Category:LucasArts

LucasArts is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was famous for its line of graphic adventure games, although today it mainly publishes games based on the Star Wars franchise.

The company was founded in May 1982 as the video game development group of Lucasfilm Ltd., the film production company of George Lucas. Lucas had wanted his company to branch out into other areas of entertainment, and so he cooperated with Atari to produce video games.

The first results of this collaboration were unique action games like Ballblazer and Rescue on Fractalus!. Beta versions of both games were leaked to pirate bulletin boards exactly one week after Atari received unprotected copies for a marketing review, and were in wide circulation months before the original release date. In 1984, they were released for the Atari 5200 under the Lucasfilm Games label. Versions for home computers were not released until 1985, by publisher Epyx. Lucasfilm's next two games were Koronis Rift and The Eidolon.

In 1990, in a reorganization of the Lucas companies, the Games Division of Lucasfilm became part of the newly created LucasArts Entertainment Company, together with Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound. Later ILM and Skywalker Sound were consolidated in Lucas Digital Ltd. and LucasArts became the official name of the former Games Division.