LucasArts had a good reputation with licensed video games. Here are some of their well-known licensed games.
- The 1989 graphical adventure game Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was Lucasfilm games' biggest hit before Monkey Island, got good reviews and was followed by the great Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. The latter's success may be partially due to the fact that it wasn't based on any particular movie. That LucasArts at the time was known for producing excellent adventure games also helped. Some years later, when the company was already going to a downward spiral, they released Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine and Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb, two 3D action-adventures that were much less well-received, but are still considered more than decent. (Emperor's Tomb was made by a studio who managed to do justice to another franchise).
- Sam & Max Hit the Road was based on a comic book, though most players probably never realised it. Of course, its creator Steve Purcell was already a graphics artist and programmer for LucasArts, and was able to make the game exactly as he wanted to.
- There are many Star Wars games that are very good, namely because developers have a whole galaxy with thousands of years of history to play around with and are therefore not obligated to be so tied to the movies; the fact that there were a total of six (later eleven as of 2019) movies and that most of these games were developed well after the movies, giving the appropriate time and information needed to fill in any gaps, helps a lot too (see also Star Wars Expanded Universe and Star Wars Legends). That LucasArts developed many of them is a plus both on their generally excellent output and the fact that they're a division of the company that made the movies. The genres covered are as diverse as:
- First/third-person shooters: Dark Forces, Shadows of the Empire, Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, Star Wars: Republic Commando, the Rogue Squadron trilogy and their more-simple-but-downright-fun cousin Starfighter, Star Wars: Battlefront (2004), Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005). Shadows in particular was meant to be a semi-canon interquel between Empire and Jedi in the film series, and was produced as if it was a tie-in for a nonexistent movie.
- Lightsaber combat simulators: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, The Force Unleashed.
- Space flight simulators: TIE Fighter, which is still considered among the finest specimen of its genre. Its predecessor X-Wing and successor X-Wing Alliance are nothing to scoff at either. Much earlier, the vector graphics Star Wars: The Arcade Game.
- Real-time strategies: Empire at War, Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds.
- Role-playing games: Knights of the Old Republic,
- Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords is a borderline case. While mechanically it's excellent, the changes in tone and abrupt ending due to rushed development time leave this game halfway between this and its counterpart trope.
- MMORPGs: Star Wars: Galaxies, Star Wars: The Old Republic.
- Racing games: Star Wars Episode I: Racer
- Direct adaptations of the movies themselves: Super Star Wars games. Nintendo Hard though they are, they do an excellent job of adapting the various acts of the Original Trilogy.note
- Despite only adapting the trench run, Star Wars for the Atari VCS was extremely groundbreaking for its day, proving once and for all that the VCS can handle 3D vector graphics.
- There have been three games based on Star Wars: The Clone Wars. A Wii game, Lightsaber Battles, which promised motion-controlled lightsaber combat but just couldn't quite deliver (Kinect Star Wars for Xbox 360, which also tried this, had a more polarizing reception.) Republic Heroes is a lame action platformer whose high point is featuring the villain Cad Bane prominently in the plot. Lastly, there's the much overlooked (as it came out at the same time as Lightsaber Battles) third game, Jedi Alliance, for the Nintendo DS. It is by no stretch a great game but is a decent game that showed a fair amount of inspiration and could have been genuinely good had it got more polish (and a co-op feature, which it was very clearly based around). It takes advantage of the DS's touchscreen features, controlling very much like the DS Legend of Zelda games, while letting you play as several prominent Jedi (including fan favorites like Mace Windu and Kit Fisto). It features the show's voice cast (who seemed to be phoning it in for the other two games but put more effort in here) and an original story that could have easily been a story arc in the show (though it fits very loosely into the show's canon), using the Nightsisters, who would later play a very important role in later story lines in the show.
