IN THE KNOW
PUBLISHER: LUCASFILM GAMES
DEVELOPER: LUCASFILM GAMES
RELEASED: 1989
PLATFORM: PC, VARIOUS
GENRE: POINT-AND-CLICK ADVENTURE
In the autumn of 1988, bosses at Lucasfilm Games handed Noah Falstein a highly confidential, unfinished script of the third Indiana Jones film. The brief? To design a graphic adventure that followed the events of the film, and to finish up in time for the premiere the next summer. “I was pretty overwhelmed by the responsibility,” Noah admits.
Noah was an experienced game designer by this time in his career and certainly no stranger to pressure. Four years earlier he had become one of the first ten employees of Lucasfilm Games after it was founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas. He had also just successfully produced the flight simulation action game Battlehawks 1942 for the company. But despite having no shortage of good ideas about how to make an Indiana Jones adventure game work well, this was a big project with a hard and fast deadline. “I think by early December 1988 I went to Steve Arnold, our boss (and still a good friend) and told him I couldn’t get the game out close to the summer 1989 movie launch without a lot of help.”
At this point two other esteemed game designers, who Noah says also to join the fold. David Fox had just finished and joined the project too. Noah told us this was just the backup he needed. “Ron, David and I were the three most-experienced project leaders at Lucasfilm Games. That was a title that meant lead programmer, producer and designer all in one. So it was a big commitment to put us all on one game.” Noah says the three were fully devoted to crafting a game that would fit with the cinematic nature of the source material. “Pretty much every one of us had come to the company because we were carried away by and wanted to make games that measured up to the standard set by Lucasfilm for movies. We loved stories and aspired to tell them with our games.”
