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Hi all! So for the last few days I've been working on a video project I've been wanting to do for a while and I have a first chapter up as a preview to test the waters As the title implies it's a Monkey Island abridged series using the official Memoirs from the Hintbook as the narration. Chapter 1 is only about 3 minutes long so it's a quick watch. I'm sharing it in a few fanspaces first to get an idea of how it is being received by who I made it for: fans like us 😀 Check it out Here if you have 3ish minutes to spare

I kept trying to write a post here gathering my thoughts and observations about the pictures released with the interviews but after several failed attempts and realizing that it was way too long for a forum post I decided it was easier to start a website and write an article about it... lol

Soooo... let's speculate on the release date! My guess : September 19! (Arrgh)

RIP Kevin Blackton. ☹️ And I'm sad that Earl Boen isn't coming back, but I'm glad they asked him and hopefully they can find somebody to fill his seven-league pirate boots.

Haha! As much as that would put most of us purists at ease, I highly doubt an Escape remaster would change any of the plot! (And truthfully, within the confines of the one game, I’ve never minded it anyway!) Monkey Kombat was made a little easier in the PS2 version by having a diagram included that could keep track of the moves (making it so that you don’t need to write them down yourself) so I’d settle for that diagram being ported across into a remaster. Aside from that, increasing the resolution, improving the quality of the audio, upconverting the backgrounds (and making them widescreen if possible) and maybe improving the controls for PC are the features I think are reasonable to expect.

Good point, Cummings was in a lot of mainstream movies/TV series to the point where his potential LeChuck voice could lean towards any of his familiar set, but at least in terms of the acting itself, he’d unquestionably do a great job. Boen had acted a lot before MI, but Terminator aside, I think he largely stayed away from franchises. So yes, he was a lot less recognisable in the role because of that. He’s such an underrated talent.

https://twitter.com/TimOfLegend/status/1511010980502798339?t=JLw_gYvc7LpbcsZ5YYS6CQ&s=19

Thank you for the kind words 😀 the positive response has gotten me very excited to continue the series, I have been rehearsing narration all morning 😀 Also as Lagomorph01 says above (and below hehe) Yes it is an official version 😀 The 16 color EGA was the original first release and the one I played as a child when it came out. I say it regularly but the EGA sunset on the Melée docks is my happy place and even there it is fleeting as eventually it dissappears to the night sky for the rest of the game. Fun fact, there have been at least 3 remakes of SMI: first revision was the VGA update with upgraded backgrounds and redrawn closeups by Ian McCaig that used the same text based inventory and verbs as the EGA original. Then the Next was the CD-rom update to the VGA version adding Redbook audio and a new icon based verb and inventory bar like the one used in MI2. The CD version is the one used in the classic mode of SMI: Special Edition. It's worth noting there that even SMI had itself 3 different art styles in its various presentations over the years

The 16 colour versions have a sunset at the Melee docks. It’s quite a sight of EGA beauty!

British Elaine goes through hits and misses in the performance to me, and both of those stand out more, whereas I felt Escape’s Elaine was consistently good and I was never taken out of her performance. In fact, Escape’s voice acting is pretty much flawless across the board in my opinion. It actually makes me wonder if we ever got to the point where Escape was remastered, if they’d redub Elaine’s voice with Alexandra Boyd just to have consistency across the games. (Maybe they could have a toggle between “British/American Elaine Mode” in the settings to please everybody!)

Nice catch with the key theme. It totally went over my way too excited head!

A great analysys!

He actually did tweet about the game "Woo!" by quote tweeting the art director!

Oh no, I had no idea he’d passed! Rest in peace, Kevin. He did such a great job. Looks like it will be a newcomer in that case. I’d rather they go with somebody who sounds like Earl’s LeChuck than somebody like Harrington, who wasn’t bad in his own right, but the difference in his voice to Boen was very striking. It reminds me of Kingdom Hearts III when Xehanort was recast after Leonard Nimoy’s passing. And while Rutger Hauer (and later Christopher Lloyd) did well in the role, the continuity felt broken as they weren’t specifically looking for soundalikes.

Oh, I wanted to look up Kevin Blackton's other performances and found out that he sadly passed away in 2017. Human LeChuck was actually his last role.