The sad success of Grim Fandango

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Video Games - March 2008

The sad success of Grim Fandango

March 11th 2008 00:36

Last week, the Escapist Magazine published a fantastic article on the critical success and commerical flop of Grim Fandango, a truly marvelous LucasArts adventure game from the 90s.

It was a tough time for adventure game fans... Sierra, famous for their Kings and Space Quest games, were running out of steam, it felt like, with every new adventure game trying harder and harder to feel like an 'interactive movie'.

Computers were getting faster, with better graphics... the popularity of first-person shooters was growing through the roof, with the new legions of gamers developing the fast twitch.

Grim Fandango was born into this seedy atmosphere, with gamers looking for the fastest game on the market, with the biggest guns.

Instead, Grim Fandango was a beautifully realized mix of Mexican folklore and old film noir. To this day, it's one of my favourite games of all time.

From the article, on why it wasn't a success:

"It's not easy to sum the Grim Fandango up in three words... The best I could do when pitching Grim to my friends was to say, 'It's, like, a murder mystery, except where everyone starts out dead.' If that got their attention, I could delve into the Mexican folkloric elements and film noir sensibilities until their eyes started to glaze over. I'm not sure I have an answer apart from Grim just being a complex game.""

It was a game of incredible comedy, but I remember being stunned by the wickedly insidious puzzles, the beautiful set pieces and the excellent voice acting.

I think I've got the CD somewhere... maybe I'll just play it again!

*this image is from the original article

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Posted By: Cibbuano - Category: PC

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Comments

2 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by Wayne F

March 11th 2008 07:08

Bucket Movies

Holy crap, almost forgot about Grim Fandango until I read this post. This game is awesome! I've beaten the game and cracked me up so much playing it. I used to love games like this and the Curse of Monkey Island. Ah... how I wish there were more games like this.

It's a shame this didn't take off, it was a really good game.

Comment by Cibbuano

March 11th 2008 07:15

20/20 Filmsight
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wayne - me too... and, seriously, I have it at home. Maybe I'll reinstall it and run it under Wine...

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