Lucasfilm Games teases a Thrillville return: "Uncle Mortimer called"

Get your coaster cam ready. On Friday, October 23, Lucasfilm Games posted the classic Thrillville key art with a short message: “Uncle Mortimer called. Thrillville needs you, but inventing wild new rides isn’t for the faint of heart. Are you up for the challenge?”

That’s the whole tease so far. There’s no title, platform, date or developer attached, and Lucasfilm hasn’t said whether this is a remaster, a re-release or a brand-new game. But publishers don’t usually dust off a 20-year-old mascot-free park sim just for nostalgia posts, and fans have been asking for this one for years.

Quick refresher: Thrillville came out in 2006 on PS2, PSP and Xbox, published by LucasArts and built by Frontier Developments, the RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 team that later made Planet Coaster. Instead of the usual top-down view, you walked your own avatar around the park at ground level, built coasters on the spot, chatted with guests and played the midway minigames yourself. Your eccentric Uncle Mortimer hands you his parks while the rival Globo-Joy corporation tries to sabotage you. A sequel, Thrillville: Off the Rails, followed in 2007.

The timing lines up with what Lucasfilm Games has been saying lately. The studio just had two surprise Star Wars hits this year with Zero Company and Galactic Racer, and executive Douglas Reilly told The Game Business Show it is exploring projects with “large and small partners” that will “continue to surprise folks.”

PPR take: We’d happily take a straight remaster, but a modern Thrillville with Planet Coaster-level building and couch co-op minigames would be the dream. We’ll update when Lucasfilm says what this actually is.