Full Throttle is a 1995 graphic adventure video game developed by LucasArts and designed by Tim Schafer. It was Schafer's first game as project lead and head writer and designer, after having worked on other LucasArts titles including The Secret of Monkey Island (1990), Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (1991), and Day of the Tentacle (1993). Set in the near future, the story follows motorcycle gang leader Ben, who must clear his name after being framed for the murder of a beloved motorcycle manufacturing mogul. A remastered version was developed by Double Fine Productions and was released in April 2017 for Windows, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, with later ports for iOS and Xbox One.
Full Throttle was LucasArts' eleventh adventure game overall and the tenth to use the company's in-house game engine SCUMM. It featured full-motion video and action sequences, using LucasArts' INSANE animation engine. It was the first LucasArts game to be distributed only on CD-ROM. It introduced a contextual pie menu through which the player controls interactions with objects and characters. In contrast to other video games of the era, which mostly relied on in-house talent for their voice acting, Full Throttle used mostly professional voice actors, including Roy Conrad as Ben, Mark Hamill as the villainous Adrian Ripburger, Hamilton Camp as the elderly Malcolm Corley, and Kath Soucie as Ben's ally Maureen. It was one of the few LucasArts games to use licensed music, featuring songs by rock band The Gone Jackals.
Gameplay
Full Throttle is a single-player video game in which the player controls the actions of the player character from a third-person perspective using a point and click interface. Players can move the player character to any place on the scene, interact with objects that are highlighted by the cursor, or leave scenes via exits - either on foot for most scenes, or via the character's motorbike, both types denoted by their own icon. Dialogue plays a large part, presenting story elements and information necessary to advance, as well as fleshing out the characters. During conversations, several choices of dialogue are presented. The selected choice is highlighted, and once clicked, the player character responds with the selected choice. Choosing the correct response allows to advance the conversation and ultimately advance the scene.Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine:
Following on from LucasArts' previous graphic adventure, Sam & Max Hit the Road (1993), which introduced an inventory and interaction system to replace those of their prior games, Full Throttle continued to refine on the changes introduced in Sam & Max Hit the Road: objects or characters with which Ben can interact are indicated by a red square appearing around the cursor's crosshairs when it is placed over the object. When this occurs, holding down the control on this causes a contextual pie menu to appear - designed upon the emblem of Ben's biker gang: a flaming circle topped by a skull and flanked by a boot and a gloved hand. The player hovers the cursor over elements of the emblem and then releases the mouse button to attempt various interactions with the object; for example, selecting the skull's mouth to speak to a character, its eyes to examine an object, or the hand to pick up, use, or pull the object. Right-clicking anywhere on the screen brings up the player's inventory of collected objects, which can be examined or dragged and dropped in order to use them with other items in the inventory, or with objects or characters in the scene.
Plot The last domestic motorcycle manufacturer in the country is Corley Motors, whose founder and CEO, the elderly Malcolm Corley (Hamilton Camp), is en route to a shareholders meeting at the Corley factory, accompanied by his vice president, Adrian Ripburger (Mark Hamill). Malcolm suspects that Ripburger is scheming to take over the company, as he is suspicious of Ripburger's plan to recruit a biker gang to ride with them to the meeting. Malcolm's limousine is overtaken by one such gang, the Polecats, and he is impressed with them. Catching up to them at a biker bar, he befriends their leader, Ben (Roy Conrad). Ripburger offers to hire the Polecats to escort Malcolm to the meeting, but when Ben declines, he is knocked out by Ripburger's henchmen, Bolus (Jack Angel) and Nestor (Maurice LaMarche).
Ben awakens to learn that the Polecats have been duped into escorting Malcolm, and that an ambush is planned for them further up the road. He tries to catch up, but his motorcycle has been sabotaged, resulting in a fiery crash. He is taken by photographer Miranda (Pat Musick) to the town of Melonweed, where he is treated by mechanic Maureen (Kath Soucie). Maureen describes how her father taught her about motorcycles, and repairs Ben's bike after he retrieves necessary parts, adding a booster to it as well. Ben catches up to the Polecats at a rest area, but is too late: Ripburger bludgeons Malcolm and frames the Polecats for the crime. Miranda manages to catch the attack on photos, but her camera is snatched by Bolus. Before dying, Malcolm tells Ben of Ripburger's plan to take over Corley Motors and produce minivans instead of motorcycles; he reveals that Maureen is secretly his illegitimate daughter and begs Ben to convince her to take over the company. Bolus tries to kill Maureen, but she manages to escape with the film from Miranda's camera.
With the Polecats jailed for Malcolm's murder, Ben is a fugitive. Miranda tells him about her film, and Ben convinces semi-trailer truck driver Emmet to sneak him and his motorcycle past a police roadblock and to an abandoned farm where Maureen is hiding. He is stranded there when Emmet steals his motorcycle's fuel line and Maureen steals his booster fuel. Emmet is killed by a biker gang called the Cavefish, destroying the bridge over Poyahoga Gorge, which Ben needs to cross. Having replaced his fuel line and gotten advice from the Polecats' former leader, Father Torque (Hamilton Camp), Ben outwits Nestor and Bolus and battles with members of rival biker gangs in order to acquire hover equipment, booster fuel, and a ramp, with which he is able to jump his motorcycle over the gorge.
Ben locates Maureen, who is a member of rival biker gang the Vultures, at the Vultures' hideout, a large cargo aircraft. Maureen believes Ben killed her father but Ben reveals personal information that Malcolm shared with him and convinces her to develop Miranda's film, which shows that Ripburger was the murderer. Ben suggests exposing Ripburger at the shareholders meeting, but Ripburger has postponed the meeting until he is sure Ben and Maureen are dead. The Vultures come up with a plan to fake Ben and Maureen's deaths by entering them in a demolition derby under false identities that will be obvious to Ripburger. Their cars are rigged to explode, but Ben is protected by a fireproof suit and Maureen's car ejects her safely out of the stadium. The plan works and results in the deaths of Bolus and Nestor, while the Vultures recover the winner's prize: a special motorcycle built by Malcolm and Maureen that contains a hidden pass code to Malcolm's safe, in which Ben finds Malcolm's recorded will and testament. Ben exposes Ripburger during the shareholders meeting by projecting Miranda's photos of the murder and playing Malcolm's will, in which he leaves leadership of Corley Motors to Maureen and exposes Ripburger as a sham. Ripburger flees in a semi-trailer truck.
As Ben and Maureen ride in the countryside, Ripburger reappears and rams them. The Vultures arrive driving their flightless cargo plane, which scoops up the truck along with Ben, Maureen, and Ben's bike. The plane and truck wind up hanging over the edge of Poyahoga Gorge, and Ripburger falls to his death, while Maureen and the Vultures flee the plane with Ben escaping at the last second just as the truck explodes and it and the plane fall into the gorge. Members of the biker gangs attend Malcolm's funeral, at which Father Torque delivers a eulogy. Maureen takes over Corley Motors, and despite her desire to remain in touch with Ben, he explains they are in two different classes and should not associate. Ben leaves.
Development The concept of Full Throttle originated following the 1993 release of LucasArts’ previous adventure game Day of the Tentacle. The company wanted to create a game that could revitalize the genre, and could offer LucasArts greater financial success than its earlier projects, such as the commercially unsuccessful Monkey Island series. Convening its designers, LucasArts expressed to them the idea and encouraged the staff to suggest potential conceptual avenues for the game. The company specifically asked Day of the Tentacle co-designers Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman to submit a design document outlining games that the two planned to develop afterward. At LucasArts’ request, Schafer and Grossman collaborated to propose prospective third entries in the Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion series. However, Schafer was willing to helm a project by himself, and he proceeded to develop concepts separately from Grossman that summer. Full Throttle was among the five concepts that Schafer submitted to LucasArts; according to Schafer, he produced "a pitch for a spy game, a Day of the Dead game, and a biker game" that later evolved into Full Throttle. Schafer later said that management "hated" the initial pitch, but he revised the design and repitched it with greater success. Edge reported that "it was eventually greenlit on Schafer's assurance that it would be a hit", as he felt that its protagonist and concept were "more commercial" than the company's earlier adventures.
According to Schafer, he came up with the idea for Full Throttle while listening to a traveller's tales about time spent in an Alaskan biker bar. As he listened, it occurred to him that "bikers are kind of like pirates — like another culture that people don't have a window into most of the time, but [which] has its own rules", and might provide a neat alternative to a fantasy setting. He began his research into biker culture, reading Hunter S. Thompson's Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. Schafer stated that the game had influence from samurai movies such as Yojimbo. The game originally would have featured an interactive sequence where Ben undergoes a peyote-induced hallucinogenic trip. This was eventually cut, because the developers could not get it to "work out" with the publisher. The concept eventually became the basis of Psychonauts. Schafer recalls the reaction from the management at LucasArts as being one of "'We can't believe we paid you to write this'", and that "they hated it". In an interview with Gamasutra, Schafer said that the biker aesthetics of the game were an appeal to fantasy. He stated that the team was depending "on the [player's] secret desire to be a biker: big, tough, cool. Riding a huge hog..." On the setting he noted that often it was mistaken for a post apocalyptic world, but he clarified that the setting was simply an alternate world which was more desolate than our own.
Developed for CD-ROM with a budget of $1.5 million, Full Throttle was powered primarily by LucasArts' SCUMM engine, however elements of the company's INSANE animation engine, previously used in Star Wars: Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire, were implemented so as to allow for improved full-motion video (FMV). The game features completely voiced dialogue, full-motion video, and a digital audio soundtrack. Project leader Schafer served as the game's writer and designer. Full Throttle has thus been called Schafer's first "solo" project, leading Schafer to quip, "I did it all on my own with about 30 other people". Production lasted one and a half years, which Schafer considered to be "crazy" for the era.