Watch this live read of Grim Fandango starring the original cast (and Jack Black)

Has it really been 20 years since Grim Fandango? Almost—the game turns 20 in October, and to celebrate Geoff Keighley and Tim Schafer put together a special event at the E3 Coliseum Tuesday night. The key cast of Grim Fandango reassembled to do a live read of the script, with Schafer setting the stage as narrator. It's not every line from the game, obviously, the but the hour-long event runs through the key scenes of Manny's quest to make amends with Meche across four years of the day of the dead.

Composer Peter McConnell and a backing band provide an accompanying live soundtrack and sound effects. Oh, and Jack Black is there. Black isn't playing his role from Double Fine's Brutal Legend—he subs in for a few of the smaller Grim Fandango voice parts and hams it up appropriately. For me, the highlight is seeing Tony Plana reprise the role of Manny Calavera. If you have an hour to kill, this is a great way to do it.

Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.


When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).