The Games Group within the Lucasfilm Computer Division originally partnered with Atari by licensing the rights to both Star Wars and Indiana Jones, which helped fund the creation of Lucasfilm Games in 1982.  Even though the newly formed Lucasfilm Games was an affiliate of the parent company Lucasfilm the company could not produce games using the Star Wars or Indiana Jones franchises.  The video game development license for these two franchises were exclusively held by Atari at the time, forcing the company to begin their venture into the video game industry with original concepts.

The newly formed studio began developing action games such as Ballblazer and Rescue on Fractalus! before turning their focus to adventure games.  Both games released in 1984 for the Atari 5200 with home computer versions releasing the following year.  Early games developed by the studio were published by Atari, Activision and Epyx as the studio did not venture into self publishing until the release of Maniac Mansion in 1987.

The studio’s first adventure game, Labyrinth released in 1986 and was based on the Lucasfilm movie of the same name.   Prior to the release of Labyrinth, the studio focused on making experimental, innovative and technologically advanced video games such as Habitat, an early online RPG beta for the Commodore 64.  After the release of Labyrinth, the studio decided to continue to concentrate on developing adventure-based games and to implement new features into the genre.  Labyrinth was published by Activision and is the only adventure game developed by Lucasfilm Games that was not published by Lucasfilm.

Labyrinth is significantly different than the other adventure games developed by Lucasfilm Games as it uses text parser gameplay as the main means to play.  Their next entry in the adventure genre was Maniac Mansion which introduced the SCUMM game engine.  The Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion (SCUMM), is a video game engine which was created to ease the development of the graphic adventure game Maniac Mansion.   The game engine became instrumental to the game studio and was used for the next decade to create 12 adventure games between 1987 and 1997.  In fact, the engine was used to power all but two of LucasArts later adventure games.

Following the release of Maniac Mansion the studio released Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure, Loom and The Secret of Monkey Island, all of which helped the studio build a reputation as one of the leading developers in the adventure genre. The studio was often seen along side Sierra On-Line as one of two developers that created high quality adventure games.

In 1990 the Lucas group of companies went through a reorganization resulting in the creation of LucasArts Entertainment Company which comprised of Lucasfilm Games, Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound.  Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound were later consolidated into Lucas Digital Ltd and LucasArts became the official name of the former game division, Lucasfilm Games.  The development studio originally worked from Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch near Nicasio, California but as a result of the reorganization of the Lucas companies the studio moved out of Skywalker Ranch to a near-by office in San Rafael, California.

The first half of the 1990s seen the studio reach peak popularity with the release of classic titles such as Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge in 1991, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis in 1992, Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max: Hit the Road in 1993, and Full Throttle, followed by The Dig in 1995.  In 1990, LucasArts began publishing their own gaming magazine, “The Adventurer”.  The Adventurer provided gamers a publication where they could read about upcoming LucasArts games and interviews with the development team.  The final issue was published in 1996 as the second half of the 1990s seen the popularity of adventure games faded.

Despite the declining popularity LucasArts still continued to develop adventure games.  They released their last traditional two-dimensional point-and-click adventure game in 1997 when The Curse of Monkey Island was released. This was followed by Grim Fandango in 1998, LucasArts’ first attempt to convert a 2D adventure to a 3D environment. Grim Fandango was highly praised for its visual art style, outstanding soundtrack, superb voice acting and sophisticated writing.  Escape from Monkey Island, the fourth installment in the Monkey Island series released in 2000.  The game featured the same control scheme as Grim Fandango and was generally well received.

Escape from Monkey Island was the company’s last original adventure game to release as the studio decided to halt the development of adventure games in favor of creating games using the Star Wars franchise.  LucasArts spent the next decade solely focusing on the creation of various Star Wars games before revisiting the Monkey Island franchise to create a high-definition remake of the original game in 2009 and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge in 2010.

LucasArts was acquired by The Walt Disney Company through the acquisition of its parent company Lucasfilm in 2012. On April 3, 2013, Disney halted all internal development at LucasArts and laid off most of its staff. However, LucasArts remained open as a licensor for other game studios to secure rights to develop games using their franchises.  Lucasfilm announced on January 11, 2021 that it was reestablishing the Lucasfilm Games brand for all future gaming titles from Lucasfilm, though it would remain solely as a licensor of Lucasfilm properties.  The following day, it was announced that MachineGames would be developing a game based upon the Indiana Jones franchise, with Todd Howard serving as an executive producer and Bethesda publishing the game.