Full Throttle (1995 video game)

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Full Throttle
Developer(s)	LucasArts
Publisher(s)	LucasArts
Designer(s)	Tim Schafer
Engine	SCUMM v7, INSANE
Platform(s)	DOS, Mac OS, Windows, many more with ScummVM
Release date	30 April 1995[1] EU 2002 (Win)[citation needed] AU Jan 2007 (Win)[citation needed]
Genre(s)	Adventure
Mode(s)	Single player
Rating(s)	ESRB: Teen (13+) RSAC: V2: Humans killed L2: Expletives USK: 16+
Media	CD-ROM (1)
System requirements	486DX/33 MHz CPU, 8 MB RAM, 1 MB Hard disk space, 256 colour VGA, MS-DOS 5.0

Full Throttle is a graphical adventure game, originally developed in-house and released on 30 April 1995 by LucasArts. It is the tenth game to use the SCUMM adventure game engine.

[edit] Story

[edit] Plot summary

The story, which seems to occur in a semi-apocalyptic dark future where motorized vehicles are giving way to hovercraft, focuses on Ben, the leader of a biker gang called the Polecats. It begins with Ben and his gang riding down Highway 9, when they come across an expensive white hover limousine. Ben, in the lead, unceremoniously drives over the limousine, crushing the hood ornament. This excites the occupants, who later catch up with the gang to find out who they are. Ben and his gang relax at the Kick Stand bar where he is approached by Malcolm Corley, the CEO and founder of the last domestic motorcycle manufacturer in the country, Corley Motors. Minutes later, all are laughing about Malcolm's past adventures when he was a biker. Before long, Corley's sinister vice president Adrian Ripburger enters the bar and asks to speak to Ben privately. He asks Ben to have the Polecats appear at the upcoming annual Corley Motors shareholder's meeting. When Ben declines, he is knocked out and thrown in a dumpster by Nestor and Bolus, malicious flunkies of Adrian Ripburger, who seems to have designs on taking over the company.

Ben later wakes up and attempts to link up with the Polecats, whom Ripburger has coerced into escorting Corley and him to the shareholder's meeting. However, he finds that his bike had been sabotaged when he attempts to pull off a wheelie. After crashing and falling unconscious, he is discovered by a reporter named Miranda, who manages to bring him to "just the person". When he awakens, he meets a female mechanic named Maureen (or Mo for short), who patches up his bike with a few parts she asks Ben to get. Mo is later revealed to be Corley's daughter.

Ben finds his gang in time to witness Ripburger murder Corley and pin the murder on the Polecats. As a fugitive, he must cross the desert to find a way to clear his name, save his gang, and prevent Ripburger from turning Corley Motors into a minivan producer. He crosses paths with other motorcycle gangs: the speed-addicted Vultures (of which Mo was once a member), the brutal Rottwheelers and the enigmatic Cavefish. He arrives at the shareholders meeting in time to catch Ripburger announcing his new control of and plan for the company. He and Mo expose Ripburger as the murderer, and broadcast the last will and testament of Malcolm Corley, who names Mo the rightful successor to his company.

Ripburger makes a final attempt to kill Ben and Mo by ramming them with his truck. The Vultures come to a rescue with a wingless airplane which ends up hanging off the edge of a bridge blown up earlier in the game. Ben manages to kill Ripburger, dropping him in the gorge and barely escapes the crashed airplane before it catches fire. The game ends with Father Torque, former Polecat leader, performing the funeral of Malcolm. Mo and Ben are seen in the backseat of Mo's limo. After a lengthy conversation, Mo seems to express some romantic interest in Ben while asking him if he'd like to have lunch sometime. While distracted during a sudden phone call from a manager, Mo realizes that Ben has left unexpectedly. We see Ben leaving on his motorbike, riding off into the sunset.

[edit] Characters

• Ben Throttle is the protagonist of the game and a biker gang leader, though the other Polecats spend most of the game in prison with Ben trying to get them out of it. Ben's entire name appears only in the manual as Ben Whatsisname and nowhere in the game due to fears of legal action being taken from the Biker Mice from Mars animated television series, which features a character by the name of Throttle.^[2]
• Maureen "Mo" Corley is Malcolm Corley's illegitimate daughter and, secretly, a member of the Vultures. She has a stoic and skeptic personality, and works as a mechanic. At the end of the game, she inherits her father's company and abandons her biker lifestyle. However, as shown in the trailer, she was supposed to return as a biker in the sequel.
• Malcolm Corley is the owner of Corley Motors, the last domestic motorcycle manufacturer, and a patriarch of the biker society respected equally by all gangs.
• Adrian Ripburger is the Vice-President of Corley Motors and the main antagonist of the game.
• Bolus is Malcolm Corley's bodyguard, secretly in league with Adrian Ripburger.
• Nestor is Malcolm Corley's driver, also in league with Ripburger, who describes him as the "smart one" of the two henchmen.
• Suzi is the leader of the Vultures. She is the brains behind an operation to stop Ripburger.
• Father Torque is the former leader of the Polecats. As the "wise old man", he gives Ben advice on his journey.
• Darrel is second in command of the Polecats under Ben.
• Emmet is a long-haul trucker with an intense hatred towards police and bikers.
• Todd Newlan lives in a trailer in Melonweed. He owns a junkyard. His best (and only) friend is his dog.
• Miranda Rose Wood is a news reporter who saves Ben in the beginning of the game. She witnesses and photographs the murder of Malcolm Corley.
• Quohog is the bartender of the Kickstand. He's a bit of a coward, and easily pushed around.
• Horrace is a souvenir salesman at the Corley stadium. According to the game's manual, he had taken too many falls from bikes without a helmet, but Corley expressed sympathy and gave him a job.
• Mavis is the projectionist for the Corley Motors shareholder meeting presentation.
• Burnfield was a new character to be introduced in the sequel, Hell on Wheels, as seen in the teaser trailer.

[edit] Gangs

• The Polecats are the biker gang led by Ben. They spent most of the game off-screen in prison.
• The Cavefish are an underground biker gang/sect known for their eccentricities.
• The Rottwheelers are another biker gang whose members are considered dumb and ugly.
• The Vultures are a gang known for their secrecy.
• The Wraiths are a new gang that was to be introduced in Hell on Wheels and shown in the teaser trailer.
• The Agave Zombies are another gang introduced in the sequel.
• The Hound Dogs are another Hell on Wheels-exclusive gang.

[edit] Gameplay

Full Throttle running in ScummVM.

The game introduced a new verb coin system interface: holding the left mouse button over a recognisable item would bring up a graphic menu rendered as a flaming skull (similar to a tattoo design, as would befit a biker), with icons featuring a fist ("use" or "hit"), eyes ("examine"), tongue ("speak" or "taste") and boot ("kick"). After the menu appears, the player then selects one of these icons for the desired effect. The inventory (a horizontally stretched skull with a wide mouth containing the items) was invoked by right-clicking anywhere on the screen. This interface was later reused (for the second and last time) in The Curse of Monkey Island.

It also contains a portion where the player is required to drive down canyon roads, combating enemy bikers. The fighting is done using fists and kicks, and later chains, planks, and other crude weapons. This portion is done using the INSANE engine. Its use in Full Throttle caused some problems since INSANE was intended for photorealism, in contrast to the game's cartoony style. The rendered environment had to be scaled down to match to the rest of the game world.^{[citation needed]}

The game, somewhat in contrast to other SCUMM games, allows the player to die: during the last sequence, it is possible to make a wrong choice of action, or react too slow, hence killing the main characters - this, however, is immediately followed by Ben saying "Let me try that again", or "Damn" and the sequence starts over. (This is similar to what Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time applied later as a game over element.)

[edit] Development

Full Throttle was released only on CD-ROM, featuring a full voiceover soundtrack. The project was led by Day of the Tentacle creator Tim Schafer, who was also its writer and designer. It was also one of the few LucasArts games to use externally recorded music, courtesy of The Gone Jackals. Certain tracks from their then current album, Bone to Pick, were featured in the game. The track that supported the game's introduction was a shortened version of "Legacy", the album's second track.

Full Throttle employed several skilled voice acting professionals, such as Roy Conrad, Kath Soucie, Maurice LaMarche, Tress MacNeille, Hamilton Camp, Steven Jay Blum and Mark Hamill. Full Throttle was the first computer game to employ mostly SAG-registered professional voice actors instead of relying entirely on in-house talent, and also featured a few pieces of licensed music.

[edit] Reception

The game received, according to MetaCritic, generally favorable reviews,^[1] and has over the time become a cult classic of adventure games. Weak points of the game included its linearity and short duration — elements that brought the game in comparison to Loom. Its vehicle combat system was also considered to be poor.

[edit] Legacy

Two attempts have been made by LucasArts to make a sequel to Full Throttle. The first attempt, entitled Full Throttle II: Payback, both began and ceased development prior to 2000.^[3] In 2003 however, development on the second attempt Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels began. Sean Clark's Hell on Wheels made it much further through development than Payback. A video teaser was released and an interactive demo was shown at E3 that year, but shortly afterwards this game was also cancelled.

Despite the cancellation of the sequel, Full Throttle retains a stable fanbase that keeps developing the setting and the story on their own, for example, through modules for a popular role-playing game system Fudge.^[4]

According to Tim Schafer, the game originally would have featured a sequence where Ben undergoes a peyote-induced hallucinogenic trip. This was eventually ejected from the game, because the developers couldn't get it to "work out" with the publishing. The concept eventually became the basis of Psychonauts.^[5]

[edit] See also

• LucasArts adventure games

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Full Throttle

• Full Throttle at MobyGames
• Full Throttle at the Internet Movie Database
• Full Throttle at Rotten Tomatoes
• Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels at Rotten Tomatoes
• "Full Throttle Graphic Novel" by Nikita "Fjodin" Kondratov