Lucas Arts

Justice Unlimited (LucasArts) [Cancelled – PC]

Justice Unlimited is a cancelled superhero action RPG with gameplay similar to Diablo, that was pitched by LucasArts around 1997. We would imagine it as a top-down 2D adventure, exploring modern-day cities and the suburbs taking the role of different superheroes to hunt down criminals, level-up and collect rare loot. While the game was never officially announced, some details and artwork were shared in the book “Rogue Leaders – The Story Of Lucasarts”:

“From 1997 to 1998, LucasArts worked on a game concept meant to challenge Blizzards’s popular Diablo RPG game. The entire concept was essentially  “Diablo, except with superheroes” recalls LucasArts designer John Stafford. Lots of concept art and story were generated for the game, but no work was completed on a game engine, and the idea was shelved.”

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Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3 [Cancelled – Xbox 360, PC]

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 3 is the cancelled third chapter in the popular RPG series developed by BioWare and published by LucasArts. The project was started by LucasArts in 2003 / 2004 when they canned another Star Wars MMO for console named “Proteus” and planned to reuse the same team and part of the already created designs to develop a new KotOR game. Unfortunately KotOR 3 followed the same fate and they later decided to cancel the project because of LucasArts’ financial problems, when the management did not want to invest money and time in such an expensive game.

A few KotOR 3 concept arts created during the design phase were leaked online and we can see new robots (Q-10), spaceships (Dashaad Fighter, Sith Troop Transport, Coruscant Vehicle) and characters. Some more details on KotOR 3 were published in 2008 in the bookRogue Leaders: The Story of LucasArts”, in which they revealed that one of the new characters was a woman named “Naresha”.

“Upon the cancellation of the Proteus project, team and elements of the designs were applied to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 3, which, according to designer John Stallford, “got quite a bit of traction… we wrote a story, designed most of the environments/worlds, and many of the quests, characters, and items.” However, this new game direction fell victim to LucasArts hitting possibly the most difficult period in the company’s history.”

We can only hope that one day someone could share more artworks and info from the early development of KotOR 3.

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Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis [Beta – PC]

Disclaimer: This is mostly a backup of an old page created by ATMachine with details about the beta differences in the early versions of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. It seems that the original page does not exist anymore, so we re-posted this to archive all the interesting details and changes. Enjoy!

The game was developed by LucasArts and released in 1992 as a sequel to “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure”. Originally Fate of Atlantis was meant to be a tie-in to Indiana Jones and the Monkey King/Garden of Life, a rejected script written by Chris Columbus for the third, lost movie. In the end Hal Barwood and Noah Falstein wrote an original story and chosen the Atlantis setting for the project. Many beta screenshots were released in gaming magazines at the time and below you can see all the differences spotted by ATMachine

Star Wars: Battlefront [Beta – Xbox / PS2 / PC]

Star Wars: Battlefront is an action game developed by Pandemic Studios and LucasArts, and released on September 2004 for PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC. Development for Star Wars Battlefront began at Pandemic Studios in 2002. Greg Burrod, executive producer on Battlefront stated “We wanted to create an online shooter title for the Xbox, PS2, and PC which would allow for team strategy and would feature battles and worlds from every one of the six Star Wars films.”

A beta version of Battlefront was released as an extras DVD for one of the trilogy sets. It’s quite interesting and has a lot of ideas that were not in the final version. The build date is February 03 2004, 8 months before the final version was released. Also, the HUD was different and the graphic was still unfinished.

Stranno posted a video and some comparison-screens between the beta and the final version on the Assembler Games Forum!

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The Secret of Monkey Island [PC – Beta]

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In the website of ATMachine we can read an interesting series of articles about the old Lucas Arts adventures and between them, we can even find a wonderfull page with informations and screens for the beta version of Monkey Island! Various differences like removed puzzles, changes in the text and missing dog closeup are show in those screens.

Robert Seddon has linked us to an interesting article at Grumpy Gamer, in which Ron Gilbert has posted some reminiscences about developing the game:

My brain is filled with a lot of old adventure game puzzles, most of which never made it into a game. DeathSpank actually has a couple of puzzles ideas that we talked about for the original Monkey Island.

Originally, I wanted the Grog Machine to be a Coke Machine, baring that, I wanted it to look like a Coke machine. It originally had the “Coke Wave” on it, but said “Grog”. The Lucasfilm legal team came back and said it was too close to the real trademarked Coke Wave.

The key to the Monkey Head used to be called a Q-Tip(tm), but in my second legal lesson of the project it was changed.

Elaine Marley was just called “The Governor” until the scene in the church was written.  Dave Grossman wrote that scene and put in the gag dialog choice where Guybrush shouts “Elaine!”, which is from the movie “The Graduate”.  I liked that, so it became her name.  In the original design, Elaine was a more ruthless Governor, but she softened up and became a true love interested as the project processed.

There was supposed to be ship combat during your voyage to Monkey Island. It would have been done top-down view with you controlling the ship and firing a cannon. It was right to cut that. Never be afraid to cut.

Also, according to Kotaku, the dog will be in the Monkey Island remake that is going to be released for PC and Xbox 360 Live Arcade.

Spiffy, the dog at the Scumm Bar, showed up on the back of the original box, but had to be cut from the actual game due to space. Now he’s back, though mostly as decoration.

In november 2009, an article on the Workshop blog revealed some unused dialogues that are still hidden in the game’s code:

One thing I quickly noticed was that Ron and Tim had left a lot of notes in the code, explaining why things were the way they were, or putting a date when a certain bug was fixed. This was fascinating to see and read. The other thing I noticed is that when they made some changes, they left the original versions of the code in there, but commented out, so that it wouldn’t be used.

Thanks to Robert Seddon for the contribution!

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