30 Years Later: Lucasfilm’s Fractalus Revisited

David Fox’s silent game changer

Oh how seductive the eternal evolution of technology! Oh what boredom lies in volumetric dust clouds of uncountable pixels, their toilsome birth betrayed only by the high-pitched struggle of a graphic card labouring inside a run-of-the-mill desktop computer. The mind slackens into a tupor of robotic keyboard spasms. Disbelief no longer needs suspension: with the visual display quite a spitting image of nature, the brain only needs to soften the roughest of edges. Oh what glory then the memories of old bestow on the stalwart art of retrography, the magic of 8-bit computing, beautifully preserved in Lucasfilm Games’ Rescue on Fractalus. And yet the most crucial ally in its creative success, the oft-forgotten and sadly underestimated manual of words crafted bold and true on sheets of paper rested inside boxes colourful and bold.

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Thimbleweed Park: A New Classic Point & Click Adventure! by Ron Gilbert & Gary Winnick

Writes the great Maniac Mansion duo: “It’s like opening a dusty old desk drawer and finding an undiscovered LucasArts adventure game you’ve never played before.” The pledge descriptions alone make you want to pay Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick a dollar for every second you’re laughing: pledge at their Kickstarter Thimbleweed Park project page to help the legendary adventure game designers become even more legendary than the legendary treasure of Big Whoop!

Thimbleweed Park: A New Classic Point & Click Adventure! by Ron Gilbert & Gary Winnick

Dark Times 11 – 1996 – Part 5

John Williams summoned the heroes at the Centennial Olympic Games, but a nerf-herder, her worshipfulness and a kid almost finding himself floating home equally prepared for victory: Star Wars continues its return to pop culture in 1996.

Star Wars was an intricate anomaly. Despite its close ties to 70ies zeitgeist it had superseded the regular status of a classic. Every generation that chanced upon George Lucas’ space opera felt instantly attracted to this peculiar property that grew independently of time and the concomitant limited fads.

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