade the buildings. Also keep other disasters away during a grace period 16. Then keep growing, adjusting buildings efficiency, more portals, more buildings 17. You only need half the Hell, to achieve hell’s Omnibulges 18. Then star heaven 19. Follow heaven best practices and you reach to Love Domes very easily and rich af 20. I would only train later in the game. Build the best training school, make it only accept top 10%, left side, watch and leave 20% no lower because it can cause excess oof demons or angels, unless you want to see the a special ending 21. Endings can be quite fun to achieve (then you want to mess up with the planet)

singularity2001 3 hours ago | parent

Tangential: After 3 Weeks Claude finished Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken in my little RL harness.

neonnoodle 3 hours ago | parent

The music from this game is still in my regular rotation.

N_Lens 2 hours ago | parent

I miss the old lucasarts era of games, it was a magical time!

Razengan 55 minutes ago | parent

I still remember the intro of this game lol

hliyan 43 minutes ago | parent

Does anyone remember a Windows game called Yoda Stories? I had such fond memories of it that I tried to find the game or an emulator version multiple times. No luck. It was an elegant game from a more civilized time where resolution, shading, texture and frame rate did not define how good a game was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJT4sdifLXM

lvbyte 15 minutes ago | parent

The game came with LucasArts Archives Vol. IV: Star Wars Collection II. It's in the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/thelucasartsarchivesvolivstarwar...

trashb 12 minutes ago | parent

It is supported by the DREAMM emulator. And the image is on archive.org, have fun!

BiteCode_dev 16 minutes ago | parent

Fun game, but very hard, and teaches you the danger of debt quite early in life.

But the 2 advisers were so funny!