Leaderboard

Hey, what if Guybrush is a child on a starship holodeck?

Really weird how scanning tools in 1991 changed ships around so much.

Looking at the wavebanks for the Special Editions, MI1 has 4551 lines, MI2 has 7157. Apparently Curse has around 8500 lines, and Escape has over 10,000 lines. Using the Telltale Extractor, Tales has around 7-8000 lines. Bascially, this is gonna be the most densely packed game in the series as far as dialog goes.

Welllllll actually, if Escape from Monkey Island remains canon, Guybrush "washed up on the beaches of Mêlée Island™" and did in fact not ... OUCH!! PAPAPISHU!! WHO THREW THAT?!

Did we talk about this here yet? At first I thought it's a funny tweet, but recently I wonder if Ron is hinting at something? Like, is the arch some kind of portal between worlds/realities? It made me curious because Ron tweeted this image from an old Star Trek episode on that same day (see below). Anybody knows what happens in that episode?

A few months ago I had a dream that EMI got remastered to lean into a simplified low-poly aesthetic, and it felt more like a hip absurdist Katamari Damacy type of game. That's how I now choose to remember it.

I was wondering recently: What if LucasArts had modern scanning tools in 1991? The original Same pixel and colour depth limitations using Peter Chan's original drawing Answer: Barely any difference at all 😆 However if they had double the resolution to play with, it could have looked like this (yes this is still 256 colours)

Yea, that sounds about right. I'm still feeling immensely grateful that we will be getting another game, however it turns out. It also inspired me to go back and replay the others after 12+ years so that's a positive too. Heck, it even got me to play TP and Labyrinth for the first time!

Guybrush is a child on a starship holodeck theory in 3 2 1

I still want to see the MI2 backgrounds AI upscaled, ideally trained using the Peter Chan art. 😅

Same. Whatever my initial reactions were to the artwork, I just want Ron and Dave (and everyone else in the team) to give us the game they want to make.

In other words, Guybrush's sister? This is getting into Chinatown territory. And I'm into it!

Like most people here… I love Monkey Island for its amazing music! And since I like to have everything in order (🤓), I've created consistent covers for my Apple Music library (using the great visuals from Laserschwert). I'm already pretty happy with these versions - but not 100% yet. I am therefore very open to alternative suggestions. [Update: For the sake of overview I have moved the downloads to "Imgur" and replaced them with an index here.]] Links to the cover downloads All album covers with framing – Version 1: https://imgur.com/a/B0CWRVe All album covers with framing – Version 2 (as seen in overview image): https://imgur.com/a/e55iyw0 Alternate covers for MI1, MI2 and MI4 with "original" framing: https://imgur.com/a/UBFgqNE Alternate covers – with logo, without framing: https://imgur.com/a/uKNk6ee The artworks without logo or framing: https://imgur.com/a/9jMgeMy Disclaimer: For the sake of the sorting, I have decided against the more beautiful CMIs and ReMIs of this world and reduced it to MI1 - MI6 ("Threewood. Guybrush Threepwood…"). (If I have unnecessarily opened a new topic here, although this can be wonderfully integrated elsewhere, then sorry.)

I would like to start a topic here that has been "on my mind" for a while (and I hope that it hasn't already been discussed to death ...). First a little outing: I am absolutely no friend of puzzles. Even more: in everyday life I hate puzzles and refuse to think about them. (I'm sure that's partly because I'm not very good at solving them). On the other hand, I love adventure games. I love the good stories, the atmosphere, the characters, etc. And in fact, in adventure games, I even enjoy "solving" the puzzles - if I know the solution. But as soon as I am stuck with a problem for more than a few minutes, I get impatient ( a characteristic of mine in general) and just look it up on the internet. I often do that with a bit of shame, because in the end: That's not what these games are about, right? But that's how I enjoy them the most. And after all, I do enjoy a good puzzle design, even when it was solved for me. I often have the impression that most adventure fans have the ambition to solve the puzzles by themselves (which I find cool and admirable!), but for me it's not like that and I've mostly found peace with my laziness. So, how about you guys? Are there others here who love adventure games as much, but just can't bring themselves to solve the puzzles by themselves?

I’m hoping the game won’t spend too much time on Melee. It’s a very played-out location, so I’d like them to keep it short but sweet. Hit us with some key locations and themes, then move it on. 😄

Hi! When I first played The Secret of Monkey Island at 10 I had a hint book. It made sense to me in context because I'd never completed a game. Games were hard to finish back then and so it never really even occured to me that I could have a go at it without help. Then when I played MI2 I played easy mode and my first game was easy mode. Later on I developed a taste for puzzles and I do like to try to solve adventures on my own as much as possible now, but I always remembered that playing on easy or with hints didn't make me like the first two games any less, and so however people want to approach games is completely valid. Generally in games I think we as players attach a bit too much value to how we like to experience games when I think that the most sensible thing is to let people enjoy them however they'd like. What works well for me doesn't necessarily for the next person, and I think it's nice that 2 people can play a game in a different way and both get some of the same things and some different things out of it.

I'm not much into puzzles myself, though I try not to use walkthroughs. Built-in hint systems, though? That's fair game. Also, I can vouch for Unavowed -- it's very story/atmosphere-forward. Great game. Sounds like a demo for the next game set in the WGU1 will be released in a couple of weeks. 1) Wadjet Gaming Universe.

Although I don't find the idea to return to Mêlée Island that exciting for now, I'm definitely curious to see/hear how they will "stage" (?) the island. According to the screenshots so far, the design and structure will be pretty close to MI1. The question is whether Michael Land will take up the familiar themes or create new ones - and also how the music is going to be in places that didn't have music in MI1. Although we also had a lot of new music in EMI for Mêlée (which I actually like very much!), the location was completely different and thus justified different music. (I also just realized how great it is that we get the same composer for all six games - a luxury that is super rare, especially in the film world!).

It was the best they could do at the time

The Guardian of Forever reference is definitely very apt for where MI2 seemed to be taking the series. In fact the Voodoo Lady is rather direct about it: Nothing particularly revealing, but it becomes a little more curious when we factor in the cut Largo/LeChuck dialogue: My current theory is the Tunnels provide unrestricted travel between worlds (and times potentially) to the bearer of the E-ticket. This has the benefit of providing the "narrative grease" if you will to allow RTMI to do as it will without stepping on the toes of Curse and beyond, or minimally to explain away potential future plot holes without hardline de-canonisation. Whether RTMI ends up meaningfully exploring this aspect of 2 is a different question, but I'm fairly convinced it'll be at least minimally leveraged to enable whatever story Ron wishes to tell.

Whoa! That High Res version looks amazing! The sprites kinda stand out now though... Even so, this would be a really nice way to do a future playthrough! Too bad we don't have all the original art assets. Could you maybe put the Guybrush close up from the fisherman's dock in it, just for fun? I'm curious to how it will look.

by the way, that episode is, I believe, the City on the Edge of Forever: "In the episode, Doctor Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) accidentally overdoses himself with a dangerous drug. While not in his right mind, McCoy transports himself down to a mysterious planet and travels back in time through the Guardian of Forever, after which he changes history to such an extent that the Federation of Planets no longer exists. Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) follow McCoy to 1930 New York and attempt to discover how he changed history and restore their timeline. While in the past, Kirk falls in love with social worker Edith Keeler (Joan Collins) and is shocked when he and Spock realize that, in order to save his future, he must allow Keeler to die in a traffic accident. "

What if guybrush is the spirit of the collective imagination of all children fantasizing about playing pirates.

Sure, no worries! I'm glad that you draw the distinction between the criticism here and elsewhere on the internet because I do think there is a difference. Many people here have had literal decades to sit with their feelings about the game. So where we are now is different from the initial response (which from a lot of Mojo folks was largely positive, if you check the secret history) AND the subsequent reactionary backlash. I think also the whole internet is in a different place from around 2000. There are many more lines of communications between developers and fans, and games themselves have changed. Apart from at the real fringes, indie games just weren't really a thing and the financial models that allow ReMI to exist now in the way that it will - as a probably mid-budget game developed by a small team, didn't exist. I was going somewhere with this and I can't quite remember, but I think my point was that I think it'll be a little different this time. In some ways, it'll be worse, because there are a certain amount of people who decide that the privilege of being to talk to the people involved with the game means they can and should say whatever mean thing that comes to mind at the time - and we've already seen a bit of that. But I think we're also past the point where we expect a new adventure game to be a AAA spectacular, bigger and grander than the last one. Adventure games are firmly in a niche, more than they ever were, and I think one of the challenges EMI had that is more obvious now than it was at the time is that it was in that transitional time when everyone still expected adventure games to be a Big Deal, but also nobody was willing to give them funding to match that. I think the mood for most has shifted a bit from 'It's a new Monkey Island game, this has to be the biggest and best thing ever' to 'It's a new Monkey Island game, I never expected this, I'm just glad it's happening... I hope it's good.'

Aaaah, obviously I wasn't. Thanks for the link! I'll look into it.

Haha - definitely true! I think I'm mostly (partly?) to blame for both conversations recently! Man, when can we get some more fresh news so we can obsess over it instead?!

@BillyCheersThen you may not know what they were referring to: https://m.youtube.com/c/gangreneofthesoul-StansPreviouslyOwnedSountracks/

Actually, that's not what I meant either. My *sigh* was just from the frustration at the feeling a need to defend being a fan of a LucasArts adventure game on a LucasArts adventure game fan site. Now, to be clear that tiredness is not directed at you or anyone here. In fact, I have generally found the group at Mixnmojo to be much more clear/verbose in their reasoning, and although I don't necessarily agree with some of the points, I respect them as valid reasons for not liking EFMI (or not liking it as much). Generally it's been a pretty robust debate, rather than some of the things I've seen in other MI fan groups on FB, such as "anything after Curse **beeping** sucked!". In fact, you seem to have a pretty informed decision, so I definitely respect it. You've played it multiple times and although I find it sad that your opinion for EFMI has gone downhill, opinions change. In fact, this time playing through them again my opinion of MI2 changed slightly for the worse as well. I also recognize that this is what fans do - they pick apart their favourite games/movies/tv shows/songs/etc., compare them with each other, and basically overanalyze them to death. And just because you're a fan of one doesn't mean you are a fan of all. Maybe you liked it but there were just some things that didn't seem right... or simply that one did suck for you for some reason. Anyways, the negativity that surrounded EFMI online, a game that I dearly loved when I first played it, was my first introduction of the negative or 'dark' side of fan communities back in 2000, so I guess I'm just sensitive. With the reaction to RtMI's graphics recently, it brought back a lot of memories of the fan reaction to EFMI. But to address your other points more related to RtMI, I also am relieved that Ron isn't just ignoring everything after MI2... but strangely I don't think I would have been that upset if he had. I guess I don't think it's my place try to influence creators when they are making their art (especially when they've been working on it for 2 years already!), so seeing as Ron created MI, my thoughts are that he can do whatever the *beep* he wants! Anyways, sorry for the long rant, and please know that nothing in here is directed at you. I've just been feeling a bit sad at all the negativity in the LA/MI community recently, so I've been debating whether I should disappear (again) for a while when RtMI is first released.

Totally agree that EMFI did a lot of things right. (It fixed Elaine's voice for one thing.) I also remember really enjoying it when it came out. I don't think it deserves the reputation it's got. It's funny, well made, and has some great puzzles. I should play it again really. I do think when I step back and examine more critically that it that it got some things wrong for a Monkey Island game. I think Kestrel summed up the differences in tone perfectly regarding the anachronisms, for example. The world just got a bit too broad for my tastes. And I was bored stupid by Monkey Kombat. But I'm really glad that someone loves EMFI. Like I said, I do think it got a lot of things right. And Ron and Dave have made it clear that they're trying to be respectful to all the sequels, so I don't think you've got anything to worry about. (Just don't expect Herman to be Elaine's grandfather )

So we're finally going to be able to hear a fully voiced rendition of 10,000 bottles of beer on the wall! This is such great news because it makes it clear that this is a huge and proper Monkey Island game. Not just a retro throwback. This is going to be epic! What were the line count for all the other games? Does anyone know?

One of the guys from that video did a speedrun marathon of all 5 games, and I gotta say, it's quite impressive. One part I found particularly interesting was that you don't have to take down any of Jojo Jr's hitpoints until you're down to one and then one hit will eliminate all of his except one where he draws and you beat him. What a crazy strat.

With the fixed cameras you really could do an EMI demake down to Alone in the Dark style.

This topic has been argued to death, but here’s my two cents. I actually really like the fact that MadMardi’s favourite game is EMI, even though it’s not my own. It’s an exciting new opinion! I don’t know who said it, and I’m too lazy to scroll back, but I agree to the fact that I don’t dislike EMI as much anymore as I did when it was the final part of the series. I would’ve hated the series to end this way, but now it’s just another chapter which got a little wonky. Even though I truly dislike the second part of the game with all the pop culture references, Herman backstory, and return to Monkey Island (there I did it), I’m actually pretty excited to play the game again in my MI playthrough’s! Also I’m curious about how I’ll feel about Monkey Kombat. I don’t really remember disliking it that much, but maybe I was too blown away by the Herman revelation to notice.

Good point, both of you!

A while ago @Laserschwert made this blank box, which inspired me to draw a super authentic cover art! Now I really want to see more Moustache-Guybrush art.

Definitely not Curse... I know I was thinking of MI2. That being said, you are probably right - my memory has gotten terrible over the last 5 years (kids + lack of sleep will do that).