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One of the first things I did with ChatGPT was to ask it to construct a text adventure version of The Secret of Monkey Island. It got off to a pretty good start: I wandered into the Scumm Bar, since I could "hear the sounds of sword fighting and rowdy pirate songs" coming from there. Much more interesting than the "Governor's mansion in the distance", or the "dense jungle off in the distance", or anything else in the distance really. Then I realised my first mistake: I hadn't specified that I was playing as Guybrush. Still, it's a good opportunity to see if this guy sounds like Dominic Armato, or if he only speaks in text? Well, he seems like a decent enough guy. Time to assert dominance and bend him to my will. Where's the fun in that? I guess I'll just have a chat instead. No points for exposition, ChatGPT. It doesn't even offer me Spiffy the dog to throw out some plot points. Other things that happened in my text adventure: I found a rusty sword in the bins behind the Scumm Bar. Easier than buying it from the storekeeper! The Scumm Bar has an upstairs! And one of the upstairs rooms is full of gold and jewels just waiting to be stolen. Easier than getting a job at the circus! Stan works in the kitchen at the Scumm Bar! I wasn't sure if it was the same guy, but when I encountered him again at the "shopyard" - a typo, but ChatGPT helpfully played along as if a "shopyard" is a thing - the narrator assured me it was. He sold me a ship for a mere 500 gold coins. I'm not sure what the pieces-o'-eight/gold coins exchange rate is, but that sounds like a good deal. All that cooking has dulled Stan's skills as a salesman, it seems. LeChuck lives in a fortress on Monkey Island, and he seems like a nice guy. I joined his crew - then I got bored and stopped playing. Despite neutering the game's antagonist, ChatGPT rigorously enforced the rules of the Monkey Island universe when I asked to teleport to Monkey Island - but with a shocking revelation thrown in casually at the end: It's a blow to find that Monkey Island isn't real (even though it starts by saying "any other location in the real world", as if it is) and I can't teleport in the game, but I'm excited to hear that teleportation is possible in real life! I'm off to try it out, I'll let you know how it goes!!!

💀 Purple Tentacle, Murray & Green Tentacle go into a bar... Thing is, it's not a joke! 🎙️ Paul & I sit down for a conversation with Denny Delk, the voice behind these iconic characters! Check it out:

I've finally added my new restoration of Mark Ferrari's LOOM artwork to the thread, plus the FM Towns cover artwork as a brand-new addition (both in several different versions). Does anybody here know who painted the FM Towns art?

I recently played Escape from Monkey Island after a couple of decades of not playing it. I have to say that it was better than I remembered, but I've realized that the problem with EMI is not that it's a bad game. It's just a bad Monkey Island game. It has its moments and I can even look past the graphics. But it's just not "Monkey Island" material.

Ironically, the title wasn’t actually written by the OP, it was written by Remi. The OP “hates all 3D” and Grim Fandango's "biggest problem is [the] 3D graphics". The hatred of everything 3D is a common refrain from certain LucasArts fans. They insist that 2D is better in all regards. It’s a silly POV because Grim Fandango is a masterpiece. (And the remaster literally added point and click controls, so what more do you want?) Plus, I think Grim Fandango looked great in 3D for the most part. (Sure there’s still some things I would change, even in the Remaster (the cheap “X” fingers, for example).) Could you clarify what you mean when you say you’re not opposed to it being remastered “properly”? I LOVE Peter Chan’s artwork, and would by so happy to see a Psychonauts 2 level of 3D detail and fidelity added to Grim Fandango, but the current Remaster does a mostly brilliant job… And I’m not sure that beautiful level of detail seen in Psychonauts 2 would add that much to the story/experience of Grim Fandango (although I wouldn’t be adverse to seeing it realised!).

I played Curse of Monkey Island in 2000 on my first PC, because stupid LucasArts wouldn't port the game to my Amiga No, wait, maybe a less abrasive approach would be great for this discussion. I hadn't started to learn about art and style, so I basically took it all in uncritically. It was a great game! It had great music and the German voiceover was good too. It wasn't until much later that I started to question some of the stylistic and narrative choices in the game. Like making Guybrush a lanky, possibly even elegant pirate and of course making Elaine a literal gold statue with eyes bigger than my fist. Escape didn't tickle my fancy as much, it's true, but its individual style at least prevented a repeat performance of the irks that I had with Curse. Grim Fandango definitely is near or at the pinnacle of anything LucasArts ever did. But with the exception of polygonal main characters and pre-rendered backgrounds, technically it was just about as much 2D as its point & click predecessors. What's proposed here is literally in the title. It's not about "making EMI 2D". It's about "making EMI with CMI graphics". But that means stamping Bill Tiller's individual style on the sequel, or worse, on more games in LucasArt's legacy. I'm not opposed to remaking, rebooting, remastering Grim Fandango properly, not at all (tank controls and flip through inventory were a mistake in my opinion). But it should be remade in the originally intended style as clearly laid out in the breathtaking concept art by Peter Chan. The game just didn't succeed in communicating all those suggested moods, the grit, the wide open spaces, the stylistic references, the vertigo inducing perspectives, the distorted architecture. If you have to look at the concept art to understand how it was originally meant, something went wrong from concept to execution. What I never understood, particularly as we were gearing up towards the Return to Monkey Island release last year, is this weird and worrying fan obsession with CMI's graphics culminating in sometimes aggressive demands to model sequels after "that style". Bill Tiller is great! CMI's artwork is great! But it has no business in Grim Fandango. It has no business in Escape or Return.

Do you want a good time? Ask your Chat a.i. how to solve a specific Monkey Island puzzle. Then, when it gets it elaborately wrong, tell it the right answer and try to convince it to changevits mind. I'm a fan of: "In the Secret of Monkey Island, how do I finish the soup in Part 2?"

Are you aware of Return to Monkey Island?! 😀

Lovely... 😅 And people want to write code using this thing... What could possibly go wrong? 😬