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Though his trajectory at Double Fine was aimed at doing new things, Schafer also wanted to revisit old things. He left LucasArts in 2000 and founded his own studio, Double Fine Productions, where for the last 15 years, he's created games like Brutal Legend, Psychonauts and Broken Age, the latter a modern adventure game that shattered Kickstarter records when it arrived on the crowdfunding platform in early 2012. They distinguished themselves from their contemporaries with their quirky characters and Schafer's baked-in wry sense of humor.
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More Paul McCartney than Axl Rose, he gained prominence in the 1990s at LucasArts creating now-classic adventure games like Day of the Tentacle, the Monkey Island series and Full Throttle. Schafer is one of the video game development industry's few rockstars. Over time, storage media like floppy discs and tapes degrade, as does the information written on them. Backing up isn't like chiseling the rosetta stone. Anyone can save and back up data - and LucasArts had a process for doing so - but, over time, that data becomes less reliable. While he's happy to know that fans of his games have kept them running, he's also worried about the original files. Polygon spoke with Tim Schafer, who wrote and served as the project lead on the original Grim Fandango, vice president of publisher and developer relations at PlayStation Adam Boyes, whose efforts culminated when he took the stage at E3 2014 to reveal Grim Fandango Remastered, and representatives from LucasArts and Disney Interactive to learn how, after so many years and false starts, they resurrected the beloved adventure game and brought the Land of the Dead back to life. And it wouldn't have been possible without the coordinated efforts of those advocates at Disney Interactive, Double Fine, LucasArts and Sony Computer Entertainment, many of whom played and loved Grim Fandango when it was first released - and some of whom built the original game. Today, more than 16 years after its release, Grim Fandango returns, officially, on modern hardware. Then, disc-by-disc and file-by-file, the San Francisco-based development studio founded by Grim Fandango creator Tim Schafer started making the adventure game again. Matt Hansen left LucasFilm with the source files for Grim Fandango.ĭouble Fine enlisted the help of an old LucasArts employee to help them unearth the data. He left with a storage tub full of outdated technology. United by their passion for the game, their frustration at its disappearance and their belief that it would thrive today, they worked out a plan.Īnd not long after that - after some awkward miscommunication, after everybody agreed and the deals got done and the papers got signed - developer Double Fine Productions producer Matt Hansen drove to LucasFilm, the parent company of LucasArts, to retrieve some old physical media. It remained in suspended animation until one day, not very long ago, a group of Grim Fandango advocates got together to see if they could change things. But officially, and for more than a decade, Grim Fandango was relegated to BitTorrent and eBay, without a sanctioned way to purchase or play it. A dedicated group of enterprising programmers even kept it running on modern PCs by reverse engineering its 3D-focused GrimE engine. Grim Fandango still stands as a classic of the genre, with unforgettable characters and unique combination of film noir and Mexican folklore.Despite its official unavailability, Grim Fandango remained in the hearts and minds of many players, some of whom would go on to hold high-ranking positions at influential video game companies. Grim Fandango's epic story of four years in the life (or death) of Manny Calavera, travel agent to the dead, has been remastered to look, sound, and control even better than when it won GameSpot's Game of the Year award upon its original launch. One of the most acclaimed adventure games of all time is now back, better than ever.

Help Manny untangle himself from a conspiracy that threatens his very salvation. He sells luxury packages to souls on their four-year journey to eternal rest. Meet Manny Calavera, travel agent at the Department of Death. Grim Fandango Remastered: Something's rotten in the land of the dead, and you're being played for a sucker.
