PASSPORT TO ADVENTURE: THE SCUMM STORY

We'll be doing a press/media push starting mid-next week to raise awareness and bolster interest in the project, and announcing a few names (including a big one) who've agreed to be in the documentary as part of that. Ping me if you want to be on our press list.

Playin with polymer

Photo of my laptop screen playing the intro to Pajama Sam in No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside. Sam is shining his torch into his bedroom closet.

A singing carrot wearing a mask over his eyes.

Sam shines his torch on Darkness.

End credits

Just played through another beautifully-animated and charming SCUMM-powered junior adventure with my four year old: Pajama Sam in No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside. She stayed laser-focused on the main objective (capturing Darkness) throughout and pushed to finish it in one sitting.

An image containing every frame of animation from Day of the Tentacle Remastered, all lined up in a hundred or so rows.

Here's EVERY frame of animation from Day of the Tentacle Remastered shrunken down onto one image. Courtesy of Double Fine programmer @p1xelcoder.bsky.social, who led the project.

The photo caption reads "Though their office is crammed with toys, LucasArts writer-animator Larry Ahern and programmer-writer Jonathan Ackley are hardly the image of goofy post-adolescent wunderkinds. © LucasArts."

A behind-the-scenes photo of The Curse of Monkey Island co-leads hard at work, courtesy of a 1998 Animation World Magazine feature article.

A screenshot of Kaptain Brawe. The titular character is standing outside a hotel that has its reception desk on an outer wall. The hotelier says "The law CLEARLY forbids digging of graves throughout the Union."

Kaptain Brawe: A Brawe New World was heavily influenced by the LucasArts adventures. Its creator Cateia Games is now also in charge of a SCUMM legacy project: Duke Grabowski, a Monkey Island-like point-and-click title from 2011 co-designed by LucasArts veteran Bill Tiller.

I did most of the interviewing for this piece over IRC, if memory serves.

Thanks Laura!

Home | Passport To Adventure: The SCUMM Story From three-headed monkeys to rubber chickens with pulleys, the Passport to Adventure documentary will explore how SCUMM revolutionized adventure gaming and spawned some of the greatest point-and-click...

Interesting to see how this one turns out - a documentary film "about the SCUMM engine, all the SCUMM games (including the Humongous titles, but obviously focusing more on LucasArts), and SCUMM's cultural influence/legacy".

Sign up here to get more info! www.scummdoc.com @scummdoc.bsky.social

For a solid history of the ScummVM happenings after those first 10 years, @damiano.bsky.social wrote a good piece a couple years back: staging.filmstories.co.uk/features/scu...

Maniac Tentacle Mindbenders: How ScummVM's unpaid coders kept adventure gaming alive For 10 years, the ScummVM project has made beloved adventure games playable on …

Some early weekend reading plucked from the archives: my 2012 Ars Technica feature on the first 10 years of ScummVM. arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/...

Game companies should release their old proprietary engine tools.

What's the harm in releasing your stuff you used to make games with on like, the Dreamcast? Or like, Bioware's old engines?

Video game companies are way too greedy about dead, useless shit (like IP they're never going to use ever).

Guybrush Triple Self-Portrait - Nerdy T-Shirt by jasesa | ShirtPunch Shop

Where to buy it, for other folks similarly interested:

www.shirtpunch.com/products/guy...

An illustration for a fan-made Monkey Island t-shirt featuring the Curse of Monkey Island version of Guybrush Threepwood painting the face illustration from the first game while looking in the mirror to see the Return From Monkey Island version looking back at him. Also visible are a cup of grog, Murray, and a few small portraits of other Guybrushes.

It's Guybrush-ception. Very clever, loving triple self-portrait from t-shirt designer and graphic artist jasesa.

It's also really cool seeing the styles that went on to become staples in the genre - I just looked it up and the background artists for The Dig don't have any crossover with Humongous Entertainment, but that image still uses the same foreground trick to add depth & make room for the inventory

LucasArts Places (@lucasarts_places@mastodon.social) 896 Posts, 8 Following, 3.34K Followers · Posts background art from a classic LucasArts adventure game (1987-2000) twice a day at 11:38.

*Love, not "kove". Anyway, here's a link to the account: mastodon.social/@lucasarts_p...

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis - New York City - Sophia's Apartment

Sam & Max Hit the Road - world of fish

The Dig - planetarium crevice

Loom (DOS EGA) - Clerics Island

There's an account I kove on Mastodon called LucasArts Places that just posts background art from LucasArts adventure games. Seeing the scenes without characters or UI really underscores the immense talent of the artists who worked on the games. A few examples:

Tales of #MonkeyIsland final cover art and three initial sketches, by Steve Purcell.

“These were done quickly on a Cintiq tablet to get an impression of the composition and potential color palette.”

Original cover art restored by Laserschwert (posters.mixnmojo.com).

YouTube video by TechJesse: Jesse Petrilla Peter Langston - Founding President of Lucasfilm Games / LucasArts | TechJesse Interview # 14/50

How was the #LucasfilmGames group started? Great interview with our original director, Peter Langston. #Gamedev #LucasArts @lucasartsmemory.bsky.social @gamasutra.bsky.social
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4slm...

Yes. Good catch. Shame we can't edit posts on here.

WANTED: For gobs of terrible things, one murderous purple slimy meteor.

Word of the purple tentacle's misdeeds in Maniac Mansion reached as far as Nepal, where the police station in Zak McKracken contains a copy of his wanted poster.

Inset image is concept art from The Dig. Below, we put the logo from the game as well as a link to our website scummdoc.com — in the hopes you'll go there and join the waitlist for our documentary.

A concept sketch for the five spires in The Dig. This was later rendered in 3D graphics software, rather than painted like many (most?) of the game backgrounds.

A page from Zzap in the Test section. The review title is Zak McKracken II: The Mindbenders Are Back.

The Italian version of Zzap64 magazine ran a review of a non-existent Zak McKracken sequel as an April Fools joke in 1989.

More pages. The tone and humour throughout the design doc is a perfect match for the game.

I just played the same Freddi Fish with my four year old last week. Her first adventure game too. She loved it so much she asked straight after the credits rolled if we could play another one.

The secret is described in the image alt text.

Flow diagram for the planned ending sequence to Sam & Max Hit the Road. There's a note about avoiding "a Freddy Kruger ending", which is referenced by the floating comic heads of Sam and Max. Max doesn't know what it is, but he thinks it's illegal in parts of Utah.

The final page of the original design document for Sam & Max Hit the Road shows the planned flow for the game's ending sequence (notice a pattern?), including a note that they'll be foregoing a "Freddy Krueger ending" -- to the puzzlement of the crimefighting duo.

Book cover for On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers. There's a Washington Post quote saying "Powers writes action and adventure that Indiana Jones could only dream of."

Our writer/director @mossrc.bsky.social's copy of On Stranger Tides, the novel that inspired The Secret of Monkey Island. Reading this as a fan of the game is a constant barrage of "oh, I see what you did there" flashbacks to Monkey Island plot moments.

Sam & Max hitting a new kind of road: TV. It's an illustration of them standing on their car, with Sam driving using his foot through the windows, with the top headline reading "Here Comes Television: Fall TV Preview." This is the cover of Animation World Magazine from September 1997.

On the eve of their television debut in 1997, Sam and Max adorned the cover of Animation World Magazine. Inside, the magazine likened the TV adaptation's humor to Pinky and the Brain, and they quoted Steve Purcell saying "My ideal licensing moment would be a Pez dispenser."

I love that the fourth astronaut wasn't just removed from the painting; they got turned into a rock.