Tag: LucasArts

Shadows of the Empire

Shadows of the Empire: The Movie-Without-the-Movie Extravaganza of 1996

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In 2015, I conducted a series of interviews with some of the people who worked on the Shadows of the Empire project concocted by Lucasfilm back in 1996. I loved the project, warts and all, from the moment it was released so it was a joy to conduct these interviews and gain multiple inside perspectives on what it was like to create such an expansive project. The essay was written for the Expanded Universe anthology called A More Civilized Age: Exploring the Star Wars Expanded Universe (2016) from my friends Rich Handley and Joe Berenato. I’ve decided to reprint the essay here on my site because I feel it sheds some more light on the nearly 30-year-old project and ended up revealing a few facts that were previously unknown to me about the inner workings of Lucasfilm at the time.

I’ve slightly edited this essay for the Internet by removing footnotes and changing them to links, and other small things like that. All quotes, unless otherwise indicated, are from my interviews. For more fun, head over to Facebook and like my Shadows of the Empire fan page.

I hope you enjoy the essay.

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Classic LucasArts Games Go Digital

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http://www.gog.com/news/lucasfilm_on_gogcom_wave_ii_starts_nowI count myself lucky enough to have been around at the dawn of home (and arcade) video gaming. From set-top pong variations right up until the Xbox/Playstation generation, I’ve seen and played them all. When home PCs started to become “a thing,” I was there also. Some of my fondest gaming memories are playing the early Star Wars titles on my old custom-built Pentium 90. I spent many an hour working through games like Rebel Assault, X-Wing and Dark Forces, not to mention non-Star Wars titles like The Dig and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Read More

Star Wars: Battlefront III: What Could Have Been…

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With news of Disney shutting down LucasArts, there came a disturbance in the Force… as if a million voices cried out in terror.

LucasArts was the developer responsible for such classic games as the Monkey Island series, the Indiana Jones series, Full Throttle & Grim Fandango. And though those games were all critical & commercial successes, it was the Star Wars games that really got fans excited.

From real-time strategy games such as Empire at War, third-person games like The Force Unleashed series, and first-person games of the X-Wing series, Jedi Knight series, and Battlefront series, LucasArts allowed us to explore the Star Wars universe like never before.

Here is some leaked multi-player gameplay footage of a project named “Wingman” or “Version Two” which was allegedly going to be Battlefront III, and it makes the closing of LucasArts all the more painful.

For more on how poorly Disney handled LucasArts, read this Kotaku article.

Note: the footage has no sound.

Source: Kotaku