Geek Out

Do you have any idea how hard it is trying to convince the damn kids
these days that there was fun to be had before the Xbox? That
Halo wasn’t the first game to feature aliens and guns, and that
the internet wasn’t created specifically so people could play World
of Warcraft?

Last Wednesday, things got a bit easier for us crotchety old-school
gamers when LucasArts released a host of their classic games via the
Steam downloadable gaming platform. LucasArts plans to trickle games to
the service throughout the month of July, but in the end, fans will be
pleased to see classic titles like The Dig, The Secret of
Monkey Island, Loom, and Armed and Dangerous available, with prices ranging from a mere five bucks to $20 for newer
LucasArts games, like 2005’s Star Wars Battlefront II.

Though most of these classics have seen numerous re-releases over
the years, many don’t function that well on modern computers. These
latest editions, however, benefit from professional
reprogramming—meaning no antiquated copyright protection systems,
no graphical glitches, and all the hilarious writing you remember from
your childhood.

That’s the real boon here: These games were successful not for their
shiny graphics or their technological wizardry, but for their humor. In
an era where it was stunning for games to have audible sound, LucasArts
made gaming fun by employing a team of writers who were genuinely
funny. Twenty years from now, Fallout 3 will be seen as a
pixilated reminder of crude graphical technology, but by relying on
clever scripts and hilarious characters, the LucasArts
classics—1990’s Monkey Island in particular—are
still as fresh and entertaining as ever.

I urge everyone who missed these games the first time—or those
simply looking for cheap entertainment—to drop the negligible
amount of cash for these games. For the price of a new Xbox 360 game,
you can spend a hundred hours remembering why sometimes the old days
were as awesome as you remember.