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Excuse my crude drawing skills, but this is clearly what's going on here. I know it doesn't make much sense, but neither does the shopkeeper store.

I am so happy that we already have a evidence-board-like image with multicolor lines and circles. That‘s what I was hoping to see in this thread. I love this forum. ❤️

Wow too bad Ron and Dave are wrong about their game. ReMI already down to 99/100 and it’s not even out.

We've got official confirmation! (Apologies I shared your drawings on Twitter @Marius - I hope you don't mind!) If that wasn't enough, Ron chimed in with a canonical answer and a possible spoiler...!

The face of everyone who has read through this thread.

The connectivity between places is something that fascinates me, and I constantly draw maps in my brain when I walk through them. My head has a clear idea where the Mêlée Town alley is after passing the store (Drawing 2). But what about you? The E stands for the elevator Guybrush comes out of at the end of LeChuck's Revenge. The little street cone marks the position of the "under construction"-barrier in the same room. Some drawings quite don't make sense, especially number 3 and 4 where the elevator is inside the church. However, since the interior and exterior of the Mêlée Town store contradict themselves heavily, I think it's ok to put those options in. I'm mostly interested what your brain tells you when you enter the alley and the screen changes. Doesn't have to make logical sense. Maybe you have multiple maps in your mind?! And if you have a completely different idea of the placement, please share it!

Can I just say how much I love this site and Marius specifically

Bah, doesn't prove anything! I always imagined Fester running further into the alley when he sees Guybrush approaching. Probably giggling the whole time. By the way, I always love that you can see his sword peeking out from behind the corner the whole time until he jumps out of his "hiding spot".

This is a ridiculous thread and only ridiculous people would have an opinion about this. So let me start with video evidence that clearly will show that #1 is the correct answer. To repeat: Number one. It's open and shut, of course -- we all see where the "Pssssst" is coming from. Need more? #3 makes no sense. The street the alley veers off from would be too narrow. #4 and #5? Wrong perspective. #6? We can wait and see if ReMI makes it canon. #2 then? That's the only other conceivable choice, but the "Pssssst" suggests it cannot be it either. There, I'm closing the thread now we all agree I'm correct good thread!

This is some mind-bending stuff. I have always thought #4 and never even considered other possibilities. Looking at the two scenes more closely, the only way l can sort of make sense of it is by paying close attention to the store. Part of the building juts out and is supported by a diagonal beam, which we can also see in the alley: The only problem is that this puts the lift in the church, and the side of that building simply doesn’t line up with what we see on the street. It also makes it strange that Shinetop is able to lure Guybrush in and then get the drop on him by following him in. Of course LeChuck could do this, but it seems more likely this is just a second alley further back a la #5. However, unlike your #5 I’d expect the store to extend all the way back, hence we can see the jutting out and diagonal beam.

In the new clip, Guybrush says: “I’m putting together an expedition... I mean, raiding party.” That gives me strong LeChuck’s Revenge Guybrush vibes. He’s still a bit insecure about his image.

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Also the closeups are about 0.5% of the graphics in the game. Surely everyone loves that EGA sunset.

Speaking as a citizen of the gingery persuasion myself, I think there *may* be a simpler explanation for red patches on the arms of a man with Wally's hair color...

Wow, so my original belief was right, even though this thread made me revise it!

I love this thread and much as it pains me to say it Remi is right, it's deffo #1

Maybe. That's like saying maybe Nixon perjured himself on the tapes.

I agree. It's obviously A. Drawing A Drawing B

That sounds insane but i'd be so down for time travel in mi.

I would like to also add that it really seems like you're watching the side of the church, at least how it's seen from the outside. There's that little part I highlighted, even though it should be much higher, it does seem to me like they were trying to keep the structure of the street intact, even if the inside of the church doesn't much up. The outside of Mêlée and the interiors were probably done by different artists, so that could explain the inconsistencies. The church could actually have a hidden elevator inside a wall, used by LeChuck to come and go from Monkey/Dinky Island whenever he pleases, which would explain how he gets so fast to Mêlée Island without his ghost ship to deal with Guybrush and then comes with the ship to kidnap Elaine. I always felt that Escape translated Mêlée Island fairly well in 3D. I did play Escape before Secret though, so that might be why, but even going back from Escape to Secret it never felt "wrong" to me and I recognized the key places quite easily. To me it always felt like the same place, and not only because they tell you that it is.

That's actually what I was thinking, but if it is this part doesn't match up... You know... I just have to say that these things were obviously not too important to the artists, especially with the differences between the outside of the shop and inside, etc. Makes me wonder why people can't give the same leeway to the artistic differences with Melee in EMI vs SOMI. (Not that I want to engage in a huge debate again or anything 😅)

Hey, I was tempted because I really like it... but as much as I like it, the version I'll always prefer is the VGA floppy. That's the one I've grown up on and played 95% of the time.

Neil Ross is 77 years old, he was 65 during the Special Edition, and he was 50 when he did COMI. I wouldn't say that the older tone is deliberate 😛

I love these responses. The logic in my mind's map also crumbles the more I think about it. But it never destroys the illusion. Even the contradiction of the shops exterior and interior doesn't do any harm. Both places are connected, and are not just seperately made background paintings. Thank you all for sharing!

My instinct always said #3 (which makes no sense to me, now that I think of it…). I’d go with #4, with how I see the backgrounds.

It might not mean anything, but I'm intrigued by the idea of Wally running "the best map shop in the caribbean and beyond". Could we end up going to whatever "beyond" the caribbean is? Is that where Brr Muda is located?

There should probably be a poll option for the best version of them all: Ultimate Talkie Edition

Me, I always played the VGA version before, but the twitch stream by @Jakeand @Marius really made me appreciate the EGA version and I think I really like it more now. 🥰 Especially since someone mentioned that it often looks like they just used a gradient of the color for fillings – and I somehow can’t unsee it anymore. It just feels a bit “sloppy” designed at times… And Stan’s music: never liked it for the same reasons as mint others here.

New MUSIC based homework assignment for everyone: Buy a ship from Stan. Instead of using the CD theme or silence, play variations of his Go Tell Aunt Rhody theme. See if you like any results.

[making_up_things] Right, they had to resolve that detail for RtMI, because the elevator door will be used again by little Guybrush to return to Melee. [/making_up_things]

Yes, same! Remi convinced me it was #1... I'll never trust him again.

The fact that it was something they had to think about for MI6 is huge praise, Marius.

Unless there's a bug in ScummVM that I've never heard of before, I guess I have to award this one to the VGA CD version: The flash when the voodoo lady disappears is different between the two versions as well, but there I couldn't say which one looks the best.

WOAH! That‘s amazing!!

I think we might be starting to venture into debating a point nobody really made, or meant to anyway. It goes without saying the first picture is the more photorealistic at face value, but we’re really talking about whether MI1’s close-ups were meant to look realistic behind the glorious veneer of EGA limitations, right? In that respect I feel we’re no further along, and to be honest I don’t think we ever will be unless one of the artists confirms the close-ups were meant to resemble the code wheel art or something. Maybe it’s time for some good old Twitter molestation. (Or we could focus our energies on more important matters such as the precise dimensionality of alleys…)

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm pretty sure we're giving this way more thought than the MI1 team did. :~ Also, that would suggest Fester is standing there with his back turned to the alley. We are solving the big ones here!

For god's sake, look at the psssst. And yes, I realize I'm getting into "the grassy knoll" territory here. ¬

Or…

Holy shit... maybe it's #1???

Confession time: I never studied the alley entance/exit as closely as I should have. This thread shames me. Good thing the church is nearby. Guys, is this the back door?

I'm honestly surprised at the amount of disagreement there is on this one. To me this was always behind the shop (1). The buildings don't line up exactly but it's plausible enough (we know as someone pointed out there's some inconsistency between interior and exterior already, so I think it's plausible enough to add to Thrik's picture by saying these two circled rooves are the same and maybe the shop building is just a slightly different shape to what we thought. Or maybe it's just a continuity error. But yeah, my assumption has always been that the alley shot is in the same orientation as the wide town shot, and that the pavements inside Thrik's circles are supposed to be the same: I actually think this could be the building with the lift. It doesn't quite match up but it's about the right size and location relative to the roof on the left.

I don't know if it makes sense, but.... What if at the end of MI2 Guybrush was just taken back in time by LeChuck (to a real past he had only forgotten) and at the beginning of ReMI we see his whole life fast forwarded - to the point where they are in the tunnels. There we have to stop LeChuck from taking him back to the past again, so that Guybrush doesn't get stuck in a time loop. And then, after he brakes out, we get a big time jump and the new story begins.

The music? I couldn't possibly choose, of course, because my dear Atari ST version wasn't mentioned! (I don't mind actually. This is a cool poll. )

Another pair of things I forgot to mention is the at the store seems to end pretty quickly in the street view, so unless there’s a further appendage at its back it doesn’t really make sense. Also, if we did accept #3 despite the church incoherence, the street outside seems far too thin to be the street we know and love. The real secret of Monkey Island.

I just paused the clip before Wally sees Guybrush and it looks like his arms are bleeding! Maybe he suffered burns after the fortress explosion.

My first instinct was #1, although #2 seems quite plausible as well.

I appreciate the EGA backgrounds for how much they did with so little, I really think they make ingenious use of the palette... but it's still a palette that I find rather ugly, aesthetically, and there's only so much artistry that can work around that for me, and the same goes for the portraits. That's really why the VGA will always win out for me. I look at the EGA stuff and go 'oh that's really well done' and I look at the VGA stuff and go 'oh, that's pretty'.

Gosh, the music. All of the Mêlée Town score sounds like a sequel to Woodtick. I'll probably spend the first hour just walking around the environment. 😍

You basically mean the highest value games for boxed versions on ebay?