This game is the one that made me love video games, you absolutely have to play it and I’ll explain why!

First of all, I prefer to warn that this article is a personal editorial, and it is only a question of my opinion and not of the absolute truth! But I must admit that I have been bothering everyone for years with this game from LucasArts, and I had to tell you about it, it is obviously about Full Throttle.

Full Throttle, my childhood love at first sight

As gamers and video game enthusiasts, we all have one (or more) games for which we fell in love at first sight when we were still children. And if Tomb Raider and Doom have largely contributed to my love for JV, I must admit that I have a particular fondness for LucasArts’ point’n’click, Full Throttle.

When it was published in 1995, I’m not going to lie to you but I was (very) young, and it was thanks to my parents and especially my father, that I discovered this game which seemed incredible to me. At the time, the latter was released on PC, and it held on a fairly large number of floppy disks (yes, floppy disks), and when I played it for the first time, it was love at first sight .

Characters, atmosphere, story, gameplay, it must be said that absolutely all these elements were able to seduce me, and even more so years later when I was able to rediscover it through its remastered version, which, by the way, , is very successful.

A gripping story in a futuristic world

LucasArts’ work on this game is quite remarkable, it must be noted. First of all, the story! Here we are in a dystopian future in which the cars we know have been replaced by anti-gravity hover vehicles. And we play Ben, a biker who belongs to the Putois gang. While he was on the road with his biker friends, they stopped at a bar to take a break, and here came Malcolm Corley, the director of Corley Motors (the equivalent of Harley Davidson in our world) who was on the road in his limousine to go to his company’s shareholders’ meeting, decides to stop there to have a chat with Ben’s gang.

However, the latter is not alone and is accompanied by his right arm, Ripburger. At first glance, the latter does not seem very friendly, but he offers to Ben and his men to escort Malcolm Corley’s vehicle to the Corley Motors meeting: something that Ben refuses. Following his refusal, Ripburger brings Ben outside, and our protagonist is knocked out. When he wakes up, he learns that Ripburger has trapped Ben and the rest of the Polecats, and is ambushing them. Subsequently, we learn that Ripburger was only waiting for one thing: the death of his boss to take over and be at the head of Corley Motors to sell the company to foreigners and… manufacture mini-buses!

Engaging point’n’click gameplay and a captivating atmosphere

You will understand, but the principle of the game will be to get back on the road to warn the Polecats of the ambush, but also to try to prevent the death of Malcolm Corley.

So, when we wake up, we find ourselves in a workshop that doesn’t look like much, and it is run by Maureen known as Moe, a “toaster repairer” but who actually knows a lot about bikes!

Our first mission is to gather several parts that are missing to complete the repair of our motorcycle: a fork, a blowtorch and gasoline, and for this we must wander around the town of Melonweed, a town that seems abandoned and which offers a really special atmosphere I must admit (but which I really like). This is when the point’n’click gameplay really comes into play (even if at the beginning we had a few small phases which allowed us to get to know it), and here we find ourselves in a caravan whose smell we can smell because it is so unwelcoming, a dump with a dog who only wants to eat us, but also with a huge reserve of gasoline (with police officers who are not really smart).

It must be said that we are faced with real puzzles and we can spend a lot of time looking for solutions if we don’t know the game. And if this can sometimes be annoying, fortunately the work carried out on the character of Ben with his His unique humor quickly makes us forget that we are struggling.

I’m not going to spoil the whole story too much, but once our bike is back on its feet, we are then on the road to find our men and warn them of what is happening. While they are on a bathroom break for Malcolm, unfortunately, we come across the latter who is dying from Ripburger’s blows. Before he takes his last breath, the latter explains to us that he does not want Ripburger as director, and that he wants his daughter, Maureen, “his little dynamo”, to take over from him. . So, we absolutely have to go find her but for that: we have to do several fights and on a motorbike!

Yes, Full Throttle is also full of combat phases but on a bike! We meet several bikers, and we have to knock them down one by one to collect elements that will help us customize our bike to be able to reach the next city (damn cavernous places and their secret cave). I must say that this phase can seem quite long and frustrating at times because you have to find the right weapon for the right biker. But once these were finished, I must admit that the discovery of the next city had an impact on me when I was little!

Now we find ourselves at the Corley Motors factory, and here new puzzles await us as well as intense point’n’click phases. I must admit that one character particularly stands out in this passage: Horrace, the souvenir seller! Once again, the studio made a point of making it unique both in its phrasing and in its appearance, and meeting Ben and the latter gives a rather special moment to experience.

Subsequently, we have a new combat phase but in a car this time, a phase which will allow us to enter the factory, and once in Corley Motors, the puzzles are present again. Here again, the game shines with its humor thanks to the character of Mavis, the projectionist, and I took great pleasure in making her go crazy…

In short, you will have understood, but Full Throttle is for me one of the best games of the 90s, one of the best point’n’click, and its very particular atmosphere, its story, and its characters are to a lot. LucasArts has made a point of making it extremely funny thanks to its characters, but also to making it incredibly beautiful through its atmosphere and its settings which are specific to the game and which, at the time, were really successful despite the pixels. And for those who would like to discover or rediscover this gem, know that it is available remastered on PlayStation, Xbox and PC! The good news is that we find the original VF, and we can if we wish switch to the graphics of the time which, let’s be honest, were very, very clean.