Comment by ethbr1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ethbr1 | Hacker News Reader

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For those who don't recognize Scumm (since it's getting pretty old now...), it was an adventure game engine. Widely used for classic Lucasfilm Games/LucasArts titles. (edit fixed! See below comment)

Here's the list of supported games: https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Category:Supported_...

If you're looking for recommendations...

- Zork (the OG, and sequels): https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Zork

- Beneath a Steel Sky: https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Beneath_a_Steel_Sky

- Blade Runner: https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Blade_Runner

- The Castle of Dr. Brain (and sequels): https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Castle_of_Dr._Brain

- Maniac Mansion / Day of the Tentacle: https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Maniac_Mansion https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Day_of_the_Tentacle

- The Dig: https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=The_Dig

- Full Throttle: https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Full_Throttle

- Gabriel Knight (and sequels): https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Gabriel_Knight

- Grim Fandango: https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Grim_Fandango

- Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis: https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Indiana_Jones_and_t...

- Kings Quest (and sequels): https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=King%27s_Quest

- Leather Goddesses from Phobos (and sequel): https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Leather_Goddesses_o...

- Leisure Suit Larry (and sequels): https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Leisure_Suit_Larry

- The Longest Journey: https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=The_Longest_Journey

- Police Quest (and sequels): https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Police_Quest

- Riven: The Sequel to Myst: https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Riven:_The_Sequel_t...

- Sam and Max Hit the Road: https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Sam_%26_Max_Hit_the...

- The Secret of Monkey Island (and sequels): https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=The_Secret_of_Monke...

- Space Quest: https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Space_Quest

- Syberia: https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Syberia

For anyone who still hasn't seen the new Indiana Jones movie, but is thinking about it some time: Go play Fate of Atlantis instead.

I’ve always wondered why they didn’t use the Fate of Atlantis script instead of the awful crystal skull

Same. It is arguably a paint by numbers Indy romp. Which of course the 2 newer films are not.

I’ve often pondered this and I have concluded that there are a number of factors:

1. Licensing. While it might appear that the Indiana Jones IP is fully in the hands of Disney, it’s plausible that there are nuances behind the scenes. For example, Paramount owns the distribution rights to the first four films. That’s a different issue, but I mention it as an example of how rights can become fragmented over time over multiple contracts. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the rights to Fate of Atlantis are more complex than we see from the outside. Having said that, I’ve no evidence of this.

2. It was a good game, but does that make for a good movie? FoA had some great game features: multiple paths, fun puzzles, classic adventure game exploration and interactivity, awesome pixel art - but none of these are useful to a movie.

3. The script was… OK. It doesn’t have any standout quotable lines like the first three films did. Its comedy is more slapstick than witty, and there are more than a few video-game in-jokes. It’s also highly derivative, written, I suspect, to make players think “This is cinematic! This is just like a real Indiana Jones movie!” To that end, it worked brilliantly. But in the 90s, games were still a sideshow compared to Hollywood, and were written in a parodic style, not yet having found their own space as a unique medium. To an extent, this is still true today.

4. An aging Harrison Ford is tough to reconcile with a story set in the 1930s. I expect this alone was a big driver in the studio wanting new scripts set in the 50s and 60s for the last two films.

5. Movies based on games have an abysmal track record, and I’m sure Hollywood producers get an allergic reaction whenever someone suggests another one.

And yet, despite all the above, FoA is still fantastic raw material for a movie. The plot, mythology, locations, set-pieces, and even the music, are all perfect for being reimagined on the big screen. Which leads me to the final reason why I think it hasn’t happened:

5. Nobody took games seriously in the 90s, Lucas was in control in the 00s for Crystal Skull and wanted his own story not somebody else’s, Disney was distracted by Star Wars and Marvel in the 10s, and by the time we get to Dial of Destiny in the 20s, Disney has become so risk averse that the idea of pulling ideas from a video game seems far outside what they are creatively capable of. Sadly, with Dial of Destiny bombing, the franchise is probably dead until the 30s.

Still, the fact that Disney lawyers shut down the recent fan-remastered version of the FoA game gives me hope that they still recognize how much value that IP has. They’ve strip-mined every other IP, so it’s possible they will eventually realize they've been digging in the wrong place, let go of Harrison Ford (in either live, de-aged, or posthumous generative form), and get their top men working on it.

To pedantically correct a thing you said, SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) was an adventure game engine, and was used for early LucasArts titles (absolutely no Sierra games!).

ScummVM is a program that bundles a lot of reimplementations of different game engines together, such that you can play pretty much any game in the "point and click adventure" category from the late 80s through early 2000s on modern platforms so long as you provide the data-files for it yourself. As you might guess from the name, some scope creep has happened since its origin.

Thanks for the correction! Fixed above. Early morning. :)

FM/YI, here's the mapping of games to engines: https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Engines

Apparently the Sierra engines were AGI and then SCI. https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=AGI https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=SCI

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