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This is a fascinating topic to me. I've spent a considerable amount of time in the last 25 years musing on what the is overall layout of Mêlée Town, for a personal project I've been conceptualizing and will share in due time. This will be a very long post, so please bear with me. To that effect, I've been compiling every image, screenshot, artistic depiction and interpretation I've been able to find, in order to see the way other people pierce together the different parts of the town ("rooms", in video game jargon), that we get to see and visit in Secret of Monkey Island (and now also in Return to Monkey Island). I must say your map is the very first I've seen that tries to encapsulate and describe the whole town, and it was most refreshing and exciting to see it in this very topic. Now, some considerations: To start our discussion, I will refer to the street with the Clock Tower and as Low Street and the street with the church, store and prison as High Street. That's how they're referred to in the Monkey Island Chronicles book that came with the Monkey Island Anthology by Limited Run. I agree with you that is absolutely obvious that the town has a considerable climbing gradient when walking uphill from the Scumm Bar by the dock to the Governor's Mansion. This obvious from the fact that the Scumm is just by the water and the Governor's Mansion is build on a cliff that rises dramatically from the sea, at a considerable height. Now, when looking at this image: There doesn't seem to be a considerable climbing gradient between the location of the Mansion and High Street, which on its own also seems to be relatively flat and at the same level throughout. Which means that the uphill section of the town must come before we reach High Street when walking from the Scumm Bar. I also agree that no way is the archway that we see on the right side of the image above is the back side of the archway under clock in low street. It's a common misconception to make, since all "rooms" that comprise Mêlée Town have archways on both its left and right ends, which may lead one to assume that a right-hand side archway on a section of the town is directly connect to the archway on the left-hand side of the following room, without any unseen sections of the town in between. But just by seeing how long it takes Guybrush to transverse between the three sections of Mêlée Town we can visit, we can automatically infer that there are unseen sections between the the section with the Scumm Bar and Low Street, and again, between Low Street and Hight Street: With that in mind, we can conclude that when walking from the Scumm Bar to the Mansion we have to transverse at least two, thus far unseen, sections of the Town, and that the path is generally uphill when walking from the Scumm Bar to the High Street, where the climbing gradient seems to level out. Low Street, on its own, seems to have noticeable climbing gradient, specially on its left-hand side, when walking, from the docks, although I reckon it also keeps a (slightly lower) climbing gradient when walking up the right-hand side of the street and through the archway under the clock tower. However, the sum of the overall climbing gradients visible in the sections of the town we can visit doesn't seem to be enough to bridge the difference with the level height of the Mansion and that of the docks surrounding Scumm Bar, So your choice of having a staircase between Low Street and High Street makes perfect sense. Nevertheless, although your interpretation of the layout makes perfect sense, in having High Street, Low Street and the docks roughly parallel to one another, I must admit my preference with having the clock tower roughly facing the camera when we see Mêlée Island in the title screen from The Secret of Monkey Island. In a similar placement as you can see on this wonderful piece of fan art (although its placement of the left-hand side archway of Low Street is completely off): I just think it makes for a wonderful panorama of the town when approaching the island, with its iconic clock tower standing tall, as it is, as we have seen, on the highest point of Low Street. Return to Monkey Island seems to take a similar stance to the location of Clock Tower in relation with the docks: As do others pieces of fan art (this one does have a more correct placement of the left-hand side archway of Low Street): Now, a lot of the fan art and interpretations have had a hard time reconciling and fitting together the position of the archway at the right-hand side of the Scumm Bar screen and the left-hand side archway of Low Street, which is nearly impossible to do if one does not consider that are unseen sections of the town between these two "rooms" we can actually visit. The fan art above, with the Curse-like art style, does a good job at this, whereas others, while fantastic pieces of art on their own, really are not coherent with that we are shown in SOTMI (this is not meant to be read, at all, as a criticism of the art shown), like this piece from the SOTMI comic adaption by Paco Vink: So in my interpretation, after we walk through the archway to the right of the Scumm Bar, we turn right into a U-shaped street, with a fairly steep climbing gradient, eventually reaching the archway on the left-hand side of Low Street, where we will continue our climb. After that, we walk through the archway under the clock, where we will turn left, climbing a staircase, until eventually reaching High Street and the level height of the mansion. High Street is, therefore, in a roughly perpendicular position to the street that goes through the archway under the clock tower. I will try to make a simple scheme in the next few days to illustrate my reasoning Concerning what's behind our viewpoint of the dock, I've always assumed it was a fairly large inlet or bay, which recedes into the land quite a bit, in so much as it makes sense to built the dock walkway across it, as a short cut connecting the two sides of the bay, instead of following the contour of the shoreline, which would make for a much longer path. In your map, I don't think the bay recedes enough to justify having it bridged by the walkway. This is more in line with how I see it (and the previous image, also by Paco Vink): This fantastic piece of fan art offers a similar interpretation, although I would imagine far less docks walkways on the right side (inner side of the bay), as they would serve little purpose, having no access to the open sea: I really could discuss this all day and never was a topic on this forum dearer to my heart. Don't take my remarks and disagreements of the layout of your map as criticisms, as I cannot praise your endeavor enough. It was really heartwarming to see a map showing the layout of Mêlée Town, probably my all time favorite fictional setting, in any medium. I hope this discussion keeps going P.S. I apologize for not crediting all the artists that did the wonderful fan art I used in this post, but after years of searching and saving whatever reference material and artistic interpretation I could find of Mêlée Island, I just lost track from where I got the images initially. My apologies to all the artists

I'm always amazed by people who can draw. I had this picture in my head of Ron Gilbert (or at least his "grumpy gamer" avatar) and Guybrush in a Lucy/Charlie Brown style "football gag"... and this was the only bit of it that came within a country mile of what I imagined:

With a little help from your friends!

Did I create the longest Mojo™ thread ever?!

I hope you two don't mind if I join the conversation here. I'll keep it going, unfortunately. 🙂 1. I might have some feelings on Guybrush headcanons, . skip 2. I love the merfolk. I think they're great characters. But also, if there was a Skunkape Tales remaster or something, there's some lines of dialogue around them that I would like to see changed. I think the jokes where Guybrush's uncertainty around their gender identities are the punchline, are the worst bit. The bit I would want changed. I get it about the flirting stuff and agree - but I also think a lot of it is extremely cute and endearing. It is dated, but it makes me smile. Is Winslow and Anenome the first queer couple between main NPCs in Monkey Island? I really don't know, I very much could be forgetting some characters. Either way, I think they're a great couple. I love them. 3. Largo LeGrande. Trying to justify the bra joke in retrospect wouldn't be great, imo. It just seems embarrassing to go back on it like that. "Oh, you thought the bra joke was queerphobic? We were just trying to tell you he was actually queer all along" or something. Eugh. To be clear, I'm not opposed to Largo being canonically trans. Or somebody having a headcanon based on the bra. Its only the specific combination that I mentioned which would be a problem.

I turned on YouTube’s 2x speed playback for the full experience. 😂

Thanks! I got the lyrics and music from https://tomlehrersongs.com/ (which will apparently be taken down by the end of 2024, so you can bet I've archived everything I could from it!), and hacked the ScummVM source code to intercept the text from the first Stan scene. (I had a convenient savegame for it.) Then I spent some time fiddling with the timings, recorded a silent version of it, added a few title cards, and mixed it all together. Edit: Attahching a text file didn't work nearly as well as I hoped, so here's the contents of the file instead. Of course, you still need to be comfortable with compiling ScummVM and understanding diff files... And it's possible that tabs have been converted to spaces, so some editing may be required. The basic idea is to intercept when Stan is saying "I'm Stan ..." and instead insert your own text with an appropriate duration. The script pointer is then moved back to the start of the instruction so that it will still see "I'm Stan" the next time and insert another line of text. diff --git a/engines/scumm/script_v5.cpp b/engines/scumm/script_v5.cpp index da0045ef237..1f20a5f5328 100644 --- a/engines/scumm/script_v5.cpp +++ b/engines/scumm/script_v5.cpp @@ -1855,6 +1855,95 @@ void ScummEngine_v5::o5_pickupObject() { } void ScummEngine_v5::o5_print() { + static int songIndex = 0; + + const struct { + int duration; + const char *msg; + } messages[] = { + { 550, NULL }, + + { 120, "There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium^" }, + { 120, "^and hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium^" }, + { 110, "^and nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium^" }, + { 120, "^and iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium^" }, + { 120, "^europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium^" }, + { 120, "^and lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium^" }, + { 120, "^and gold and protactinium and indium and gallium^" }, + + { 50, NULL }, + + { 130, "^and iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium." }, + + { 110, NULL }, + + { 120, "There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium^" }, + { 120, "^and boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium^" }, + { 120, "^and strontium and silicon and silver and samarium^" }, + { 140, "^and bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium." }, + + { 350, NULL }, + + { 120, "There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium^" }, + { 120, "^and phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium^" }, + { 120, "^and manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium^" }, + { 120, "^dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium^" }, + { 120, "^and lead, praseodymium and platinum, plutonium^" }, + { 110, "^palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium^" }, + { 130, "^and tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium^" }, + + { 70, NULL }, + + { 120, "^and cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium." }, + + { 130, NULL }, + + { 120, "There's sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium^" }, + { 120, "^and also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium^" }, + { 120, "^and argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium^" }, + { 120, "^and chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin and sodium." }, + + { 140, NULL }, + + { 180, "These are the only ones of which the news has come to Ha'vard^" }, + + { 30, NULL }, + + { 160, "^and there may be many others but they haven't been discavard." }, + + { 500, NULL }, + { 0, NULL } + }; + + + if (vm.slot[_currentScript].number == 56 && memcmp(_scriptPointer, "\x03\x0fI'm Stan", 10) == 0 && messages[songIndex].duration > 0) { + const byte *oldPtr = _scriptPointer - 1; + + vm.slot[_currentScript].delay = messages[songIndex].duration; + vm.slot[_currentScript].status = ssPaused; + + const char *msg = messages[songIndex].msg; + _actorToPrintStrFor = getVarOrDirectByte(PARAM_1); + + if (msg) { + char buffer[120]; + + buffer[0] = 0x0f; + strcpy(buffer + 1, msg); + + _scriptPointer = (const byte *)buffer; + decodeParseString(); + } else { + stopTalk(); + } + + _scriptPointer = oldPtr; + songIndex++; + + o5_breakHere(); + return; + } + // WORKAROUND bug #13374: The patched script for the Ultimate Talkie // is missing a WaitForMessage() after Lemonhead says "Oooh, that's // nice." so we insert one here. If there is a future version that

I don’t know… since the trailer drop at the switch event (which in retrospect makes totally sense), I’m not so sure about predictions anymore. But yeah: A game release doesn’t seem right as it would lose a lot of hype they could build up with a release date upfront. So the safest bet is: trailer and/or live gameplay with Ron and a release date next week. 🥳🥳🥳 but who knows: Maybe they’ll postpone it to 2023 because LeChuck needs another lip boost before the release. 💋

Not my kind of music, I'm afraid... So I put this one together instead:

I'm replaying Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for the first time in years. Did you know Indy has reactions when you try to Pick Up some of the people in the Venice restaurant? Man: "I don't want to disturb him." Woman: "I don't think she would appreciate my attention." Man: "I don't want to disturb him." Cat: "Why would anyone want a cat when they could have a dog?" Old Lady: "Please! I've got manners!" Slob: "I don't want to disturb him." Lover (woman): "She just doesn't have Elsa's... charisma." Lover (man): "That's not my style, and he's definitely not my type." EDIT: Even though Tales restored Guybrush by the end, I like to think that was his skeleton under Venice, and that I have his hook in my inventory yet again.

Thanks, something very much like that! (Though it never even occurred to me to draw Guybrush as Charlie Brown. Nice touch!)

Hard to predict the time when the trailer airs as the Opening Night Live is a 2 hours showcase and starts at 7pm here in the UK.

I continue to be quietly/loudly confident it's september. Devolver have been releasing 1 game every 3-6 weeks (about a month on average) all year, and they start ramping up publicity for the games in the month or two before the release. Devolver just released Cult of the Lamb, and with very few exceptions that's the only other game it's tweeting about right now except for ... ReMI. There's a couple of other games it could be releasing soon, but they're not talking about those ones on social media at all, while ReMI is getting a twitter series, mainstream magazine articles, a new trailer and show appearance. ReMI is coming out in September, if not earlier (but I doubt earlier), and if I'm wrong I will happily eat crow.

Have I got some news for you!! https://mixnmojo.com/news/Maniac-Mansion-Bonus-Track-aka-The-Sounds-of-SOMI-SE-Part-2#comments

This is great! And all that extra work into making all the subtitles work and sync was so well-done and worth it. Thanks for also taking the time to explain the process.

On the plus side you will wake up with a great start to the day 😃

👕 I beat #Mojole #151 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 5/6 🖤🖤💛🖤🖤 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤🖤💛🖤 🖤💚🖤🖤🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

It’s also how they’re referred to in the game’s source! As learned by @Marius and Frank Cifaldi when excavating it for the VGHF chat with Ron Gilbert. Also your post was a great read!

I don't remember where I found this, but I think it is particularly cool and proper interpretation of what Mêlée Town might look like during the day:

Ahhh this is worth the 13 year wait!!

Pretty interesting how LeChuck is being modified during these last months of development. Now the Jolly Roger on his hat has real bones that have been roughly tied together, and his "lips" are more thick, noticeable and green. Here they are for comparison.

Yeah, similar to ending "A Pirate I Was Meant To Be". In both of those you can end things early, but it's more fun to drag it out until the correct option is the only one left!

Haha, yes, hopefully some people are going to be stewing over how 'woke' ReMI is going to be, that'd be lovely. Weird nerds not understanding what Star Trek has always been (even if it isn't doesn't always do it great) is one of my favourite genres of social media post and I'd love to see Monkey Island get a piece of that action. Seriously though, I actually appreciate talk about inclusivity when it's actually followed up by tangible action. I always appreciated that Tim Schafer took a stand during the whole gramergrape thing and then followed through by actually committing to diverse hires, actually committing to building accessibility features into the game, actually letting it inform how Psychonauts 2 was written, etc. Otherwise it's all just words. I'm going to draw a soft line under this and say let's not go TOO far down this rabbit hole as these conversations have a tendency to go a Certain Way after a while.

Well it’s not often that monkey island makes a grand return after being effectively dead for over a decade. I think i can make an exception lmao.

Stupid me... in a way to not get spoiled, I just glanced at these images for a moment, and what I saw on this shot was clearly a room-sized chicken sitting across from Guybrush. And since it's a demon chicken, I was sure this must be El Pollo Diablo. Now I realize it's just a ghost chicken in the foreground.

To sort of hark back to Escape being a more suggestive game; as a Brit I find this line way more amusing and rude than the American writers intended 😁

I don't know if I'm reading into this too much, but isn't it strange that Murray is in so many different locations in the screenshots? Makes me wonder whether he plays a more important role, like Murray is the hint system or something. Sidekick Murray? Also, the PC Gamer screenshot is the first time we've seen Elaine on Melee isn't it? I feel like that changes my view of how Melee will play out, as previously I was under the impression that Guybrush returned to Melee on his own...

Return characters in the style of curse. Think it's probably important to point out that this is in no way a criticism of the return style (which I love) but just a goofy experiment.

I think people were more thinking that he could be slightly older if there is a timeskip involved. I doubt they'd make him particularly old. Anyway, while I'm here I might as well reshare one interpretation of how a new-style MI theme could sound. It was based on the idea that MI1 and 2 had quite different takes on the theme, and I'd like it if ReMI went for soemthing different too.

I wish I could watch it live but it'll be 4am in Australia 😅