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• LucasArts' first adventure game was actually Lucasfilm Games' Labyrinth , based on the movie of the same name. The developers consulted with Douglas Adams on the game, and he suggested that they make it a hybrid game that starts as a text adventure, and then turns into a graphical game.
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• Their first true science fiction game was 1987's Maniac Mansion, which contained the technology that was used in LucasArts' games for over a decade. It introduced new ideas like multiple endings, multiple character, and clues there were hidden in the cutscenes, which was a clever way to make you watch them.
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• LucasArts famed SCUMM engine was created for this game, and used for many more of their interactive adventure titles. SCUMM actually stands for Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion. It's been ported to multiple systems, and you can still play those classic LucasArts games on it.
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• Maniac Mansion was inspired by B-movies, and features a storyline complete with mad scientists, disembodied, sentient tentacles, and an evil mastermind played by an also sentient Purple Meteor. Players have to figure out how to stay alive and save the Earth from the Meteor.
  
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• In part of the game, characters can actually microwave a hamster, and when this game was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System, they were ordered to take it out. However, they noticed it a bit too late, so it made it onto all the North American game cartridges.
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• In 2004, fans collaborated and enhanced the game graphics, added music, fixed glitches, and released as freeware Maniac Mansion Deluxe.
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• LucasArts/Lucasfilm Games visited the world of science fiction again in 1988 with Zak McCracken and the Alien Mindbenders, where titular hero Zak had to help fend off an alien invasion by the Caponians. They want to lower the intelligence of everyone on Earth by using dial tones.
  
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• Luckily Zak finds some ancient technology left behind by the Skolarian race which can be used to fight the Caponians. Unfortunately the parts are scattered all over Earth and Mars, and you have to go around collecting them.
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• In later games the developers decided to make it impossible to actually kill one of your characters, although this new "rule" was broken a few times.
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• LucasArts went on an adventure game tear after Zak McCracken, producing Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure in 1989, The Secret of Monkey Island in 1990 (probably the title most remembered and most associated with LucasArts), and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge in 1991.
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• During this period, in 1990, Lucasfilm Games became LucasArts during a reorganization of the company.
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• They returned to the realm of science fiction with Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis in 1992, the sequel to Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle in 1993.
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• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis was a game not based on any previous Indiana Jones, and featured Indy going to the lost city of Atlantis. He eventually encounters a huge machine called the Colossus, which runs on a mineral called Orichalcum. This device gives the Atlanteans godlike powers, and comes in handy if you want to turn yourself into pure energy.
  
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• The cover art for the game was created by lead artist William L. Eaken in an effort to emulate Drew Struzan's work on the previous Indiana Jones movie posters. In fact, LucasArts eventually released movie-style posters promoting this game.
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• Dark Horse Comics released a four-issue miniseries based on the game, and also for the planned sequel that never came out called Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix. It involved Indy finding the Philosopher's Stone that could transmute metals and bring people back from the dead. The Nazis planned to use it on Hitler's ashes.
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• In Day of the Tentacle, you return to the original Mansion, and do battle against the Purple Tentacle, who drinks toxic waste and grows arms. Oh, and he also wants to take over the world.
  
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• This game features time travel, and lets you go back in time to interact with historical figures like Ben Franklin, John Hancock, and Betsy Ross. In fact, time travel ends up being the very thing that saves the day. Just try and forget the fact that they are portapotties turned into time travel devices called "Chron-o-Johns."
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• Inside the game, you could use Ed's computer to play the complete and full version of the original Maniac Mansion. Other games have done this since, but Day of the Tentacle was one of the first.
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• In 2004 Adventure Gamers compiled a list of the Top 20 Adventure Games of All Time, and Day of the Tentacle topped the list.
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• By the mid to late 1990s, LucasArts adventure games had begun to decline in sales. Console games were becoming more popular, as well as first person shooters. The Dig became the last science fiction game released by the company in 1995. After that they released two more Monkey Island sequels, and the afterlife themed Grim Fandango before shutting down the adventure games development in 2000. Since then, LucasArts has focused mainly on developing Star Wars and Indiana Jones games.
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• The Dig was an ambitious game produced by Steven Spielberg for LucasArts, which very nearly didn't come out. It was based on a story idea that Spielberg originally had for Amazing Stories, and had dialogue provided by Orson Scott Card, and was written by both Spielberg and interactive fiction author Brian Moriarty. It began development in 1989, but wasn't released until six years later.
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• The story involved a team of astronauts placing explosives on an asteroid on a collision course with the Earth, a la Armageddon. However, things go pretty well, and the mission seems to be a success. However, once they investigate the surface of the thing, they get zapped to a faraway world. Commander Boston Low (voice by Robert Patrick) and his team have to explore their alien surroundings and find a way to get back home.
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• The Dig was the first LucasArts game to have its soundtrack sold separately on CD, and a novelization of the game was written by Alan Dean Foster, who has written numerous Star Wars novelizations, and well as ones for the Alien films.
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• LucasArts actually filed a "notice of opposition" with the U.S. Patent Office against the website Digg in 2007, saying that they were infringing on their trademark on The Dig. They settled out of court, and the opposition was withdrawn later that year.
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• Most LucasArts games feature reference to other LucasArts games, the numbers 1138 (from THX-1138, Lucas' first film), and Han Solo's line "I have a bad feeling about this." Several of the games also feature a plant named Chuck, which has become a running joke amongst game developers. He first appeared in Maniac Mansion, and later made his way into other games.
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• Besides the science fiction games, LucasArts also produced the motorcycle adventure Full Throttle (my personal favorite), the magical adventure Loom, the Monkey Island series of pirate adventures (four games total), Sam & Max Hit the Road, and Grim Fandango. Hopefully, we'll see games like this coming out once again.
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• Rocket Ship (Gottlieb, 1958): One of the first true science fiction themed pinball machines was this beauty where you had to spell out R-O-C-K-E-T-S-H-I-P during gameplay and blast off into outer space.
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• Egg Head (Gottlieb, 1961): A wacky mad scientist and his robotic pal use their wiles to play tic-tac-toe with a bevy of buxom beauties. The actual playfield had a tic-tac-toe setup made up of bumpers, and you had to try and light them up in a row based on the random bouncings of your ball.
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• Pinball Pool (Gottlieb, 1978): Dark-haired pool sharks with ample bosoms spar against a gleaming chrome robot. Just check out the closeup of the lower half of the playfield that shows them glaring at each other.
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• Apollo, Blast Off, and Lunar Shot (Williams, 1967): Hoping to cash in on the race for the moon, Williams released not one but three pinball machines, all with identical artwork and slightly modified playfields, that played on America's race for the moon.
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• Star-Jet (Bally, 1963): Bally's outer space fantasy game was one of the first to feature extra balls in play, which was called the "Blast Off Extra Balls" feature. The term multiball hadn't come into play yet. Pretty amazing back art showed a group of attractive young men and women heading for space.
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• Time Tunnel (Bally, 1971): Time Tunnel was a simple pinball game featuring mod-style artwork of teenagers who were probably supposed to be traveling through time. However, CBS sued Bally over the copyright to the name due to their Time Tunnel television show and Bally stopped producing this game.
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• Space Mission (Williams, 1976): Inspired by the space exploration of 1970s-era NASA, Space Mission featured artwork that looked like Spacelab above a playfield filled with outer-space docking targets. They also released a two-player version that was virtually identical called Space Odyssey.
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• Tri Zone (Williams, 1979): Tri Zone looked a bit like Logan's Run meets THX-1138, with vapid people standing around in some sort of a utopian future where they're forced to compete in the Tri Zone competition. Don't ask me to explain it.
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• Alien Poker (Williams, 1980): Yes, you've seen dogs playing poker on countless oil paintings, now it's aliens playing poker. You know, when interstellar travel and exploration get boring, it's time to bust out a deck and play a little five card stud. Check out the playfield, where it looks like ROM the Space Knight also plays poker.
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• Fireball (Bally, 1971): A giant space vampire hurling fireballs at you? Sign us up. The actual game was about releasing Odin and Wotan (the German version of Odin), and having them square off against each other, but we're holding onto our fantasy of a space vampire who wants to kick some ass. He even came back for vengeance in Fireball II in 1980.
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• Laser Ball (Williams, 1979): This game featured a buxom redhead (who looks a lot like Jean Grey) firing... er, laser balls at you. She sure was hell-bent on keeping you beat down for some reason.
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• Vector (Bally, 1982): This was a science fiction sports fantasy game, where it looked like players were combining jai alai with some sort of bizarre Discs of Tron hockey mashup. Still, they got to don cool Mighty Morphin Power Rangers-esque costumes and hurl things around, sounds like fun.
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• Embryon (Bally, 1981): This game featured some of the most graphic pinball art we've ever seen, featuring a half-naked bald alien woman writhing around in some sort of a birth-chamber-sac. There's a human figure who looks a lot like Adam Strange watching over everything... did he somehow impregnate her? Maybe that was the goal of the game.
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• World Defender (Nuova Bell Games, 1985): Boy, does the guy on the backart for this game look familiar or what? Plus, we can't recall a time when the Terminator went toe-to-toe with fighter jets. Holy ripoff, Batman.
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• Pin-Bot (Williams, 1986): The first in a series of three robot pinball-themed games from Williams featured a Pinball robot in outer space, forcing you to do his interstellar bidding and attempting to score points.
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• Strange Science (Bally, 1986): A truly bizarre pinball game that featured a mad scientist trying to swap a monkey's brain with that of a hot girl's. You had to facilitate the transfer by lighting up bonuses and making things happen. Much like Igor.
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• The Machine: Bride of Pinbot (Williams, 1991): Probably one of the coolest and most bizarre pinball machines was this early 90s model Pin-Bot sequel from Williams, which featured a robotic woman with light-up nipples, and an extreme bonus field right where her vagina would be. Overt sexuality in games? Shocking.
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• Jack-Bot (Williams, 1995): Jack-Bot was the third in a series of games featuring "bots" in pinball, and of course used the Pin-Bot babe yet again. The game features a jackpot robot (the Jack-Bot), and a jackpot-style playfield.
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• In 1978 Taito was a Japanese company that was struggling to make a profit on Pachinko machines. With the rise of electronic arcade games, Tomohiro Nishikado designed Space Invaders and created history.

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• The game was inspired by Atari's Breakout, by the descriptions of the aliens in H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, and by a freaky dream that Nishikado had about aliens appearing in the sky instead of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Which means you get lines and lines of relentlessly invading creatures, who all happen to look like an octopoids.
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• Arcades opened in Japan featuring nothing but rows and rows of Space Invaders games, so if you thought your corner convenience store with Galaga and Pole Position hardly had any choices, think again.
  
• The game was so popular in Japan that it caused a major shortage of coins, and they had to quadruple yen production to keep up with the demand.
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• Space Invaders was one of the first games to feature endless gameplay, as previous games had all worked on a timer. If you were good, you could go on blasting aliens forever... or until the game ran out of memory.
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• The upright cabinet version of the game in arcades actually had the monitor below the eyeline of the player, and the gamefield was reflected onto a piece of plastic on the back of the cabinet, which had cool artwork painted on it. The resulting combination had the gamefield on top of a lunar landscape.
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• The original Taito version of the game used joysticks, but the American version from Midway used buttons to control the laser cannon.
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• The game ran on an Intel 8080 as its processor, running at 2 MHz.
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• It was estimated that the game pulled in $500 million in its first year of release in the arcades alone, which still makes it one of the most profitable games ever developed.
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• In 1980 a version of Space Invaders was released for the Atari 2600, and it quickly became one of the "must have" games for the system.
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• Versions came out for other home gaming consoles, but due to copyright infringement they would have to be retitled. Like Space Armada for the Intellivision.
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• Coca-Cola even asked Atari to create a version for the 2600 called Pepsi Invaders, featuring invading letters spelling out Pepsi, so you could blast them out of the sky. Coke gave the 125 cartridges out to its employees.
  
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• Numerous sequels have appeared in arcades over the years, including Space Invaders Part II (or Space Invaders Deluxe), Return of the Invaders, Majestic Twelve: The Space Invaders Part IV (or Super Space Invaders '91), Space Invaders DX, and Akkan-vaders (or Space Invaders '95: The Attack Of The Lunar Loonies).
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• Guillaume Reymond created a human version of the game in 2006, which you can watch in all of its glory right here:
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• Shigeru Miyamoto, who created Donkey Kong and a slew of other games for Nintendo, has said that Space Invaders was what inspired him to get into game development.
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• The cover for Boston's "Don't Look Back" album was inspired by Space Invaders.
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• In an episode of Futurama, Fry fights off invading aliens because he's a master of Space Invaders. All he needs to rock the game are a two-liter bottle of Shasta, and a Rush mix tape.

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• The first game to bear the Star Wars name was The Empire Strikes Back for the Atari 2600. You could fly around as Luke Skywalker taking down AT-ATs which inexplicably had one tiny space on their backsides which allowed you to destroy them easily. Too bad the Rebels didn't know about this in the movie.
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• They followed that one up with the equally forgettable The Return of the Jedi: Death Star Attack on the same system, and it faded like a an iron-on tranfer that's been washed 2,000 times.
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• Probably the worst (or at least simplest) Star Wars game to come out of the Halls of Lucas was 1983s Jedi Arena, which featured an overhead shot of... two dueling lightsabers. The little Star Wars target probe would pop out every now and then to irritate the crap out of you, and you'd try to vanquish your opponent.
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• The real Star Wars game that most people think of and remember as the first in the genre was the coin-op game Star Wars from Atari in 1983. The thing came in both standup and sitdown versions, and featured digitized voices from the game. It was vector graphic goodness, and for some reason it was also addictive as hell. You could even "Use the Force" by not firing a shot during the trench run on the Death Star for bonus points.
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• Atari also put out versions of Return of the Jedi in 1983, and a strangely out of order The Empire Strikes Back in 1984. Jedi featured a weird 3/4 angle looking down at speeder bikes, but Empire returned to the vector graphic format. You could find Jedi at theaters across America, but Empire was extremely hard to come by.
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• Star Wars games faded from the limelight until 1991 when Ubisoft Games released Star Wars on the Nintendo, but the game really looked best on the Super Nintendo where it appeared as Super Star Wars, Super Empire Strikes Back, and Super Return of the Jedi. These were side-scrollers that were surprisingly fun to play, especially since the Jawas would say "Utinnin!' over and over.
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• Part of what I can blame my low grades for in college was the release of Star Wars: X-Wing in 1993. It was a flight and combat simulator based on the X-Wing, and it was obsessively fun because... well, you're in the cockpit of an X-Wing. What kid hasn't dreamed about that? It had expansion packs for more missions, different kinds of ships, and later led to Star Wars: TIE Fighter in 1994.
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• By 1996, the Star Wars gaming renaissance was in full swing, and LucasArts released Shadows of the Empire for the Nintendo 64. It was set between Empire and Jedi, and followed the exploits of Dash Rendar, a sort of Han Solo-ish mercenary. In fact, Shadows of the Empire was also a novel, a comic book, an action figure line, and a soundtrack release for Lucas, in an attempt to take advantage of all types of multimedia at once.
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• In 1997, the popularity of fighting games on gaming consoles was hard to resist, so LucasArts released Masters of Teras Kasi, where you could pit Chewbacca against Luke Skywalker, and so forth. The game had some decent animations, but mostly sucky gameplay. Just explain to me in what world a Gamorrean Guard could beat Darth Vader.
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• With the prequels came more opportunities for video games, and there were a slew of forgettable Episode I games on the consoles and on PCs. However, Episode I Racer in 1999, which was a game solely about podracing, can still be found in most arcades around the country. It's not half bad, even if that movie did suck.
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• In 2001 LucasArts created a launch game for the Nintendo GameCube with Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader, which features the word "rogue" in the title two times, just so you're sure. It was a sequel to 1998's Rogue Squadron, which was a Nintendo 64 (and later Windows) title. It spanned all three movies, and tried to fill in gaps in the story.
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• In 2001, 2002, and 2003 LucasArts released Star Wars Starfighter, Jedi Starfighter, and The Clone Wars, all with declining sales, and they featured elements like stale gameplay, and repetitive missions.
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• 2001 was also the year that LucasArts tried to go after the hardcore strategy gamers with Galactic Battlegrounds. It featured gameplay similar to Warcraft (not World of, mind you, which hadn't been invented yet).
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• 2002 was a year of Star Wars sequel games, giving us not only Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast (which was a sequel to Dark Forces: Jedi Knight, which was itself a sequel to Dark Forces) but also Racer Revenge, which was an update to the Episode I Racer game.
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• Dark Forces actually followed a character created specifically for the video games, Kyle Katarn. He was originally an Imperial Officer, but later turned and became a spy for the rebellion. He was played by actor Jason Court for Dark Forces: Jedi Knight II.
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• 2003 saw both the release of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars Galaxies, both of which were the first Star Wars roleplaying games. Knights was set 4,000 years before A New Hope, but Galaxies was in the "current" Star Wars universe. However, while Knights was a huge hit and spawned a sequel (and possibly an upcoming third game), Galaxies was reviled for having sucky gameplay and things like dancing Wookies.
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• In 2004 Lucas brought Battlefield style gaming to the table with Star Wars Battlefront, where you could play as a single soldier in massive battles set in the Star Wars storyline and universe.
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• Republic Commando in 2005 was, for my money, one of the most underrated Star Wars games, featuring you as a clone trooper who had to issue squadron commands to the other clones under his command. It was set amidst plot holes in the prequels, and was genuinely Anakin-free fun.
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• However, one of the most fun Star Wars games, both in gameplay and with the supplied tongue-in-cheek humor was Lego Star Wars: The Video Game. It was irreverent, sassy, and pure dumb fun. It was followed up with Lego Star Wars: The Original Trilogy in 2006 and Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga in 2007. Later this year you'll also be able to pick up Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures.
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• While there are many to choose from, what wins the award for the crappiest game ever to bear the Star Wars name? That would have to be Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing from 2001. It featured big-headed versions of the movie characters racing around go-kart style. While the Star Wars Lego titles could take something like this and make it fun, this game just sucked, bombad.

That experimental laser that turns Bridges into a video game character actually zips an orange across space first, early in the movie. It's only later that a pissed-off Master Control Program does the same thing to Jeff's pesky ass. Of course, no one at the company seems to remember that they've invented teleportation either, at the end of the movie. Probably a more lucrative line of work to go into than gaming. Here are more secrets of Tron:

• Director Steve Lisberger saw video games in the late 1970s, and was fascinated with the world they existed in. However, he wanted to open that up to people in a non-cliqueish way, and he and his partner Donald Kushner set up an animation studio in 1977 to start developing the film.
• The film was supposed to be animated, with live-action bookends setting up the "human" side of the story. However, Lisberger met with Information International, Inc., who showed him footage of filming real actors in front of back-lit animation. They filmed test-footage of a frisbee champion hurling discs, and this convinced Disney to fund the film.
• Information International, Inc. had previously animated the android-vision in the movie Westworld, and they scanned and animated Peter Fonda's head for the sequel Futureworld, which was the first appearance of 3D computer graphics in a film. They also did animation tests for Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars, but they ultimately achieved the most success for creating a newspaper and technical document publishing system.
• Moebius, Syd Mead, and tech artist Peter Lloyd all contributed to the production design of the film, with each designing different elements: Moebius the set, Mead the vehicles, and Lloyd the environment. Mead also created the iconic Tron logo.
• Speaking of vehicles, when I was a kid those Recognizers scared the hell out of me. Yes, it's not really trivia related, but can you imagine one of these, on fire, and piloted by a Sleestak? Holy hell.
• Peter O'Toole was originally signed on to play Sark/Dillinger, but when he arrived on set and didn't see any of the physical sets or props, he balked.
• Apparently Jess Bridge's manhood created too much of a bulge in his "Clu" outfit, so he had to wear a dance belt to conceal it. The Big Lebowski, indeed.
• Debbie Harry screen-tested for the role of Yori. She probably told the producers to "Call Me," which they never did. Yes, that was a bad Blondie joke. Sorry.
• The scenes of the ENCOM labs with the laser teleportation array were shot at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Their own real laser is able to produce 28 trillion watts of power on target. The lab is now the home of the faster computer in the world, Blue Gene.
• The Tron videogame was a smash hit compared to the movie, which did moderately well. The game has far outgrossed the movie. In fact, it took several dozens of my quarters back in the 80s. It spawned a sequel called Discs of Tron, which is worth it just for the black light effect alone.
• A game sequel that ties into the movie, Tron 2.0, was released in 2003. It features Jet Bradley, the son of Alan Bradley (Tron) being zapped back into the computer world. It didn't do that well financially, but is worth picking up and playing. I still play the damn thing from time to time.
• Supertramp was supposed to provide two songs for the movie, but eventually those were provided by Journey. They are "Only Solutions" and "1990's Theme," and are pretty forgettable.
• Composer Wendy Carlos provided the rest of the soundtrack, doing most of the work on MOOG synthesizers. She had also provided the scores for The Shining and A Clockwork Orange.
• The Academy left Tron out of the voting for any visual effects awards, because they felt they'd cheated by using a computer. Oh Academy, always so forward-looking.
• A sequel for the film has been in the works since 1999, and last September Disney announced that the project continues to move forward based on a script by Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, who both write for Lost. Jeff Bridges has said he's excited about possibly reprising his role as Flynn.

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Here's how the game went: You spent your hard-earned allowance on the game controlling Dexter, the teenager that Ace reverts into, and tried to rescue your bitchy girlfriend Kimberly. Who just happened to look an awful lot like the buxom Daphne from Dragon's Lair. Now for the back story.

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• Besides creating Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, Don Bluth was a chief animator at Disney, and also directed The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, The Land Before Time, All Dogs Go To Heaven, and Titan A.E., among others.
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• Space Ace appeared only four months after Dragon's Lair, and was offered in a standalone cabinet, or as a conversion kit. You just popped out the Dragon's Lair disc, popped in Space Ace, changed a few stickers and the control panel and bingo.
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• Space Ace was promoted as if it were a movie, with movie-style promo posters and press kits. Bluth even did interviews with film journalists to promote the game.
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• Just like they did with Dragon's Lair, to save money Bluth's studio didn't hire actors for the voices of the characters, but used employees to provide them. Bluth himself is the voice of the evil Borf.
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• The animators made actual physical models of Ace's ship, the Star Pac, his motorcycle and the tunnel seen in the dogfight for the game. These were filmed and then rotoscoped to provide a more realistic look.
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• The original concept for the game was based on the Billy Batson / Captain Marvel comic book model. Dexter would be able to turn into super space hero Ace at different times in the game. However, since they were marketing the game to teenagers, they thought they would relate to an adult better. So that model was reversed.
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• Unlike Dragon's Lair, you could choose your difficulty setting when you popped your quarters in: Cadet, Captain, or Ace. At the Cadet level you'd only see roughly 50% of the game, and you'd need to choose the Ace setting to see it all.
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• The game also offered multiple paths for the player to choose from, rather than having to follow one course of action in each scene. At different points in the game the player had the opportunity to slap the "Energize!" button to turn Dexter back into Ace, which would result in the scene being played differently. You could complete the scene as either character.
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• At one point in the game a decoy Kimberly turns into Hexter, an evil version of Dexter, and you have to do battle. He then turns into a mega-giant evil Ace, and you have to shoot him in the mouth. Ouch.
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• Although Borf wanted to take over the Earth with his weird de-aging ray (and who wouldn't mind being a teenager again?) he sure spent a lot of his time trying to kill Ace/Dexter with laser beams, giant drilling robots, and massive traps.
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• In 1984 twelve Space Ace episodes were produced for the "Saturday Supercade" of shows on CBS that featured other video game cartoons like Pac-Man and Frogger. Nancy Cartwright, the later voice of Bart, provided the voice of Kimberly.
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• The game didn't anywhere near the popularity that Dragon's Lair did, and it's high cost sent the laserdisc game fad into a tailspin that it didn't recover from. In 1991 Space Ace II: Borf's Revenge was released for the Amiga and PC platforms, but quickly faded into obscurity.
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• Although it's been on DVD before, in April a high-definition version of Space Ace will be out for HD-DVD and Blu-ray players. You play the game with your remote, which sort of sucks. However, there's a ton of extra material on the disc, including the ability to just watch the game all the way through. It's one way to relive the time you spent in the 80s, without rolls of quarters in your pocket.

We love the idea of multipupose bot-like armor suits, and these perfectly juxtapose the images of life and death in war. You might have some massive bionic titans slugging it out and destroying the landscape, but these little suckers will be scurrying around everywhere, filling up guns and patching up wounds. In fact, why don't they put them to work in every facet of life? You could have a little mailman suit of armor, policemen, firemen, pizza delivery, and even Jehovah's Witnesses with backtanks full of copies of Watchtower.

New Bionic Commando Concept Art [Capcom Unity]

It's a tale of two planets, Earth and Arkanar, who live together in brotherly love and all that boring jazz until a bitter war broke out between the two worlds. Afterwards, the Earth ages, matures and develops things like technology, computers, and digital watches. However, Arkanar stays rooted in medieval-era weaponry and warfare and starts stagnating. No one know why until the forces on Earth decide to send a spy to Arkanar, and guess who you get to play? It sounds a bit like Assassin's Creed where you get "regressed" back into the a similar era inside your head, except this time you get to take a blaster, a missile pod, or a hand grenade with you.

This might be the closest that a game has come to sticking you into a Harry Turtledove novel, except you have to also unravel the mystery of Arkanar's situation to boot. Bonus points if your character gets to brandish a laser rifle and tell everyone "This is my BOOMSTICK!"

Halo Wars takes place before the first game in the series, Halo: Combat Evolved, when the war with the alien Covenant was just beginning to break out. Set in the year 2531, the United Nations Space Command has colonies spread throughout the galaxy, turning previously barren planets into thriving communities. However, once the war breaks out people start fleeing in terror from the onslaught of the Covenant. Artist Jason Merck from Ensemble Studios makes it clear in this concept art of a group of people with bags packed and sporting warning signs in the background that it might be high time for a change of scenery. Either they've just arrived, are waiting on some sort of a hovertrain to take them away, or maybe they're watching a battle unfold in the sky.

Sadly, by the beginning of the gaming series 21 year later, most of these colonies have been lost, which means these poor painted people probably didn't survive. Check out more concept art from this upcoming game in the gallery and keep your bags packed for a quick exit.

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• Starcross, by Dave Lebling: This 1982 game was Infocom's first foray into science fiction, and you played the central character who was a lonely miner in space, searching for black hole. However, you end up encountering a massive alien derelict ship and to explore its depths to unravel the mystery. This was Infocom's third game (behind Zork III and Deadline) to feature "feelies," props that came in the packaging that were meant to enhance the gamplay. It included a logbook for your ship, a partial map of space, and a letter from your company which was supposed to help if you encountered alien life.
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• Suspended: A Cryogenic Nightmare by Michael Berlyn: This brilliant game featured the player as the "central mentality," basically a human in cryogenic freeze for 500 years, whose sleeping brain functions as the processing center for the city's support systems. However, an earthquake disrupts everything, and you have to repair the systems via six robots that serve as your sense while you're on ice before the a crew arrives to "disconnect" you. Each robot had a different ability, and most of the game was spent trying to figure out how to get them to help you. Plus, the game came with a creepy cryogenic mask cover that terrified me as a kid.
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• Planetfall by Steve Meretzky: In Planetfall the player travels the cosmos as a lowly ensign seventh class in the Stellar Patrol, scrubbing floor and performing menial tasks. However, the ship begins exploding and you flee in an escape pod, eventually landing on an alien planet whose inhabitants have vanished. As you try to figure out what happened to them, you encounter Floyd, a goofy robot who quickly becomes one of the most memorable characters in any game I've ever played, both text and with graphics. Touching and funny, this is my personal favorite.
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• The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Steve Meretzky and Douglas Adams: This award-winning adaptation of Adams' novel takes the book to new heights as you play Arthur Dent. The plot is similar to the first novel, with the character trying to find the legendary lost planet of Magrathea, and encountering galactic hijinx along the way. This game came with a huge amount of feelies, including a microscopic space fleet, pocket fluff, and "Peril Sensitive Sunglasses" that turn black when you're in danger.
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• A Mind Forever Voyaging by Steve Meretzky: Just when you think Meretzky couldn't top himself, he does. I swear the guy probably helped shape my childhood more than most of the teachers I had in elementary school. In this game, you play an artificially intelligent computer called PRISM having just "awoken" from what you thought was a real life as a human being named Perry Sim. Turns out you were living in a simulation all that time. Your programmer sends you into several advanced simulations to check out the feasibility of The Plan for Renewed National Purpose being lobbied for by a senator. Turns out, things aren't so nice in the future if Congresses passes the thing. You visit it at 10 year intervals, and it is a commentary on the future, as well as politics. Truly epic.
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• Stationfall by Steve Meretzky: Infocom returned to the world of Planetfall in 1987 with this sequel that reunites the player (now a lowly lieutenant stuck processing paperwork) Floyd. Although not quite as charming as the original, it does have a lot of the comic and touching hallmarks of Meretzky's writing. Fans weren't too pleased with the ending of this one, however, and Meretzky said he did it because he didn't want to write another game in the series. Darn it to hell.
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• Leather Goddesses of Phobos by Steve Meretzky: This is an interactive fiction take on Barbarella, and the player can set one of three different "naughtiness" levels: tame, suggestive, or lewd. Think Leisure Suit Larry, but in space and without any graphics. Set in 1936, the player tries to stop the Leather Goddesses of Phobos from invading Earth after they abduct him. If you fail, you'll get tossed into their "pleasure dome." Why would that be considered a punishment?
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• Trinity by Brian Moriarty: Trinity is one of the most epic games ever created, and probably the best (although not most-known) that Infocom released. Set against the creation of the atomic bomb, the player finds himself in the middle of a nuclear missile attack in the United Kingdom. Through a series of adventures involving time-travel and space-folding, you have to foil several different nuclear weapons tests in order to have the military abandon the technology. Truly an incredible game with emotional moments, and well worth playing, even today.
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The Necrum level had quite an impact on fans of Oddworld even inspiring fanart around the net. People loved the spooky setting the level took place in, and were drawn to the reverence of the resting place of the mudokon dead. In this part of the game, you have to drive out the baddies in the mines below and return the city to a place of mourning, which artist Rob Brown took into account while designing it.

Brown has worked as an artist and art director for a slew of companies from Disney to Activision, but his stint on the Oddworld games is probably what he's best known for, since he provided a real look and feel to this alien world. He brings a dark, brooding intensity to his artwork, which normally isn't seen in such a lighthearted game, and made it seem like a living, breathing world. Check out some of his other concept art on his website, and lament the loss of Oddworld.