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Oh, I knew exactly what I was doing, and it didn't take a voice director to guide me 🙂 I mean, cheap, fun, dumb, goofy, sleazy, whatever. Take it up with whoever wrote the line. But as an actor, there's only one way to read that line responsibly.

Ok, FM Towns support is ready enough to play with. Still a couple of rough edges and uncertainties, but we'll call it 1.0b4. If you have or know someone with a real FM Towns, please help connect me. Particularly unsure of the anemic music in MI2/Indy4. Check out the 1.0b4 release here: https://aarongiles.com/dreamm/ Version:1.0b4 • Added FM Towns support for Zak/Loom/Monkey/Monkey2/Indy3/Indy4. • Improved i386 emulator to support paging (needed for FMTowns). • Added YM2612 and RF5C68 sound emulation (needed for FMTowns). • Support IMA as a file extension for floppy images. • Fix some cases where games would fail when writing save files.

That's correct, I was replying to OP. Yes, I am also going crazy from not hearing more news about the game 😄 Which is not to put myself in your shoes. But my impatience comes from two places. First, there's still a LOT I haven't seen. Or more accurately, I've seen almost everything, but almost none of it has been in its final form. I did a playthrough months ago to prep for recording, but since GB's voice is now in the can and the performance will gain nothing from me seeing/learning more, I'm actively trying not to fire it up so I can preserve some of the unknown for myself! (Primarily voices, graphical polish and some puzzles.) Even more, though, I just can't freaking wait for all of you to see it. Social media existed last time we did this, but it didn't have the same ability to go from 0-170 mph in an instant. I'm just really, really looking forward to a big, collective outburst of joy 🙂

Yeah, I've already played around with keying out the sky to reduce the texture there. But after all, they are still supposed to be paintings, so even the sky would have texture. Looking at the DOTT marker paintings, I've noticed that texture gets stronger the darker the color is - which makes sense, as the paper gets wetter, it roughens more. I'll incorporate that in my next version. Until then, enjoy some aspect ratio-corrected screens with some hastily upscaled Sam & Max sprites (until someone more capable than me redraws them in HD).

You guys can pretend to be cultured all you like - we all know what you're really thinking.

A test with replaced texts:

LOL, seems I forgot to remove the frontend code that blocks you from adding FM Towns versions of the games. (Works fine if you add them from the command line, as I usually do.) Quick update to 1.0b5 to remove that. https://aarongiles.com/dreamm/

This can't be right. That pirate's actually working.

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.

They've said, both before and in recent interviews, some stuff that can probably give us some clues. Back in 2013, Ron's thinking was here: I more or less agree with this with a few caveats, but that's by the by. More recently toward the start of ReMI, he's said: It's unclear what he could mean here. What IS the current status quo. I don't really think there exists enough consistency in adventure UIs to have a status quo, so I'd be interested to know what Ron had in mind here. In interviews, they've said: In my opinion if this were JUST what we saw in Dolores, or just similar to something that already exists, they would have simply said that. It's a fascinating quote because it sounds like whatever they've hit on, they believe that it's truly different to what's been attempted before. This bit... Feels to me like it's hinting towards some sort of context sensitive elements of the intervace, moving away from just a standard list of verbs and moving more towards actions that serve particular puzzles in particular moments. Suggests some sort of dialling down of the ability to do invalid actions which to some people might sound a bit scary, like it'll make the game feel too easy or something, but I wouldn't be TOO worried about that, because it's all about how you design the puzzles around the new interface. Sometimes in Thimbleweed Park, for example, I felt like the puzzles were only 'hard' because the possibility space was so big and not because I actually had to be clever with my working out. But puzzles in Monkey Island like following the shopkeeper to the swordmaster were clever and satisfying even though the only thing you were doing is walking around. Or ones like retaining the grog to go to the jail were clever even though all you were doing was using one item with another. You don't need a ton of invalid possible actions with canned responses 'Mmm.... no' to make the puzzles feel good. You just have to .... design clever puzzles. It excites me that they might have spent more time in this game thinking about what would be fun things for the player to figure out. I've been thinking along similar lines for an adventure game I'm in the early stages of designing with a friend, and it's really fun to try to think of puzzles that use the interaction style and feel of adventure games, but in puzzle situations I don't think I've seen before.

The 69 reference in mists of time is 100% a Bill and Ted reference, because in that movie Ted meets himself in a time loop and asks what number he’s thinking of and they both answer with “69 dude!!!” There aren’t many movie references that direct elsewhere in the games are there? Where guybrush will straight up quote a movie’s own joke. The one example that comes to mind is giving the Phatt Island librarian “1060 West Addison” as your address, which is the address they give to the cops in the Blues Brothers to throw them off the scent, later revealed to be the address of Wrigley Field. But even that one feels more understated.

I've taked about this a bit too far but I agree with his comments from years before about how mostly verbs are cruft and getting rid of them isn't as scary as it sounds. Inventory items are more interesting than verbs. But I do think Tales took it one step too far in removing 'look' (except for inventory items, I guess). So whatever the new thing is I hope it either finds a way to make verbs more interesting than they have been before and I hope it isn't so stripped back that we lose what we had in a meaningful way.

I can't say I'm a complete expert on US culture and language, but I would guess the 69 is a reference that has long since found its way into generally kid-friendly franchises. For me, most notably, the 1989 movie Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. It was probably perceived as too raunchy in Germany at the time, so they dubbed over it with a reference to Arnold Schwarzenegger. This might be one of the allusions that you can put into anything. Whoever understands it is probably old enough to do so. Same with the "Is that a ... in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?" paradigm. It's in Who framed Roger Rabbit (rated PG). So, yes, the director probably asked Dom to NOW SAY IT WITH THE SLEAZY VOICE. But that doesn't make EMI a sex game. Well, for Fox News maybe. And that Argentinian TV station that raged about how kids imbibe "Grog XD". Hey, that was my joke up there. 😆

I actually know it as this song: (Please don’t comment on the imagery in this clip, the discussion has been fueled enough over here.) It’s been a traditional dutch “Sinterklaas” song for as long as I know. Sinterklaas is the dutch Santa Claus, (in fact Santa is derived from this tradition.)

In the case of both games the humor is pretty broad for my tastes, but I don't know what there is to object to with regard to design. Having recently replayed the Monkey Island games in preparation for ReMI, and a bunch of other LEC adventures to put DREAMM through its paces, and Thimbleweed Park, and Broken Age, I'm now revisiting the Autumn Moon titles. I ended up starting with Ghost Pirates. It's pretty much how I remember it: budget constraints really denies it that final level of polish (cutscenes suffer especially) and I wish they'd contracted BA Sound, but it's quite solid. I am enjoying it more than Broken Age, which I compare it to because it shares the "switch between characters at will" mechanic and is even similarly divided into two main acts. It's definitely not nearly as polished as the Double Fine title but neither is it as lofty. I like the world more, even with the cheese. Locations like this supplemented by Camacho's music is just money in the bank:

To be fair, Full Throttle used that interface first.

I hear no resemblance at all. And I've known Oh, du lieber Augustin for like 14 years before I first booted up LeChuck's Revenge. 😄 I mean, I can hear strong similarities between Jared Emerson-Johnson's "4-59" and a song from Bud Spencer's "Non c'è due senza quattro". But I don't even for a second think that Jared was inspired by a 1984 Italian movie.

I'm not sure what weird conventions in other genres has to do with it, I guess? But I'll have a go - I think what Ron is getting at is that verbs don't actually have very much utility, or at least they are given way too much prominence for the amount of utility they have. Those two examples you gave... sure, they're odd genre conventions, but it's useful in a game where your health is important to have a way to heal quickly because I don't think most people would enjoy an FPS where every time you got shot you had to take a trip to hospital. And in a game where scavenging items is important, on whatever corpse is nearby is as good a place as any (I would say how realistic the items you find might be varies from game to game, and that's about how much that game cares about realism vs utility). So the obvious question is... what do verbs bring to the party? And the answer is... usually, very little. I've made this point before, but if you go through the walkthrough to DOTT, for example, and have a look at which puzzles actually wouldn't be as good if you took the verbs away, it's a small handful of situations across the whole game. I can't remember them all - one of them is pushing the speaker over in Green Tentacle's bedroom, another one is opening the clock. With very few exceptions, puzzles are solved by picking stuff up, using things with other things and talking to people. "But those few situations where other verbs are useful still exist" Sure, but they're so rare, and spread out that they might as well not. They could have been replaced with other, equally clever puzzles that didn't need extra verbs. "But sometimes you get a funny response." Yeah I guess, but 90% of the time you just get a canned response you've heard a million times. "But the verbs add detail to the game and complexity that raises the difficulty of all puzzles. Removing them narrows the possibility space and therefore your thinking." Maybe? But like I said, you don't need to fill the game with red herring verbs and canned responses to make a good puzzle, you just need to be a bit creative in how you frame the puzzles. So where I tend to fall on this is: 1. The look verb is cool. Keep that, in some way. 2. The rest can probably be boiled down to one or two actions. 3. Inventory. Inventory is already like verbs, but better because you can gain them, lose them, combine them, spend part of them. Inventory does everything a verb does, and more, and can be ANYTHING, and in this context losing things like Push/Pull Open/Close, and seperate Talk To/Use/Pick Up commands seems trivial. I believe that Ron meant something like this when saying verbs are cruft. And we already know this. Nobody said Grim Fandango's puzzles were too basic, or Escape's, and they basically did away with everything except for Look and Interact. And of the various complaints I hear about Curse, its 3-verb system isn't one of them. In fact, people liked it so much that now call it the Verb Coin system, even though Full Throttle used the same type of thing before it. "

As far as I'm concerned, Curse of Monkey Island perfected the modern verb-based interface. I don't really understand why every adventure game since hasn't just stolen it.

There's also this quote from The Verge: I honestly can't imagine a point and click interface that's just as good with a mouse and keyboard as it is with a controller. But if they pull it off that'll be really cool.

(Note: Quoted post is stolen from the ReMI ramp-up thread) I've been thinking this over and over, and there's good signs and bad signs. Ron's not likely to go from nine to one verb, that's for sure. But RonDave have also said they're "evolving" the genre. And whenever somebody said that about the adventure game genre in recent decades, it meant simplification (or action elements, but I don't expect that here). And evolution, I mean, it's a completely arbitrary, non-discriminating process. Evolution is sticking on random things that accidentally happen to work in a given era, and shearing off what has become unpopular for the most absurd of reasons. 💀

Pair of dimes?

I've added a bunch more backgrounds. You're right, the (automatically generated) brush strokes aren't ideal (apart from location, like on the truck above, because those were randomly masked across the image, without much manual placement). Generally, I mostly wanted the brush strokes there to fake a bit more detail. I know that marker or watercolor paintings wouldn't have them, but when placed manually (like in my latest additions), they could at least suggest a bit of texture on stuff like wood or rock. If I took this further, I'd actually use different textures for different parts of the image - basically the hi-def version of the pixel-art paint overs the original backgrounds got. A lot of this stuff on my latest additions was automated in After Effects, including random placement of the paper texture, with manual masking of the paint strokes afterwards.

I was wondering if they were going to do playable flashbacks like TP.. if they did it would make sense why it’s not just a direct sequel to MI2. Also avoids time travel while still jumping around in the story.

Sounds like a better tip is to just avoid the SEs and play the actual games that shipped in 1990 and 1991. ;

Apparently the same tune is used for Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and Mary Had a Little Lamb Baa, Baa, Black Sheep. I never realized that. Mind blown.

Sorry to get pedantic, but it didn't. It's was the first attempt at the verb coin, but it was perfected with Curse. Full Throttle's was always slightly clunky. From the slightly-too-long delay to the cramped inventory. Exactly. The two are superficially the same, but the small changes make the difference. I love Curse's interface... I tolerate Full Throttle's. (Although the worst of the second generation interfaces was Sam & Max's by far).

Personally, I think the Full Throttle interface was kind of clunky, in that it has a "Kick" verb that's only used for a couple of puzzles (kicking open the Kickstand door and the secret switch for the Corley Motors back entrane IIRC). And combining the "Eye" and "Mouth" icons into a single skull element felt like they were crammed into awkwardly small spaces. In contrast, CMI has separate areas on the Verb Coin for the "Eye" and "Mouth" icons, which feels much easier to control when you're holding down the mouse button to select an action (rather than just simply clicking once to make a pop-up menu appear). It's not surprisng IMO why it was the CMI version of that interface that really became well-remembered.

Official movie props for Indiana Jones just went up for sale and preorder today, with more coming soon like the Staff topper from Raiders. No word yet on the Fate of Atlantis posters... https://www.shopdisney.com/movies-shows/disney/indiana-jones/?searchType=autosuggest&originalTerm=Indiana Jones

Ah, I see. The blasted thing is a generic folk/rhyme tune, like the one used for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, etc. 🥲

Two against one, you lose. ;

I believe most of it survives here: https://web.archive.org/web/20180926094338/http://www.worldofmi.com/features/trivia/ Plus of course The SCUMM Bar and The Legend of MI continue to thrive survive. It’s all too easy to get lost in a nostalgic dive through those sites.

I hope that whatever the interface is, it allows for some interesting puzzles and a good amount of experimentation/exploration. I feel like there needs to be a good balance between streamlining the gameplay and having a satisfying amount of options. We do know at least from Ron's musings on his blog that he's not a fan of just a single click to interact, or what he called the "poke" verb (meaning "poke" this and see what happens, wash, rinse, repeat); I think that's probably Tales' biggest weakness, even though I'd still argue it has plenty of memorable puzzles.

Worst edit in the history of edits. See actual post below.

...and in Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis also.

I’m sorry, please explain this paradigm to me?

Yeah that was kinda how I saw it if there was any intention at all. It certainly doesn't come near the Leisure Suit Larry levels of "humour".

And the fencing theme Michael wrote for the beginning. I could listen to that for hours. Avoids time travel, indeed, but also makes the whole thing pretty linear because you know the outcome of these scenes. Hmmm. I'm still clinging to the prediction that ReMI will consist of a series of playable flashbacks. But we'll see. SOON. There's a reason LeChuck makes them ghost pirates first. 😉 I have no idea what you're talking about. Please elaborate in detail. 🙉

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.

Further thoughts on Tales of Monkey Island now I've hit episode 2: * I think Guybrush is written a bit too stupid/silly in these episodes so far. He's a little bit wet and sometimes a bit oblivious - mostly to problems he's causing, but I never got the sense in the first few games that he was a complete buffoon -- he gets stuff done and can hold his own in a battle of wits. Here he occasionally approaches Homer Simpson levels of obliviousness. I don't think it's a bad joke for Guybrush to be so tickled by the idea of mermaids existing that he doesn't pay attention to what Winslow's saying, but it doesn't feel particularly Guybrush to me. * I've only played the start of Chapter 2, but so far I think it flows a bit better than the first, and the dialogue is just a little snappier overall. There's some signs of them settling into the writing style that really starts paying off in the next episode if I recall. * I enjoyed the puzzle at the end of Chapter 1 involving listening out for De Singe's sounds. * I'm worried I'm not gonna love some of these jokes about the Merfolk. * It's done something which is a really nitpicky pet peeve of mine. It's not 'Insult Swordfighting' and shouldn't be called that in universe. It's just sword fighting. EMI is the worst at this, treating 'Insult Swordfighting' like it's a thing, and not just what players called the puzzle about swordfighting, but I think to make a whole thing of it undermines the excellent joke/puzzle in MI1 that this is how they resolved to implement swordfighting in an adventure game. * a friend pointed out something to me that i think I agree with. People are way too nice to Guybrush. Guybrush can be a little bit of a jerk sometimes but it was always balanced out by the characters generally having no interest in being his friend, or feeding his ego. I think it's fun to have the one character, Winslow comically taking everything in his stride, but other characters are a lot like that too, way too tolerant of Threep's bullshit. * I still feel like the difficulty is piched about right, once you turn hints down * It's a nicer looking game than I remember, but that makes me want a remaster more than ever. * De Cava's theme music is really nice.

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

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

I wouldn't mind Anna Karney's Armed & Dangerous soundtrack seeing the light of day either. Unleash those bagpipes.

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

elTee makes better points than me, but quite frankly the logic of the complaints towards the Remasters seems reflective of so many other hyper-emotional fanboi rants that seem to bleed out from Reddit. To me they are the product of groupthink -- ideas supported and bolstered by a group existing in a vacuum. And when they're challenged outside of that vacuum there's an inability to defend them without resulting to circular logic or side-stepping. Or just a plain old hyper-emotional response. In the case of people complaining about missing lines and recasting in the Remasters. Hmm. Lines were changed between versions of MI. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes by mistake. (Some of them have only just been restored in ScummVM.) And the special editions made even more changes, cutting lines. I don't recall anyone getting seriously upset any them. Same goes for recasting. TellTale games would sometimes recast roles between episodes! Sometimes people missed the originals, sometimes they preferred the new takes. Sam & Max themselves have been recast countless times throughout their many iterations! Again, I don't recall anyone getting seriously upset about that. I know elTee suggests this is purely a generation thing, but honestly I can't say I'm convinced, because when someone is recast for reasons which could be described as "woke" (reasons for which I wholeheartedly applaud and support), strangely then it's a huge issue. Changing a line like "take our complimentary goggles designed for special needs children!" is treated as a crime against culture! Sorry, I just don't buy it. I do prefer the performance of the original Bosco actor, but I also understand and agree with why it was changed. Same goes with the line alterations. And believe me, I'm someone who has gotten bent out of shape when other remasters have gotten things wrong. It drives me crazy when something I really care about is changed for bad reasons (like the "Golo Flake" label oversight in Grim Fandango which makes the puzzle harder to solve -- after DoubleFine promised a "Criterion Edition" level remaster). But the changes made to the S&M Remasters weren't done for bad reasons... So if that still bugs you then I think it's less about the changes themselves, and more about the reasons for the changes. Recent example to illustrate my point: Earl Boen isn't going to reprise LeChuck in Return to Monkey Island and so the role is going to be recast. Fans accept this unfortunate turn because of the reason (Boen has decided to retire). So I think it's actually all about the reason for the changes. Either you think the reasons were justified, and so you are disappointed but understand. Or you think they were unjustified, and so you refuse to buy the product and blame the developer for making them. I know this makes me sound old, too, but this sort of reaction (and the blind belief that everyone, everywhere agrees with it) makes me worry about the future. *shakes old man cane*

Man, reading this just made me feel impossibly old and sad. I cannot relate to this at all, and it just shows how much the world of gaming has changed in the last twenty years or so. When I grew up it was normal for games to receive changes. All of the early LucasArts games were changed multiple times. Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken were both replaced, during their original lifespan, by different versions. Loom has more versions than I can even count without a reference. The Secret of Monkey Island was released in EGA, then a few months later a VGA version came out with completely new art assets throughout. They released the same game on CD a few years later and made changes to it. They made a further edition of it in 2009 which had further changes. None of this was considered sinister or oppressive. It was a company taking an existing product and trying to give new buyers a reason to purchase it. I guess we all have one specific version of a game that is the one we played first. That's the "correct" one in our own little subjective world. For me and Monkey Island, it's the EGA PC version with the internal speaker soundtrack. That's not the "best" version or the "canonical" version or any of that guff, it's just the one I experienced first, it's the one I'm nostalgic for. The existence of all those other versions doesn't invalidate it. If I want to revisit it, I can revisit it. But that EGA version I played also had an adlib soundtrack that I didn't get to hear the first time I played it. I heard that music later, and it's objectively "better" than the PC speaker equivalent. I enjoy that version of the theme music too. If we're going to talk about re-releasing old games then it's important to ask the question of whether the company should cater to me. There's an EGA version of this game with a PC speaker soundtrack, so surely it's no real work or effort on their part to add a toggle for those modes, is there? Well, setting aside the obvious fallacy that anything in game development is "easy" or involves "no real work", why should those modes necessarily be supported? Is the objective of a re-release to simply emulate the original? Which version of Monkey Island 1 is the original in this scenario, anyway? I mean, EGA was released first, but LucasArts themselves replaced it with a VGA version. So which one is the "original"? If you first played the VGA version, you might make the argument that the VGA version is "obviously better" because it has more colours. But that's a subjective opinion! The simple reality is that the game I'm nostalgic for still exists. I can still play it. I don't need them to re-release it, I already own it. And where does the nostalgia end? Is it still true to the original experience if I don't have to type DOS prompts in to start the game? Is it really the same without the copy protection? My opinion is that the objective of a re-release should be to bring something new or to update the art and the music in a way that might appeal to gamers who weren't lucky enough to be there the first time around. It's never to "replace the original". Fans of the original version(s) might love a re-release or they might hate it, but so what? You said yourself that Skunkape has done a "fantastic" job "on a technical level". Skunkape has also made the original versions of the games available. If this isn't enough for you, I wonder what is? It almost sounds like what you want is a version of the game that keeps the graphical improvements, because you've deemed those to be acceptable, but that also lets you choose which other aspects of the game are "original" or "updated". That's fine if that's what you want, but let's not pretend that's an objective desire for "the original". That's what YOU want. And again, it's okay to want that. But why do you expect to find it in anything except your original version that you fell in love with? I guess the above is the part that makes me feel so old. The part that makes me feel sad is the words you use here. "Backlash, less sales, an army of trolls review bombing and warning people". This is INSANITY. It's a video game. The people who made it are real human beings with feelings just like the rest of us, and I'm fairly sure they are doing this as a labour of love, a genuine good faith effort to re-release an old game to a new community, and they want everyone to be free to enjoy it in the most inclusive way possible. How are these things seen as negative? Some of the other things you have said allude to the problems in this discourse. "The Voodoo Lady's voice actor is a white lady in that game so she obviously has to go." "people calling each other racists or nazis in the community just because some people happen to prefer the old voice actor". These are not rational video game points of discussion. It's just a sad reflection on how successful the white supremacist propagandists have been in the last ten years. I'm not saying this about you, here, I just mean broadly across society. I think a lot of kids get introduced to concepts like this by extremely malicious individuals with a nihilistic bent who enjoy watching good people start to spout divisive rhetoric, because they've found a way to sell these concepts that is prima facie reasonable. Of course, it doesn't hold up to any real scrutiny. But this isn't the place for that debate, and if anyone tries to take it there they can expect to find this discussion diverted back on track quite sharply. We're all tired of these arguments. You said it yourself - "I saw that once, it was really stupid, I'd rather not watch the rerun thank you very much." I honestly think that this kind of comment is something people only really say when they're immune from the real-world negative consequences. When they are so hard-up for actual oppression, so far away from being a victim, that the only place they can find it is in a video game. I'm not trying to say anything bad about you, this isn't personal. Like I said, I'm just old, and I'm really, really sad.

Dalixam deleted it and wouldn’t let Mojo archive it 😡