Leaderboard

Hi all, If you read my recent interview here, you may have caught on that I've been working hard on a new emulator that is specifically designed to run all the classic SCUMM games (DOS versions, plus Curse of Monkey Island). Well, the time has come for me to reveal more. The emulator is called "DREAMM", which is a backronym for "DOS Retro-Emulation Arena for Maniac Mansion (and other LucasArts SCUMM Games)". It's been in private beta for a couple of months and is looking pretty solid at this point. You can download the latest release and read all the documentation on the project here: https://aarongiles.com/dreamm/ At the moment, the project is Windows-only (sorry!), but it runs all the DOS versions of the games (plus CoMI) quite reliably. Give it a try, and let me know how it works for you! I'll keep an eye on this thread, plus my twitter feed (@aaronsgiles) and the official email address dreamm@aarongiles.com for feedback. Important note: you will need a complete install of the games you want to run, including the original DOS executable files. This is similar to what's needed when running the games in DOSBox. Some of the GOG versions of the games include them (DREAMM can detect this), some don't. None of the Steam releases do, sadly. 😔 But DREAMM can help you install everything from original media if you still have them! Have fun! Aaron Giles

Yeah, those were good times. I'm a completist, so no way Maniac Mansion wasn't coming to the Mac! I knew marketing would never go back and let me do Maniac and Zak as standalone releases for the Mac, but I figured I could at least slip Maniac in through the back door. 😁 Yes, screen scraping is involved. As a result, it has some imperfections. For example, if you move the mouse around sometimes you can get it to glitch (at least for some games). And if you look at Dr. Fred's plans in the CD version of DOTT (which has no copy protection) it will still suggest options to you. But it sure made development a lot easier once it was in, because I insisted on trying to always run the true originals and not the "cracked" versions that are floating around. Ultimate talkie versions are explicitly supported. You have to build the DOS versions as explained on his site, but if you do, they run well.

Truly nuclear unpopular opinion. This thread delivers. Unfortunately all my opinions are popular, universally beloved really.

Return to Monkey Island's first real trailer is likely to debut within the next 48 hours. Its existence was a laughable notion as recently as March, but, improbably, it's true: Ron Gilbert is helming a Monkey Island game, with many of the key players back. The announcement trailer showcased an art style different to what I'd have expected, foregoing 1991 with a respectful acknowledgement of the 31 years since and a hope to break new ground. Still, we're very much back, baby. Perhaps for the last time. At the height of my love affair with Doctor Who in 2010, I came across a sad forum whose users had made their dislike for anything the show'd done from ~1977 a personality trait. At heart, it was an unexamined fear of change. I'd seen that outlook on forum posts (for example) bemoaning adventure games' collective decision to no longer require months'-long, trance-like trips into designers' neuroses to progress—a decision that had left people stuck in place. Me, I moved on to different countries/cultures/ideas, and I'm richer for it. So I look forward to the trailer, knowing that Monkey Island fans appreciate iconoclasm and wouldn't squander the mind-boggling excitement of the moment by collectively soiling their trousers over Guybrush's new design (at least, I'm hoping he has a new design—maybe something in bottle green?) or spamming its creator in vain hopes of "saving" whatever version of Monkey 3a they hallucinated as teenagers. Because surely—surely—Monkey Island fans wouldn't be so insular and myopic they'd be stuck in their 1977, would they? Can't wait to meet this guy.

A few pages back, I compared the idea that Return to Monkey Island could be anything besides "Monkey Island 6" to the equally absurd notion that you could funk up the Doctor count by retroactively inserting an in-between doctor into the story. Adding to that, in my completely objective opinion, anyone who did not madly fall for the Donna-Doctor-duo back in 2008 can not possibly possess a soul. But back to the topic at hand. 🥰 At the beginning of April, back when hell froze over, I was pretty sure that Monkey Island fans would be so starved for a new part, one with Rondave at the helm and the iMuse trio at the instruments (plus JEJ, I'll have to add), that they would not utter a word of criticism and just enjoy this new entry. Sure that was naive, but it was a naivity that was specific to the Monkey Island series. I've bathed in that fandom's positivity back in 2009 and that even sold the concept of episodic gaming to me. I'm pretty disappointed by game culture as a whole – so much in fact that I sometimes wonder whether the bulk of "gamers" nowadays even like their own hobby, or if it's just something they started because there's nothing else for them, really. The criticism up until now was by a select few who dislike – rather "strongly dislike", "hate" or "despise", evidently, because there are no grey zones in gamer country – the early screenshots and animation shown in the teaser. However, I guess at least 97% of MI enthusiasts have taken a rough assessment of the dominant three negative nelly archetypes* and decided that those dudes will have to battle it out amongst themselves, to the death. I of course reject the notion that this will be "perhaps the last" Monkey Island game. Chances for Monkey Island 7 are so, so much better now than they were, say, in March of 2022. We'll just make sure that Disney has their payoff, and a sequel is inevitable. * [1] the 40+ year old "how could Ron ever do anything besides the pixel art he promised" archetype, [2] the younger "It should be like CMI but in HD" archetype and, of course, the default [3] "Ron can do whatever style he wants, but NOT THAT ONE" archetype.

The essential difference is that DREAMM relies on the original interpreter (the .exe), while ScummVM replaces it, trying to replicate its behavior -- which, given a talented and fastidious engineering team plus 20 years, it does remarkably well. But DREAMM will get you total accuracy to the original experience, or as close as you are going to get short of physically building a vintage IBM with a Roland MT-32, plus the streamlined convenience you won't get from a general-purpose DOS emulator. In addition, some of the UI stuff in the SCUMM games (such as save/load screens and the displays for pause and quit confirmation) were built in to the .exe, which is why ScummVM has to provide its own generic replacements. With DREAMM you'll see all that stuff as it was, which is cool because sometimes there were unique images (Maniac Mansion save screen) or information (the Indy Quotient on the Last Crusade save screen) involved. There's all kind of other little things that would be difficult to thoroughly catalog. For instance, ScummVM lifts some restrictions on when you can save. Thanks to Aaron's efforts, future generations will no longer be deprived of the sacred terror of being told the Meteor has control of your computer when you try to save in Dr. Fred's lab! ScummVM is still unbeatable in terms of platform independence and being able to run any given version of these games. If you wanna run FM-Towns Loom or Nintendo Maniac Mansion on your toaster, there is no substitute. DREAMM is ideal if you're more of a stickler, happen to be a Windows user, and are playing the DOS-based versions of these games (or CMI). The two programs really complement each other quite well in my opinion. DREAMM is much more a replacement for DOSBox than ScummVM. What's unfortunate is that many people will be denied DREAMM as a (legal) option. The official versions of these games as sold nowadays (that is, through GOG/Steam) mostly leave out the .exes because they come bundled with ScummVM. It's annoying to think that paying customers are getting incomplete filesets, but Lucasfilm probably made the unfortunate assumption that they would be moot to the end user. I wonder if something could be done about that if the situation was brought to the attention of the right people.

This is incredible. Thank you so much! Also, as a longtime LucasArts adventure game fan who grew up playing the Macintosh ports of their games, let me extend my heartfelt thanks to you for coding most of those ports. The DOTT port including the previously-unported Maniac Mansion in particular was crazy brilliance.

I just watched it (three times) for the first time and literally had tears in my eyes – because it’s so beautiful and very similar of my (and probably many’s) reactions! 🥰

Me and my snail-shaped pause icon stand humbly corrected.

I felt that way through the entire development of season one! They completely grew on me over the course of season two - I think the writers got more in the groove of writing for “our” Sam and Max - and by season three I wouldn’t have traded them for anything. I still do watch the Freelance Police trailer sometimes. It seems like another universe now, totally disconnected from the Telltale games, but it’s one I’d like to visit.

I just took a break from reading a research paper for my master's program, and I have to say that the posts I just read by both Kroms and Vainamoinen were truly well-written, insightful, and thought-provoking literary masterpieces, not to mention much more interesting than reading about educational theory.

Haha! I'd say enjoy the wedding. That's a once in a lifetime event. The trailer and info will still be there when you get back (if they even show it.) I'm guessing we'll at least get a big box from Limited Run. Anyway, I'm hoping for a different box. One that will truly be a showcase of the adventure that we're about to embark upon!

Mine wasn't filmed but I sat down my wife on the couch, all seriously mind you, took her by the hands and said "Do you remember how excited I was for Spiderman with three Spidermen in it? That pales in comparison to what Ron just announced..." All the whole speaking calmly and containing my excitement. My wife just rolled her eyes and smiled at my goofiness.

Napoleon Bonaparte was excommunicated by the church for annexing Rome and insulting the Pope—a mere misdemeanour compared to your heresy. A Biblical stoning, while regrettable, might be required.

This sure is a nice reaction video! Thanks for sharing.

I had @Marius' reaction video and that simply made the day for me. April 4th, it was all sunshine and monkey wrenches.

My unpopular opinions: Insult sword fighting was clever in the first Monkey Island game, but really quite unnecessary in the others. The Monkey Island 1 "red herring" puzzle was much harder than the Monkey Island 2 "monkey wrench" one. The Amiga versions were inferior to, or at best on par with, their DOS counterparts. (There! I said it!) Day of the Tentacle is a much funnier game than Sam & Max Hit the Road.

I agree so much with that sentence you wrote. It echoes what I feel when I lurk around the rotten corners of YouTube and Twitter. It hurts me to see such anger, self-entitlement, disdain and malice from individuals who call themselves fans. What do they gain from it exactly? Do they feel better after all that venting? My guess is they don't. I'm kind of happy I wasn't around when the announcement trailer came out.

I'm curious...has anyone tried to run the Ultimate Talkie Editions of MI1 and 2 on this? Would it even be able to call the monster.sou files and play the speech?

Thank you Aaron for your dedication and hard work in preserving the SCUMM classics! I'm definitely going to try it out! To me, this also acts as a nice continuation to the fascinating discussion that was happening here last year.

You gotta love how the cover made him a smirking asshole: Presumably they went to the same seminar that the Dreamworks marketing department did where it was explained that the douchiest possible expression on a character's face is also the most ingratiating.

You just wait until I get home. I have a truly nasty, absurdly nitpicky, entirely subjective and completely senseless preference that dumps on all of the greatest people directly, and this thread is just right for it.

I definitely share the sentiment of surprise at the initial reaction, but at the same time my exposure to how fans reacted to certain other famous franchises has left me a bit jaded and expecting some negativity. I also know from this experience that things pass and soon people will find the next thing to be angry at; at least we're spared the YouTube grifters making hundreds of videos about how Disney are forcing their "agenda" onto Monkey Island. That would've been exhausting and I promise you that my name would not be popping up in the forums this frequently if we got to that level of insanity. There's a part of me that's expecting nothing to be shown at Devolver's showcase just to protect my own sanity (even though it seems pretty likely that we'll get SOMETHING). I had to do that when the game was announced on April Fools' too, I just couldn't let myself believe it.

Where I live the Devolver showcase is tomorrow night. 😬😬😬 Annoyingly I'm at wedding, but I'll definitley see it as soon as I'm allowed. This forums been a bit quiet so I wanted to post my hype! We might finally see Guybrush! Also do you think Return will get a big box like this? Well done the fan that photoshoped this 😁

Whoa! This is amazing! Thank you from the bottom of my heart! I just booted up CMI in ScummVM for a playthrough yesterday, but now I kinda want to run it on DREAMM. Too bad I don't have a Windows PC. Can't wait for a mac version of your software, so I can run it too!

Well, I probably have a lot connected to EFMI: - I did enjoy the Toothrot-Marley-revelation, as I thought it was a cool connection between the first two and 4 th games. - I'm glad they made the transition to 3D in Escape and had no issues whatsoever with the controls/interface - I loved the whole last act (Monkey Island plus ending... including Monkey Kombat!) and felt it was much more satisfying and epic than the short and abrupt ending of CMI But, I'm only putting those as BillyCheers mentioned the first one. The first thing that actually came to mind, is I actually love the LAs Star Wars games, especially Tie Fighter and Dark Forces, and have played some of them more than some of the adventure games. I just wish their success hadn't killed adventure games... (I know that's a overly simplified version of historic events) Oh, and I really don't see why people like the second MI special edition much more than the first. For me there were too many little details they didn't get correct with MI2, starting with the missing opening credit sequence (Don't get me wrong, I'm still grateful for the SEs in the first place). Oh, and I didn't mind Guybrush's hair from the first SE. This is fun - great topic starter! 😁

This is a gift. I'm particularly grateful you went beyond your original charter to bring CMI into the fold. Never thought I'd see those Save/Load screens again.

OH MY GOSH!!! You guys are my heroes!! How did you find something so similar so fast!!! @Crumb Thank you so much for the detective work!! Well, the reason I need it is because I'm too young to have been around back in the lucasarts days and boxed copies of these games are just too expensive for me to purchase, so I wanted to make reproduction boxes for myself (like those people who make prototype boxes for their board games) just so I could have them on my shelf, I recreated a lot of the Hit the Road Box text and assets myself (outdated gifs from the very begining) : But the background (although it WOULD be possible to remake it myself) would take too much time to recreate and would probably not be as good as if I just used the actual one... VERY selfish reason to want this map, I know.....

The frantic run in followed by "it's real! it's real!" just killed me. It's priceless! I totally get that feeling of having all that excited energy and not quite knowing what to do with it so you bolt to the people closest to you and just unload 😜

I liked the Monkey Island 2 ending as a series ending and the "mystery" reveal.

Not to mention it was impossibly creepy. I still have nightmares from that scene. Compared to that, The Fly looks like a visit at Grandma's.

They actually weren't. Ever since Maniac Mansion on PC, save/load screens have been rooms with SCUMM scripts like everything else (heck, I think in the case of save/load that wasn't even hardcoded on C64 - can't check now, though). (ETA: Well, except for SCUMM 5-6, where they aren't rooms). But other than that, great summary of the differences. 😁

That's a really interesting one! I have to take a closer look at the graphics and voice acting on my next playthrough. For me (maybe because of the age) Indy 3 never was that interesting. I only got to the catacombs yet and always thought: "I rather watch the movie for the millionth time...". Although I have to admit to be almost big an Indy fan as I am a MI fan. 🙃

I said SCREW IT and made it live, because that's how I roll. Or I edited the wrong data file, who can tell?!

Just echoing how appreciated this is! Fantastic work

This is SO great!! I agree though, GOG and Steam should start supplying the EXE files at some point! The one thing that stood out for me is the suggestion box for the copy protection screen! That's insane and so cool! How did you do it? Is screen scraping involved in some measure? I am hoping this can be open sourced at some point, both for the educational value (you are a very experienced programmer and I'd have a lot to learn from your code), both for easier long term support and port developing. Also, I'm really glad this exists, this is fuel for some very healthy "competition" (even though I'd say this is not the right term): I now have this itch that I really want to scratch, which is implementing the original GUI and menu for COMI in ScummVM, and I have already begun the RE works for it

Hey, if you want easy, go play Wordle.

I don't recall any 'firings' happening as part of development. What I do recall was a massive torrent of misinformation happening around the announcement that they'd be splitting the game into two parts. It also coincided with the whole g*mergate thing, so what happened was a ton of people trying to manufacture controversy around how Double Fine was managing funds, while the overwhelmingly most common response from backers was that they were happy for DF to take whatever approach they thought was best in order to make the game they wanted to make.

You know, The Dig was the last LA adventure I played, mainly because everyone online seemed to have mixed feelings about it. Yet going into it with low expectations I ended up really enjoying it. I thought it looked and sounded beautiful, and I really liked how the story was different than all the other adventures. Made me wish I had played it much earlier. I guess that's a lesson I keep learning - expectations can really change the way you experience something. Guess that's why I'm trying to keep them low for RtMI and get pleasantly surprised. I rather that than be thoroughly disappointed.

I'd be interested in seeing some video of this working, maybe pointing out some of the differences from SCUMMVM (like those COMI menu screens someone mentioned)...

Why did it tell me I was at my wits end! Eep ook ack! I failed at #Mojole. 🖤🖤💚🖤🖤 🖤🖤💚🖤🖤 🖤🖤💚🖤💛 🖤💛💚🖤🖤 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 💛🖤🖤💛🖤 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

I actually thought me liking the Dig was the unpopular opinion. It's far from my favourite LucasArts game, but I did enjoy my playthroughs immensely when I was a kid. I should boot it up again to see how it holds up.

Same. I still enjoy it, but my biggest problem with it, more than the lack of characters, is the ending. The game posed several interesting moral and ethical questions and really challenged Boston's confidence in his abilities as a leader and a survivalist; in a lot of ways, it was a tragic story. Then the ending comes and it completely undoes everything and it becomes this sappy, happy ending with all the lessons up to this point being rendered meaningless. It really rubbed me the wrong way because it felt cheap; reading up on the novelization didn't do a lot to ease those feelings either. I wonder how much the troubled development played into that, it definitely comes across as rushed.

Wow, I never heard the cursed SoMI soundtrack. It's great @AndywinXp!

I don't think you need to rebuild the leaf - it's a relatively common glyph in fonts, called a "hedera" or "fleuron" or "aldus' leaf" or - in unicode - "floral heart", and although I'm not sure where this exact design originated, many fonts copy it - or try to. One of the ones I think does it best is "Symbola" (free): https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/symbola But there are many others copying the same design. You'll also find copies of this design in MS Gothic (not quite as well drawn), or in Deja Vu Sans (really badly drawn) and somewhere around hundreds of other fonts (although some will obviously do their own design fitting with the general font design). The sharp corner towards the top of the left glyph here is intentional - and it looks like it's also in the MI manual - an "ink trap". The glyphs are at U+2766 and U+2767 - or you can try just copy/pasting these, and changing the font: ❦❧ A pretty nice version without the ink trap (although I'm not particularly a fan of the way the swirl and the heart meet in the upright glyph) is Bainsley: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/bainsley

finally a use for AI

The joke is that that kind of art hasn't even been invented yet, much less become well-regarded enough to be in a museum. They're playing with the fact that everybody in the Monkey Island games tend to blithely accept anachronisms as part of their reality, but in actuality there's no reason a 17th century sailor would know what post-impressionism is. Also, it's funny because King Andre is playing at being the all-knowing villain with a plan the hero can't possibly grasp, but the "foreknowledge" he's claiming is just...what art movements will eventually get big? What's so funny about King Andre to me is how grandiose he acts versus how banal everything he's actually doing and saying is. (And Dave Fennoy's A+ performance of course.)

After all this talk of Thimbleweed Park I've decided to replay it again and I came across this fun little UHS style guide for the game that a journalist apparently put together out of pure love for the game. I know there's a hint system in the game, but I thought it was still worth sharing: https://philome.la/IndieGames_Muso/tiny-incremental-hints-for-thimbleweed-park/play/index.html

Ok, you all had loads of fun, but this ends here. This is the real™ official ordered list: 1) MI2 2) MI1 3) CMI 4) EMI 5) TMI That's just how it is. Sorry to be 100% objectively right.