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Xbox Game Pass Is Adding Three Classic LucasArts Adventures This Month
Xbox Game Pass is adding three classic LucasArts adventure games - Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, and Grim Fandango - to its lineup later this month. The games will be recent remastered editions by Double Fine Productions, which Microsoft acquired in 2019.
Before its acquisition by Microsoft, Double Fine was perhaps best known for the cult classic Psychonauts, which took players inside the minds of the denizens of a psychic summer camp. Double Fine funded a sequel to Psychonauts on Kickstarter, which had been in development for several years before the studio became part of Microsoft. Studio head Tim Schafer reassured fans that the purchase would only help Psychonauts 2, and in fact had resulted in Double Fine being able to add the game’s boss battles back after previously cutting them for budgetary reasons.
Now, Double Fine’s remasters of Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle, and Full Throttle are coming to Xbox Game Pass, Schafer revealed on the Xbox Podcast. Before founding Double Fine, Schafer designed all three of those games for LucasArts. According to Schafer, the three adventure games will be coming to Xbox Game Pass on October 29, the same day they’re made available for purchase as standalone titles on Xbox One. They will be available on both PC and console versions of Xbox Game Pass, and Game Pass Ultimate subscribers can also stream them to Android.
The trio of LucasArts remasters belong to the point-and-click adventure genre that was once a dominant force on PC, but has become more of a rarity since the ‘90s. In the last few years, though, adventure games have been resurfacing more often, particularly from indie developers. Double Fine’s own Broken Age was a successful modern adventure game, and earlier this year, Nightdive Studios announced that it was remaking the Blade Runner adventure game, though it still hasn’t received a solid release date.
Releases like Double Fine’s remasters of Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle, and Full Throttle are perfect fits for Xbox Game Pass. They may not appeal to the largest audience, but when they’re available to try risk-free, it’s easy to imagine them gaining quite a few new fans from the deal. Microsoft seems to be taking a similar strategy with its recently acquired ZeniMax, putting all the games developed by studios under its umbrella on Game Pass. Hopefully, the surefire popularity of its biggest titles, like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, will give studios like Bethesda more leeway to experience with upcoming games like Starfield, knowing that Microsoft is backing it.
