Amazon heralded a return to some of the most beloved cult-classic video games ever made by LucasArts this summer in Prime Gaming. If you are an Amazon Prime member, you'll be able to "claim" a few games with Prime Gaming starting on July 1, then again on August 1 and September 1. The games are each LucasArts classic titles, each of them "iconic point-and-click adventures."
A number of gamers out there grew up playing games made by LucasArts, but before the gaming arm of LucasFilm was known as that, it was known as Lucasfilm Games. In fact, the company was known as Lucasfilm Games from 1982 to 1990, which is when it switched branding to LucasArts. Today, Disney and Lucasfilm announced that it'll be switching branding back to Lucasfilm Games, and with that switch apparently comes a renewed interest in gaming.
Today we're taking a quick journey down the list of Star Wars projects announced by Disney this week. Disney revealed that there'd be a number of new television shows that'll be shown on Disney+ and at least one more feature-length movie in the near future, too. This comes after the initial announcement that there'll be 15 Star Wars projects on Disney+ in the next few years - so buckle up!
In addition to the other Xbox Game Pass additions arriving this month, Microsoft has announced that its video game subscription service will also be getting a handful of LucasArts classics just in time for Halloween. These are, of course, the remastered versions of the classic games, which originally launched for platforms like DOS, classic Mac OS, and early versions of Windows.
It would appear that Star Wars lore just cannot stay solid as, just this week, Rey's parentage changed yet again. As events and details in the novelization of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker showed, the official word on the origin of Rey's parents is not exactly what you might've assumed, given the details present in the film. Further, it would seem that the actor who played Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) shed some light on an earlier version of the films' script, after the impenetrable wall of Lucasfilm NDA fell at the film's premiere. This is where I say SPOILER ALERT if you'd like to remain unspoiled.
The original Lucasarts creations "Star Wars: X-Wing" and "Star Wars: Tie Fighter" have been re-released as Special Editions. This after just 20 years after their original release, and slightly less time since their first re-releases in 1998. These games spawned a massive cross-platform collection of space fighting games both in and out of the Star Wars universe. Now we can only dream that these classics will make their way to the mobile environment next.
If you’ve been playing the space-fighter game Star Wars: Attack Squadron regularly, you might already know the bad news. This game has been in development for some months, and even went so far as to have an Open Beta sequence so that players from the public might give it a go. Unfortunately for them - and for us - the game’s developers have opted to move on to other projects.
There's a new free-to-play Star Wars game coming to a system near you. It's a classic dogfighting game based on classic Star Wars fighter vessels like X-wings, TIE fighters and, if the teaser trailer is to be believed, the Millennium Falcon. The game is entering a closed beta selection process right this instant; you can sign up at the Star Wars: Attack Squadrons site.
Today a new set of "master filmmakers" has been announced as working on the next Star Wars film, these including first and foremost J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan as screenwriters. Keen-eyed fans will recognize that Abrams is also the director of this film, tentatively titled Star Wars: Episode VII, while Kasdan was also already a consultant for the film. He's been a consultant due to his extensive experience with past Lucasfilm epics, writing the screenplay for Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark as well as co-screenwriting both Return of the Jedi and The Empire Strikes Back.
If there's one thing LucasArts was good at, it was getting to know 3rd-party game creators - that's essentially the base for their entire industry, after all. When you run a gaming company that's creating games that are (mostly) based in the Star Wars universe, you've got to work with a collection of developers - at least that's how it used to be, before Disney shut down LucasArts. Now the Third Party Relations team is happy to bring former LucasArts producer Gio Corsi aboard here several months after the closing of LucasArts in early 2013.
In a piece of news that informs on the future of Star Wars video games after Disney shut down LucasArts last month, Disney and Electronic Arts have signed a multi-year agreement that will see the game publisher obtain exclusive rights to the Star Wars video game franchise, allowing them to make Star Wars video games from here on out.
When we learned that Disney was purchasing the Star Wars Empire from George Lucas, it was rather bittersweet. Lucas hasn't had the best track record with adding new films to the Star Wars franchise. We knew that new films will be coming in the Star Wars universe from Disney, but most fans we feared that Disney would ruin the franchise.