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I wanted my hand at EGA-palettised version of new Guybrush.

So apparently Bill Tiller likes the new art direction: https://www.instagram.com/p/CfWrjkPpGT4/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

The publisher steps in.

Us in 2009: Tales' setting in the chronology is confusing! Is it MI5 or MI6? Return to Monkey Island: Hold my Grog

Remi’s eagle eyes strike again.

Even wilder and more specific theory. Guybrush starts talking to his kids about how he used to come to this place with 'your Uncle Chuckie.' You know, '....before he died...' and then the subtext of the whole game is him returning to this park and coming to terms with the death of an older brother with whom he had a... complicated relationship.

Here's my completely wild stab in the dark guess at how we get from the end of Monkey Island 2 back into the game. Right where we leave off, Guybrush starts wandering the theme park, and we scroll along with him. As he does we see various attractions pass him by in the background and foreground. They allude to the various different adventures he's been on, but not just the ones before Monkey 2 but the ones after too. Perhaps we see a cart selling Goodsoup brand soups. Maybe we see a giant robot monkey ride in the back. Definitely a grog machine. A volcano themed rollercoaster. As he keeps on walking, the boundary between this world and the world of Monkey Island starts to become a bit looser. Maybe Guybrush starts changing, too. Gradually getting his coat back, then boots, etc, when he passes behind foreground items, until he's fully back in Monkey Island again but we get the sense that the timeline isn't so important any more because of what we've seen. Alternatively: similar to above, but at some point it transitions between guybrush visiting the with his parents to Guybrush taking his own kids there. But the park is now older, a little more run down, some of the attractions have lost a bit of their lustre, and it's not what it was before. Guybrush starts to imagine what Melee island would be like now, if he returned to it after all these years...

Thanks Aaron! In the meantime, your application has already replaced DOSBox and my Windows 95 VM as my personal way for checking the original behavior of the games. DREAMM is so quick to use that I'll probably never be bothered again to fire up DOSBox for that purpose.

This is maddening. It was painful waiting for an update, but instead of sating me, the trailer has made the wait for release even more excruciating!

Avril Harrison drew the classic Deluxe Paint King Tut illustration. What a powerhouse team Monkey Island had in seemingly every version.

I'm curious to see what LeChuck's ambitions are in this one. While history would imply he would want Elaine again, I think there's something much bigger going on. He didn't even give her a thought in Revenge, so I'm really interested what route they take with the character. I always wondered if LeChuck wanting to marry Elaine was simply just about having her by his side forever. There is one curious line he says in the original "With years of planning almost ruined by my death," which seems to imply that he had plans for Elaine even before their first encounter. In the novel, On Stranger Tides, Blackbeard wanted to marry Beth in order to gain the powers of man and woman. Since that novel inspired Monkey Island, I wonder if there is something there and LeChuck wanting to marry Elaine was much bigger in scope for his ambitions.

I've been thinking about this, and I came to the realisation that while I'm sure Ron wants the fans to enjoy his games, he also is clearly making the game for himself as much as anyone else. RMI is something he's wanted to do for decades. He's also talked a lot about how ultimately, he's ok with not everybody loving what he does and being proud of his own accomplishments independent of an audience. He talks a lot about this in his PAX Australia speech when he refers to a statement Spielberg said about being confident enough in what you create that you will "dance naked on top of it", using The Cave as an example of a game he made that had a mixed response but he is nevertheless extremely proud of. It might take time and serious consideration, but I can see Ron taking this experience and becoming tougher from it and maybe just engaging with fans in a different, more controlled way the next time he tackles one of his old IP. I wish that last part wasn't necessary but you've gotta protect your own mental health; the shit he recieved can do some serious damage to a person's confidence, hell it made ME depressed. Now on the idea itself: hell yeah! A fully voiced, prettier looking Maniac Mansion with tighter design and more puzzles? Hook it into my veins yesterday!

I totally just stumbled onto a pun that might end up having something to do with the Key Queen/King(not sure): Monarch-Key ... I'll let myself out

Pretty much 🙂

This is SO GOOD! I love the magenta rim light 😍

Heh, I lied. Apparently threatening this as the "final" beta brought out a bunch of bug reports, a few of which needed more invasive fixes. So we'll do (hopefully) one more beta before calling 1.0. Get 1.0b7 here: https://aarongiles.com/dreamm/ Version:1.0b7 • Fix modifier keys (shift/control) in Curse of Monkey Island. • Fix bug in copying from physical media; allow for multiple CDs when copying. • Bump memory for Indy Fate and the Ultimate Talkie Monkeys to 2MB since they can use EMS. • Add CD-ROM menu when game is run from a CD image or physical CD-ROM. • Fix mouse cursor in Maniac Mansion when run from within Day of the Tentacle. • Fix video detection in early games when Tandy sound is not selected. • Suppress error messages for CoMI disc 2 and for Maniac Mansion when found within Day of the Tentacle.

Incase you're wondering if they're reading your Tweets, I sent a nice message of support to the team (@grumpygamer @phrenopolis @JennSandercock @DavidBFox) and got likes back from them. Why not let them know that there are people who there who are super excited about Return!

It is sad, but I’ve personally stopped reading into it too much now. There is a clear pattern emerging of these idiots mostly coming from some pretty sad corners of the internet, for example you look at their Reddit profiles and they’re full of right-wing nonsense. I think there is unfortunately a subset of fans of most things — after all, they were once children just like us — who also have an incredibly toxic view of the world, and a knack for sharing that toxicity far and wide. In a funny sort of way it makes me feel better about it all, because frankly there is no helping those people. And so the only reasonable option is to disengage and not allow them to poison the good vibes, which is what I have been doing when the nastier comments appear in the Mojosphere — straight into the bin.

I think so too! But I'm pretty sure they can't beat your guesses. ;)

I completely forgot that part, so I'm going to say #3 Is captain Madison only by the similarity to the silhouette that we see throwing Guybrush off a cliff or something. More people should jump on this thread 😀 it was a lot of fun trying to guess 😀

I should say that while this is my idea for what a way to go from carnival back to MI universe could work, I don't necessarily have an opinion about how much the carnival vs the MI universe is 'real' and I can see this kind of idea working in either case.

He's just taunting us, isn't he? lol we all do a little trolling. I'd be happy to eat these words, mind you.

I'm suddenly back on Phatt Island, down an alley... "If this is three and this is six..."

Monkey 2 has a mix of styles in its close up moments. The campfire near the beach and the fisherman both veer towards cartoony, but Rapp Scallion is quite realistic and is a pretty close match to the box art. The mismatch in styles never bothered me, and still doesn't - they just went with what was right for each moment. They tended to treat the horror aspects with a bit more realism, which I always liked. It was fun horror that still felt a bit dangerous - it trod its tonal tightrope very well.

So true 😂

YES! I love to see it. (Both this illustration, and a new piece of MI fan art from you after all this time.)

What gets me by is the idea that by the time I have my holiday decorations up and I'm drinking my hot chocolate and rum, I'll be playing this game, even if it comes out months before that.

Absolutely. It’s been a while since I want to play a game so badly. It’s not only nostalgia or the fact that I love the franchise. It actually looks really fun to play and I’m genuinely curious about the story and character development

I think a release date would've made it easier cause I could kinda remove myself from the hype a little bit and jump back in for a series playthrough right before it comes out. Now though I'm still obsessively checking all the usual spots every day for news on when it might arrive 😜

I hope they make an ingame joke about it 🤩

Those upscaled Sam&Max backgrounds looks perfect in my opinion... 😮 About the ScummVM and modding backgrounds... each engine has it's own trickery inside, so It would have to be added engine y engine, game by game... too much work Somewhere on the ScummVM forums I read something about they being more inclined to a realtime AI upscaler than to mod-packs... as with image pack you have to provide modified-copyrighted-material.... but hey, there are mod-packs for the music, doesn't it? Anyway, although maybe, SCI games are far easier to mod, I was completely blown away by ScummVM-Ex project ... I would love this kind of treatment for more games, specially other engines.

Speaking of remasters…

Presumably referring to this I would say... reading between the lines, that is... to really be able to have a conversation about this, we'll have to play the game.

😏 Good call! I just threw this together, really! Give us a minute... EDIT: Updated!

I have to admit I've always loved the VGA versions -- there's something so "real" about them that grounded the game for me. I reached out to Purcell and asked if he knew who was responsible for them (I couldn't find the answer online anywhere). He pointed me to Ian McCaig, I reached out and he was brilliant enough to share all those little details about his time at LucasFilm Games. What a great surprise it was! Also: Did McCaig use himself as a model for Guybrush? Interesting when you compare their faces!

And while I went that far, I thought there was no better time than now to display these posters, and the few other physical pieces of Monkey Island merch that I've acquired over the years, plus my physical editions of the games themselves, and display them in one location. Introducing Monkey Corner! (Overlooking the fact that I clearly need ink in my printer, I'm happy with the result nonetheless!)

All things considered, they did a good job.

For those interested in names, the original art team is credited as follows: Backgrounds: Steve Purcell, Mark Ferrari, Mike Ebert Animation: Steve Purcell, Mike Ebert, Martin Cameron as "Bucky" The subsequent VGA conversion is credited to the following people: -Tami Borowick -James Dollar -Bill Eaken -Avril Harrison -Iain McCaig -Jim McLeod -Michael Stemmle -Sean Turner In an old interview we did with Eaken, he remembered that the process was given about a month, which may explain why LEC unleashed such an army of people at the conversion, though the fact that programmers are among those names may suggest that some of those folks were doing touchup or technical work.

So the secret was never about Monkeys, but about a Frenchman looking for "Mon key!"

The sunset disappears when you go into the second area of Melee town - where the shop/alley/church/jail is. After this, when you go back to the dock the sun on the horizon has been replaced by a sprite showing a flat horizon, and some colours in the palette are set to different colours to create the effect that it's now darker.

The EGA portraits are fun in how clearly they’re drawn by Purcell, and more closely match the look of everything else. The VGA portraits are less to my taste but they’re no slouch - they’re one of the first pieces of work Ian McCaig did at Lucasfilm, while waiting to start up at ILM. Props to Mojo for interviewing him about the work.

Extra points for colouring 'key' in Monkey 😂

Same... I grew up with VGA floppy version and never played the EGA version. It surprised me the other day to read that Ron doesn't like the VGA portraits. Have I been playing the non-director's cut all this time? I just started playing the EGA version last night (using Aaron Giles' excellent DREAMM) and I actually prefer the EGA backgrounds. The VGA version looks like somebody went hogwild with gradient fill and look almost amateurish (felt the same way about Loom VGA conversion). I think I might still prefer the VGA portraits though...

Use a nice CRT shader for the ultimate experience. It’ll smush the pixels together in a way consistent with the tech of the time, which one of the artists Mark Ferrari confirmed was something he exploited to make the dithered areas look smoother.

I haven't read any comment section, Reddit boards, Twitter, anything! And I couldn't be happier about this: I loved the trailer, the art style, the music, Dom's voice-over, everything, I am still 100% psyched! Nothing and nobody has managed (or will manage) to put down my excitement! I'm just waiting for the moment when I'll be in my pajamas, plausibly with an autumn breeze coming from my window, my earl grey tea, and the game up and running either on my PC or my Switch (or both? ). Aaah Do yourselves a favour, if you can and if your job allows for that of course, suppress the FOMO and try not looking at Twitter/YouTube/anything Because at the end of the line, it's just not worth it to have our excitement artificially put down by an uneducated mass of people who think writing mean stuff on the internet has no consequence on the real world.

There are several reasons: Like all cross-platform frameworks, SDL trades off compatibility for lowest common denominator. I can almost always tell when I'm running an SDL app because it has the "feel" of one in its UI behavior, and it just doesn't feel as polished as a natively written program. On top of that, DREAMM has a number of extra-game behaviors (e.g., the frontend, installation, etc) that fit better with the native GUI, versus writing custom UI controls and logic to run in an SDL context (though to be fair I ended up customizing a decent amount of the native Win32 controls, but that wasn't my initial plan). As a personal programming preference, I am generally framework-averse. My experience with most frameworks is that they get me 80-90% of what I want, but I spend an inordinate amount of time fighting that final 10-20%. It usually ends up being a wash, time-wise, and a net negative, frustration-wise. I also prefer writing code with minimal dependencies. As it sits today, all the code in DREAMM is 100% my own, and its only dependency is bog standard Win32. I'd call it lean & mean in general, though the template explosion from my i386 emulator makes the final product a bit of a chonk. All that being said, there is enough interest in other platforms that I will probably do an experimental port to SDL in the not-too-distant future to see how well I can make it work, and also to evaluate just how much work I'm looking at for extra-game behaviors. (And, now that you pushed me to articulate it, I will import this into the FAQ!)

Since the announcement of Return to Monkey Island I worked on the Monkey Island 2 Flash Film!! I just announced it with a little trailer, and will release the whole movie on monday.

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

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 ...