
Long Live Grim Fandango - aaronbrethorst
http://blog.longreads.com/2015/01/29/long-live-grim-fandango/
======
Nursie
>> "The game was built for Intel’s 386 processor; one year later, the 486
arrived. Computer games rely on a web of interlocking code that resembles more
a cityscape of cards as opposed to a single, measly house. These new chips
were too fast, and the difference in speed made this towering game tumble
down."

Errrr..... This seems wrong. I played the original on a Pentium 2 box back in
the day

Damned awesome game though, been meaning to replay it.

~~~
beloch
Here are the original game's system requirements, courtesy of Disney:

[https://help.disney.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/What-are-the-
syst...](https://help.disney.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/What-are-the-system-
requirements-for-Grim-Fandango?section=Games&siteLang=de_AT)

Minimum CPU: Pentium @ 133 MHz

The video requirements are actually pretty long, but for the overwhelming
majority of people who played this game back when it came out it all boiled
down to one thing: 3DFX required.

I'm not sure if I played this on the Diamond Monster I or the Diamond Monster
II 3DFX card, but I'm pretty sure it was one of those two.

For those young enough not to remember, the 3DFX chipset was on the first
cards with logic specifically built for 3D rendering that was affordable for
consumers. For the first couple of generations, you typically had to own a 2D
graphics card (for all your usual stuff) and a 3D card. You would plug the
video output from your 2D card into your 3D card, and then connect the output
to your monitor. Running code that used the 3DFX's glide API would cause the
3D card to cut in and replace the 2D card's output with it's own. This is
pretty ghetto by today's standards, but the step forward in graphics was
amazing at the time!

~~~
72deluxe
My brother still has his 3DFX cards (Banshee, Voodoo Dragon, perhaps a Voodoo
2 as well?) Playing Screamer 2 with 3DFX acceleration and Need For Speed 2 SE
with 3DFX was very impressive at the time, still great fun now (he keeps an
old ancient Celeron around and runs Windows 98 on it for such vintage things)

------
ShaneWilton
The game was recently remastered and released on Steam. It's an incredible
game, with some of the wittiest writing I've seen, and I couldn't recommend it
more highly.

[http://store.steampowered.com/app/316790/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/316790/)

~~~
ekianjo
"remastered" -> a lot of the assets were not really remastered. I know that is
what they are calling it but they are overselling the actual changes.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
So? It's not called Grim Fandango Every Single Asset Remastered. They updated
the controls, made hi-res versions of all the character textures, added
dynamic lighting, re-recorded the entire score with a full orchestra, and of
course made it run smoothly on modern machines. It would have been nice if
they could have updated all the backgrounds as well, but I think what's there
counts as "remastered" by any reasonable definition.

~~~
ekianjo
> They updated the controls, made hi-res versions of all the character
> textures, added dynamic lighting, re-recorded the entire score with a full
> orchestra, and of course made it run smoothly on modern machines

You forgot one thing: they updated the price as well. Instead of costing 5
dollars like every game older than 10 years mostly does, it's 15. But hey,
there's no little profit, and they got a lot of free press coverage on top of
that just because it was a miserable mess before to run this game on modern
computers (Thanks ResidualVM folks for doing their work).

~~~
PhasmaFelis
So that's the real issue? You're bitter that they're charging all of $15 for
what's been called the best adventure game ever made?

~~~
RunningWild
I don't think that's what he said or meant.

------
daurnimator
A significant portion of Grim Fandango was written in Lua 2.5! Here is a
followup talk from the developer in 2005:
[http://www.lua.org/wshop05/Mogul.pdf](http://www.lua.org/wshop05/Mogul.pdf)

~~~
onemore360
Somewhere I read that GF implements game saves by serializing the whole Lua
heap.

~~~
72deluxe
Good idea, serialization is a good technique when you don't need to switch
architectures.

------
jordigh
Nitpick from a Mexican raised in Mexico: we never say "día de los muertos".
This is a literal back translation of English of "Day of the Dead". We say
"día de muertos", without the "los".

The only times I see "día de los muertos" is in English-language media.

~~~
jordigh
Oops, looks like I spoke too soon. I _do_ see the "los" version now, but it's
far less frequent than the one without:

[https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3A%22jornada.unam.mx%22+...](https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3A%22jornada.unam.mx%22+%22d%C3%ADa+de+los+muertos%22&btnG=Search&gbv=1)

[https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3A%22jornada.unam.mx%22+...](https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3A%22jornada.unam.mx%22+%22d%C3%ADa+de+muertos%22&btnG=Search&gbv=1)

[https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3A%22reforma.com%22+%22d...](https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3A%22reforma.com%22+%22d%C3%ADa+de++muertos%22&btnG=Search&gbv=1)

[https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3A%22reforma.com%22+%22d...](https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3A%22reforma.com%22+%22d%C3%ADa+de+los+muertos%22&btnG=Search&gbv=1)

Maybe the English back translation is making its way into Mexico? Maybe it
always was there? Who knows. It sounds weird to me, as if you were speaking of
a particular group of dead people instead of all of the dead, but maybe usage
has changed or it always existed.

~~~
hkarthik
Quite possible that the difference is due to Mexican-American influence in the
Southwest US where the holiday is celebrated.

FYI my high school spanish teacher (who grew up in New Mexico but was
Hispanic) always called it Dia de los Muertos.

------
pcthrowaway
I've always wanted to play this and never got around to it. Would someone
who's played both Grim Fandango and Secret of Monkey Island (one of my all-
time favorite games, also released by LucasArts about 8 years prior to Grim)
be willing to provide their comparison of the two?

~~~
carise
I played Escape from MI (which I am assuming is kiiiinda similar to Secret of
MI) and Grim Fandango. Loved both.

 __* possible spoiler alert __*

Both are puzzle kind of games. There isn't anything like the insult fighting
in GF. Both storylines are fascinating and suck you right in. Great voice
acting and sidekicks. I think (if I recall correctly) both games make you
travel to different places.

I found that GF moved me a lot more emotionally than MI (subjective, yeah) and
I think it's probably because the GF storyline is a little darker/serious (not
to say it didn't have funny moments). When I finished MI, I felt accomplished.
When I felt GF, I felt like I was saying goodbye to friends that I'm not sure
I would ever see again. That kind of feeling.

I could go on and on, but I don't want to spoil it too much more. :)

~~~
pcthrowaway
Thanks! I highly recommend the first MI game since you haven't played it. It
was my favorite in the series.

~~~
carise
Thanks! I'll need to check it out for sure. I wanted to do all of them in the
MI series but didn't get around to it. Lately I've been trying to play through
some old games so I will put that on my list.

~~~
Otik
Escape was probably the weakest of all the MI games and hasn't aged as well
Grim Fandango or any of the other MI games due to its art style and the early
3D engine.

The Curse of Monkey Island still looks amazing (if low-res), as does Full
Throttle. I'd love to see the return of big-budget games with 2D art.

------
exch
This is definitely one of my all time favourite games. The atmosphere and
story are top notch. Good to see it being revitalized.

------
shmerl
Interesting to note that remastered version requires OpenGL 3.3, which makes
it unsuitable for Intel GPUs older than Sandy Bridge.

------
rmc
Tim Schafer has also made a new point and click game: Broken Age
[http://www.brokenagegame.com/](http://www.brokenagegame.com/)

~~~
makeset
It drew quite a bit of ire when, after a wildly overfunded Kickstarter
campaign in 2012, they missed their deadline by a year, only to deliver a
short "Act 1" instead of a full game. After yet another year, the rest of the
game still remains to be completed.

~~~
pluma
Not to mention that Double Fine then went on to start Spacebase DF-9, which
despite a successful Kickstarter relied on a paid alpha model[0] via the Steam
Early Access program to fund the ongoing development and was eventually
canned[1] when it didn't meet the monthly sales numbers they depended on to
finance the project.

[0]: Sadly they didn't really communicate that they were relying on continuous
funding for development and had to use most of the Kickstarter funds to pay
back the initial investment. This miscommunication resulted in a lot of bad
blood because many fans had assumed the Kickstarter funds would pay for the
future development rather than the development that had already happened.

[1]: Well, they just called it "1.0" and released it, but calling it a
finished product would be absurd. It's barely playable, has game-breaking bugs
and contains only a fraction of the gameplay that was originally proposed.

------
shmerl
I'm playing it now for the first time (GOG release). It's a great game.

If you have a large XFS partition however (1+TB) it will fail to run. For a
workaround see:
[https://www.gog.com/forum/grim_fandango_remastered/grim_fand...](https://www.gog.com/forum/grim_fandango_remastered/grim_fandango_remastered_fails_to_run_on_linux)

------
blt
one of the best games ever. play it.

------
tammer
This is what I was really excited about when I first heard about Lucas selling
everything to Disney.

------
elyrly
Brings back memories of reading the article in PC Gamer. OpenGL has come a
long ways

------
avodonosov
The problem with that article - it's too long.

Are they creating new version of Grim Fandango? (The original game was really
great!).

~~~
adrianpike
Were you expecting something wildly different on a site called 'longreads'?

~~~
72deluxe
Perhaps there is a market for "condensedlongreads"?

~~~
avodonosov
I am thinking about that too

