Contents:
The Intro
Title: Full Throttle
Release year: 1995
Developed by: LucasArts
Genre: Point-and-click adventure
Platform replayed on: PC
Full Throttle: it’s not long, and there are a few speed bumps along the way, but it’s a helluva ride!
You join protagonist Ben Throttle (perhaps anti-hero is a better term), leader of the Polecats biker gang, as he’s being set up and framed for the murder of the owner of the last domestic motorcycle manufacturer in the country. Ben doesn’t take this lying down, and it’s up to you to help him save his gang and clear his name.
I first recall seeing Full Throttle in a gaming magazine in 1995. Knowing it was made by the same developers as Sam and Max Hit the Road (1993) was probably enough for me—I had to play this!
But I didn’t.
I never managed to get my hands on a copy, and it remained the one that got away. Until now, through the release of Full Throttle Remastered (2017). It comes with updated graphics and sound, and also allows you to toggle between the original and remastered graphics. I really like this feature, and it has been seen in other remakes and remasters such as The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (2009), and Day of the Tentacle Remastered (2016).
Let’s take a look.
The Game
Full Throttle is a point-and-click adventure game, using the SCUMM engine (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion). You control Ben through the use of a radial interface that shows up when you click on interactive features on screen (for example, other characters and items).
The radial menu is simple, and features the actions Ben can take: look at, speak to, kick, and pick up/use.
Inventory management is also simple, mostly due to the fact that there’s just not a lot of it. In a lot of point-and-click adventure games, you can end up with a dozen or two items, and knowing when and how to use these (or not use them at all) is a major part of the game. Not here. You rarely have more than a few items, and there’s no combining of items either. As such, puzzle solving is greatly diminished when compared with other similar games like Sam and Max Hit the Road and Day of the Tentacle.
Dialogue in Full throttle is handled by presenting a list of options for Ben to say. Conversation may provide you with some hints as to how to progress, but generally it’s short and to the point. Which is a lot like Ben’s attitude: he doesn’t mess around.
Now, being able to kick things is an indication of the setting and the tone of the game: dark and violent. Ben is in a biker gang, in a world populated by other biker gangs, all generally up to no good. This tone is very different to the general wackiness of many point-and-click adventure games of this era. The Police Quest series is one that comes to mind as being serious, but that was based on real-life police work.
Full Throttle is in a world that is almost post-apocalyptic in appearance and feel. Or perhaps it’s more a wild west feel, out in the middle of nowhere, with no rule of law. However, there is some quite advanced technology around, as cars no longer have wheels: they hover.
Ben and his gang, the Polecats, are a bit of a throwback. They prefer their vehicles with wheels. As mentioned, there’s only one domestic motorcycle manufacturer left in the country, and the plot involves turning this manufacturer into a maker of minivans (minivans!). It’s a bit of that classic old versus new, big corporation versus the little guy dynamic.
Well, we better get back to Ben (we left him in a dumpster earlier…) and see how my playthrough of Full Throttle went. Time to put the pedal to the metal!
The Replay
I had a choice to make as the opening credits rolled: was I going to play Full Throttle with the original graphics, or the remastered ones?
It was an easy choice, like it was when I played The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, and Day of the Tentacle Remastered. I went with the remastered graphics. I feel like I might be in the minority here, but I figure that all this time and effort has gone into remastering the graphics, so I might as well check them out. Plus, I think they look great.
Perhaps I’ll lose some retro-cred here, I’m not sure. But don’t get me wrong—I still love the old graphics, and have no problem going back to those old classics. I’ve already featured Sam and Max Hit the Road and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure (1989) here on Present Perfect Gaming, and they don’t (yet!) have remasters.
However, I will mention that looking at the original graphics of Full Throttle, I wasn’t as impressed as I was with other point-and-click adventure games of the time. I don’t think the graphics were as defined, when compared with Sam and Max Hit the Road, for example.
I suspect for me it was the darker colour scheme that made the scenes appear muddied at times, and the fact that these are human characters which appear quite large on screen at times. In contrast, the characters Sam and Max are anthropomorphic, and Indiana Jones appears quite small on screen in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure.
With that choice out of the way, we join Ben at his local watering hole as he’s just about to be propositioned by the Vice President of Corley Motors, Adrian Ripburger.
Ripburger has his eye on taking over Corley Motors from owner, Malcolm Corley. This is where Ben and the Polecats come in. You see, Ripburger wants to frame Ben and his gang for Corley’s murder.
Ben doesn’t want anything to do with Ripburger and his offer of employment as Corley’s escort to an upcoming shareholder meeting, but Ripburger won’t take no for an answer.
And so, we find Ben in a dumpster, with his gang stranded up the road with Corley and Ripburger—the gang believing Ben had accepted the offer, and had gone to scout the route ahead.
It’s time to ride to the rescue!
The intro sequence is quite lengthy, so it was a welcome relief to finally take control of Ben. It didn’t take long before Ben had “coerced” the bartender to give his keys back so he could chase after his gang.
But Ripburger wanted Ben out of the way for good after he refused his offer…
Miraculously surviving the fiery crash, Ben wakes up in a strange place with a strange saviour.
And now, it’s here we finally get to some good old-fashioned point-and-click puzzle solving! Full Throttle is basically broken up into two parts, each one essentially a “sandbox” of locations you can visit and a series of puzzles to solve. They’re separated by what I found to be a slightly frustrating minigame-type section. But I’ll get to that later.
First up, Ben wakes up in an unknown location, having been apparently rescued from his almost demise.
Making a new friend with Maureen (“Mo”), who happens to be a mechanic, you’ll need to help Ben find some parts for his prized motorcycle if you ever hope to see it road worthy again.
This is the first sandbox you can freely explore, with three locations in which to find the three parts you need (how convenient).
The puzzles are not too taxing, and it will see Ben using some ingenuity, some stealth, and of course, some violence.
After catching up with the Polecats, Ben’s day goes from bad to worse: framed for the murder of Malcolm Corley.
Thankfully, the true murderer was caught on film…
With Ben now a fugitive, your goal is clear: stop Ripburger from presenting his takeover of Corley Motors at the shareholder meeting, and clear Ben’s name!
At this point, you transition from the first sandbox area, and become involved in some rival biker gang tensions. This involves the biker to biker combat minigame.
I’m not going to lie—I didn’t enjoy it much. I found it repetitive, and it wasn’t immediately clear that it wasn’t just a combat minigame. In the end, I spent a bit more time than I would have liked getting to the next transition point.
Long story short, you need to help Ben get to the other side of a canyon with a bridge out in order to get to the shareholder meeting.
Ben now has Corley Motors in his sights, and this brings you to the second “sandbox” of Full Throttle.
The classic point-and-click puzzles return, and I found them a bit more challenging than the first section. One of them also reminded me of some of the more bizarre puzzles in Sam and Max Hit the Road.
There’s also a plot twist, as Ben learns of an heir to Corley Motors.
Ripburger is aware of this too, and won’t start the shareholder meeting until both Ben and the heir are “removed” from the picture. There’s only one solution then—it’s time to fake some deaths!
Unfortunately, while I like the way the story unfolds here, the execution involved another minigame. On the surface, it looks fun: a demolition derby! But this one is worse than the earlier one. And, like the biker combat minigame, it wasn’t immediately clear if this was really a puzzle to solve, and again this took me longer than I would have liked.
Moving on though, with Ben and the heir now “out of the way”, it’s time to disrupt Ripburger at the shareholder meeting.
All that’s left to do is to expose Ripburger using the photos of him murdering Malcolm Corley, right?
Well, not quite. Ripburger manages to escape, meaning It’s time to take Full Throttle to its frantic and explosive conclusion in a high speed chase!
Now, don’t get me wrong, it was a thrilling end to the game as Ripburger tries to end Ben once and for all. But one of the final puzzles was incredibly frustrating. Basically, you end up inside a huge jet plane hurtling along the road towards the gorge, and you need to use the onboard computer to stop it (yes—it’s a crazy ending, one you have to see to believe!). The problem is, it was just randomly clicking through systems on the computer until I happened upon the right combination—not fun! And it’s timed. Take too long, and it’s game over.
It really broke the immersion, as you know you’re right near the end, but you get stuck with this tedious exercise in frustration. Maybe I missed a clue in some dialogue earlier that may have helped me, I’m not sure.
If you have the patience to persevere, it’s not long until Ben is riding off into the sunset, and it’s roll credits.
Well, I managed to ride this one out, but what did I make of Full Throttle overall?
The Verdict
I haven’t mentioned this yet, but Full Throttle has an amazing soundtrack, and the voice acting is superb. If you like your games a bit rock and heavy metal, you’ll like the music in this game, which was provided by the American rock band The Gone Jackals. I felt a connection with Brütal Legend (2009), a game actually about rock and heavy metal. I was then pleasantly surprised to learn that Tim Schafer, designer of Full Throttle, was the director of Brütal Legend.
If you want to give it a listen, I’ve recorded the intro sequence to the game in both the remastered and original versions.
I wasn’t familiar with The Gone Jackals, but I was familiar with one of the voice actors.
Mark Hamill portraying the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1995) was must-watch after-school TV in the 90s, and it remains my favourite animated series.
Looking at the game itself, the setting and the plot are brought to the forefront in Full Throttle, with the puzzle solving taking more of a backseat. It’s hard not to compare this game with others in its genre though, and I think there is (or was) an expectation of what a point-and-click adventure game should be about: the puzzles! But I think that would be doing this game a disservice, as to me it was really an early entry into the interactive fiction genre.
I’ve addressed this continuum of point-and-click and interaction fiction games before in other blogs, with both What Remains of Edith Finch (a walking simulator) and The Walking Dead (the illusion of choice) being more on the interactive fiction end. The Walking Dead fell a bit flat with me as I replayed it, as it was built on the premise of your choices mattering. I felt it didn’t deliver on this. But as interactive fiction, it’s great.
I think the expectation was high for Full Throttle, and I do wonder if everyone who played it when it came out thought of it as highly as other games in the point-and-click genre. A puzzle adventure might have been expected, where a more interactive fiction was delivered—and a good one at that (minigames excluded!).
I know that it did well, both commercially and critically, but I do wonder if some of that success was a reflection of the success of Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max Hit the Road. However, that may be underselling Full Throttle. My final reflection is on the weirdness of the premises in Sam and Max Hit the Road and Full Throttle. They’re not appealing to me in a non-game context—I’m not sure I’d want to read Sam and Max comics, and I’m not into motorbikes or biker gangs.
But put them in a game, and it just clicks.
Full Throttle is short ride, but it delivers a great example of interactive fiction, with only a couple of minigame speed bumps along the way disrupting the otherwise good pacing.
Two 🤘🤘 up!
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