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That looks and specially "feels" fantastic. From what we've seen thus far, this really feels like an amalgamation of a lot of previous styles in the MI games. Premature as it might be at this point, this might be my favorite look of a Monkey Island game

Probably for the best. I still think they're keeping most of the game a surprise, hence the focus on Melee. Called it, inventory!

https://web.archive.org/web/20071026161126/http://lucasfic.mixnmojo.com/novels.htm

EDIT: I've change the title to "Lucasarts games" instead of MI1 and MI2 because I had more content to make it HD with Zak " Hi all ! My name is Benjamin, from Belgium (french part) and I have recently made an HD version of MI1 manual and I'm working on the MI2 version at the moment. See the work here: https://forums.mixnmojo.com/topic/200432-recreating-the-original-manual-of-the-secret-of-monkey-island/ Following this, another idea emerged from this work...recreating from scratch a brand new version of MI1 (and MI2?) PC big boxes, as it was sold : with floppy disks, manual, wheel, etc Some kind of work done in this post but with all items of the original box https://forums.mixnmojo.com/topic/200485-custom-lucasarts-boxes/page/2/ This idea has been in my head for months now...since January...really. So I have started some Proof Of Concept and did some researches/ Project code name: Big Box love ! I will skip the origins of PC big boxes and all that kind of stuffs and get right into the project. Why recreating PC big boxes with the whole package ? Because I'd like to have it for my personal collection in good conditions and when I look few months ago, prices were totally crazy ! 999$ for an old version of MI1 ?? WTF ?! I already owned some big boxes from my childhood and recently bought some from eBay but prices are really crazy. So why not trying to recreate some with all the information that exist on the Internet ? (I will talk about copyrights later) Also I'm 42 and I grew up with those games, it reminds me so much good times and as part of my professional life, I need to have some fun aside projects to do ! That's a good one ! You can check my medium page (sorry in french...) to see that I'm sharing my work (retrogaming, printing, electric car, etc) when I can https://bennywhitebread.medium.com/ Goals ? My first goal would be to make 50-100-300 copies (depends on the number of floppy I would get) with everything that was on the original boxes (floppies, manual, etc) and sell it to other fans for an affordable price (around 50$?). The second goal is NOT to make money about it and reinvest the generated money in gaming associations, people who spent time on it, I don't know. This section has to be discussed. I already have a lot of work on my professional side (I'm a cybersecurity freelance) and honestly, if it was for the money then...I would prefer working for clients !😄 It's really about passion and love about Point and Click games. Where I am now: The design of the box First, my idea was to make MI1 version. So I tried with what exists on the internet: big box fan art (from Big Box Collection for example, manuals (in poor quality), pictures, stickers, logos, etc ) All the text and images are editable in Photoshop or Illustrator. My goals were to make possible to translate it into a spanish or french original version ! Please note that I found this forum lately, after the first version of it, and I would LOVED to found this forum BEFORE going in :- ) It would have save my time and money !!! So I have create a "high-res" version from a big box webp file of a macintosh version found on the internet, cleaned it and recreate the text of front and back side. Nothing comes, at this stage, from the HUGE work Laserschwert has done ! Unfortunately 😄 The hard part was to extend the green background because it's not "usually" pattern. It comes from a painter who specialized in marble called "Peggy Skycraft" (watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfdCWzd5MiM). Where am I now: the package Box: I have the printer partner in Spain and prices. The size of the box is 233mm x 183mm x 41mm. taken from my original Day of the tentacle PC version ! For the design, since I found this forum, I really upraise the requirements about the final quality and would like to associate the work done by Laserschwert to this project. I'll have to ask him🙂 Manual: A local printing company can make the manual from my HD version so no worry about this ! I already have the prices. Floppy disks: It's the hardest point. It's hard to find and the new ones are too expensive for the project. So I've collected hundreds of floppy disks (with lot of dusk!) from friends or administrations and I have to filter and remove old stickers. I don't know how many I have but let's say nearly 1000 I guess. So the number of copies would be definitely limited unless I find other floppy disks. Old Adobe version Corel Draw, windows 3.11, NT, I have a lot of old stuffs. I even have 5"1/4 floppy disks so I can create only few 5" 1/4 version ! Note: I WON'T put the original files of the game on the disks. It's not the goal. I even bought a USB floppy disk ready to erase every disk I will use (for GDPR reasons). Wheel: I have to recreate it and see what are the price on my local printing company. But it's Ok Floppy disk sticker: I have recreated it and it's perfect size🙂 And now ? I could have go further and go the the end of the project by myself, setting up an e-commerce webshop and start selling it or sell it on ebay BUT since I found this forum and started reading the posts, I found people like me: passionate with good feedbacks and other points of view. So I'd like to have your feedback about this project and answer those questions Am I mad or do you think I can find 50-100 people like me ready to buy this stuff for an affordable price ? (+- 50$) Would someone want to join the project and bring it a step further ? With full transparency regarding the community of course. The money generated (minus the costs) could be reinvest or given to others... The only blocking thing would be the copyright question. I guess I'm violating the copyrights of the original work. I tought we can add a special mention on the bottom side saying it's not a real copy and it's from the "Big Box Love" project. I don't know. I would really love to make it happen. At this time I can make it happen for my personal use. The box will cost me around 120 euros (with the original way of work with 2 sides for the box) and that's it...Too selfish for me. I already spent around 400 euros for a designer (I'm limited as Im' more a developer) and hours of researches and emails in it and I'd like to make something of it🙂. So it hadn't be "for nothing". Hope you will enjoy my post, understand it and I would like to hear from you guys. Good night !

I was thinking the same. It's incredible. From the beginning where I was a bit skeptic about graphic this art style had grew so much in me that now it's almost my favourite in the series. It's unbelievable.

I agree. Mostly Escape... I replayed it recently, and I didn't like the dialog at all. It didn't feel natural. I feel like Return will have a better sense of rhythm, if that makes sense. Anyway, I'm so excited... And I love the music as well! I'm trying not to look too hard at the items so I don't get spoiled, ha, ha. I can't believe we'll all finally be able to play the game in three weeks!

I think it looks great! So nice to see the inventory. It does make me think of the Delores game, for sure. Monkey Island looks gorgeous. Also, something I love with Ron, Dave and Tim’s games… The dialog gets to the point. This is something I find tiring in a of lot modern P&C adventure games – the long overwritten dialogs, it gets old fast. For example, even though I love the Deponia series, it’s hard for me to replay the games for that reason. I love Ron Gilbert’s games because the dialog is always short and funny. You really feel like you’re interacting with this world. You’re Guybrush, in a way.

In the Phatt City library. That's how we know Scabb's history as a sort of leper colony!

I'm just glad that they didn't bring back Orson Scott Card to help with the writing.

MI1 was definitely Ron, Tim, and Dave’s game all along because they wrote and programmed it! MI2’s writing and programming team broadened out even wider than the three of them, expanding to include Tami Borowick and Bret Barrett, who both left with Gilbert to make kids games at Humongous after MI2 shipped. (Tami made Freddi Fish and Bret made Spy Fox. Grossman would later join them and work on Pajama Sam.) Really every Monkey Island has had a different set of people involved (not just the people involved but the time passed means everyone’s always changing, as are the relationships they have with each other) and this is no different in that regard. Another go with the full original trio of guys would have been really cool but this is still exciting and, imo, unprecedented.

This is a lot of weird assumptions about both The Dig and Myst! Myst-like games and sequels to Myst sold like gangbusters for a long window after Myst. Many many many people who played it were captivated by it and recommended it to their friends and kept coming back to the game again and again. Myst created an entire and very successful sub-genre of games.* The Dig is a weird game but it’s easy to imagine the combination of “a sci-fi mystery game… by Spielberg!” was a huge draw. (And honestly the game is kind of Myst-like! Lots of puzzles involving weird alien transport devices, subtly rearranging things to make patterns and wake old machinery, etc. All stuff traditional adventure games yawn wildly at, or have scorn for, but captivated the Myst players who like these games as slow meditative experiences to get lost in.) I think you’re probably right to some degree, that The Dig is the game equivalent of a movie everyone is excited about the week before, excited about on the walk in… then at the end, walk out of the theater and don’t even really discuss on the walk back to the car, and kind of forget they saw it. But what’s interesting to me here is, we don’t really know that: No one really tried making more games quite like The Dig, and no one really talked to these hundreds of thousands who bought it and asked what they thought. The traditional gaming press - especially adventure gamers - seem to have a low opinion of the game, and don’t interrogate it other than point out how it’s lacking through the lens of traditional LucasArts games. Honestly the disdain for the dig among adventure gamers is kind of similar to that for Myst, but Myst was an undeniable blockbuster so press have had to (sometimes reluctantly) grapple with its success and interrogate it. Its success-but-not-an-undeniable-blockbuster status is another place where The Dig found itself kind of adrift out in the middle of nowhere, fading out of existence. * Point and click players often hate on Myst for being a totally different thing, but holding that against Myst is, and has always been, a mistake in my opinion. I don’t think Cyan ever set out to make a traditional graphic adventure game, but unfortunately there weren’t many genre boxes to put non-combat games into so it got lumped in. And then adventure game fans got really sore when Myst sold super well and was beloved by millions instead of their favorite (and in their minds, more deserving) games. Again, not Myst’s fault.

I do agree it's a downside of today's gaming space, but I can access The Cave's Steam page and buy it.

Also, again, the frickin' MUSIC!!!

To continue some admittedly pointless speculation, I notice the "inner monologue" of the interface has been replaced with a more traditional verb interface (as mentioned above): Presumably that is a setting that can be toggled?

Tentacle chow? Was going to take a break from the forums until the game comes out but i missed it too much.

Funny you should say that--back when it first came out and the community consensus developed that it was a Myst dig, I thought it was a massive reach because it seemed like a logical exchange for the two of them to have--the Welshman's tired of being cursed to wander the fog, Guybrush says something perfectly oblivious, the Welshman responds with disdain. But I was also a child and hadn't played Myst, so my brain was probably willing to slap any rationalization on there for it to make sense.

If I was a betting man, I'd say this... ... is the hint book. Furthermore: Purple tentacle?

👆. 👍. The later Monkey Island games -- CMI and later -- doubled down on really wanting to hammer home a joke by padding out punchlines with punchlines to the punchlines. So far, it looks like ReMI is keeping with the brevity of the two originals.

I hope the Horse Armor makes you instantly over-encumbered and you cannot move or pick up any other inventory items, thus you must leave it on the ground of the first game screen. 😛

If you can't purchase it, don't. Treat it like its abandonware, because it is for you, in your region. Just as a point of curiosity, this is how Tim Schafer feels about abandonware: (source + full context) https://web.archive.org/web/20051225151237/http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/pc/abandonware/p2_04.html And this is how Ron Gilbert feels about The Cave: https://grumpygamer.com/about

So what are our guesses for Monkey Island Monday this week? For my money, I'm betting on seeing the inventory, where the only item we have is...you guessed it, the horse armor.

Heh.

I know it's just anecdotal, but I've seen a lot of love for The Dig online recently (twitter, as well as the Steam community, etc.). It seems like it's actually remembered quite well by those that played it. The Dig is the last LA adventure game I played (well... besides Labyrinth) and going in with low expectations I was very pleasantly surprised. Sure, it may have it's drawbacks and it's not my favourite, but it's a good reminder that even the 'lesser' LA games are quite good and have high standards. As I played I refrained from comparing it with others and really enjoyed myself.

Same! I remember really liking the first one at least. I think I read three but my memory of the later two is nonexistent. Which brings us to an important point: Where are the Monkey Island expanded universe novels?

Nice seeing you here. And thanks everyone for the warm welcome! ❤️ I have to agree with that. I’m actually a huge Schafer’s fan – he’s my favorite writer ever. This is only thing I’m a bit worried about. We’ll see for sure if MI is Ron and Dave’s game or was Ron, Tim, and Dave’s game all along. Still, I’m happy that Dave Grossman is working on the game. I would have been much more worried if it was Ron Gilbert alone, even though I love his work – Thimbleweed Park was amazing, IMO. I feel like Tim Schafer does great with emotional scenes, and I’ve been missing that a bit with RG’s games. However, what I read and heard makes me feel like it will be great no matter what. I especially like the fact that Dominic Armato said, in a interview, that the story was poignant. This is exciting.

Yes!!! Welcome

Hi! Sorry, I feel like I'm disrupting a conversation. I'm new here. I'm not a native speaker, so I apologize if my English is a bit clumsy. I've been a fan of Monkey Island since I was a kid, in the 90s, MI2 is my favorite game (and MI2's ending is my favorite ending ever), and I've been really excited about Return since its announcement in April. So I guess I just wanted to meet and discuss with other fans. ❤️ I already preordered the game (on the Switch), and I can't wait it for it to come out. I've been going on Twitter religiously every Monday to see new clips from Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman. I personally love the art style. It has, for me, kind of weird, in a good way, and unique vibe. It made me feel like I'm gonna enter this strange world, which is exactly how I felt when I first played MI1 and 2 in the 90s. I always felt like RG's games had some kind of Lynchian vibe, and I think this fits perfectly. Anyway... Nice to meet you all!

I love the little detail that if you get beaten by the first Rottwheeler 42 times in Full Throttle, Ben won’t wake up after the bike crash and you get to play the rest of the game as Maureen.

Doesn't look like any pre-release demo will happen.