Between 1990 and 1998, LucasArts produced the most consistent run of comedy adventures ever shipped: The Secret of Monkey Island (1990), Day of the Tentacle (1993), Sam & Max Hit the Road (1993), Full Throttle (1995), The Curse of Monkey Island (1997), and Grim Fandango (1998).

Two rules that saved the genre

First: the player character could never die (a reaction to Sierra's trap-laden adventures). Second: no dead ends - the infamous "unwinnable state" was engineered out. These two promises made LucasArts adventures playable as comedy rather than survival exercises.

The SCUMM engine

Ron Gilbert's SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) turned game verbs into a visible interface: Open, Push, Pull, Use, Give. It shipped in 1987 and its logic shaped adventure design for a decade.

The end of the age

3D arrived, sales dipped, and the industry moved on; Grim Fandango was both masterpiece and elegy. Today the catalog lives again in excellent Double Fine remasters - and in the hearts of everyone who ever tried to look at a chicken in a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle.