Full Throttle

1001 Video Games

Full Throttle appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Cancelled sequel

A 3D sequel was in development, called Full Throttle: Hell On Wheels, but it was officially canned on 7 August 2003. A brief statement from LucasArts president Simon Jeffery said: "We do not want to disappoint the many fans of Full Throttle and hope everyone can understand how committed we are to delivering the best quality gaming experience that we possibly can."

Development

In addition to the SCUMM engine, lead programmer Stephen Shaw and Mark Crowley used Vince Lee's Rebel Assault engine for some of the action scenes. This was pretty hard to do since both programs have their own calls to the processor and means of handling data. However, the R.A. sequences were kept discreet and the SCUMM engine was reworked so it could multi-task and keep all of is variable states in their location while the R.A. engine started up, allocated its own memory locations, and shutted down.

The use of the R.A. engine also caused problems in the art department. Since the engine was originally conceived to be as photo-realistic as possible, when the art team placed Peter Chan's drawings as texture maps over the 3D hills they started getting 15-20 k of data per frame of animation, thus causing the desert terrain too look overly realistic in contrast to the rest of the game world. The Over-rendered terrains as well as other features (like parallaxing sky and optimized data flows) were then scaled down to create a continuous game world.

Full Throttle uses 3 engines: SCUMM, INSANE and iMUSE.

Mini game

Following what LucasArts had begun with Sam & Max: Hit the Road (mini-games inside the game), Full Throttle has one special 'game' in it. If you wanna play what Emmet is playing in the Kickstand (that is, after you leave the town where you first meet Maureen and the police set up roadblocks) all you gotta do is ask him several times (and I DO mean several times) using the "I can do that" dialogue option. You won't get any prize if you succeed in using the knife without cutting your hand but, hey, you won't lose anything by chopping it up either!

References

• At one point in the game, Miranda, the reporter says "Help me Ben, You're my only hope!" This is, of course, a reference to Star Wars.
• The Cavefish's suits are of course based on the Tusken Raiders (or Sand People) that you see in A New Hope.
• Emmett the trucker has an Imperial logo tattoo on his right arm.
• Some of the Vultures are named Razor, Wendy, and Sid - all names of characters in Lucasarts' Maniac Mansion.
• When you've stalled the blue car in the demolition derby, run over to the box seats. Max's head (from Sam & Max) should be one of the posters on the wall.
• The sequence near the game's end (with Ben and Ripburger fighting in a plane that's teetering on the edge of a cliff) is a parody of a similar scene in the 60s heist movie The Italian Job.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack to the game is basically its own CD, available at many record stores around the country. A San Fransisco biker band called the Gone Jackals did most of the "biker" music for the game. Their CD Bone to Pick features almost every song from the game, along with many other songs. It became the best-selling item in the LUCAS mail order catalog.

Also included is a non-Gone Jackals song: Increased Chances.

Awards

• Computer Gaming World
  • June 1996 (Issue #143) – Adventure Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
  • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #9 Most Memorable Game Hero (Ben Whatsisname)
  • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #5 Most Memorable Game Villain (Adrian Ripburger)
  • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #10 Most Rewarding Ending of All Time
• GameStar (Germany)
  • Issue 12/1999 - #89 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking

Information also contributed by Apogee IV, Itay Shahar, James1, Macintrash, Maw, Mitch Kocen, n-n, Swordmaster, Tiago Jacques and Zovni