Articles

Ssh, it's a secret (history) 01 Sep, 2008 / Comments: 21

By Gabez


Find out all sorts of interesting facts, like who Sophia Hapgood is based on, and how old Hal Barwood is, in our LucasArt's Secret History on The Fate of Atlantis!

LucasArts is now all about Staff of Kings, but we know that there were games before 3D graphics. Just because it's made up of pixels doesn't mean we don't like it. I love pixels, in fact. I regularly bathe in them.

Thanks to everyone who made The Fate of Atlantis such a sterling game, to Dan Lee for the amazing header art, and to everyone who wrote in to say how much they liked (or didn't like) playing it.

We raise our glasses to you, half-forgotten hero story. "Hears to the Fate of Atlantis, and to all those darling adventures with Sophia!"

Hear hear.
21

21 Comments

  • mikeb on 12 Sep, 2008, 12:40…
    Great work guys - what a fantastic resource, possiibly the best ever created on Fate. The 'History and Myth' and 'Plato's Lost Secrets' sections are particularly fascinating.

    I had the pleasure of interviewing Hal Barwood for the Making of Fate of Atlantis feature in Retro Gamer magazine 51, and am honoured that its been made available here to compliment this great online resource. Cheers!
  • Murray the Chao on 04 Sep, 2008, 04:12…
    I didn't see any mention of the alternate ending.
  • Udvarnoky on 05 Sep, 2008, 04:39…
    I totally did!
  • Ryback on 04 Sep, 2008, 00:55…
    Hey, you used my article: I'm very flattered :) Although reading it now it could certainly do with a thorough copy edit.
  • Ascovel on 05 Sep, 2008, 18:36…
    Great article! Somehow it is a lot of fun to have so much Plato in an Indy storyline. Brings the old cliffhanger serials roots to a wholly different class. To this day I keep wondering what is on the other pages of The Lost Dialogue and what kind of philosophical problems bugged the old Greek this time. Unfortunetly, Jones was only interested in the book for finding The Facts.
  • Gabez on 04 Sep, 2008, 19:43…
    Yes -- sorry I didn't get permission to use it before it was published. I e-mailed you afterwards, but perhaps you don't check that e-mail address anymore (the one on LucasFiction). If you wanted to do an edit of it you still could, and I would update the article as you wished -- tho' I thought it was very good as it was!
  • Ryback on 04 Sep, 2008, 23:41…
    Excellent. I think I will do that over the weekend.
  • jp-30 on 02 Sep, 2008, 00:30…
    Wonderful feature (yet again). One day my job and family won't take all my time, and I may actually be able to contribute to one of these things as I always intend. I'll aim for DOTT.
  • clone2727 on 01 Sep, 2008, 20:20…
    Uhhh... shouldn't the "hears" in "Hears to the Fate of Atlantis, and to all those darling adventures with Sophia!" be "here's" ?
  • Gabez on 01 Sep, 2008, 20:30…
    Not according to Wikipedia, tho' of course the accuracy on that could be debated... but I can't find a better source at the moment. Either way, it's a strange phrase.
  • Jayel on 01 Sep, 2008, 17:31…
    "Indiana Jones does Atlantis"
    Ahahahaha- I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard!
  • Lagomorph on 01 Sep, 2008, 17:10…
    I incidentally read "to Doug Lee for the amazing header art".
    I was so amazed, only to find that I misread it... XD
  • Jennifer on 01 Sep, 2008, 16:01…
    Wow! I love that header art! All of them have been great, but this one's my favorite so far. :)
  • Ascovel on 01 Sep, 2008, 18:56…
    Agreed. I wouldn't mind if mixnmojo produced a series of alternative box arts for all LucasArts adventure games. But you'd have to stick to Dan Lee and not let Gabez draw even a single bone in there.
  • Gabez on 01 Sep, 2008, 19:16…
    Haha, I'm not that bad (actually I am).

    Don't forget Paco Vink, though who did the Last Crusade art (and will hopefully be back for some more in the future).

    Once the series is finished it would be cool to get all the header art together and do something with it. Wallpapers, or something, if there's high res versions, and if the artists were okay with that.
  • Kroms on 01 Sep, 2008, 20:50…
    Reminds me of that comic I was supposed to do a while ago.
  • neon_git on 01 Sep, 2008, 15:17…
    Fun fact: the word pixel is actually short for "PIC-Cell". PIC stands for Pigment Incarcération Criminelle, which was a part of the French legal system from 1756 up until 1959 when it was sold to Haloid Xerox (Now commonly known as Xerox). The PIC dealt with the so called stain-on-my-just-washed-white-collar crimes and any convicted inks would be sent to a PIC-Cell for the period of their sentence.

    The spelling of the word was changed by the Xerox marketing department in hte early sixties in the run up to the release of the Xerox 813.
  • Gabez on 01 Sep, 2008, 17:23…
    Obviously a man who loves pixels even more than I do!
  • Ascovel on 01 Sep, 2008, 17:22…
    Wow, Now that's some secret history!
  • Sp0tted on 01 Sep, 2008, 17:35…
    Wikipedia knows EVERYTHING.
  • Ascovel on 01 Sep, 2008, 18:40…
    Sssh! You're spoiling the fun of finding out secrets.