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Like @Jake pointed out, we did some really interesting and fun Monkey 1&2 streams with @Dmnkly. I'm really happy how they turned out. To me the point was to figure out why I am drawn to these two games so much, and better understand how they make me feel. I see both games from different angles now, and appreciate them even more today. Both of them don't feel like comedy games to me. They have tons of humor in them, but it's not the basement. I believe both games would still be great games if you remove the humor. Anyway, I would redo streaming both games again and again, because I am drawn back to the games forever. Thanks everyone for watching and participating in the chat!

(As usual, Moderators, don't hesitate to correct / translate what I try to write in English !!) The idea of this topic would be to centralize the latest unpublished discoveries on LucasFilm Games / LucasArts projects. To start, do you all remember the amazing gems that Aric Wilmunder posted on his website in 2016 ? It seems that a still significant number of documents of this kind exist. I recently had the opportunity to see a little more, and I am in talks to succeed in scanning and putting online as much information on design documents or projects abandonned by the studio. As Aric says : " Our ratio was probably about 5-8 designs for every game that got approval " So, here are already two documents which, I believe (but I could be wrong, don't judge me), are still unknown and concerns "THE PIRATE CURSE OF MONKEY ISLAND" (We had already the opportunity to see the document that pitches the game).

All the speech extracted from the prototype can be found here. There's plenty that you don't hear ingame. As I said in the article you'd have to skip rooms to check if speech plays anywhere else but I don't think they do. Did anyone else try it or indeed try the windex stuff?

It was ! That's right. Aric posted the initial document (2nd version) on his website back in the days. The doc seems to be available for download there : Pirate Curse of Monkey Island.pdf

I guess one of the bigger things I did (literally) was using some machine learning models (via ESRGAN) to upscale all the CoMI backgrounds to 4x their size. All backgrounds can be found HERE, while I've posted several comparisons to the originals HERE. This is more of a proof of concept, because currently there's no way to use these inside the game (via ScummVM), plus all the sprites would need to be upscaled as well, which would be an enormous task on its own. Maybe I'll combine these with an offspring of the poster thread, in case someone wants to hang CoMI's backgrounds on their wall. And in the same vein I've also used ESRGAN (and further manual work) to clean-up and upscale the CoMI intro to HD resolution (while rebuilding the logo and credits): A side-by-side with the original cutscene can be found here:

Very this about Curse, which is my favourite. It really is about that atmosphere which makes each space feel unique, special, and interesting. Even when you have so many different locations within a single island, like Plunder with its beach, town, swamp, jungle, grassy knoll, etc; they somehow all seem to hold together to form a cohesive whole. And I've always loved Blood Island, it's just completely magical to me. But beyond that, i think this is the one that hits my sense of humour the most. I think it's got the best lines, visual gags and references. Then again, I played Curse a lot when it came out. I mean, a lot. You know how sometimes you'll put on music or a TV show for background noise while doing something else? It got to a point that I would do that with Curse. Forget speedruns, I'd go as slow as possible - selecting every longer bit of dialogue, and making sure to extend the conversation trees as much as possible. I would sometimes just leave it sitting on a single screen for a bit while doing something else IRL, waiting to run through all of the different Guybrush asides that could happen, or to hear the whole of Slappy Cromwell's performance rehearsal. I still can quote the game in its entirety from memory. So it may be that it's just the sheer amount of time I spent in it that has made Curse my favourite. When EMI came out, I was so excited and I wanted to like it so badly. I tried to convince myself I was enjoying it. When I finished the game, I cried actual tears because I was so disappointed in it. I've only played it through three times, and one of those was last year. I'd seen an article (can't find it now) that was toting EMI's merits and saying that it basically got a bad wrap because of the fanbase's love for the earlier games and their aversion to change. So I decided to give it another shot - I thought that surely now, with some distance and age, I'd be able to see the good in it. That I could, in some way, divorce it from the franchise and see it objectively as a unique adventure game. That was not the case. I still hated it. I just found it tedious, not funny, and shallow as an overall experience - even before the Monkey Kombat. MI2 is runner-up for me, great storyline, good characters (esp. Largo, Kate, and Gov. Phatt), but it falls apart for me on Dinky and I've actually replayed it multiple times and just stopped when I get there because I don't want to bother with Dinky. I've had similar experiences with MI1, where once i'm on Monkey Island, I just don't want to go through the island bit. Tales is a hit-and-miss for me, and it really goes episode for episode, which makes it hard to rank but I was glad for it overall.

That painting of the pirate reading the insult book reminds me of the concept art for the original Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. It’s honestly very in line with Monkey 1 and 2, and 3 - you can see how all those games pulled from this same source material in different ways. Cartooney and fun mixed with scary and weird, inviting but creepy all at once. lots more of it here: https://www.themeparkreview.com/parks/photo.php?pageid=235&linkid=6881&pageno=2

Adding a bit of diversity here! My favourite game is The Curse of Monkey Island and unlike a lot of people that prefer the game because it was their introduction to Monkey Island series this was actually the third Monkey Island game I played. The first one being LeChuck’s Revenge: Monkey Island 2. I must say that I didn’t get most of the jokes as my english back then was really basic and most of the witty dialogues went over my head. None the less I still enjoyed playing it but for me it was just another great adventure game. The second game I played was The Secret of Monkey Island (CD version) and I must say I enjoyed more than LeChuck’s Revenge: Monkey Island 2. Then in 1998 I played The Curse of Monkey Island and that’s when I really became a fan of the series. It’s hard to say why this one and not the others, but I think the main reasons are because of the amazing drawings by Bill Tiller and the atmosphere it creates with Michael Land’s music on top of it. The Blood Island part is definitely my favourite as it’s very mysterious and exotic and almost makes you want to go there. Of course, not all is good. I felt the carnival part a bit boring and the ending a bit rushed, but overall it’s still an awesome game.

For me it's never not been Monkey Island 2. The only thing that has fluctuated in my mind is how thin the margin is. The original is an undisputed classic, the game that showed off the true potential of a SCUMM adventure game and more or less represents the best of a genre and the halcyon days of LucasArts as a spirit. I don't think the series ever really did fully recapture that kind of Princess Bride storybook flavor it had going here. I can't imagine arguing with anybody who would rank it first, though I find it hard to find any new way to sing its praises at this point. Monkey 2 feels like it builds on the first game and offers a deeper, richer, more ambitious experience. It ups the ante in every way, and to this day you can pit the Four Map Pieces segment against pretty much anything the genre has produced since. Again, three decades worth of discussion sort of leaves me at a loss to come up with some kind of original take on the thing, but for me this is still my favorite game. CMI is an undeniable departure from the first two in overall feeling for reasons both unavoidable (major technology gap, different creative personell) and chosen, and it probably honors the template of the original a little too much in the first half (get ship and crew, insult sword fighting) but it's just such a well-made adventure game top to bottom, with stupid good production values, that I doubt a convincing, objective argument could be made for it representing any kind of misstep from a strict quality standpoint. It's another installment where I can't object to it being ranked first. It is also as influential as the first game in a certain sense as it seems to have spawned, or at least been released at the right time to soak up, that initial burst of online fandom. Many people seem to have met the series through CMI. EMI is the least of the games, but I think it deserves reappraisal in terms of what that really means. What I see is a satisfying, rock solid adventure game with a lot of funny moments, good animation and very possibly the best voice acting in an LEC game -- and that's really saying something. On the other hand it delivers a somewhat off brand story for a Monkey Island installment, it comes dangerously close to making the world feel too small (that Tri-Island Area map: hilarious) and it unquestionably fails its pedigree on the graphics front (both because using GrimE to create a cartoony-yet-lush 3D world with the target specs of the average turn-of-the-century Windows user isn't setting yourself up for success, and because Chris Miles, by all accounts a talented animator, probably wasn't the guy to sit in the Art Director chair for the series' delicate transition to 3D.) But visuals aside I think it's held up reasonably well, and I would like to think its status as a kind of "side trip" story will gain some appreciation/perspecitve now that it is a middle installment and not the last game, which admittedly was not a good look for it. Monkey Island is an exceptionally good series, and in this case being the worst of five great games still leaves you: a really good game. TMI is a bit of a rebound that to a large extent feels like a course correction or return to form, especially in terms of a moody atmosphere and a general sense of captivating piratey-ness (both of which were a bit lacking in EMI as a consequence of its story), and the Telltale engine really upped the ante on the "performances" in my opinion, allowing the installment to go into some new emotional territory. On the downside, the decision to develop the episode with WiiWare in mind and general corner-cutting absolutely and unnecessarily hurt the production values. The art direction is good, but the 3D is up against limitations it should not be up against, and it is kind of funny how the Xerox-character-designs-for-background-NPCs strategy never really improved on Monkey 1. And while the MIDI score has a certain nostalgic feel that I like, it is kind of shameful that Michael Land's excellent compositions were not given the respect of a proper production, which might well have resulted in something that could have usurped the CMI score. The game's qualities more than overwhelm these drawbacks, it's just frustrating that they feel so self-inflicted. On the quibbles front, the equal-sized chapters necessitated by the episodic structure made me weirdly sad, I object to the absence of Alt+W, and the abruptness of the last moment felt like the one real shortcoming of CMI wasn't learned from. Short version: All these games are great, and I question the value of rankings, but I give the crown to MI2 if coronating one is a life or death matter. And I look forward to buying them all yet again in what promises to be a truly absurd anthology package in October.