On Our Desk - 18

Rogue Leaders: The Story of Lucasarts

Author: Rob Smith
Publisher: Chronicle Books
UK Price (as reviewed): £22.99 (Incl. VAT)
US Price (as reviewed): $37.99 (Excl. Tax)

With Monkey Island mania gripping most of the office, if not the world, we figured now was a good time to take a look at Rob Smith’s attempt to chronicle Lucasarts’ videogame history – all of it lavishly presented in a full-colour, hardbacked, over-size volume.

Starting way back in 1982 and covering the full 26 years that the company has going for since, Smith stays very much focused on Lucasarts’ early successes and charting their rise to greatness through games like Jedi Knight and Day of the Tentacle before too much Star Wars began to spoil the company. Rogue Leaders starts with the likes of Ballblazer and Rescue on Fractalus! and then charts the development of every project (finished and unfinished) until The Force Unleashed.


Of course, it’s a shame that Smith hadn’t waited just a little bit longer before finishing the books, giving readers a chance to read some of how Monkey Island: Special Edition was made and why the company finally decided to fall back on it’s back catalogue of classic games after all those years. As it is, the book has a bit of a bitter-sweet edge to it and it’s impossible not to notice how the company eventually falls into laziness and an over-reliance on the Star Wars name to bring in the dollars. At the start of the book Lucasarts is working on projects that were lightyears ahead of the competition – like Habitat, the first MMO – and by the end ideas are being cancelled before they’ve even fully formed.

The slow decline of the subject aside, Rogue Leaders really is a fascinating look at the company and how it went about recruiting and structuring the talent that gravitated towards it. The main body of text, which rarely delves into true detail but gives a good general over-view of the company, is offset by lush spreads of concept art and design notes from the various games and there are box-out trivia stories to skim over too. It’s these stories which are perhaps likely to be of the most interest to long-term Lucasarts fans, such as the story of Tim Schafer’s initial interview where he accidentally revealed that he had pirated Lucasarts’ best-selling games.


The artwork and full-colour scans is going to be a big draw for fans too of course and Smith has really gone to town when it comes to making the book look attractive, with a selection of concept art and scrawls from even cancelled games. The amount of text devoted to ill-fated games like Sam & Max: Freelance Police and Full Throttle 2 may be a bit disappointing, but getting a chance to peek behind the scenes and see what the Polecats could have been is something that’s hard to pass up on.

In the end, Rogue Leaders is definitely a must-have book for anyone who considers themselves a fan of the company and, though a few classics like Monkey Island are given favour over some equally-good or innovative titles (LOOM barely gets a mention), most titles get an even amount of coverage. It’s just a shame that recent years have made the quick Star Wars cash-ins far outweigh the number of really brilliant classic games that we’d much rather read about.

Verdict: A fantastic coffee-table book and something that’s great for flicking through, Rogue Leaders might not be the type of book you’ll read start-to-finish, but it’s still damned entertaining.