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I just remembered that I wrote this little guide a while back for the Steam forums. Thought I'd paste it here for posterity. Basically I found a couple of mods that really improve the PC experience. I highly recommend them if you're considering replaying Psychonauts on Windows any time soon. (I might even be able to find the time to upload the up-rezzed HUD and videos somewhere for my fellow forum chums,) 1. Fix the Aspect Ratio Psychonauts supports widescreen monitors and high resolutions out of the box, but the cut-scenes (videos) and HUD got stretched in the process. This little mod fixes that: https://thirteenag.github.io/wfp#psychonauts That might be good enough for you, but if you want more... 2. Insert AI Upscaled Videos & HUD Textures The 3D elements of the game still look rather good, but the UI never got a rez increase and they look really rough at higher resolutions. And the cut-scenes video look noticably lower resolution than your game... So why not use AI upscaled versions instead? https://www.nexusmods.com/psychonauts/mods/4?tab=files Forget HD texture resolution projects that never get finished. This is all you need to make Psychonauts its mostest excellent! Enjoy!

The CD version of The Secret of Monkey Island is known to have introduced a number of bugs, or what appear to be bugs. The clock tower, Lemonhead's missing lines... These are well-documented issues, and have in fact been (optionally) corrected in recent ScummVM releases. But there seems to be another bug in the CD version which I have never seen mentioned anywhere. I was checking out this playthrough of the rarer VGA floppy version (the one with VGA graphics, text-based inventory and the original soundtrack) when I noticed something: It seemed to me that character sprites looked a bit darker than the ones in the more common CD version (VGA graphics, icon-based inventory and CD audio; the one included as Classic Mode in the Special Edition). After checking different scenes in that video, I realized that it's not that the sprites are darker per se: instead, the VGA floppy version seems to have a a very basic "lighting system". The colors of character sprites change a bit depending on the scene (or "room", I think would be the more technical term). They use slightly darker colors when it's a dark or night scene, and they use brighter colors when it's a bright or daylight scene. Presumably, they do this so they integrate better with the environment. You can check it out in the video: compare Guybrush's colors when he's, say, inside the circus tent to his colors when he's talking to the Voodoo Lady. However, in the CD version this feature is nowhere to be found: all characters default to the brightest setting in every single scene. As a result, whenever there's a particularly dark scene, characters kind of appear to be glowing in the dark. And this is where it gets really interesting: the Ultimate Talkie edition mod (which as you probably all know uses the Special Edition to generate an enhanced, fully-voiced CD version) seems to fix this and includes a similar feature. In fact, it appears to do more than just fixing it: it improves it. There's at least one scene/room in the game (the very first one, with the lookout by the fire) where Guybrush's colors changes depending on where he is standing inside that particular room. He looks brighter when he's near the fire, and darker when he walks away. You can see it in this video: Notice how the colors of the sprite become brighter when he approaches the fire. In the VGA floppy version, this specific transition does not seem to exist (the darker colors are used even when he's near the fire), but the colors do change from scene to scene. In the CD version, they don't change at all: all characters use the brightest colors everywhere. Therefore, it seems to me there are two possibilities: a) LucasArts completely forgot about this feature when creating the CD version. The author of the Ultimate Talkie edition added it from scratch as an enhancement. b) This "dynamic lighting system" was originally developed as a feature of the CD version, but for some reason it was bugged/not properly enabled (if I'm not mistaken, the CD version was upgraded to the same SCUMM version used in Monkey Island 2, which did use some form of "dynamic lighting", so it would make sense). The Ultimate Talkie edition fixed this bug so that it works as intended. Now, the Ultimate Edition is fantastic. It has many enhancements and it shows an amazing attention to detail, so option A is entirely possible, I would say. Still, option B strikes me as a bit more likely, if only because the improvement to the lookout scene seems weirdly specific. And even if you disregard that particular improvement, it's pretty bizarre that LucasArts would deliberately remove an entire feature of the VGA floppy version when developing the CD version. But I'm mostly a layman in all these SCUMM intricacies, so I really don't know.

Oh and btw. just because I like to live dangerously by making wild guesses: I'm pretty sure that the reaction to RTMI will be similar to what Twin Peaks season 3 got in that a lot of people will complain for a lack of explanation and closure while the other half will ask questions like "what the hell, you expected closure from David Lynch?"

I’ve heard they’re making Loom 2 and 3 back to back! (Source)

My point is that occasional anachronisms like t-shirts and grog machines are simply part of the storytelling style of Monkey Island. Retconning them into the plot itself is overwriting. It'd be like Airplane ended with Striker waking up on a flight with a copy of Mad Magazine over his face.

I think that would have worried me more than anything. I'm playing through Thimbleweed at the moment, and so far it's fine for what it is, but it's also so self-consciously a throwback that it has trouble being anything else. You can't go five minutes before hitting on some joke or reference which is basically 'See? Remember old adventure games?' and that's... fine, but I would hate for a Monkey Island game to be so backward looking. Remember at the time, especially the first two games were on the cutting edge of what adventure games could be. SoMI revolutionised Adventure puzzle design overnight and set a new standard for comedy in games. MI2 only a year later achieved a similar goal but with the scope expanded massively in all directions. Hand drawn art, dynamic music, enough game that it had to be shipped on Amiga on ELEVEN disks. These were forward looking games, and I think they've correctly realised that the same should be true of the new one. I think it would have been a sort of sad return to Monkey Island if it was just a reflection upon past glories. To me, going with a distinctive new art style is a statement, and it says: 'Yes, we're carrying on where MI2 left off, but we're not pretending that nothing has happened in games since then' and I'm hugely encouraged by this shift in thinking.

Here's what'll happen. (Probably. I dunno, I'm predicting here) You'll see it, and you'll instinctively be weirded out by it because it's going to be in a different style to how Guybrush has ever looked, which is always odd (same with CMI, y'know). Then you'll see more and more of it in motion and you'll realise that it's pretty well done for what it is, and in the end you'll probably either end up liking it or just making peace with it. I think the big take away people will have when they see it all in motion is that this is it's own style, it's not going to be like the previous games, or like the special editions. Some people will vibe with it, others won't, but it'll be really clear they were GOING for something (my main criticism of SoMI SE is that I really wasn't sure WHAT it was going for with the style.)

Had to dig back into the archives of this forum but it turns out there is still an active link for a patch from LogicDeluxe to run the SE in easy mode. In their words:

I'm 100% certain that they'll "stick" to the CMI explanation as in they won't care much about explaining that stuff at all. I think that anyone who wants a "true" explanation for MI2's ending is kind of missing the point in that it's these secrets that keep MI engaging to this day. Some mysteries are not to be solved. This is where Thimbleweed Park differs I think, there the goal of the story was to ultimately solve a mystery that was packaged into the game's referential, nostalgic nature. That's a level of self reference that MI will never go to I feel.

MI2's ending potentially has the same issue as TP though, which is that it takes all the parody and anachronisms of MI and gives them an in-universe explanation. I personally think leaning into the it's-all-a-dream twist takes the fun out of those elements, once you get over the mindfuck. So I kind of hope they do stick to the curse explanation, and they have a good out: The Big Whoop carnival doesn't look explicitly modern. Guybrush's parents are still dressed old-timey. The carnival looks like something that could easily exist in MI's satirical 1700s, maybe even a place Guybrush remembers visiting as a child. All the commercialization and fourth-wall jokes don't need to be explained by the carnival, they're just part of the MI aesthetic.

This is probably sacrilege but when I played Thimbleweed the first thing I did was turn off the injokes using the in game setting. It felt weird to choose to see less content, but the developers put the checkbox there so I consider it fair game. There were still plenty of injokes even with the toggle flipped, but it felt more like an era appropriate level. That said, Thimbleweed Park is kind of about nostalgia, and fractally diving into itself, and being a LucasArts adventure game. eg the developers of the game appear in it as themselves, and characters can call the games hint line from within the game using working touch tone telephones that you have to dial by hand (amazing imo).

I think it's a matter of scale and quality. Monkey Island has occasional 4th wall winks, and the odd reference (I'd argue EMI is much more reference heavy than the previous games too), and every time it's well thought out and cleverly done. But for example... MI1 2 and 3 have ... 3 jokes across the 3 games about how you can't die in LucasArts games. The first time it's the rubber tree in MI1. It's quite well done with the fake game over screen. The second time it's in MI2 where you take too long and fall into the acid and Elaine calls this out as impossible being that we're in a flashback. The third time we get the fake credits sequence in the crypt. 3 different games, 3 different versions of what's basically the same joke, each done quite well. Thimbleweed park does a 'you can't die' joke 4 times in the first 4 hours. And each time it's just a throwaway line in the dialogue with nothing really clever about it. All it achieves is taking me out of the world for a moment. MI's best references and in jokes were either subtle enough that you might not even notice them, or so marvellously overdone that you couldn't help but appreciate the effort, or so odd and out of place that they fall into that uncanny realm of 'all is not as it seems' that MI likes to play in. They were very rarely just 'nudge, nudge, adventure games, eh?' kind of jokes, they were more purposeful than that. Don't get me wrong though, Thimbleweed Park has some really nice writing in it so far, I just wish it would trust its own worldbuilding to stand up a little better not to have to remind me every few seconds that I'm playing something like in the olde days.

Normally I don't like any of this kind of stuff but the Fate of Atlantis idol does look good. This looks to be the original source of the model, I've found it unpainted on ebay but this painted one from Etsy does look good.

And they couldn't be bothered to voice the stump joke. Guess they just extracted all dialogue lines from the data files to record. Stump joke was missing from the VGA data files, while Lite Mode was still in the data files.

Please, please please, DO file it on the bug tracker! We might fix it and mark it as an enhancement!😁