Jeff Gullett doesn’t think DS cartridges can hold Lucasarts adventures, and Chris Norris says the company has considered porting games to DS or Wii but he doesn’t know if they actually are. Their apparent cluelessness suggests to me that they aren’t really into adventure games.

Maybe Jeff was thinking of Grim Fandango. Admittedly, the games from the mid 90s are larger and might not fit on a DS cart. Those could be ported to the Wii, where the remote is a decent replacement for a mouse.

But the older games such as Maniac Mansion or Loom are tiny DOS games. They would easily fit on a DS cart and could be released as bundles like they were in multi-CD packages in the mid 90s. And with the popularity of Phoenix Wright, releasing more adventure games for the DS seems like a no-brainer.

Maybe they don’t think the SCUMM engine games would sell because they have historically had a niche audience. And that niche audience is already playing them on DS and Gamecube anyway, as the homebrew community already ported the SCUMM engine to both systems.

Still, I think Lucasarts is missing out on a great opportunity to expand their audience. And if they actually redid the artwork for some of the classics, and made it easier to save games, they would get sales from both new and old fans.

Please, Lucasarts, don’t forsake us! Bring back Maniac Mansion!