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Hey all! Thanks for the support and viewing the "Live Action" trailer. Here's some shots of the scrap book. From page 8 onwards it was just interpretation based on the first 7. The book was made out of a art pad which was recovered with the pages aged. I've also included the maps from Lechuck's Revenge.

@tmetic / @El_Pollo_Diablo These are absolutely stellar works, you're really setting the bar here. 🥰 I have ... these guys.

@Vainamoinen Wow, thank you for that post, that warmed my heart. Thank you for taking the time, and give me more perspective on all of this. I feel even better now. ☺️

I'm really curious about Carla's role. Did she become governor after Elaine, only to have to deal with the new leaders taking over? Or is she on their side, acting as their bodyguard? Or is she leading her own revolution in response to them? Hmm.

I can't believe it's already been a week since the trailer! Already I'm (not-so) patiently awaiting the next bit of news, but I guess that won't be until the next official posting with a release date now that Ron's been (rightfully) scared off posting about the game. Atm I suspect a date by the time Gamescom rolls around, but who knows? The whole marketing campaign had been all over the place 😜 Now if we can get away from the art style/mean comments discussion, let's talk about the characters. What do we think the Voodoo Lady will be doing? Normally she's Guybrush's quest-giver, but will the dynamic be different coming off the reveals in Tales? Will that aspect of her character even be acknowledged? I hope it does, it'd be a shame to see the character in a post-Tales world where she's regressed to being unambiguously on our side again, the twist shook things up and made her more interesting, I'd hate to lose that. Will Otis join our crew again? Or will he stay in jail? I wonder what flowers he picked to end up there. Carla is back, and perhaps the new Governor? Or taking up the Sheriff Shinetop role: will we see more of the mansion this time around? I kinda hope all the swordfighting isn't just insults, I trust that Ron and Dave have cooked up something more interesting that just another grind that fans of the old games already know how to solve: perhaps the "reactive dialog trees" whatever they are, have something to do with that? Or there's an action component? Don't know how I feel about that, the action sequences of the old SCUMM games always felt a little half-baked. Wally's back! I've wanted to see him again for so long, and he looks so happy! Even got a bit of stubble too, this is definitely dealing with older characters, I'm so excited to see how we get there from MI2's ending. It's been pointed out that after he spins the globe, the ground appears to shake in every scene shown afterwards. Clever trailer editing or a sign that he has some kind of magic control over the other islands? I'm very keen to see Murray again with Ron's writing (assuming Dave's not the one writing for him). Seeing him being used as a cannonball in the trailer was hilarious. Looks like he'll be part of our crew for a good portion of it too...on the Screaming Narwhal? I'm not convinced that ship is back yet as I'd have to have a better look at it, but that'd be great.

Thanks, I've trimmed my beard recently and have been training hard... or not. OK, I know the way out.

I've gone through all the youtube comments. Yes, there are those three, in short succession, and I totally understand why it makes no difference that they're in the minority. That's the thing with toxic comments. With toxicity, you don't need 50% poison in your blood stream for it to become lethal. Much less suffices. Coolest comment translated for all those who don't speak German: grdguardian: Good morning, this is nicely done, but there are some, you know, mistakes in regards to content. Was that done on purpose? Marius: I know, the fisherman accidentally has two pipes. Some mistake with the layers. A comment I also had to shrug about was the dude who felt entitled to have a German version before the English. Because you're German, apparently that only comes with duties, not privileges. Why would you serve the larger international audience first when your domestic audience is thirsting for this? 😆 Has it really just been 13 years since the Tales? It feels like 130. Maybe I'm way too nostalgic, maybe there was a horrific backlash when Telltale showed its first scenes from Tales. I just looked up the first trailer on Telltale's youtube channel though, and about the most negative thing I found was "I definitely prefer the 2D hand-drawn look. Especially in Curse'! That doesn't kill my excitement for this latest installment though. ". And seriously, Telltale's graphic style was no less of a shock to lifelong fans than Terrible Toybox'. People were more polite and thankful for Monkey Island to return. So maybe this is the age of entitlement, whining, right-wing disregard of other people's feelings, and destruction of fun for everybody else. Maybe this is why we can't have good things. But it's also the age of interpassivity, and that's a soothing thought. It's an era in which we watch reaction videos to intensify our joy in narrative media. Joy created through other people's enjoyment, a perpetual motion device of positivity! And back on April 4th, I wasn't just royally fucking hyped because a new Monkey Island was announced, this hype was much intensified by your reaction video. It wasn't just "Monkey Island is back", it was "Majus is back" as well. Back in the Tales timeline, those 130 years ago, it wasn't even Telltale's episode trailers, it's been the IwwhiToMI series of Flash videos that was getting people infinitely hyped. The wait between episodes was excruciating, people were racing to the finish line and then suddenly there was the trampoline for our excitement, these Flash vids (and of course, the "I'm more piratey than you" video). You had yourself baked into that fandom and into the whole Monkey Island legacy. Dave is so right for retweeting everything you do. Think Monkey Island, think Marius. This new Flash vid is incredible. All the good of the old plus guest star. I don't think I would have drawn so damn much fan art in my life if it wasn't for you showing the world that some people and some franchises deserve that devotion, and the joy it brings to me for just throwing myself into a new piece regardless of the outcome quality. So, yeah, I hate seeing you down like that. I understand why these comments sting, disproportionately so. I really want to play Bud Spencer, banging the heads of those youtube commenters together. But we can't be Bud or Batman, we can only ever be Barbara Streisand. And that means the only path open to us is to smack them silly with positivity. To not even react to the negativity in any way, but just place a ridiculously positive comment right beneath. I think I can do it. In part, you showed me how. Oh, and by the way. My friend was overjoyed, and treated this with love and care, but put it behind glass, and it's been over a 100 years now, so it's a bit bleached out. Maybe you can make a new one one of these days.

I just shared a buggy, trippy version of the end of the film. Something went wrong in Adobe Animate, and my camera layer broke. The result is amazing. And it's hard to find my favorite glitch. Maybe this one. I call him Goybrosh. nullnull

I never saw Murray as grumpy, more enthusiastic at the prospect of world domination yet frustrated at not quite reaching his goals, but not grumpy. Well, maybe a little in Escape, being a bouncer clearly took its toll on him.

The Tales' "reveals" about the Voodoo Lady were part of LeChuck's plot (badmouthing her, destroy trust), so I don't think we'll have them verified in Return. The Voodoo Lady is always scheming, that's her thing. Her voodoo was always an uncontested power of good with the exception of a voodoo doll now and then on LeChuck's side. I think the Very Important Pirates will try their hand at voodoo and might act as the very first antagonists to the Voodoo Lady directly. I also like the idea that Carla has retreated into the governor's mansion, fighting the invasion of the Brr Muda / Key King's forces. I wouldn't like to see her as an antagonist really, maybe she's just fighting Guybrush for old times' sake. Or practice to show him the (new) ropes, become his teacher. Ohhh I'd like that. Taking the reins from Smirk. We don't really need the swordfighting insult paradigm back for fencing sequences to be more brainy than mashing some button or two. We see several instances of protagonists fencing some opponent in the trailer (Guybrush vs. Swordmaster, Guybrush vs. LeChuck, Elaine vs. Mystery Pirate Lady with square collar), so it's a given that there will be some form of repetitive mechanic tied to swordfighting. We're being shown a fencing animation while there's some clever other thing you're doing that decides who wins. Which really could be anything. We've been discussing the "collect your crew" trope before and the consensus (more or less) was that it has become a trope / necessity / stereotype / meme in the Monkey Island series only with Curse, the game that first repeated the TSoMI-era puzzle. If Ron's not into repetition here, that would be appreciated. It's not just that Wally is back that excites me. He's a mapmaker again and I love maps! Making him a wannabe pirate like Guybrush was a bad idea. I also don't want him to have any magical powers, making maps is magically enough. It's a literal superpower that far surpasses voodoo and only Wally possesses it. The Screaming Narwhal wasn't a bad ship. It was in fact a very good ship, it just had a lot of recycled and repurposed parts. Whatever Guybrush's on for ReMI is rock bottom. This thing has its steering wheel literally tied to its bow with ropes. I'm not even sure it's a complete ship ( ... the wheel is usually at the stern 🤣). Maybe it doesn't even have a sail. Ron writes the grumpy characters. Murray is a very grumpy character. I think I can do the math.

Wow, I didn't think of the revolution idea! That'd be neat!

Thank you so much for the wonderful feedback. Really pleased you enjoyed it! Sadly there is no money to be found for the grog machine. There are a few parts I'd have liked to extend, like this and actually being able to find a diamond pickaxe instead of suddenly randomly carrying one. Maybe I'll edit in a few extra branches at some point...

This was so fun! I spent this morning trying to find all the jokes, but I don’t think I was succesful. This game is huge! My favorite bits: - The CodeWheel actually works! - I can throw water at Stan forever. - I laughed out loud that I was actually able to clean the cups. - Oh, hi Carla. Ok bye! - Best surprise: The hell-part was surprisingly effective. The thought of Return not existing this year was a chilling bummer to me. This year (like every other year) is extremely challenging, and it’s hard to avoid bad news overload. The Return of Monkey Island is a huge positivity boost that gives me so much strength and energy, that the thought of your “hell” made me even more grateful that we are here right now, having fun sharing our excitement for Monkey Island again. Super cool game, thank you for making this! P.S.: Can I find money for the grog machine?

YouTube comments weren’t a social network in and of itself at that point. Social media was generally just less of a thing. Everyone’s parents were starting to file into Facebook, but people weren’t using it as a news source. Twitter barely existed, Reddit barely existed (if it did yet)? Same with 4chan. It was a transitional time for sure, but still an era before everyone was pushed together into like-minded buckets by algorithms. It was also an era where the majority of fan conversations were still happening in heavily moderated spaces (like the Telltale forums) before all conversation was offloaded to third party spaces that were either optionally moderated or totally free for all.

I wrote a Choose Your Own Adventure story a few weeks ago in response to general negativity permeating certain online forums (not this one) after the first screenshots of the game were released. It features Stan, tunnels, Carla the Swords Master, more tunnels, Ron Gilbert, and seventeen half-empty cups of tea. This is the intro:

Not sure how useful it is since this is the first official release, but if you're really curious: https://aarongiles.com/dreamm/version-win32.txt

A couple of last minute fixes, and I'm officially releasing DREAMM 1.0. DREAMM provides a simple way to run your original DOS or FM Towns SCUMM games on a modern Windows system with high fidelity to the originals. Download it here: https://aarongiles.com/dreamm/ At this point, DREAMM will run all the known DOS and FM Towns versions of the SCUMM games, along with the Windows-only The Curse of Monkey Island. This includes: Maniac Mansion (both low and high resolution versions) Zak McKracken & the Alien Mindbenders (both low and high resolution versions, plus FM Towns version) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure (both EGA and VGA versions, plus FM Towns version) Loom (both EGA and VGA versions, including CD-ROM talkie, plus FM Towns version) The Secret of Monkey Island (both EGA and VGA versions, including CD-ROM music, plus FM Towns version) Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge (including FM Towns version) Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (both floppy and CD-ROM talkie versions, plus FM Towns version) Day of the Tentacle (both floppy and CD-ROM talkie versions) Sam & Max Hit the Road (both floppy and CD-ROM talkie versions) Full Throttle (CD-ROM) The Dig (CD-ROM) The Curse of Monkey Island (CD-ROM) How Is DREAMM Different From ScummVM? ScummVM is a modern reinterpretation of the original SPUTM game engine. It has a modern(-ish) interface, and runs lots and lots of games, but its fidelity to the original games is limited to the accuracy of the reverse engineering efforts, combined with how closely the ScummVM developers choose to mimic precise behaviors and details. In general, it does an excellent job at this, but may not achieve 100% fidelity to the original code, due to the fact that it is not actually running the original code. DREAMM, on the other hand, runs the original SPUTM game engine code in an x86 emulator. This means that fidelity to the original depends largely on how accurately DREAMM emulates the well-documented x86 architecture. Further, it means that you get all the original “chrome” (such as the save/load screens) and behaviors of the original game. Finally, DREAMM provides a streamlined, simple user interface that is customized for running the SCUMM games. In the end, for most people, the two are probably equivalent for running most games. But if you’d like to experience the games closer to their original form, complete with original bugs and user interface, DREAMM might be closer to what you want. Try them both! How Is DREAMM Different From DOSBox? DOSBox is a generic DOS emulator, and has a lot of similarities to DREAMM in how it is constructed. Both DOSBox and DREAMM emulate an x86 machine and all attached peripherals, and offer a fake implementation of DOS to service requests from the games. But DREAMM takes this concept further by optimizing its experience and interface specifically around the SCUMM games. This means that mouse cursor control is integrated, video updates are done without tearing, and idle time is given back to your system. It also means that DREAMM will help you install your old games into its environment, and will handle all the configuration of video and sound devices. Finally, DREAMM has the advantage of including a miniature 32-bit Windows implementation as well that allows it to run The Curse of Monkey Island, plus a miniature FM Towns layer that allows it to run the original FM Towns versions of the games that were released for that system!

They look amazing!

Guybrush really is just a big kid. 👀

It's cool this exists, but weird to me that Rex's name isn't mentioned anywhere. After all, Ron might be frustrated by this, but it's Rex who put all the love and care into that art style.

During the Loom EGA intro the messenger nymph that travels to Bobbin is moving very fast, and the screen scrolling at this point is also too fast. I am running beta 1.0b3.