Now Ive got a chance to talk to one of the designers of the old Lucasarts games, David Fox who has worked on some of the early Lucasarts games, like Maniac Mansion or Indy 3 so I asked him a couple of question and he gave some brilliant responses so you can already tell it's not some imposter. Keep in mind that he worked in Lucasarts before DOTT or Monkey Island.

ME : Now star wars and Lucasarts go together like bread and butter. Was there ever an idea for a Star Wars point and click game?

david : During the time I was there (in LucasArts from 1982-1990, then Rebel Arts and Technology for 1990-92)...we weren't allowed to create any games based on Star Wars. The license for Star Wars games had already been sold to other companies. So we had to focus either on new ideas, or the occasional game based on other licenses... like Labyrinth or Indy. At first we were disappointed... one of the reasons I joined the company was because I was a big SW fan. But in retrospect, it was probably the best thing that could have happened... it forced us to be creative, to stand on our own 'two feet', not take the easy way and build a game based on a very rich universe. And it also meant that we were pretty much left alone by the rest of the company. I think if we were doing SW games then, there would have been a lot of attention from others in the company, including George, and licensing, and we wouldn't have had the freedom to do what we wanted.

ME : Was there any big threats in sales from a rival company like Sierra?

david : Maybe not threats... but we definitely considered them our rival. They had been doing adventure games much longer than we had, and were very successful at it.

ME : I think what you did better than  Sierra was make a better and a more fluid interface

david : So we studied their games, especially Ron Gilbert... and he came up with a list of dos/don'ts based on when playing their games made him angry.  That was one of the problems he had with their games... too hard to control. If you didn't happen to know what word the game programmer had been thinking of when he/she wrote the puzzle, you might not be able to solve it. even though you knew how... (pick up the rock... stone... pebble... dirt clod... etc. I know for me, the sign of a good puzzle is one that you can figure out without the help of a hint book.     
and one where you feel a strong sense of satisfaction when you do it. And then when you see what the solution was (either by guessing, or resorting to a hintbook), and you think, "I'd never have figured that out on my own",
Also, stupid deaths... dying for something that you can easily do in real life. I gave up on one of their games when I picked up a piece of broken glass or mirror, I cut myself and died. I think in real life, I'd be able to pick up a piece of broken glass and survive... to me that either shows laziness or sadism

ME : Did you have any involvement in the NES porting of Maniac Mansion?

david : And to answer your question about NES MM, no.

ME :   Who had the idea of the wacky deaths in Maniac Mansion like Green killing you due to the contract or the microwave hamster death. 

david :  Hmm... well most of the gameplay in MM was designed by Ron and Gary Winnick... when I came onboard, they already had the game mapped out. But there were times, when I was 'wiring' the game that I found. and so suggested it to Ron, or just coded it and showed him... Like putting the glass of radioactive pool water in the microwave and turning it on... Pretty sure that was mine. And definitely my idea to put the hamster in the microwave, and the resultant effect. I didn't tell Ron about it... Got Gary to give me the art (blood covered microwave door) and programmed it, then called Ron in without telling him what I had done. Fun. But don't do it in real life!

ME : Those parts were one of my favorite. Doesn't everyone remember killing the hamster. And I remember the refference from DOTT. In the computer version of MM was there ever the ghost effect? (For the users, this was a glitch in Maniac Mansion on NES in which you died if you moved the parser to the far right you could become a ghost in the game.)

david : Might have been a requirement on their part. so it looked like they weren't really dead... I think we just panned over to the gravestone. 

ME :  Was it your idea for the multiple areas in Zak?

david :  Most of the game layout for Zak was my idea... or came from a 2-day brainstorming session with spiritual write, David Spangler. who lived in the Seattle area... hence the Mt. Ranier reference. But when we started coding it (Matt Kane and me), again, all sorts of other ideas came up as well. 

David had to go but he told me to ask even more questions! So next part we'll discuss Indy III, and the action games Lucasarts developed during their starting period.

   
           

That, my friend, was awesome. You should become a game journalist. IGN, Kotaku, Engadget, whatever. You did a great job interviewing him. I was very interested. I gotta say, you know your stuff. Especially considering you're my age. I doubt most gamers who lived back then know as much stuff as you do.

God job. Could use better structure and you need to type out the whole name for something before dropping to the acronym. I have no idea what DOTT or ZAK are. I read your article thoroughly to make sure I did not miss it, and the reference is not there.

That's definitely really cool, lots of inspiration there.

In what form did you can chat? Also, how did you come across finding him?

Yeah how did you get so lucky as to talking to him? lol You must have connections
Was he involved in Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis? Because I liked that game a lot. You should talk to him about that too haha
Nice interview! I hope to see more

Davideo7 : I met him through a group where he persuaded Lucasarts to remake one of his game that he designed for Lucasarts since this was going on with the whole revamp of Monkey Island now, considering it was part of the adventure game timeline that Lucasarts produced. So I talked to him and chatted to see if it was really him, and it seemed legit. So I asked him if I could interview him, and he seemed fine about it.

mdynasty926 : I would ask him about Fate of Atlantis but he left the company during the time Secret of Monkey Island was being made. However I can ask him about his involvement of the Indy III adventure game.

xfighter1138 : Yeah that's almost the same thing lol