Day of the Tentacle, also known as Maniac Mansion II: Day of the Tentacle, is a 1993 graphic adventure game developed and published by LucasArts. It is the sequel to the 1987 game Maniac Mansion. The plot follows Bernard Bernoulli and his friends Hoagie and Laverne as they attempt to stop the evil Purple Tentacle - a sentient, disembodied tentacle - from taking over the world. The player takes control of the trio and solves puzzles while using time travel to explore different periods of history.
Lucasfilm Games is an American video game licensor and a subsidiary of Lucasfilm. It was founded in May 1982 by George Lucas as a video game development group alongside his film company; as part of a larger 1990 reorganization of the Lucasfilm divisions, the video game development division was grouped and rebranded as part of LucasArts. LucasArts became known for its line of adventure games based on its SCUMM engine in the 1990s, including Maniac Mansion, the Monkey Island series, and several Indiana Jones titles. A number of influential game developers were alumni of LucasArts from this period, including Brian Moriarty, Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, and Dave Grossman. Later, as Lucasfilm regained control over its licensing over the Star Wars franchise, LucasArts produced numerous action-based Star Wars titles in the late 1990s and early 2000s, while dropping adventure game development due to waning interest in the genre.
Monkey Island is a series of adventure games. The first four games were produced and published by LucasArts, earlier known as Lucasfilm Games. The fifth was developed by Telltale Games with LucasArts, while the sixth was developed by Terrible Toybox with Lucasfilm Games and Devolver Digital.
Grim Fandango is a 1998 adventure game directed by Tim Schafer and developed and published by LucasArts for Microsoft Windows. It is the first adventure game by LucasArts to use 3D computer graphics overlaid on pre-rendered static backgrounds. As with other LucasArts adventure games, the player must converse with characters and examine, collect, and use objects to solve puzzles.
Michael Z. Land is an American video game composer and musician best known for his scores for various games produced by LucasArts.
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge is an adventure game developed and published by LucasArts in 1991. Players control the pirate Guybrush Threepwood, who searches for the legendary treasure of Big Whoop and faces the zombie pirate LeChuck.
Timothy John Schafer is an American video game designer. He founded Double Fine Productions in July 2000, after having spent over a decade at LucasArts. Schafer is best known as the designer of critically acclaimed games Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, Brütal Legend and Broken Age, co-designer of Day of the Tentacle, and assistant designer on The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. He is well known in the video game industry for his storytelling and comedic writing style, and has been given both a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Game Developers Choice Awards, and a BAFTA Fellowship for his contributions to the industry.
Escape from Monkey Island is an adventure game developed and released by LucasArts in 2000. It is the fourth game in the Monkey Island series, and the sequel to the 1997 videogame The Curse of Monkey Island. It is the first game in the series to use 3D graphics and the second game to use the GrimE engine, which was upgraded from its first use in Grim Fandango.
From the late 1980s to the early 2000s, LucasArts was well known for their point-and-click graphic adventure games, nearly all of which got high scoring reviews at the time of their release. Their style tended towards the humorous, often irreverent or slapstick humor, with the exceptions of Loom and The Dig. Their game design philosophy was that the player should never die or reach a complete dead-end, although there were exceptions.
Psychonauts is a 2005 platform game developed by Double Fine Productions and published by Majesco Entertainment for Microsoft Windows, Xbox and PlayStation 2.
Sly 2: Band of Thieves is a 2004 stealth platform video game developed by Sucker Punch Productions and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 2. It is the second installment of the Sly Cooper series and the sequel to Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus.
iMUSE is an interactive music system used in a number of LucasArts video games. The idea behind iMUSE is to synchronize music with the visual action in a video game so that the audio continuously matches the on-screen events and transitions from one musical theme to another are done seamlessly. iMUSE was developed in the early 1990s by composers Michael Land and Peter McConnell while working at LucasArts. The iMUSE system was patented by LucasArts in 1994, after being added to the fifth version of the SCUMM game engine in 1991.
Clint Bajakian is an American video game composer and musician.
Adaptive music is music which changes in response to real-time events or user interactions, found most commonly in video games. It may change in volume, arrangement, tempo, and more. Adaptive music is a staple within the role-playing game genre, often being used to change the tone and intensity of music when the player enters and leaves combat. Music video games, in which a core gameplay element involves player interaction with music, also have fundamentally adaptive soundtracks.
Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time is a 2013 stealth platform video game developed by Sanzaru Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. The fourth installment in the Sly Cooper series, it is the first game in the series to not be developed by Sucker Punch Productions. Sanzaru Games had remastered the original trilogy for the PlayStation 3 as The Sly Collection, with Thieves in Time being teased in the bundle, but it was not formally announced until several months later at the 2011 Electronic Entertainment Expo during Sony's presentation in June 2011.
Broken Age is a point-and-click adventure video game developed and published by Double Fine. Broken Age was game director Tim Schafer's first return to the genre since 1998's Grim Fandango, and was released for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Xbox One platforms. The game was developed in two acts; the first was released on January 28, 2014, and the second was released on April 28, 2015. A retail version of the complete game for Windows, macOS, and Linux, published by Nordic Games, was released on April 28, 2015. A Nintendo Switch version was released on September 13, 2018.
Razmig Mavlian is an Armenian-Canadian artist, animator, video game developer, and musician. His nickname "Raz" was the inspiration for the name of the main character in Psychonauts. He currently is a concept artist at Oculus VR.
Jory Prum, also known as Jory K. Prum, was an American audio engineer, best known for his work in film and video games. He was the owner of a recording studio located in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Peter Chan is an American freelance concept and storyboard artist and animator for video games and films. Chan is best known for his work in several LucasArts adventure games, including Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango.
The music for the video game Grim Fandango was composed and produced by Peter McConnell and published by LucasArts in 1998. The soundtrack is a mix of South American folk music, jazz, swing and big band sounds, for the game story filled with adventure and intrigue set in a unique combination of film noir and Mexican folklore's Day of the Dead. The soundtrack garnered critical acclaim and remained subject of positive reviews and inclusion in critics' rankings for the two decades after its first release. The soundtrack was praised both as a stand-alone musical experience, as well as for its outstanding contribution to the overall game experience; capturing the spirit of the game, "gluing" the story together, and becoming "integral" to the success of the game.
