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Yeah, I always read it as not much more than a parody of the Darth Vader "No, I am your father"-scene, with the weirdness turned up to 11. If, in an alternate timeline, Ron would have stayed at Lucas and started designing Monkey 3 right after finishing 2, I'm sure the vast majority of the game would still take place in pirate land, with that being the real reality of that world. After all, we have Elaine almost winking at the camera and talking about it being a spell from LeChuck during the credits. I know not everyone is a fan of the way they did it, but I always liked how Curse handled it, with the characters themselves mostly being confused about what actually happened, and the writers shrugging their shoulders about the whole thing through LeChucks optional explanations at the end. All the modern references like the Coke machines in these games feel more like 90s Simpsons-esque jokes rather than hints about some Lost-like mystery, and Ron hinting that there might have been more to it in later years never felt completely genuine to me - I just don't think they were thinking that far ahead and just needed a funny ending. I should probably note that I really do like both Ron and the Monkey 2 ending though!

You know, a list of "Make sure you... X" for adventure games is probably not a bad idea. I'd rather not use a guide, but there are times when old adventure games are just too unforgiving, so a list of the real "gotchas" would be good. ScummVM at least makes it easier to save. That said, whatever flaws Zak has, my memories of it are very fond. It's a really charming and fun game. And very much of its time in terms of cultural references and outlook. I'm sure you'll have fun!

Good to know! I'm familiar with "Save Early, Save Often" (I came up with Sierra and LucasArts side-by-side), and I expected it to have some dead-ends but I'll keep more on top of it now that you both say that. Also, thanks for the heads-up about mazes. I will make sure to have a lot of pencil/paper at the ready too. I'm looking forward to doing this "the old fashioned way". Bit of an attempt to jumpstart that part of my brain towards creative problem-solving.

Honestly, I would just play the game with a walkthrough. Better to "cheat" and have played Zak at all than to get frustrated and miss out, as I gather many have. I personally like Zak about as much as anybody outside of Germany seems to. I like how it's something of a reaction to Maniac Mansion, which was a "single location" game in a sense, while Zak is wide open and globe-trotting -- kind of a wackier Indiana Jones. The main objection to Zak is that it's the most dated LucasArts game in terms of design philosophy. As with Maniac, you can die and get stuck, but these flaws are magnified with Zak because of its scope. Nothing is worse than realizing you've been stalemated because you simply failed to pick an item that is in a location you can no longer access. At least with Maniac, the nature of the game is such that you could get back to wherever you were relatively quickly if you had to start over. Because it's relatively unforgiving, Zak is probably the most "Sierra-like" of the LucasArts catalog. It predates the jump in art/animation that came with Last Crusade and lacks the trailblazer status of Maniac, so it's sort of a middle child in that early period of SCUMM before Loom and Monkey Island 1 finished the recipe and firmed up the policy never to deny the player a winnable state. I think you almost have to be familiar with the kinds of adventure games that were otherwise being released in 1988 to get a sense of how Zak represented progress, and how a lot of its worst aspects in hindsight were practically pro-forma in those days. The mazes in particular are unpleasant and utterly bald attempts to pad the game's duration, but they were also an uncritically accepted feature of the genre at the time. Zak's introduction of multiple valid puzzle solutions was something of a quiet breakthrough in my opinion, and the game deserves credit for its ambition. I think it's telling, however, that the most enjoyable scene for me is an extremely self-contained one: when you have Zak wreak havoc on the airplane and ruin a stewardess's day. It's a classic "being an asshole" adventure game moment that would have made Guybrush proud.

Tim Schafer mentioned how they fought with the management at LucasArts to even get the name of the project lead on the cover of the games they made. MI2 finally had Ron Gilbert's name on the cover, but since the fight to get it there was a pain in the neck, I imagine he wasn't too thrilled to go through that process again with the LucasArts brass. Plus, Ron wanted to make adventure games for children, to get them interested in adventure games young so they'd carry that interest into adulthood, something LucasArts wasn't keen on doing (Mortimer and the Riddles of the Medallion being the sole game in that genre by LucasArts, quite a bit after Ron left). As he owned Humongous Entertainment, he could make the games he wanted to make and be credited for it. Plus, he had a deal with LucasArts that allowed him to fork the SPUTM engine and SCUMM language for the HE games, allowing him to continue using the tools he created at LucasArts. It was definitely a win-win situation for him.