The man led the creation of Grim Fandango and Full Throttle and helped make other beloved LucasArts games including The Secret of Monkey Island. Today, LucasArts is all but no more, shuttered as a development studio by its new owners at Disney and turned into a licensing house. Tim Schafer, now running things at Double Fine, shared his thoughts about the shutdown with Kotaku.
"Even though part of me felt this was coming, I’m still, somehow, shocked," he said over e-mail. "I never thought that Lucas would actually shut down. I feel badly for all the talented people there. LucasArts was my first job in the industry. And sad to see all that history go away. And all that concept art. I’m going to be dumpster diving behind their offices for a while to see if I can find any old Full Throttle concept art.”
We'd asked him if he'd pay tribute and if he has interest in getting the games he made back. There you go.
Schafer has also been Tweeting some videos from his years at LucasArts, including this terrific video. He shows up 56 seconds in.
Schafer's partner in LucasArts adventure game glory, Ron Gilbert, also remembered the studio today.
While I was looking for a vintage image of Schafer from his LucasArts days, I found this terrific SF Gate article from 1998:
Think of it as "Casablanca" meets "Roger Rabbit," but without the bunny suit.
It's "Grim Fandango," a lively new PC adventure game created by film-noir buff and veteran game designer Tim Schafer at LucasArts, the game subsidiary of George Lucas' Marin County entertainment empire. It hits stores Friday, just in time for Day of the Dead celebrations Monday.
Those were the days!
Top photo: Schafer at the Video Game Awards in 2008. (AP)