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Ron was finally the brave enough one to click the "Enable 3D Acceleration" option on Curse of Monkey Island preferences.

Two small tips for those who are playing or planning to play some of these games, in case you find them useful: 1) The Special Edition of the first Monkey Island is known to have very long, awkward pauses after every spoken sentence, which completely ruins the flow of the dialogue. Indeed, many people have complained about this in this forum. However, there's a very easy fix for that, which I have never seen reported anywhere: switch to the classic version with F10. Press "+" a few times to max out the text speed. Switch back to the Special Edition mode. Enjoy the dialogue without weird pauses. 2) The control scheme of Tales of Monkey Island is usually criticized as well. As a matter of fact, I think this was briefly dicussed in the "Return to Monkey Island" main post, but I'm mentioning it here because it feels more on-topic and so that it doesn't get lost there. There were some comments about how the control scheme feels dated and convoluted, and I was wondering: is everybody aware that the game includes an alternative control scheme that, for some reason, is not mentioned (I think) in the tutorial at all? I agree the hold-the-mouse-botton-to-walk system is not very comfortable. However, you can also use the WASD keys to control Guybrush directly (hold Shift to run). So you move Guybrush with the keyboard, and you control the pointer with the mouse to interact with objects, as you normally would. I actually think this is a great control system, and I even found myself using it instinctively quite a few times when I played the Sam & Max remasters.

The game's probably finished by now, they'll just have to hold it back another three months until they can get the German voiceover done so we'll stop whining all the time. 🇩🇪 Errrr nothing to see here. Just some persistent negative thoughts. Move along. 🙈

Playing around with ESRGAN a bit, I noticed how cleanly the HTR backgrounds could be upscaled, so I went the extra mile and added stuff like paper textures and brush strokes to them. The results could almost pass for scans of original background paintings (or remastered backgrounds), even though you can also see the limits of this technique on smaller details and stuff that's been meticulously pixeled in (especially text). Still, with a bit of manual work on each background, these could probably work as "Special Edition" backgrounds. A few samples (Note: These aren't aspect ratio-corrected yet):

I thought about making this into an article but it somehow seemed like less work better as a thread. The Lucasfilm learning division, particularly the early days of it, has always been a somewhat murky part of the company’s history. It wasn’t until the late 90s that the division emerged as the more recognized spinoff company “Lucas Learning,” which helped create the impression that it didn’t exist until then. But on Lucasfilm.com, the following entries appear in the company history timeline: The explanation for why the division was so invisible for ten years seems to be that they functioned more like an R&D laboratory than a game studio, and their main product in the early days was edutainment targeted at classrooms. They were making multimedia primarily for schools and organizations, not shelf-sold games for retail consumers. This software was of the then cutting-edge interactive CD-ROM/LaserDisc variety that anyone who grew up in the 90s was probably exposed to at some point. Most of what is publicly known about this era of the learning division comes from a series of contemporary articles that @Jenni helpfully collated here, and it comes across that the work done during this period could be pretty pioneering, experiment stuff. This video montage of Paul Parkranger and the Case of the Disappearing Ducks, a collaboration between the division and the National Audubon Society circa 1991, probably gives a decent idea of the kind of products they were developing: We know of a few recognizable LucasArts developers who served stints at the learning division. Husband-and-wife Jonathan Ackley and Casey Ackley did a spell there at the beginning of their careers. Most notably, Brian Moriarty hopped there to work on a Young Indiana Jones game between shipping Loom and his return for the ill-fated attempt at The Dig. The Young Indy game (putatively called Young Indiana Jones at the World’s Fair) was obviously a tie-in for the ABC television show, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, and its planned existence explains the following reference at the end of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis: Indy seems to have been a pretty big part of George Lucas’s grand plans for the division. In this article, he even claims that Young Indy was an educational software idea first, but one he concluded he would never have gotten funded in that form. So he came up with a show, which would produce hours of story content (on a television network’s dime) that his interactive concept could ultimately exploit. What’s described is pretty ambitious, ahead-of-its-time stuff: Ultimately, none of this software actually materialized, probably in part because the show got cancelled midway through its second season. In any case, the money dried up before Lucas could really take things as far as he envisioned. Young Indy still ended up being something of a hotbed for emerging technology. It is said that the series was used as sort of an incubator for some of the post-production tools that Lucas would use to make the Star Wars prequels. Digital editing, set-extending CGI effects, and other tech that would eventually become institutional in the entertainment business used Young Indy as a proving ground. When he got around to putting the series on DVD, Lucas drastically recut the show into 22 features and revisited the idea of the series as an educational tool. This included preparing 90 supplemental documentaries and approving a pretty serious initiative to produce companion curriculum. You can check out the still-functional http://www.indyintheclassroom.com/ for more. As for the learning division, it continued to exist in various forms, and was probably responsible for a few things sold under the LucasArts banner before “Lucas Learning” became a formal brand. For example, Mortimer and the Riddles of the Medallion seems like a shoo-in for a Lucas Learning title had the label existed at that time, and it would surprise me if Star Wars: Behind the Magic, an interactive encyclopedia for the franchise, wasn’t a product built in that building as well. In the developer commentary for Full Throttle Remastered, Tim asks Casey Ackley about a “library archive project” she was involved with at the learning division that he cites for its innovative use of a pop-out interface similar to Full Throttle’s. Something along the lines of Behind the Magic isn’t the craziest interpretation of what that could be referring to. It could also refer to the Indiana Jones thing. It could also refer to one of the several projects that actually got released that I simply wouldn’t know anything about. Anyway, there are still plenty of gaps, but it’s always fun to hear a bit more about this somewhat unsung arm of the Lucas empire. They were up to some wild stuff.

QUICK! If we all post more often the trailer will come out faster. Lets get to 76 pages by tomorrow 😂

Earlier this month saw the release of Mark Griskey's soundtrack for Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. The occasion was probably the new Switch port of the game, but to my knowledge it represents the first official release of a LucasArts game soundtrack album by Disney's music label, which all Lucasfilm music ended up under after the acquisition. Hopefully a sign of things to come?

This is great though I'm not fond of the brush strokes at all and the paper textures seem to be a bit too prominent and more watercolor paper than proper marker paper which is very smooth. The thing with the link of Peter Chan's backgrounds for Dott is it shows a lot of texture because the exposure in the scans are way blown out, or it could be that over the years they have faded quite a bit since marker paintings are not good for storing and even less for displaying as the colors will fade really fast, but originally those should have looked much more strong and fairly even looking and the paper texture wouldn't be as noticeable or at all specially if they use layout paper (or paper best suitable for markers which is very smooth). You might add a little bit of paper texture but that brush stroke just looks terrible to be honest, it reminds me of that cheap gimmick used to turn photos into "paintings" that adds brush strokes everywhere even though real paints don't work or look like that. If you see Steve Purcell's work you might see there are no noticeable brushstrokes, that is because he uses either acrylic, gouache and/or watercolor paints and neither of those leave noticeable brush marks on the paper, you might see some here and there depending on how dry the brush was while painting but never consistently all over the piece.

So you deny in front of everyone that this is you standing in front of the world's single Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island poster.

Oh man that was me in 2006 when Telltale said they were making a new Sam & Max. I was on edge until the game came out.

li·bel (lī′bəl) n. The legally indefensible publication or broadcast of words or images that are degrading to a person or injurious to his or her reputation.

https://mixnmojo.com/features/sitefeatures/LucasArts-Secret-History-14-Escape-from-Monkey-Island/6

Everyone likes an underdog, so how about a little sugar for Bill Tiller’s studio Autumn Moon Entertainment, which produced all of two games – A Vampyre Story and Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island – before the funding opportunities went the way of Mixnmojo’s press credentials. That was thirteen years ago. While these games do not reach the heights of the LucasArts classics they were clearly looking to as a beacon (with Bill’s best known resume entry, The Curse of Monkey Island, being specifically quoted interface-wise), I do think they are a substantial cut above the usual LucasArts Reminder games that the point ‘n click genre turns out so regularly. Whatever their issues, I always thought the games were a pretty auspicious opening salvo and was really eager to see the studio continue to hone its talents…which is hard to do without more projects to do that on. As of only a few weeks ago, A Vampyre Story got plucked from Steam and GOG to be exclusively hosted on a digital platform called ZOOM. Ghost Pirates, which is reputedly @Remi's favorite game of all time, remains available on Steam. The future of Autumn Moon: still unwritten. Here’s the place to place to discuss Bill’s curtailed efforts at running his own graphic adventure studio. Turns out, it's a tough racket.

Have you tried clicking on all the stars on the main page of returntomonkeyisland.com? I do that every day. It really helps.

That guy looks like he's being forced to stand infront of the poster at gunpoint. 😒

Congrats! It seems that's the life stage a lot of us are at now 😁 You'll definitely be finding your free time is a bit more limited!

I'm pretty sure MI6 will get a proper soundtracks release, because lately Disney has done this a LOT (especially most of the latest Star Wars games all got official releases). Monkey Island is still the crown jewel of LucasArts' classic IPs, so I could see the release of MI6 giving enough momentum for more love towards the other games of the franchise.

Thanks everyone! I'm gonna try out your suggestions when I get some free time! We've been a bit preoccupied with our newborn son lately, so everything else is put on hold.

Oh my gosh!! These are so impressive!! And even though there would need to be someone manually touching them up for some minor details, this is like, a huge part of the work already done!!

EMI received a native Mac port in April 2001, courtesy of Aspyr. Now, I'm not a Mac user, but I'm assuming if that version was capable of running on modern macOS, people would hardly be resorting to ResidualVM/ScummVM or WINE. I've always been curious, though, how severe the incompatibility issues with that port are that emulating the Windows version became the shortest path to a workaround.

I actually agree with you. I don't think I would have instigated a logo change, but I have no problems with the SE one, and I actually like it a lot for Tales. However, for the sake of consistency, I wish they hadn't changed it... or only used it for the SEs.

That would break me. There's still a part of me that won't believe this game is real until I'm playing it.

I don't know... I feel like you're advocating for a much 'smaller' and more streamlined game, when really it was the wide open world that I really enjoyed about the middle part of the game. Sure, sometimes I felt as if I wasn't sure what I should be working on next, but there was always clues in the todo lists that gave me plenty to think about and work on. If I couldn't progress in one line of puzzles there was always something else I could make progress with. Also... it seems kinda strange to be spending so much time trying to get into Safely First when it was obviously closed. Right away I filed it away as "hmm.. maybe this will open later". One example of this (and I'm sure there are others) is in MI1 was when Stan's Emporium is closed when you first visit there, but opens later when you are in need of a ship. Sure... if you want to poke around and try to get into the bank there's nothing wrong with that, but no offence or anything, but it seems odd to be frustrated with it doesn't work.

Yep. Actually Twin Peaks The Return is another good example of this: The second viewing was sooo much more enjoyable than the first time around. I think we're all in for a bumpy ride with ReMI!

AT it’s just as likely that you are making up a read behind those photos as the author of that Twitter account is. Like in the Outlaws thread you basically made up that the document was for two separate games (I guess citing Last Crusade as precedence, despite the action game not being an in house project in that case), and then continued to pile evidence on top of that as if it was true, and repeatedly challenged people who might claim otherwise - with no additional evidence other than how well it fits into your theory, which is not actually evidence. You cannot both invent the foundation yourself, and refute other people citing flaws in the foundation, without additional hard evidence that strengthens that foundation itself. (How well it enhances other ideas further downstream from that foundation is not further evidence of the validity of that foundation, that’s not how it works.) Your pattern seems to be: Create a hypothesis/foundation and then declare “if that is true, it gives new meaning to all these other things,” which is often very interesting and lets us see previously unrelated things in a new and possibly-interconnected light, but if your foundation is also your hypothesis you absolutely have to be more graciously accepting of challenges to the hypothesis. Indy could just as easily be questioning the snake might be real, and given his pattern of fearing snakes it’s more likely what is happening than his entire character being misrepresented by him being “revenant” to a snake. But that would disrupt your own ideas downstream of that hypothesis so you give it no credence, despite like you it being posted by a fan. Your arguments will forever be weak if you take this defensive approach. It seems like you are more interested in building up your own theories than pursuing the truth.