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I went to PAX! I got to meet David Fox!* It was great. * (And Ron and Dave and Dom, but I have met them all before.)

And here it is, probably the first Dave Grossman foto since E3 2010. I'm just so glad he's involved.

Dave Grossman : "Return to Monkey Island" is a game about Guybrush wanting to close something in his past that has been left unfinished. It's the same with us: we're going back to something we did a long time ago. I don't think we could have done Return to Monkey Island 10 or 15 years ago. The game as it is was only possible in the here and now. This got me even more excited for the game 😁 I love how personal this game is. I'm also still amazed that they aren't shying away from addressing the 'secret'. If i was making the game i'd be scared to address the 'secret'

It was a great session and a stellar panel! 😃 Watch it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1581145334 Things that I liked: Roberta hijacked the very first question and started immediately to promote their new game. Lowe was, expectedly, a great source of impromptu jokes. Jane Jensen being there. Ron’s t-shirt. The question about their best and their worst puzzle! Things that I didn’t like: It was so focused on questions about the old times that there were few mentions of their new games. RtMI was only tangentially mentioned. How on earth is it possible that nobody asked Jane Jensen if she expects to make new games? @Jake : did you manage to attend the session? P.S. I'm not sure if it's OK to cross-post something that I also wrote in a different site, but I wanted to share my thoughts with this community as well. Let me know if cross-posting isn't appreciated. 🙂

Loved the panel! The constant Stan-like promotion of Williams' new game was a bit annoying (especially towards Dom's interesting questions), but apart from that I really enjoyed everybody's stories. Kudos to Frank Cifaldi for keeping it well balanced and on track all the time too. And man, Lowe is still sharp as a needle. I hope he'll return to write a (non-LSL) game at some point.

I’d be screwed if I couldn’t connect to the internet to go to that site with all the old code wheels on it.

Then again, what in the game says that it's not the same timid monkey, smelly monkey, strapping monkey or brawny monkey? It's of course absurd but I always seem to employ an ensemble cast kind of logic here. One monkey actor for "the smelly monkey", one monkey actor for "the monkey who walks in the background", and all the waving arms, legs and tails don't count because OF COURSE they're animatronics. Anything else would go way over budget! Those monkeys don't come cheap, they're unionized. 💸

Wow, Dave hasn't aged a day. It's great to see all these guys hanging out and just having a good time. I never thought I would live to see this day lol It must be so surreal for Dom; hanging out with these guys, having some good food and drinks, promoting the game after being afraid for years that Ron wouldn't like him. Happy for the guy. Ron, Dave, and everyone else all seem like such good people to work with.

OK, consider this pretty much done (music addition may or may not happen (but probably may)): https://mixnmojo.com/countdown/ Thanks to @Marius and @Kroms for constructive activities additions, and more importantly @Thrik -- our miniature Buddha -- for his strict but wise guidance.

All the great work done here aside, I'm just going to be the dick who asks: Why do you shorten Monkey Island to MK, instead of MI? It's neither important, nor a big deal, and yet, I can't get over it.

*barrel

Just thought I'd give a little shout-out to Wadjet Eye/Dave Gilbert. They've put out gems, and the best of them can proudly stand shoulder to shoulder with collective favourites. Please play Technobabylon and Primordia if you haven't.

Another german interview with the guys: https://www.heise.de/hintergrund/Interview-zu-Monkey-Island-Die-Kontroverse-war-unvermeidbar-7248052.html?wt_mc=rss.red.ho.ho.atom.beitrag.beitrag Interesting that the decision to also release the game for the Switch was apparently made very early on, as Rex tells us that the platform had an impact on character design.

Damn right they are. If there's one thing a monkey knows it's that a bunch is better than one.

Hmm.. I could get on board with this.

As I say, this makes zero sense to me. Software has had copy protection ever since it could -- it's just been adapted to the modern age. Nothing new. Physical copies of modern games (which I love, too) have copy protection. I've heard complaints that Steam might suddenly disappear... for the last 20 years The requirement is connect to the internet is nothing -- It takes more effort to NOT be connected to the internet these days. Even with GOG you need to connect to the internet to download the game in the first place. The only potential downside with Steam is the lack of a second-hand games market -- which isn't helping software developers: Publishers want DRM. But then GOG doesn't have that, either. As I said: The convenience outweighs the cons for me. Arguments against DRM seem to be idealogical more than practical/logical... but vote with your wallet. Maybe I'm just being lazy, and there's definitely pressure on smaller companies to support GOG due to it.

Ditto, though I also feel appreciation for his contribution has increased over the last few years. Listening to his MI2SE commentary shows his influence on both the world of the games and Guybrush as a character. In a sense he balances out Ron’s cynicism and Tim’s boyish enthusiasm, and they may have been missed by some/many. I’m stoked he’s back for ReMI.

I believe Dave was the one who programmed the Stan sequence.

Me too. Dave being involved was as exciting, maybe even more exciting than Ron coming back for me. I generally thought after Telltale that Dave was done with point and click games and we wouldn't hear from him again. I heard he worked for an audio company or something. I always felt Dave Grossman was the most underrated of the original trio. I still wish we got to see him lead a game project on his own.

👔 I beat #Mojole #165 and all I got was this stupid shirt. 4/6 🖤🖤🖤💛🖤 💚🖤💚🖤💚 💚🖤💚💚💚 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

But guybrush doesn't ONLY exist in that void. Presubably we're looking at an imaginary, out-of-fiction guybrush, since there's no real in-fiction explanation for what is happening. I think at this point regardless of how you count there's no version which doesn't put MI2 at least number of living monkey heads, regardless. Tales and CMI both have more than 3 monkeys on a screen at a time, MI1 probably has 7 living monkey heads, but it could possibly be counted as 5. Escape has loads. So it's MI2, for sure. My argument about the intro monkeys is that if 'living monkey heads' is to count for anything it must mean that 1) You have to be able to see at least part of the head 2) It has to be at least arguably a distinct monkey (which means either it appears with other monkeys in the same shot or it's at least plausibly a different monkey) 3) It's alive within the fiction of the game. (that last part because if it had to literally be alive then all the games would have 0 monkeys) Since the monkeys of the MI2 intro exist ostensibly outside of the fiction of the game, they fail on that point, and so MI2 has 1 monkey. An alternate 3) is 'it appears on screen during the game and is depicted as alive' In this version MI2 has 3 monkeys. I don't care which is which, I just want people to argue about it.

Oooh that is a cool shirt Grossman has got on! I don't love Guybrush and Elaine being married, but I think I would like it less if they got divorced. The scenes between them in 3-5 are usually sweet and that relationship is a big part of the tone (and plots) of those games. There's also something that feels regressive about undoing the marriage of a character that most fans encountered as children. I really like that Ron seems to be accepting what has happened in his absence and rolling with it, rather than trying to live in an alternate 1993 before anyone else touched his toys.

It sounds unabashedly Golden Age Hollywood, and yes that is a compliment.

I think if you divorce them, the game would need to address it in some way, then suddenly a portion of the game text has to be about the creators feelings about the characters relationship, and maybe that is more annoying than just not spending time litigating it. At some point it’s easier to say, fine the status quo can just exist and we’ll move on.

To paraphrase @elTee, the original games were all about the DRM of the time.

Oh! I didn't realize we had CONFIRMATION that Captain Madison is the tall pirate leader in the middle, and also confirmation she is a "she"! Rex Crowle: And here I was, thinking, "I hope he doesn't take me first!" Alright. I really like the pirate leaders, especially Madison, this very tall character. For a lot of the characters in the game I needed a lot of concept art, showed it to Ron and Dave, improved it and so on. But Madison, I just drew her like that, with her beanpole character and that ridiculously tall, long face and the hat on top - she was perfect right away. It's really hard for me to make a decision, but if I have to, I'll choose Madison.

I was referring to the Monkey Kombat section, in which Guybrush encounters timid monkeys, smelly monkeys, strapping monkeys, and brawny monkeys in infinite amounts. I would use the same logic to argue there are infinite pirates in MI1, during the swordfighting section. The great tragedy is that during the 90s and early 00s, pop culture raised us on everything being a monkey. Let's blow our minds: MONKEY KOMBAT IS A LIE. Anxious Ape - not a monkey Bobbing Babboon - monkey Charging Chimp - not a monkey Drunken Monkey - monkey Gimpy Gibbon - not a monkey THREE-FIFTHS OF THE MONKEY KOMBAT STANCES ARE ACTUALLY APE KOMBAT!! But MI1 failed us originally. Ten years before Herman Toothrot told us he was H.T. Marley, he was telling us that he found enough chimpanzees on Monkey Island to crew a ship, and also these chimpanzees were monkeys. There have been no chimps seen in the MI franchise (with the possible exception of Captain LeChimp). Are we to actually believe that Herman found enough chimps on Monkey Island to crew his ship? If a crew of chimps sailed the Sea Monkey back to Mêlée and sold it to Stan, then where did they go? Are they dead? Did they sail back to the Eastern Hemisphere?!! I trained a bunch of chimps to crew the ship and sail it back to Monkey Island. They were supposed to get help and come back for me. Something must have happened. How come you didn't just go with the chimps? WEEKS on a boat full of monkeys. Oh, joy.

Glad to hear he's not totally against the idea of making another one day. I think everyone assumed that after the back lash he would have been scared off. He's tough as old boots that one.

So I think we've got the TSoMI count down, plus minus one (5 + 1). Three heads on one monkey (3) + Donald Duck hat monkey (1) + Banana swing monkey (1) + optional wedding bottom monkey. LeChuck's Revenge is at 3 and that will pretty definitely make it the winner. That must mean I'm going to cast my vote now. 😘 Escape has doesn't have "infinite", of course, but a definite count may still pose a serious problem. If only we had an Escape expert @madmardi around. A definite count for Tales is impossible, as there is definitely overlap that we can't fathom. I'm still wondering where all the additional monkeys on top of the thirteen Montevideo monkeys are coming from. Can we get a definite count for Curse, provided that (a) background monkeys are the same, they're just making their rounds and (b) arms and legs are just prosthetics waved into the screen (don't you know anything about movies?)? On that note, are the monkeys in the theater the same as on LeChuck's ship? Certainly you have an answer.

You bastards lure me into doing all kinds of ridiculous stuff. https://mixnmojo.com/countdown/ Click the ReMI image on the frontpage and the same thing should come up.

My case: