Behind-the-Scenes Photos from LucasArts, c.1990

We’ve all posted pictures on Facebook, or been tagged in pictures on Facebook, or found out later that there’s naked pictures of us on Facebook that we didn’t even know existed because our roommate took them while we were asleep; and that’s why we don’t sleep naked anymore.

However, not all of us are Tim Schafer.

Tim Schafer is the founder of Double Fine Productions; the lead designer behind Brütal Legend, Psychonauts, and Grim Fandango; and one of the co-creators of The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey Island II, and Day of the Tentacle.

A little while ago, Tim posted some pictures to his own Facebook account: specifically, some behind-the-scenes photos from LucasArts, circa 1990, when the company was preparing to ship The Secret of Monkey Island. He’s agreed to let us publish them here. Enjoy!

Here, you can see the creators of Monkey Island hand-making the codewheels included in the original boxed version of the game. (Remember codewheels? Think modern-day DRM, except they didn’t make everyone sad.)

More codewheel-creation action. Note Ron Gilbert in the background, ordering everyone around.

Boxing up retail copies of The Secret of Monkey Island. (Yes, they did that themselves, too. They also had to shrink-wrap them.) In one of these boxes, the developers slipped a five-dollar bill, signed by the whole team. It hasn’t been seen since.

(Or, I guess it was seen by the person who opened the box; but nobody knows who that person is. Well…I guess that person knows who that person is, but…ah, forget it.)

The whole Monkey Island crew, wearing striped shirts in celebration of “Ron Gilbert Appreciation Day.” (Presumably, they were also pretty excited about the pending launch of their new game.) If you look closely, you can spot Tim Shafer, Ron Gilbert, AND Dave Grossman (who later went on to design games for Telltale). Also a mop.

Not pictured are the “I was fulfilled by Lucasfilm Games” t-shirts that members of the team received.

Earlier that day. The man everyone’s pointing to is, of course, Ron Gilbert.

(The information in this post comes from Tim Schafer’s Facebook page, which I won’t be linking to, because I don’t think he wants to be flooded by MI nerds asking for more photos.)

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