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So during the pandemic I took up playing Planet Coaster (I’m a bit of a theme park fan on the side) and I put together this obligatory boat ride. It’s not the most polished it could be, but I enjoyed putting this together. https://youtu.be/OxIZSr0dSYA

That would be me To be fair I didn’t come up with most of them. I asked for help on Twitter and people sent a lot of suggestions, but most of those are actually suggested by people that commented on the YouTube videos.

I like this one! I never knew it had so many different reactions!

I'd never seen this one before:

This may be cheating, but this YouTube channel (which I think is run by someone on these forums?) is full of these kinds of details: https://www.youtube.com/c/legendofmi I binged it a while back. It's amazing how much they stuffed into these games while keeping it unobtrusive.

I made a few adjustments to all album covers (mainly the position of the logo) and added variations of the SE covers and the Tales cover – each with the old Monkey Island Logo (my old school heart needed this somehow 😁😞 All updated images can be downloaded from the links in the first post. 🙂

I promise this was the first thing that came up:

Incredible! This is a feature I've wanted to see in ScummVM for years! Thank you so much for working on adding this!

So... I've long been someone who has voiced negative things about Thimbleweed Park. I backed the game on Kickstarter and loosely followed its progress. I even have an answerphone message recording in the game (1488). I played it when it was released and, taking my cue from CMI, started with "Easy" mode. The game wasn't what I expected. Rays and Reyes were essentially the same character. The world didn't captivate me. It was filled with endless details (like massive libraries and phone numbers to call). It got better when Delores, Randsome and Franklin were introduced. I played it until the end and was just utterly let down by the conclusion. It felt like a non-ending. I've carried that memory around with me for 5 years. With all the commotion around the announcement of Return to MI, my appetite had become whet for a classic point and click. And for some reason, I decided to give TP another whirl... This time I made little notes about the characters, their desires, and the central mysteries around the game. If there was going to be ANY pay off at the end of the game, I wanted to catch it. To my complete and utter delight... I loved every minute of TP. Even the ending. It was so clever and interesting. I don't know if it's due to me playing in Hard mode. Or if it's because I roughly knew how it was going to end, so I was more prepared for the type of game it was. Or if changes have been made since I first played it (I know several major patches were release: Adding the ability for characters to talk to each other, a hint system, and the arcade hall with playable arcade games). But whatever the reason... I FREAKIN' LOVED IT! Total perception shift. (I think the new Hint system helps a lot, actually. I didn't use it THAT much, but I really appreciated it for some of the more obtuse puzzles -- of which there were a few.) So anyway, what I'm saying it: 1. I was completely and utterly wrong, Thimbleweed Park is a fantastic game. 2. If you're carrying around a bad memory of it, like I was, I really suggest giving it another go. I don't know why I had such a bad experience the first time around. I would say as a tip for any new players: Don't get bogged down in the endless details that fill the world (maybe turn off the injokes, and don't bother hunting around the phone book or library for hidden things). Ignore the specs of dust, too (they don't mean anything -- and you'll get an achievement for doing so). Just focus on the story and the characters. They're really rewarding. Kudos to Gilbert, Winnick, Fox, Sandercock, Ferrari, et al. TP is a clever, modern successor to Maniac Mansion style games. I'm so glad I backed it! That it all. PS - Turn on the uncut Randsome dialogue when you get to the inner chambers of the factory at the end of the game. It's adds to the theme of the narrative

In the interest of not flooding the AI thread, here is a place for more AI text nonsense fun. To start, a series of responses to the prompt 'Write a snarky multi-paragraph Mixnmojo.com news post titled "Tim Schafer bangs on Ron Gilbert's door and screams 'Wilma!'": '

For every plausible synopsis, it came up with 20 more like this with implausible premises and plot details that only half make sense:

Skunkape posted on Twitter that there is a retail Switch version of Save the World remastered at Best Buy with a retail-exclusive cover (and Jason posted it as Mojo news, which is where I found out about it). I had to dust off my Best Buy credit card as the completionist in me needed to get one. '

Going to response to Kestril's post here: I agree that some of the puzzle logic was a bit much, but once I'd accepted that a Hint System wasn't cheating those moments didn't bother me too much. (Actually, I don't know how you realised the 4th page was there -- as this came from the same mind as MI2, a piece of paper can be known to float ANYWHERE on a big game map.) I agree that getting a "spotter" seemed odd, but it was mostly painless once you'd given everyone a map. I do think there were general quality of life improvements that could have been had. (Passing objects from one character to another was excruciating -- why not use the excellent system perfected by Day of the Tentacle? And that damn hotel lift...!) But on the whole I really appreciate the game's structure. The way it unfolded and kept all five characters active. I thought it was really clever. I also think I was braced for how "meta" it was going to be due to my first playthrough (even though I had zero recollection of the actual details of the ending -- I swear the "Easy" mode just ended abruptly, where as the game I just finished seemed to ramp up to the ending nicely). I think maybe I had a better time with it now is perhaps I was prepared for what it was: A very meta, spiritual successor to MM. Not a spiritual successor to Monkey Island. I would say one thing: I barely played with Angela Ray... the line delivery was unbearably slow, and her line deliveries didn't work for the hardnosed character she was supposed to be. She seemed more petulant than "no nonsense". It's odd because the rest of the characters are great -- Reyes in particular added depth to everything he said. You can nitpick anything, of course. On the whole I really loved it this time around.

I guess, as always, it has a lot to do with expectations. I didn’t back it (shame on me), also because I somehow wasn’t really interested in the whole project. I only really stumbled upon it a few month ago, gave it a go on the iPad - and loved every minute of it: the story, the characters, the puzzles etc. I read here on the forums that the ending was… special and that many people didn’t like it. So maybe I was kind of prepared? Anyway, I also really loved the ending. It’s interesting, clever and totally fits to the whole game. A game which was meant to be a big nostalgic adventure party. For me it was exactly that and the end was the icing on the cake. I really wouldn’t that kind of ending for a Monkey Island game, but here, it was just perfect. Too bad, some people had a bad (first) experience, because of expectations, an “incomplete” game or some other reason. I’m glad you changed your mind! Because it might not be the game everyone wanted/expected or likes – but it’s not a bad game either!

This is OpenAI, using their text playground. Pretty sure anyone can sign up for personal use https://beta.openai.com/

Today I've asked the AI to write an open letter from Ron Gilbert begging fans to stop calling him "Wrong Gilbert" Here are my favourites:

Wow, what? I was literally typing random letters at the end there. 👕 I beat #Mojole #91 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 6/6 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤💛🖤💚🖤 💛🖤💚🖤🖤 🖤🖤💛🖤🖤 🖤💛💛🖤💛 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

30 years ago, an april's fool of an italian magazine hipotized the same connection...

Yoink!

Here are my favourite responses to a prompt I did about Ron Gilbert tweeting the end of Return to Monkey Island to spite fans:

I have to admit, I was curious: seems legit and... Wow, they really DO know us

It's got the Mojo tone down perfectly... who needs to WRITE reviews?!

I'm now getting it to generate negative steam reviews, to recentre my expectations: "Return to Monkey Island is a huge disappointment. Not only does it have terrible graphics, but the plot is full of holes. For starters, the game completely ignores the ending of the previous game. In that game, Guybrush Threepwood became the governor of Melee Island, and married Elaine Marley. But in this game, they act like none of that ever happened. Secondly, the villainous LeChuck is somehow back from the dead, despite being killed in a very final way in the last game. And his new plan makes no sense whatsoever. Finally, the whole game feels like it's just going through the motions. There's nothing new or interesting here, and it all feels very stale. Avoid this one at all costs."

I'm constantly surprised by how funny this is: Write a sarcastic back of the box blurb for Return to Monkey Island: "What do you get when you cross the fourth wall, a talking pirate monkey, and Tim Schafer? The answer is: a whole lot of nothing. That's right, in Return to Monkey Island, you play as Guybrush Threepwood, a washed-up pirate who has to save his wife from a bunch of monkeys. With gameplay that consists of picking up bananas and saying 'Argh!' a lot, this game is sure to provide hours upon hours of mind-numbing fun."

I'm forced to admit that the AI is a pretty good comedian: "Improvise a letter from LeChuck to Guybrush, apologising for his behaviour and suggesting 3 remedial actions:" Dear Guybrush, I want to apologise for my behaviour. I know that I've been a bit of a jerk and I'm sorry. I hope you can forgive me. Here are three things you can do to help make up for my bad behaviour: 1) Buy me a drink next time we meet. 2) Let me win the next game of pirates we play against each other. 3) Give me a big hug. I hope this makes up for my bad behaviour. I promise to try and be better in the future. Love, LeChuck

This might be outdated by now — particularly with the Mac architecture shift — but I did write up some steps back in the day: https://mixnmojo.com/features/sitefeatures/Running-GOG-Escape-from-Monkey-Island-under-Wine-on-macOS I believe some people had sound issues with those steps while others didn’t.

I've attempted the PS2 version, and the biggest issue I can see is that depending on the graphics mode you use, certain transitions hang and there are some minor sound glitches (especially during the opening credits during all those fades between shots). As far as I'm aware, those issues disappear in Software rendering mode, but you're stuck with the original resolution of the game, wheras OpenGL and Direct3D options allow you to upscale the game so the 3d models are a lot more crisp, so it's a bit of a balancing act on what concessions you're willing to make for which features.

Niiice! I hope the 3D accelerations finally work now, too.

Oh yeah, the original menu is there too! I still have to implement the thumbnails, but other than that I managed to get every remaining feature to work as expected.

Let's bring a more positive note to this thread So, about the original COMI GUI not being in ScummVM...

Damn, I was going to find a picture of terrible 90s curtains hair but stumbled upon Guybrush Threepwood:

One of my pandemic efforts. I had a really good surge of creative energy back in 2020. But, alas, didn't finish much. Back when I showed it around, one of the most common comments was "That's not Guybrush Threepwood!". I mean, I can't taylor the outcome that much to what's in my brain, but this one is coming pretty close to how I imagined high res Guybrush in the original The Secret of Monkey Island. Hope you guys like it ... ... because I have tons of that stuff back from 2020, especially Swordmaster sketches ... I have so, so many Swordmaster sketches ...

It’s rough The later telltale games do away with pretending to be point and click at all, and the earlier telltale games ARE point and click, but this middle ground of fake-direct-control-but-in-a-point-and-click-world is so rough to go back to. Unfortunately it includes Tales of MI and Sam & Max Season 3, two of my favorite Telltale games. I think it’s inaccurate to call this a “telltale thing,” as it only truly happens in Tales of Monkey Island and was 100% due to size limitations of WiiWare games. In the Telltale Sam & Max games for example, the characters say what you pick with very few shortcuts taken (unless it’s a joke that your choice is subverted). Even the later Tales of MI chapters drop this, because it turned out to not save much space but created a notably bad experience. Telltale had plenty of cut corners but this wasn’t actually regularly one of them, it just really sticks out when it occurs, especially in Tales of MI chapter 1. I have no memory of it ending in a weird place, but agree it’s a sad arrangement. I think the music in Tales is under-appreciated because the actual final production of it is done so cheaply, but much of the composition and style of it is really good. The main theme, not as much. I replayed all of Tales last month and had the same reaction. Even when working on it I felt like the puzzles were a little lightweight but replaying it, they’re way more legit than I remember. The presence of jungle mazes is never ever my favorite, but maybe with those aside, I think time has been kind to Tales’ difficulty level. The reuse will always drive me crazy. It’s a thing that Telltale was known for (and was done because new character rigs and acting animation suites are actually very expensive to produce) but in Tales it went into absolute overdrive. The combination of the cast size needed for just the main characters, plus the Wii’s 40 megabyte limit for downloadable games, made it nasty. As you said Winslow is one of the more egregious ones. I don’t think it was known that he’d be a recurring character until the season was underway (but even if it was know, I don’t think he would have got a new model because we were out of both budget and disk space). Same, I was surprised on replay to be reminded of how much there was. Probably the most music interactivity in any Telltale game? I know the team worked hard to do it. There’s no formal interactive music tools in Telltale’s pipeline, or weren’t until post 2013 when I left, so instead gameplay programmers had to write their own music managers in LUA. That code got pretty advanced in Tales and Sam & Max S3, but was mostly gone by The Walking Dead, when music had devolved back down to largely being single loops or fire-and-forget stingers. I like that flotsam town’s music changes as you walk around, and then changes again when the pox blows in.

Finally got round to finishing Thimbleweed Park and I know a couple of people were curious what I'd make of it so here are my non-spoilery thoughts: * I think the game looks and sounds great. Don't love all of the voice acting, but generally think it achieves a good aesthetic, even if that kind of bobblehead character style isn't one I'm particularly fond of. * I don't think the game has a lot of great puzzles. I got stuck and used the hint line quite a few times, and 90% of the time it wasn't because there was a clever piece of logic I hadn't worked out, but more like I hadn't tried one particular thing with one particular character, or there was an item I'd missed which was hard to get to. In particular, the middle of the game I really felt had a lot of busywork to it any not a lot of actual nice 'a ha!' moments. lengthy example: * The final parts of the game I think actually did have some nice puzzles in them. * I do think the character work overall was a little bit shallow. The most developed arc was clearly Dolores, and I liked that character, and I don't know if I'd have prefered a more focused game with just the one lead character, than the character switching. * I didn't find the game particularly funny, but that's mainly I think because I'm not super fond of the sort of self-referential thing this was going for. Characters like Ransome really don't do anything for me, also. * if this sounds a little negative I'd say that my overall impression of the game is that I had a decent but perhaps slightly underwhelming time with it. And my spoilery thoughts: After this, I started my replay of Tales of Monkey Island. While I'm still being critical: * First of all, enjoying it over all. * That control scheme is nooot working for me in 2022 * I think this is probably to do with there being size limitations on the game for the Wii, but I forgot this game does that telltale thing I really dislike which is to give a dialogue choice and then have the characters either deliver the same response no matter what the line was, or actually just read out a completely different line which only slightly resembles the dialogue choice I picked. When I pick a line in a Monkey Island game it's because I want to hear Dominic Armato read that line! * Whoof, yes, this is still the worst version of the main theme to me. It's just the MI1 version, but not even sounding as good as the MI1CD edition, and worst of all, it just ends abruptly, in a weird place. I forgot about that. * The puzzles are a bit trickier than I remember. I remember it as being a kind of easy game, but I've definitely had to think a few times. I've turned hint frequency all the way down. I've been enjoying the difficulty level so far. * I think it can be forgiven for reusing character models for minor characters, I just wish this wasn't also true of ones which would become recurring characters like Winslow. * I'm quite enjoying the music implentation, for what it is. I forgot about the dynamic parts of the soundtrack, it's nice.

Rhea Seehorn from Better Call Saul. And while you're at it, get Bob Odenkirk for a life action Stan

The way that one samples Murray repeatedly saying "Ron Gilbert..." "Ron Gilbert... told.. me" is baffling. Wouldn't be MI fan art without weird choices though. This one showed up a couple weeks after the trailer and made me happy. Also theres this, which showed up early too:

Oh, here, you can have the most plausible Grim Fandango sequel premise it could come up with: In Grim Fandango, Manny Calavera is stuck in the Land of the Dead, working off his debt as a travel agent for the dead. He meets and falls in love with Mercedes Colomar, a newly-deceased woman who is trying to find her way to the Ninth Underworld. In the sequel, Manny has managed to escape the Land of the Dead and is now living in the Ninth Underworld. He is reunited with Mercedes, and they are able to start a new life together. However, trouble soon arises when it is revealed that Manny's escape from the Land of the Dead was not entirely legal. The authorities in the Ninth Underworld are not happy with Manny's presence, and they want him gone. Manny must find a way to clear his name and stay in the Ninth Underworld with Mercedes. Along the way, he will encounter new challenges and face old enemies from his days in the Land of the Dead.

Interestingly, my poll results show that most people don't think there will be a trailer... 😪