Lucasfilm’s classic point-and-click era is getting the big, glossy history lesson it deserves, with a new documentary project called Passport To Adventure: The SCUMM Story now in development. If you’ve ever lost an afternoon wrestling with verb bars in The Secret of Monkey Island or Maniac Mansion, this one’s squarely aimed at you.
The film is being put together by CREATORVC, the folks behind In Search of Darkness and FPS: First Person Shooter, with writer and games historian Richard Moss in the director’s chair. The plan is a roughly three-hour, game-by-game retrospective on Lucasfilm Games/LucasArts’ SCUMM titles, plus a selection of Humongous Entertainment stuff, framed around how the engine reshaped adventure design and comedy in the late ’80s and ’90s. Confirmed interviewees already include heavy hitters like Ron Gilbert, David Fox, Aric Wilmunder, Tami Borowick, and background art wizard Mark Ferrari, with more names to follow.
The team wants to dig into things like SCUMM University (Lucasfilm’s internal training setup), how “talkie” CD-ROM releases changed the craft, and that eternal LucasArts vs. Sierra design philosophy beef. Moss has called it one of his dream projects and is positioning the whole thing as both celebration and preservation, a way to document the tech and the people while they’re still around to tell the stories firsthand.
Right now, the project is in pre-production, with a crowdfunding campaign planned but not yet live. Instead, CREATORVC is asking fans to sign up for a newsletter and early “focus group” list; they’re targeting at least a thousand sign-ups to prove there’s enough demand to move forward. Over on forums and Reddit, Moss is already soliciting feedback about what people want covered, so if you’ve got strong opinions about insult swordfighting or puzzle design sins, this is your chance to yell into the canon instead of just yelling.
Source: Time Extension
