Full Throttle opens with a biker waking up in a dumpster behind a bar, with nothing to his name but the keys to his motorcycle. He is Ben, leader of a gang called the Polecats, and within ten minutes, as Computer Gaming World counted, he has been beaten up, run off the road and left in the desert beside the smoking wreck of his bike. Tim Schafer’s first game as sole project leader at LucasArts took the comic point-and-click adventure somewhere new: a road movie in a near future of hover-limousines, with fistfights on moving motorcycles between the puzzles. Edge called it “in effect the first true ‘road game’”.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: LucasArts, 1995, on PC CD-ROM (£45 in Britain, $69.95 in America).
- Project leader: Tim Schafer, who designed it and wrote all the dialogue.
- Engine: SCUMM, with the INSANE video engine from Rebel Assault built in.
- Voices: 12 professional actors for 40 characters and over 2,500 lines, among them Mark Hamill as the villain, Adrian Ripburger, and Kath Soucie as Maureen.
- Music: songs by the rock band The Gone Jackals, with a score by Peter McConnell.
- Remaster: Full Throttle Remastered, by Double Fine, 2017.
The story
Malcolm Corley founded Corley Motors, which makes the Polecats’ bikes. His ambitious aide, Adrian Ripburger, wants to take the company into the minivan market. Ripburger murders Corley, frames Ben for it and leads the rest of the gang into an ambush. Ben has to rebuild his bike with the help of Maureen, a mechanic who turns out to be heir to the Corley fortune, then catch up with his gang and stop Ripburger at the shareholders’ meeting.
On the way there is a demolition derby to win, a gorge to jump, a minefield to cross, “about a dozen” fights with rival bikers on the road and, Computer Gaming World noted, a finale that “may remind you of the truck sequence in Raiders of the Lost Ark”. The tone, the same review wrote, was “a heavy-metal-and-leather-jackets kind of comedy”, a long way from the cartoon of Day of the Tentacle or the satire of Sam & Max.
How it played
LucasArts dropped the list of verbs. Hold the mouse button over something and a biker’s tattoo appears, a skull with a fist, a boot and a mouth. The eyes look, the fist picks up or uses, the boot kicks and the mouth talks or tastes (see point-and-click). PC Player in Germany noted that the player could not die and could not get stuck in a dead end.
The road fights are action scenes. Ben rides alongside another biker, steers with the mouse and punches, and whoever wins takes the loser’s weapon: a chain, a plank, a morning star or a chainsaw. Edge found that they worked well, but were “more a case of having the right weapon to clobber your opponent with”.
It was LucasArts’ first adventure sold only on CD-ROM, and Edge thought the disc was full: every line was spoken, with subtitles as an option, and the speech was so well synchronised that the game looked like “a slightly pixellated cartoon”. The vehicles and some of the characters were modelled in 3D rather than drawn. Retro Gamer later explained the technology underneath: the INSANE engine, written for Rebel Assault, had been built into SCUMM, so real-time animation could be mixed with pre-rendered video.
What the reviewers said
Edge gave it nine out of ten in July 1995, calling it “friendly, intelligent, funny and completely absorbing”. Computer Gaming World’s Charles Ardai wrote of Roy Conrad’s performance that “his Ben is Clint Eastwood cubed”, and noted that Hamill supplied three voices, “including Ripburger’s sinister snarl”. Both magazines found the same weakness. CGW called the gameplay “somewhat less challenging and more obvious than it might have been”, and its shorter notice said the game was “a bit short by most gaming yardsticks”. PC Player also found the puzzles much easier than in Day of the Tentacle. Ardai’s conclusion was that it made “an ideal starter game” for anyone new to adventures.
Later history
Schafer told Retro Gamer that MTV wanted to make a Full Throttle cartoon and LucasArts management did not, and that he later heard about a sequel “and no one had even asked me about it!” In April 2003 LucasArts announced Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels, a 3D action adventure for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC, with Ben back on the road. It was shown to the press in May and cancelled by August. Schafer left LucasArts to found Double Fine in 2000, and in April 2017 Double Fine released Full Throttle Remastered for the PC, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita. The artwork was redrawn by hand and widened from 4:3 to 16:9, the original voice sessions were recovered from old tape drives, and players could switch between the remaster and the original at any moment.
Sources
- Edge issue 22, July 1995, pp. 68–70: review (PC CD-ROM, £45; LucasArts’ first CD-only adventure; all speech; 12 actors, 40 characters, over 2,500 lines, Mark Hamill; the hover-limo; “the first true ‘road game’”; the action scenes; nine out of ten).
- Edge issue 30, March 1996, p. 44: Schafer’s first solo project, “with about 30 other people”; he designed it and wrote all the dialogue.
- Computer Gaming World issue 132, July 1995: short review (“a bit short by most gaming yardsticks”; IBM CD-ROM, $69.95).
- Charles Ardai, “Hawg Heaven”, Computer Gaming World issue 133, August 1995, pp. 80–82: the dumpster and the Kickstand bar, Mo (Maureen), the plot, the derby, gorge, minefield and fights, the Raiders finale, the interface, the voices of Ben, Ripburger and Mo, the 3D vehicles, “an ideal starter game”.
- PC Player (Germany), July 1995: review (Hamill as the villain; music largely by The Gone Jackals; no deaths or dead ends; the skull interface and weapons; puzzles easier than Day of the Tentacle).
- PC Zone issue 24, March 1995: preview (the tattoo interface), as cited in the point-and-click entry.
- Retro Gamer issue 110, January 2013, pp. 74–79, “SCUMM origins”: INSANE in SCUMM, Mark Hamill as the antagonist.
- Retro Gamer issue 22, 2005, pp. 40–42, Tim Schafer profile: the MTV cartoon, the sequel, and “Throttled”, on Hell on Wheels (announced April 2003, shown in May, cancelled by August).
- Computer Gaming World issue 227, June 2003, p. 54: Full Throttle II: Hell on Wheels preview (3D, more action).
- James Spafford (Double Fine), “Classic adventure game Full Throttle Remastered arrives today on PS4, PS Vita”, PlayStation Blog, 18 April 2017 (web, secondary): the redrawn 16:9 art, the recovered voice tapes, the commentary. https://blog.playstation.com/archive/2017/04/18/classic-adventure-game-full-throttle-remastered-arrives-today-on-ps4-ps-vita
- Wikipedia, “Full Throttle (1995 video game)” (accessed October 2026) (web, secondary): Roy Conrad as Ben, Kath Soucie as Maureen, Peter McConnell’s score, the Macintosh version, the remaster’s later platforms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Throttle_(1995_video_game)