Blogs of the Round Table: Whenever I Smell Asphalt, I Think of Maureen

Ben's Opening Monologue, Full Throttle:

Whenever I smell asphalt, I think of Maureen.

That's the last sensation I had before I blacked out:

that thick smell of asphalt.

And the first thing I saw when I woke up was her face.

She said she'd fix my bike, free.

No strings attached.

I should have known then that things were never that simple.

Yeah. When I think of Maureen I think of two things:

asphalt and trouble.

Full Throttle is the first of Tim Schafer's relationship-centric LucasArts adventure games. I think Grim Fandango is superior, but Full Throttle is one of the shortest adventure games from LucasArts making it perfect for deconstruction. The entire game can be played easily in about six to eight hours and an experienced player or someone following a walkthrough without doing further exploration can do it in four hours.

I certainly recommend grabbing a copy from a friend or even a strange acquaintance. It plays perfectly well in ScummVM and on just about any platform you could want to run it on. Considering LucasArts' indifference to their own classic properties you probably shouldn't feel all that guilty if to borrow the game you engage the help of some devious Seeder utilizing Mr. Cohen's patented Torrent-brand Æthertube Data Cross-Packers. Come back when you've played it...

So let's deconstruct! Full Throttle is centered around the relationship between Ben and Maureen. It's right there front and center in ...