By John Walker on August 27th, 2008 at 1:43 pm.
I would like to publically declare my love for Full Throttle. Something very strange happened with history and opinion on that game – it was well received by critics, it was completely fantastic, it was Tim Schafer’s most mature writing (three years before Grim Fandango). And then somehow it became the black sheep of LucasArts’ output, condemned by false memories of being too short, and having awful arcade sequences throughout. Which just isn’t true! Certainly it was a shorter adventure compared to others in their catalogue, but it was such an astonishingly fine one. And the arcade bits? Pieces of piss, apart from one crappy section with the demo derby. Get over it! Restore Full Throttle to its rightful glory! And then check out this excellent piece from Adventure Classic Gaming, discussing the fate of the two aborted sequels with former LucasArts artist, Bill Tiller.
LucasArts did seem to have a bit of a phase at the beginning of the decade, hellbent on killing off anything with a spark of imagination in order to focus on churning out dreadful Star Wars dross. Tiller provides some insight into those times, as well as going into excellent detail about what the first, almost unknown, sequel would have been about. Full Throttle: Payback was apparently going to be a straight point-and-click adventure, going deeper into hero, Ben’s life.
“The story line we wanted to be similar in them to FT1, so it revolved around a large corporation and the territorial governor concocting a plot to replace all paved highways with hover pads to help make the hover mini vans and family hover cars safer and faster. Of course, this plan didn’t sit well with the bikers and truckers, who were going to unit to fight this plot at a rally. The evil governor had secretly hired the Rotwheelers to assassinate Father Torque, the leader of this new alliance at the rally… So the first half the game Ben tries to stop the assassination, and the second half he teams up with a persistent undercover female reporter to bring the governor down and uncover his nefarious secret.”
Check out the rest of the interview/retrospective, here.
Thanks to Jonty.
27/08/2008 at 13:50 subedii says:
Wonder if Telltale might be able to get the rights to Full Throttle someday.
Or heck, anybody, it’s an awesome franchise just sitting there and LucasArts refuses to do anything with it.
27/08/2008 at 14:08 Binary Assassin says:
The old Lucas adventure games are the games that give me the fondest memories of all the games I have ever played. From Maniac Mansion, to day of the tentacle, the Monkey Islands, Sam and Max… all of them. I am so disappointed there are no more. Lucas arts should stop pushing 50 star wars games a year and make a couple more of these… they do not realize how well they would sell. I installed them all on my pocket PC last year and finished them all again in my spare time… it was great. lol
27/08/2008 at 14:16 Martin Kingsley says:
Agreed. Full Throttle blows my tiny mind even now.
27/08/2008 at 14:16 Okami says:
LucasArts did seem to have a bit of a phase at the beginning of the decade, hellbent on killing off anything with a spark of imagination in order to focus on churning out dreadful Star Wars dross.
A phase? Only at the beginning of the decade?
So they stopped killing off anything with a spark of imagination in order to focus on churning out dreadful Star Wars dross? Or do you mean, that there’s nothing left with a spark of imagination to kill off for them?
27/08/2008 at 14:38 Ian says:
I’ve heard excellent things about Full Throttle and yet have never played it. Perhaps this is my time to do so.
Is the one linked in the article for use with ScummVM?
27/08/2008 at 14:39 ImperialCreed says:
Full Throttle was the first LucasArts game I ever played (I was a late starter), and I love it to this day. Seeing what Telltale have done with Sam & Max (more miss than hit, sadly) I’d be wary of any resurrection on their part. Give the rights to Tim and Double Fine. They’re going to need something to do after Brutal Legend.
Anyone else a fan of the soundtrack? I found it on iTunes ages ago and it’s still on my mp3 player. Absolute solid biker-band gold.
27/08/2008 at 14:39 The_B says:
Okami: Now be fair, Lego Star Wars isn’t ‘dreadful Star Wars Dross’. It’s a Quite Good Star Wars game. Although granted, that’s more TT’s doing than LucasArts. But they did publish it, I suppose.
And I remember my very first PC Gamer mag had a preview of Full Throttle 2 all that time ago. I still mourn its loss to this day, and maintain that the LucasArts adventure pack (with Sam & Max, The Dig, Full Throttle and Grim Fandango) was one of the best purchases I ever made. Certainly so in the adventure genre.
27/08/2008 at 14:47 The Sombrero Kid says:
i’ve been planning to make a first person scumm game based loosley on full throttle for a while now, in my spare time, probably for the DS, i love it, it was the first PC game i owned, that and dark forces which was also brilliant!
27/08/2008 at 14:52 dartt says:
Whenever I smell asphalt, I think of Full Throttle.
27/08/2008 at 14:58 Nero says:
Oh I love this game as well. I would love to see something more from this, with Tim Schafer naturally. I doubt we’ll see it from Lucasarts since from the new releases coming from them hey hate the PC and loving the consoles.
27/08/2008 at 15:05 Yann Best says:
Full Throttle was fantastic, particularly the ending (Ben doesn’t get the girl… because he’d rather stick to his bikes, thanks), and I have noticed that it’s been wallpapered over in the years following its released. I wonder how much of that is to do with the action sequences, and how much is to do with its mood: of the fondly remembered Lucasarts adventures, all bar Grim Fandango and Fate of Atlantis are clear-cut comedies (MI, DOTT, S&M), and FoA has the Indiana Jones effect in its favour while Grim Fandango has its unique stylings.
Full Throttle, on the other hand, plays things relatively straight both in terms of its aesthetic and its plot, without tying into a popular pre-existing universe; all things which I can imagine helped people forget about/ignore it. Pretty much the same problems that The Dig faced, in fact (the difference being that The Dig was, in fact, a pretty uninspiring game). People just don’t want gruff, action-hero types in their point and click adventures – even if said character and adventure have an awful lot of quality under their skin.
27/08/2008 at 15:12 phil says:
A fine game, though one marred by a change from the demo in which Ben would simply state “cool bike/door/fridge/dog/helicopter/whatever” when asked to describe something. Hearing him struggle though multi-syllable descriptions really pierced his biker cool.
27/08/2008 at 15:22 Meat Circus says:
Box of Toy Bunnies + Minefield = One of the happiest moments in gaming.
I recently replayed it on ScummVM, and was rather startled to discover that it is far better than I remember it. However, John, it *is* ridiculously short.
Revisionism can’t make it any longer.
27/08/2008 at 15:24 Ginger Yellow says:
I bought this about a year ago, having loved Grim Fandango but never played Full Throttle. Maybe I’m being really stupid, but I’m totally stuck at the bit with the rabbits and the minefield. I eventually caved and went to Gamefaqs, but even if I follow the instructions exactly I can’t get through. It’s really annoying me.
27/08/2008 at 15:36 Meat Circus says:
@Ginger Yellow:
You need the entire box of bunnies. One at a time will not get you across.
27/08/2008 at 15:55 Freelancepolice says:
You know what would look better on your nose?
the bar
27/08/2008 at 15:57 Subtle says:
Full Throttle! I haven’t thought of that game for years! I remember playing it at age 16, and my first girlfriend being absolutely appalled by it for some reason. It was my first indication that girls and videogames usually don’t mix…
Now I feel old. Thanks, RPS…
27/08/2008 at 16:12 Tim James says:
The hour-long movie of all the story parts in this game was cool.
27/08/2008 at 16:34 The Sombrero Kid says:
i used to love playing the knife hand game and just repeatedly jamming it in his hand and him going ouch and then at the end admitting he’s pretty bad at it, can’t remember it exactly cause it’s been about 10 years since i last played it but yeah that was awesome, that kick wall clicking machine puzzle is a bitch though!
27/08/2008 at 16:53 Max Cairnduff says:
Fantastic game.
Didn’t the bunnies require two boxes? I thought that actually rather undercut the comedy of the first bunny box battalion advancing.
27/08/2008 at 17:06 Darius K. says:
The first thing I did when I got scummvm running on my Wii was play Full Throttle. Still awesome to this day.
27/08/2008 at 17:06 Tom says:
Love it, along with all the others.
Really should play the Monkey Islands some time – can’t believe I haven’t. Grim F remains my favourite though – it’s got an epic feel to it.
Ugly Betty’s father is the man who voiced Manny by the by.
27/08/2008 at 17:14 zanbowser says:
Is it telling that I have that track by the Gone Jackals on my mp3 player?
“I thank tha Lo-ooo-worrrd each dayee… fur thee Apocalypse.”
Best VG track ever, for my (meager) dollar.
27/08/2008 at 17:14 Ergates says:
…and the action sequences really were terrible. Good game though.
DOTT and Sam & Max (I’m not going to start talking about playing S&M!) are the only significant entries in the LucasArts catalogue I’ve not tried. I got them a while back but couldn’t get them to work properly. Are there any recent emulators that they’ll work with (including sound)?
27/08/2008 at 17:17 Tim James says:
ScummVM doesn’t play those?
27/08/2008 at 17:55 Meat Circus says:
@Ergates:
ScummVM plays Sam and Max and DoTT perfectly.
The odd thing is that the only two Lucasarts graphical adventures you haven’t played are the two widely regarded as being THE BEST.
27/08/2008 at 17:56 Yann Best says:
DOTT certainly works perfectly in ScummVM, though S&M did have some problems last time I played it (the action/mini-game segments, mainly).
Edit: gah, too slow. I’d hardly agree with S&M being THE BEST, though. I will agree it’s got popular appeal, mind, so perhaps it is ‘regarded’ as THE BEST (probably along with MI and/or GF – DOTT seems to be a little less popular than those, despite clearly, actually being the best Lucasarts adventure, so nyer).
27/08/2008 at 18:06 Ginger Yellow says:
I’ve done it with two boxes many, many times and it still doesn’t clear a path all the way through.
27/08/2008 at 18:07 Rath says:
Sequels to Full Throttle and Grim Fandango would make my day.
Or, wonder of wonders – both in one. Ben actually dies at one point, and gets sent to the underworld as seen in Grim Fandango. Where Glottis is his Reaper/Travel Agent. Imagine the team they’d make, with the enthusiasm for fast machines and such. Then Ben gets back to the Land Of The Living somehow to right the wrongs, and so forth.
Imagine the potential for Ghost Rider puns.
27/08/2008 at 18:07 Sal says:
speaking of old Lucas Art games…X-Wing
27/08/2008 at 18:07 Max Cairnduff says:
I released them bit by bit I think, then walked along the cleared path, then released some more, then walked along the further cleared path, etc.
It’s actually not a particularly intuitive puzzle, but then one could say that of many adventure games.
27/08/2008 at 18:22 KruddMan says:
Yeah! Full Throttle!
http://www.kruddman.com/ft
Full Throttle was incredibly influential for me. In themes/art/style/humor.
I would much prefer it if Full Throttle remained dormant in sequel land unless it was picked up again by one of the original creators.
27/08/2008 at 18:40 Jay says:
Preach the love, brother!
27/08/2008 at 18:45 Alex says:
Right on, zanbowser. Ben’s still out there, chasin’ chitlins, whiskey and skirt.
27/08/2008 at 19:00 KruddMan says:
“I thank tha Lo-ooo-worrrd each dayee… fur thee Apocalypse.”
that song isn’t actually Gone Jackals it’s some band called Chitlins Whiskey and Skirt
27/08/2008 at 19:01 LionsPhil says:
Oh dear Gods, no. Don’t let TellTale anywhere near this. They suck all the humour and cleverness out of everything they touch—and, to be honest, ISTR wincing at what FT2 preview stuff came out before it was cancelled.
Needs moar
cowbellSchafer. Unfortunately, Brutal Legend isn’t an adventure game, because “they’re dead”. Or, rather, “there haven’t been any good ones since 1998″.27/08/2008 at 19:01 Dr. Quincy says:
Unfortunately Full Throttle is just slightly too butch to work on the (whisper it) Nintendo DS version of ScummVM. Sigh!
27/08/2008 at 19:26 Charlie says:
I really hope Telltale DON’T get hold of this franchise. It’s my favourite adventure and I really don’t find Telltale funny at all.
27/08/2008 at 19:38 Nick says:
I dearly loved Full Throttle, but it was criminally short, despite what you may say!
I liked Ben’s style of puzzle solving too (use ring on man’s nose)
27/08/2008 at 20:01 LionsPhil says:
Seeing as we’ve somewhat of a “underappreciated adventure” theme going, why the heck do people have so much hate for Toonstruck? It may not be at the same heights as LucasArts’ high notes, but it’s no Limbo of the Lost.
Also, Discworld Noir, which is easily as funny as Grim Fandango, because it has PTerry’s writing and spot-on voicework.
27/08/2008 at 20:08 James G says:
I picked up Toonstruck for £2 in game about a year after it game out, and thought it was quite good fun. I must admit, I’ve not seen much hate for it, most people just end up thinking ‘Toonwhat?’
::Sigh:: I think I’m stuck in the past with respect to games, I loved graphic adventures, and still prefer strategic RPGs to action RPGs.
27/08/2008 at 20:14 Ted says:
Do people remember how incredibly bad the Full Throttle sequel looked like it was going to be? The graphics were extremely cartoony, and it was going to be a button mashing fighting game instead of an adventure game. Thank god that fiasco was canned.
27/08/2008 at 21:24 CaptainJorge says:
Great game. Damn shame LucasArts stopped being original in the last decade.
27/08/2008 at 21:42 LionsPhil says:
Stuck in the past? My current games-to-play queue has the likes of System Shock, System Shock 2, Fallout 2, and Planescape Torment in it. First time through each. There’s nothing wrong with the past, when graphics were based on artistic skill, not pixel shader complexity, and people weren’t afriad of inventory screens.
Still haven’t got anywhere near ascending in Nethack yet, either.
In a desperate attempt to swerve back on topic, this thread needs more Yahztee.
27/08/2008 at 21:59 Ergates says:
@All
This was some time ago – I don’t think SCUMMVM was around then.
I knew they were good, and I dearly wanted to play them but..all I got was KABOOM!
Should still have the CDs in the loft somewhere – I’ll hoick them out at the weekend and look up SCUMMVM.
27/08/2008 at 22:44 hidden_7 says:
The trick with the bunnies was to release them, then grab all of them before they could explode. Then just release them in a straight line. Letting them go all higgeldy-piggeldy would probably require more than one box, yeah.
Also, yes, Full Throttle. Though, yeah, it was real short. Though most of the action scenes really were more puzzles than anything. You’re never going to make it through those scenes just actioning it up, and if you know what to do you really can get through em real quick.
28/08/2008 at 00:38 Jochen Scheisse says:
It IS real short. A friend of mine and I decided to replay Full Throttle recently, and after about 3 hours of playing we were finished. We started Dark Corners of the Earth after that to end the evening with something. Anyway, still a great game.
28/08/2008 at 01:29 Angel Dust says:
Awesome game and also my Dad’s favourite game ever. Developers could definitely tap into these types of characters and stories to lure older players in. My Dad saw me play all the other Lucasart adventures but it was the characters and tone of Full Throttle that actually interested him enough to play.
Also I would like to nominate ‘The Dig’ for underappreciated adventure game too. The character development and voice acting is all top notch and the atmosphere of a truly alien world is well done. It also has one of the best game soundtracks I’ve ever heard.
28/08/2008 at 03:49 Ninelives says:
POLECATS, ROLL OUT
28/08/2008 at 04:29 Bhlaab says:
I kind of prefer the idea of there only being one Full Throttle
28/08/2008 at 04:56 Mark Stevens says:
Jumping on the “too short” bandwagon.
Full Throttle was the first LucasArts adventure that left me feeling unfulfilled. There’s much that’s great about it, including the wonderful art direction, music, dialogue—just the general ambience really.
In addition to being too short, the puzzles were practically nonexistent. I wasn’t look for a level of surrealism that occasionally accompanied Monkey Island and Indiana Jones puzzles, but the approach to puzzle-solving in Full Throttle was far too linear to offer a challenge.
I must admit, when the end credits scrolled by, some five hours into my first session (with a small break for dinner), I laughed at loud, thinking it to be a typical LucasArts fourth wall bashing joke. When I found myself staring at the DOS prompt I sat in stunned silence for a few minutes. Was that it? The previous games had entertained me for about a fortnight each. What was going on?
Thankfully my faith was restored with the release of The Dig. It had puzzles! It was freaking huge! Plus all the other usual ingredients: great graphics, sound, dialogue, etc. While The Dig was critically well received, whenever a roundup of LucasArts adventures appears online, The Dig’s usually somewhere near the bottom. I’ve never been able to understand this. It seems quite a few people struggled with the lack of outright comedy. Others couldn’t get past the alien skeleton puzzle, which was a bit odd as a blindingly obvious solution was just a screen away.
Anyway, I really do like Full Throttle—while it lasts. But I’ve never understood why it got so much adoration heaped upon it while The Dig had to make do with being buried under compost.
28/08/2008 at 06:08 Lucky says:
“Thankfully my faith was restored with the release of The Dig. It had puzzles! It was freaking huge!”
That doesn’t sound like the game I played.
The main problem with The Dig is the fact that its world is so empty and the supporting characters don’t really do anything. Maggie just spends almost the whole game in that library while Brink keeps repairing that machine of his. It’s painful to read about what the game was supposed to be like when Brian Moriarty was designing it. http://www.mixnmojo.com/php/site/gamedb.php?gameid=29
Oh, and I did like the skeleton puzzle.
28/08/2008 at 10:29 Ginger Yellow says:
“While The Dig was critically well received, whenever a roundup of LucasArts adventures appears online, The Dig’s usually somewhere near the bottom. I’ve never been able to understand this. It seems quite a few people struggled with the lack of outright comedy. ”
I really think that’s it. There are lots of decent adventure games (or there were). There are very few as funny as the best LucasArts ones.
28/08/2008 at 10:59 phil says:
Kudos to whoever mentioned Discworld Noir – the only game I ever played that when I accidentally duplicated a item (the crowbar, for reference), then used it in a context when I had lost the original crowbar, had a fully voiced response of, “sure, I could break the glass with that, but I’m not supposed to have that now, am I, hummmm?”
28/08/2008 at 11:20 Bobsy says:
Which is more or less the nub of the matter. These days Lucasarts quality measure depends on outsourcing the development. See also: Kotor. But in Lucasarts’s heyday, their internal development house was a force to be reckoned with. Not just the adventures, but also stuff like Jedi Knight.
Lose marks for including the X-Wing series in there; they were made by the lovely Totally Games. I wonder what they’re up to these days.
28/08/2008 at 11:24 monkeymonster says:
Rather fiendishly, Grim Fandango original cd an all wont run on me xp build….. Here goes with scummvm
DOTT – an awesome game, how on earth can you beat changing the american flag with an anatomy drawing of a tentacle or putting a jumper in for years and years of drying abuse just for a wee hamster :D
28/08/2008 at 12:06 Max Cairnduff says:
I rather like the occasional short game, apart from anything else it means I can be fairly sure of completing it.
Full Throttle told its story, it told it well, what more could one ask? Adding more length would likely have detracted from its charm.
For me, the trouble with the Dig was the ending, which I thought rather sappy and also damaging to the drama and meaning of what had gone before. I hated that ending (hated in the ordinary English sense of didn’t really like, not the internet sense of stalking its writers and posting multi-page rants about it decades later).
On a grognardy note, no love here for Broken Sword? The first one is probably one of my favourite computer games of all time, cruelly left out of the PCG top 100 in place of such fol de rol as Warcraft III (a game I got thoroughly bored with round about the start of the elven missions).
28/08/2008 at 12:08 Dreamhacker says:
If you want to experience Full Throttle without the arcade-derby-part and the puzzles, I recommend VGMD’s Full Throttle movie.
28/08/2008 at 14:25 LionsPhil says:
The Dig was truly awful Spielburg dreck, sorry. The characters were all completely insufferable, and it couldn’t have been cheesier if it were trying to do so on purpose. But it wasn’t a parody—it was po-facedly serious, like a thirteen-year-old blogging about how Google will take over the world by 2015.
And the lead dev who finished it hated FT, which clearly shows that they are a bad person:
monkeymonster: Sorry, Grim wasn’t SCUMM-based, so ScummVM doesn’t handle it. They’re working on it; last change five days ago.
28/08/2008 at 17:17 zanbowser says:
@KruddMan: The band *was* the Gone Jackals, from all I can find online. I plan on emailing the band with the question, since I can’t find a definitive answer from the big G.
I like to imagine (given that these are all smart, but nonetheless super-roady biker fellows) that the credits were intentionally listed as Chitlins, Whiskey, and Skirt; being as they were likely the only motivation for writing music (particularly this song) in the first place. ^_~
28/08/2008 at 17:21 Nick says:
The Gone Jackals certainly did the intro song anyway.
28/08/2008 at 17:25 Ginger Yellow says:
“Rather fiendishly, Grim Fandango original cd an all wont run on me xp build”
Yeah, I can’t get the second CD to work in Vista either, even in compatibility mode.
28/08/2008 at 19:11 MRC says:
its weird that this article is up now. I just started playing Full Throttle for the first time ever a couple of day ago, i tried playing it a while back but i couldn’t get it to run on my pc, i recently got summVM and it was the first game i tried on it. so much fun! day of the tentacle is next.
29/08/2008 at 02:59 MeestaNob! says:
Sam and Max, Day of the Tentacle, The Dig, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango – a golden era of gaming – and all so good that they should NEVER have sequels.
New Sam and Max is evidence of this.
29/08/2008 at 03:04 MeestaNob! says:
By the way RPS any chance of a LucasArts retrospective with interviews and such? It would be a must read article.
01/09/2008 at 06:50 Munken says:
I was always a bit terrible at adventure games, so never really played Full Throttle. My first proper exposure to it came from this song by 65daysofstatic http://www.musicuploader.org/MUSIC/4607781220247677.mp3 utterly fantastic band by the way.
I now want to get a copy.
18/11/2008 at 09:43 Marar says:
I really don’t get the “new sam and max” bashing, i mean sure, the first season was rather dull, but you can feel the episodes getting better as the team get’s confortable, and i found the second season’s last two episodes hillarios, sure they’re not as
funnywitty as the golden lucas art’s games, but then again, what is these days?27/12/2008 at 23:19 mashakos says:
WHAT? Go say that to the designers at polycount and ca.org, you will be warmly received.
Designers HATED working on the tools available at the time where 3D modelling was concerned. Now they have a lot more freedom and are simply loving the shaders :D
12/10/2009 at 00:22 PrettyMonkeyStudio says:
We even made a fan video for it, featuring Australian retro band Wolfmother
12/10/2009 at 00:23 PrettyMonkeyStudio says:
We even made a fan video for it, featuring Australian retro band Wolfmother
Full video at Youtube
26/04/2010 at 07:05 MsSeana says:
full throttle ROX. and I like the bunnies. And their VENDOR! “Fill these two reservoirs in this hat with yer drinka choice!” LOLOL