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Hello everyone. I cannot not do Monkey Island art while waiting for ReMI, so I made this. Please enjoy. ❤️ Marius

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!

Hi all, If you read my recent interview here, you may have caught on that I've been working hard on a new emulator that is specifically designed to run all the classic SCUMM games (DOS versions, plus Curse of Monkey Island). Well, the time has come for me to reveal more. The emulator is called "DREAMM", which is a backronym for "DOS Retro-Emulation Arena for Maniac Mansion (and other LucasArts SCUMM Games)". It's been in private beta for a couple of months and is looking pretty solid at this point. You can download the latest release and read all the documentation on the project here: https://aarongiles.com/dreamm/ At the moment, the project is Windows-only (sorry!), but it runs all the DOS versions of the games (plus CoMI) quite reliably. Give it a try, and let me know how it works for you! I'll keep an eye on this thread, plus my twitter feed (@aaronsgiles) and the official email address dreamm@aarongiles.com for feedback. Important note: you will need a complete install of the games you want to run, including the original DOS executable files. This is similar to what's needed when running the games in DOSBox. Some of the GOG versions of the games include them (DREAMM can detect this), some don't. None of the Steam releases do, sadly. 😔 But DREAMM can help you install everything from original media if you still have them! Have fun! Aaron Giles

A couple of last minute fixes, and I'm officially releasing DREAMM 1.0. DREAMM provides a simple way to run your original DOS or FM Towns SCUMM games on a modern Windows system with high fidelity to the originals. Download it here: https://aarongiles.com/dreamm/ At this point, DREAMM will run all the known DOS and FM Towns versions of the SCUMM games, along with the Windows-only The Curse of Monkey Island. This includes: Maniac Mansion (both low and high resolution versions) Zak McKracken & the Alien Mindbenders (both low and high resolution versions, plus FM Towns version) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure (both EGA and VGA versions, plus FM Towns version) Loom (both EGA and VGA versions, including CD-ROM talkie, plus FM Towns version) The Secret of Monkey Island (both EGA and VGA versions, including CD-ROM music, plus FM Towns version) Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge (including FM Towns version) Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (both floppy and CD-ROM talkie versions, plus FM Towns version) Day of the Tentacle (both floppy and CD-ROM talkie versions) Sam & Max Hit the Road (both floppy and CD-ROM talkie versions) Full Throttle (CD-ROM) The Dig (CD-ROM) The Curse of Monkey Island (CD-ROM) How Is DREAMM Different From ScummVM? ScummVM is a modern reinterpretation of the original SPUTM game engine. It has a modern(-ish) interface, and runs lots and lots of games, but its fidelity to the original games is limited to the accuracy of the reverse engineering efforts, combined with how closely the ScummVM developers choose to mimic precise behaviors and details. In general, it does an excellent job at this, but may not achieve 100% fidelity to the original code, due to the fact that it is not actually running the original code. DREAMM, on the other hand, runs the original SPUTM game engine code in an x86 emulator. This means that fidelity to the original depends largely on how accurately DREAMM emulates the well-documented x86 architecture. Further, it means that you get all the original “chrome” (such as the save/load screens) and behaviors of the original game. Finally, DREAMM provides a streamlined, simple user interface that is customized for running the SCUMM games. In the end, for most people, the two are probably equivalent for running most games. But if you’d like to experience the games closer to their original form, complete with original bugs and user interface, DREAMM might be closer to what you want. Try them both! How Is DREAMM Different From DOSBox? DOSBox is a generic DOS emulator, and has a lot of similarities to DREAMM in how it is constructed. Both DOSBox and DREAMM emulate an x86 machine and all attached peripherals, and offer a fake implementation of DOS to service requests from the games. But DREAMM takes this concept further by optimizing its experience and interface specifically around the SCUMM games. This means that mouse cursor control is integrated, video updates are done without tearing, and idle time is given back to your system. It also means that DREAMM will help you install your old games into its environment, and will handle all the configuration of video and sound devices. Finally, DREAMM has the advantage of including a miniature 32-bit Windows implementation as well that allows it to run The Curse of Monkey Island, plus a miniature FM Towns layer that allows it to run the original FM Towns versions of the games that were released for that system!

As I kept reflecting on the ending, some new thoughts have sprung. This will be an enormous post, soI’ll be truly grateful to those who manage to read the whole thing. So called “metanarratives” have been told before, across various mediums, whereas by placing the audience as the unwilling target of some sort of storytelling, fourth-wall breaking pun, or resorting to the “it was all in the main character’s head and imagination all along” angle. Regardless of how masterfully conceived these “metanarratives” can be (whether in the form of books, movies, etc.), there is inevitably a gap, a distance, between what the characters are experiencing and what is our own reaction to those experiences. A good storyteller will diminish that distance, create greater empathy between the audience and the characters, but we are still outside witnesses, external observants. We can be touched emotionally by the story, but that tends to come down to how much empathy has been conjured between us and the characters, on how much we can imagine ourselves in the characters’ shoes, on how much we can “relate”. However, I feel RTMI takes this to a whole new level, using a storytelling method that is a particularly perfect vehicle for exploration of this kind of thematic undercurrent: the point and click adventure game. This goes beyond the mere notion of being able to control where the main character goes, or how long we can linger in certain places or even the choices of dialogue (within the obvious limitations of the game framework). Those are just the mechanical and functional means of the storytelling experience. We learn, in what I think is a pretty definitive and unequivocal conclusion, that the world of Monkey Island is a plateau of existence, a mental place, a dimension, if you will, where Guybrush finds solace, refuge, escapism and entertainment. I won’t go into the discussion whether this dimension is any more real than the one where his everyday existence is taking place. What seems pretty definitive to me, is that those two dimensions are separate, they are two different things, although elements from the “everyday dimension”, to a certain extent, seem to feed the fabric of the Monkey Island dimension (and probably vice-versa. as well), as the things we experience almost subconsciously in our everyday lives can also feed our dreams. This Monkey Island dimension might have been triggered by Guybrush’s experiences, both as a child and as an adult, in a pirate themed amusement park, as a way to escape from a reality that is either too sad, too painful, too dull or too empty to face without solace. The details really don’t matter. And this is where the “metanarrative” comes to its full fruition. We are not witnessing Guybrush escaping into an imaginary pirate world, as he tries to take some reprieve from his everyday existente, while feeling empathy for his plight. No, we are Guybrush! As much as I ever felt in any work of art, we are indeed the character. We are not empathizing with Guybrush, we are not relating to Guybrush. We truly are Guybrush. We are the ones looking for solace, refuge, escapism and entertainment in a fictional pirate world. We are the ones (particularly in this forum of such dedicated fans), who treasure and look forward to the moments we spend in this Monkey Island dimension. We don’t do it to spend the time while waiting for the train to arrive. We don’t do it because there’s nothing else to do. We don’t do it to fill in the blanks in our daily schedule. We make it a pinnacle of our leisure time. It’s primetime worthy. In those playing hours, we rather be in the Monkey Island world than in whatever real life has to offer , regardless of how happy or fulfilled we feel. I don’t play Monkey Island the same way I play other games. Not even in the same way I play other point and click adventure games. It’s not to reach the end, get a dopamine fix or an adrenaline rush. I play it for the experience, to live in that world for a bit. That’s why I like linger in the wonderfully evocative locations, just wander around the locals, why I look forward wish to get stuck certain puzzles, so as the music and ambiance seep through my skin and become engrained, so as to when we listen to the soundtrack, it will immediately conjure up memories and feelings of those precious moments spent in the Monkey Island dimension. And I know Monkey Island is not real. Guybrush knows Monkey Island is not real. But it is true. And it matters. And that’s why we like to discuss the minutiae of this world, what things are “more real” than others (although nothing of it is really real), why we hang posters of it on the wall, listen to the soundtracks, replay the games knowing by heart all the solutions to every single puzzle. We want to keep visiting the same amusement park, we get excited when there’s a new ride on the horizon and we love riding the same old, well-worn, familiar rides.. And when not in the amusement park itself, we reminisce by looking at ticket stubs, park maps, promotional brochures. And I, like Guybrush, want Monkey Island to be as real as possible. So I keep chasing the horizon, clinging on to every small thing that might make it a little bit more concrete. I want to make LEGO models of Melee Town, the Giant Monkey Head and Woodtick. I want character statutes to proudly display on my bookcases. I want to wear T-Shirts of the Legendary Treasure of Melee Island. But it is not real. It 's not concrete. It can’t be. And just like Guybrush, I felt disheartened when I reached the back alley of Melee Island at the end of the game. It’s time to go home. My day at the amusement park is almost over. No more new rides to try. It’s with heavy hearts that I turn off all the lights in the park. I have to get back to my more mundane existence. But this game gives us something absolutely new. Almost revolutionary. It shows us a Guybrush with a life outside of Monkey Island. And a happy and fulfilling life at that, with a beautiful family. And we realize, maybe for the first time, that Guybrush doesn’t really need Monkey Island anymore. He’s ceased to be obsessed by it. And this is where The Secret comes in. And how it really could never have been something of true importance. It was a red herring all along, a distraction, something with an importance that grew in an unwarrantedly disproportionate manner throughout the years. It was ever only something that was part of the fabric of Monkey Island, among many other things. It was never its raison d'être, never a cipher to understand the whole thing. Monkey Island is not a mystery to solve, but a “reality” to experience. Like life itself. Lechuck lost sight of this. Monkey Island ceased to be a “good place”, where one could have sprawling adventures, meet colorful characters and visit fascinating places. It was all about The Secret, looking for some sort of resolution, an answer, something with which to cover the gaping holes in his existence. At the end of the game, Guybrush is finally freed from this anchor (ohh, symbolism). He can now visit Monkey Island because he wants to, not because he has to. It’s something that adds to his life, it doesn’t replace it. And it has become a pure thing again. A place where he can play pirates, simple as that, only constrained by the limits of his imagination. Stories being told around a campfire. In light of this, the very beginning of The Secret of Monkey Island has become even more perfect. Guybrush arrives at Melee Island not by ship, but by walking through a stone archway, as it were some sort of portal, and declare bluntly and plainly: This is all we want. We are Guybrush from the very start. We want to be pirates in a make-believe world. That’s why we are playing. Even the setting is perfect. How else would a Pirate setting be enticing unless when seen and interpreted by a child-like imagination? Throw any serious degree of historicity in it and the whole thing crumbles, with all the pillaging, violence, depravity and filth involved. It has to be a Pirate universe as imagined by a child. Again, it was never about The Secret. The whole point of experiencing Monkey Island is perfectly captured by the very first thing Guybrush says. There can never be a Monkey Island prequel. There’s no other possible beginning. To do it would be to corrupt it. Nothing exists before that declaration of intent. That’s where the whole dimension of Monkey Island is born. “I want to be a pirate”. That’s the absolute summation of what Monkey Island is all about. At the end, Guybrush (and myself), realize there’s peace to be found in knowing there’s no deeper meaning behind all of it. Monkey Island is a “good place” to visit every now and then. Guybrush has regained the purity of intent shown in that very first scene in The Secret of Monkey Island. The whole thing has become unburdened by overarching narratives, unsaddled by strict continuity between adventures, freed at last from the shackles of having to provide answers and meaning. Elaine emphasizes this by suggesting yet another adventure. Of the simpler, purer kind. And how perfect and crucial that little intervention is. Brings the whole thing full circle. And Guybrush sits on that bench, looking truly at peace with himself (as I see it), having regained the true purpose of Monkey Island. That image is the perfect coda to the Ron Gilbert trilogy. The lookout scene in SOMI as an overture. This is one as an epilogue. The world of Monkey Island is now wide open. There was never a better time to create new stories in it. Purer stories. With more cannons and less “canon”. I became a father 6 months ago. A little Boybrush named Manuel. Like Guybrush, I now have a family to share the world of Monkey Island with. And it has become something new again.

Hi all. I'm new to this site but just want to say how pleased I am to have found it. It's such a relief to find somewhere on the internet full of thoughtful, interesting discussion about the new game. I think I'm going to like it here.

Unceremoniously and not as a goodbye present, though it might still serve as that. It's Time, Guybrush acrylic on paper

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 wanted my hand at EGA-palettised version of new Guybrush.

Man, reading this just made me feel impossibly old and sad. I cannot relate to this at all, and it just shows how much the world of gaming has changed in the last twenty years or so. When I grew up it was normal for games to receive changes. All of the early LucasArts games were changed multiple times. Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken were both replaced, during their original lifespan, by different versions. Loom has more versions than I can even count without a reference. The Secret of Monkey Island was released in EGA, then a few months later a VGA version came out with completely new art assets throughout. They released the same game on CD a few years later and made changes to it. They made a further edition of it in 2009 which had further changes. None of this was considered sinister or oppressive. It was a company taking an existing product and trying to give new buyers a reason to purchase it. I guess we all have one specific version of a game that is the one we played first. That's the "correct" one in our own little subjective world. For me and Monkey Island, it's the EGA PC version with the internal speaker soundtrack. That's not the "best" version or the "canonical" version or any of that guff, it's just the one I experienced first, it's the one I'm nostalgic for. The existence of all those other versions doesn't invalidate it. If I want to revisit it, I can revisit it. But that EGA version I played also had an adlib soundtrack that I didn't get to hear the first time I played it. I heard that music later, and it's objectively "better" than the PC speaker equivalent. I enjoy that version of the theme music too. If we're going to talk about re-releasing old games then it's important to ask the question of whether the company should cater to me. There's an EGA version of this game with a PC speaker soundtrack, so surely it's no real work or effort on their part to add a toggle for those modes, is there? Well, setting aside the obvious fallacy that anything in game development is "easy" or involves "no real work", why should those modes necessarily be supported? Is the objective of a re-release to simply emulate the original? Which version of Monkey Island 1 is the original in this scenario, anyway? I mean, EGA was released first, but LucasArts themselves replaced it with a VGA version. So which one is the "original"? If you first played the VGA version, you might make the argument that the VGA version is "obviously better" because it has more colours. But that's a subjective opinion! The simple reality is that the game I'm nostalgic for still exists. I can still play it. I don't need them to re-release it, I already own it. And where does the nostalgia end? Is it still true to the original experience if I don't have to type DOS prompts in to start the game? Is it really the same without the copy protection? My opinion is that the objective of a re-release should be to bring something new or to update the art and the music in a way that might appeal to gamers who weren't lucky enough to be there the first time around. It's never to "replace the original". Fans of the original version(s) might love a re-release or they might hate it, but so what? You said yourself that Skunkape has done a "fantastic" job "on a technical level". Skunkape has also made the original versions of the games available. If this isn't enough for you, I wonder what is? It almost sounds like what you want is a version of the game that keeps the graphical improvements, because you've deemed those to be acceptable, but that also lets you choose which other aspects of the game are "original" or "updated". That's fine if that's what you want, but let's not pretend that's an objective desire for "the original". That's what YOU want. And again, it's okay to want that. But why do you expect to find it in anything except your original version that you fell in love with? I guess the above is the part that makes me feel so old. The part that makes me feel sad is the words you use here. "Backlash, less sales, an army of trolls review bombing and warning people". This is INSANITY. It's a video game. The people who made it are real human beings with feelings just like the rest of us, and I'm fairly sure they are doing this as a labour of love, a genuine good faith effort to re-release an old game to a new community, and they want everyone to be free to enjoy it in the most inclusive way possible. How are these things seen as negative? Some of the other things you have said allude to the problems in this discourse. "The Voodoo Lady's voice actor is a white lady in that game so she obviously has to go." "people calling each other racists or nazis in the community just because some people happen to prefer the old voice actor". These are not rational video game points of discussion. It's just a sad reflection on how successful the white supremacist propagandists have been in the last ten years. I'm not saying this about you, here, I just mean broadly across society. I think a lot of kids get introduced to concepts like this by extremely malicious individuals with a nihilistic bent who enjoy watching good people start to spout divisive rhetoric, because they've found a way to sell these concepts that is prima facie reasonable. Of course, it doesn't hold up to any real scrutiny. But this isn't the place for that debate, and if anyone tries to take it there they can expect to find this discussion diverted back on track quite sharply. We're all tired of these arguments. You said it yourself - "I saw that once, it was really stupid, I'd rather not watch the rerun thank you very much." I honestly think that this kind of comment is something people only really say when they're immune from the real-world negative consequences. When they are so hard-up for actual oppression, so far away from being a victim, that the only place they can find it is in a video game. I'm not trying to say anything bad about you, this isn't personal. Like I said, I'm just old, and I'm really, really sad.

Here's a compilation of most of the logos and typography I've recreated in high-res over the years. It's always fun re-building these things or researching which fonts were used for taglines or subtitles.

Had Ron and Dave made this game in 1992, I'm sure it would have been very different. But unless I'm mistaken, I believe the notion that Ron HAD ideas for MI3 back in 1992 assumes facts not in evidence. I mean, I'm sure his mind wasn't a total blank. But has he ever said that there was any vision for MI3 back in the day? Again, I might be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure that never existed. It seems that for those who feel dissatisfied with the ending, there is a theme of feeling like they just wanted closure. But may I suggest the possibility that you're just overthinking it? I mean, there is a lot of ambiguity around the specifics, but I'm not sure how much more clear RtMI can be about the core revelation. The Secret of Monkey Island is that these stories are fantasies inspired by an amusement park. And in the fellas' defense, they've basically been telling us this for 30 years — in ways both subtle and less subtle — right from the first two lines of the first game. What constitutes "reality," so to speak, is much more unexplained and nebulous. Do Boybrush and Elaine exist? Where are the lines between Guybrush's fantasy and reality? What's the back story? How do all of these pieces fit on the timeline? My hunch is that these are intentionally very undefined because — to put it bluntly — who cares? It's interesting to ponder, but at least as far as this chapter is concerned, as they say quite explicitly, that's not the part that really matters. I'm not sure if the disappointment some people experience stems from feelings of ambiguity beyond the secret, or that RtMI's big reveal is hammering home confirmation that the secret is a fairly obvious thing that's been staring us in the face the whole time. (Or from something else, I don't mean to put words in anybody's mouth.) But FWIW, I really don't think there's a lot of wiggle room around what the core of the revelation is. Like I said way upthread, I get the impression that people's comfort with this ending largely comes down to whether you're comfortable with a lot of peripheral ambiguity, or if you really want everything spelled out to the letter. This definitely isn't the latter. But just because an ending is ambiguous, that doesn't mean it can't bring closure. My opinion is that yes, the game obviously and quite intentionally leaves all kinds of loose ends hanging. But when it comes to the primary themes of the story, the heart of the matter, the capital T Truth at its core, it really wraps things up quite nicely while still giving us a bunch of other stuff to play around with. And speaking for myself, that's what I want from a Monkey Island game. I don't want everything spelled out. I don't want a neat package where everything is carefully explained. To me, that hazy, ambiguous half real, half fantasy isn't the thing Monkey Island is trying to work through to get to a destination. That IS the destination.

Ugh I'm so excited for tonight to finally play Return! Couldn't resist drawing a whole bunch of character yesterday

While I've been planning to give Peter Chan's Star Wars DOTT artwork a make-over at some point, LRG's announcement of DOTT Remastered somehow put this on the fast lane. I wasn't really convinced by the poster they decided to include, so I got down to business, planning to offer them a new print-ready version of the art as an option. How could they say no to that? Well, while LRG seemed to be interested, Disney ultimately wasn't. So, here's the result of this effort, adding a much-needed improvement over my old version, both in terms of colors and detail. No more artficial brush strokes and oversharpened edges to suggest detail. I even separated the color channels of the scan to fix the severe alignment issues the Adventurer print suffered from, removing the color fringes and blurry edges caused by that. A few comparisons (at 70% size, enough to show the differences):

with love

Turns out, guy posted two unfinished Full Throttle 2 cutscenes back in January and no one noticed 😮 Spoilers for a cancelled game Intro: Cutscene:

I've finally got around to doing a full release of Thimbleweed Park Explorer, or as its now known Dinky Explorer. Thanks mainly to the hard work of one man reverse engineering machine Jan Frederick it now fully supports ReMI, including images, sounds and decompiling the scripts. It even allows patching of the weird.dink script to do things like enabling debug mode features. I'm looking forward to seeing people create their own patches and sharing them. More details and download here.

I've taken the liberty of writing out text for a video interview with Ron that was done by Rock, Paper Shotgun but was locked by a paywall. There's some further detail of the hint system and confirmation of how it works as a mechanic within the fantasy of the game world as well as hints to what the story is (he's still vague enough about it but it's a great tease) So Ron, what has it been like for you returning to this world? It's been a lot of fun! It's been 30 years since I really immersed myself in that world and it's a lot of fun to sort of get back to it. I was a little worried at the beginning about what that was going to be like, but it is just like a comfortable glove at some point, you know when I started working on it with Dave, we just fell into it so quickly. Awesome! So what can you tell us about the story? Well, the story is...we kinda call it unfinished business. You know Guybrush, in the first game even though it's called The Secret of Monkey Island, he never actually found the secret, so this game is really about him finding the real secret to Monkey Island, and I think it's also unfinished business for Dave and me as designers, because we never disclosed what the secret was, and you know Monkey Island 2 ended on this bizarre cliffhanger, so for us it's unfinished business and for Guybrush it's unfinished business. Yeah we were talking before about this huge cliffhanger at the end of 2, so where in the Monkey Island timeline does this land? So the game starts right after Monkey Island 2 ends...and then it just gets bizarre from there. Can you explain what kind of bizarre things we're gonna see? No, you'll have to buy the game (laughs) I love that! So one thing that was talked about on the panel was this idea of puzzle creation and adventure games are known for their challenging puzzles. Will Return to Monkey Island follow in its predecessor's footsteps, or what kind of puzzles are we gonna see, what should we expect? Well it's definitely a point and click game. There's a type of puzzle that really inhabits a point and click adventure, so we're definitely doing that. I think that times have changed, players have changed, we're different people, we've changed, and I think adventure games need to change with that. And it's not about making thongs simpler, but I think it's how you design puzzles. You need to be a bit clearer about things with people, and there are people who don't know point and click, don't know Monkey Island, and you need to kinda ease people into that stuff. One thing we've added to the game is a hintbook, so if you are stuck you can look at the hintbook. I mean these days, when you get stuck on a puzzle, you don't puzzle theough it for a month and talk to your friends about it, you just run to Google. We didn't want people to leave our game to do that, so we added a hintbook, and it's part of the fantasy of the game, it's actually a physical object that Guybrush has in his inventory. And you have to go get the hintbook, it's not something that's just given to you. So we hope that people who do want hints use our hint system, because we can be very clever about the hints, we know where you are and what things you've tried, so we can give you hints that are very tailored to the specific issue that you have. As someone who's had a relationship with Monkey Island for so long, how has your approach changed from the older games to the new one? What's different? I think creatively, design and story-wise, not much has changed at all. We start with a high concept for the thing, down to the individual parts of the game, then below that the character arcs and below that the puzzles. We've always done that with games and I don't think that part has really changed.

Playing around with ESRGAN a bit, I noticed how cleanly the HTR backgrounds could be upscaled, so I went the extra mile and added stuff like paper textures and brush strokes to them. The results could almost pass for scans of original background paintings (or remastered backgrounds), even though you can also see the limits of this technique on smaller details and stuff that's been meticulously pixeled in (especially text). Still, with a bit of manual work on each background, these could probably work as "Special Edition" backgrounds. A few samples (Note: These aren't aspect ratio-corrected yet):

Sorry I'm late! Y'all are some crazy bastards. Some beautiful, crazy bastards. Love this thread. Which I have spent half of today reading. (Well... skimming. And sometimes reading. There's a lot.) Mostly jumping in at the moment to send apologies for not responding to the request for VO for the stump joke. I'm usually pretty good about answering people, so the most likely scenario is that I either first got it on the run and totally forgot to respond, or it fell into the gap when Facebook and Instagram started filtering craptons of incoming messages into a "message requests" folder that I had no idea existed. When I finally found those, some of them were literally years old. Either way, I suck. Copious apologies. Though performing Guybrush in an unofficial capacity probably isn't something I could have done anyway, so no harm done. Except for the non-responsive rudeness 😕 Anyway, do carry on. Please keep being awesome. There are, like, twenty threads in here I'd love to revive but I don't want to sow chaos. (Not yet.) 😄 -Dom

DREAMM 2.1 is officially released for Windows, MacOS, and Linux targets (x64 and ARM64). DREAMM is a bespoke emulator for LucasArts titles running on DOS, Windows, and FMTowns platforms. Download it here: aarongiles.com/dreamm/ Link to what's new (also copied below): aarongiles.com/dreamm/docs/v21 What’s New in 2.1? DREAMM 2.1 sports a number of significant upgrades over the original 2.0 release. In short, the major changes are: Greatly enhanced Windows emulation to support new games: Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures Mortimer and the Riddles of the Medallion Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire Star Wars: Yoda Stories Outlaws Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith Star Wars: Behind the Magic Star Wars: Episode I Insider’s Guide Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine Extended support for Windows releases of Star Wars: X-Wing, Star Wars: TIE Fighter, and Afterlife. Added support for Star Wars: Making Magic multimedia CD Added support for running on Linux systems, both Intel and ARM. Added detection of dozens of new game variants. Improved the UI, adding mechanism to verify installed games. Added support for MDS/MDF and CCD/IMG CD image formats. Added a mechanism to turn on portable mode, where all data is kept next to the DREAMM executable. (Re-)added standalone mode if you place DREAMM next to the game files. Added an OPL-based MIDI emulator as a fallback for all platforms. Games can now be installed via the command line. Added limited telemetry to notify me remotely if DREAMM runs into problems.

Four details I really appreciated:

Big Guybrush And tiny Guybrush

Converting a day scene to night reminds me that I did the first pitch for converting the opening of Tales from day to night. It was originally a bright sunny day at the start of the game, and I suggested we change it to a dark night with thunderstorm, rain etc, and then have it fade to day as Guybrush washes ashore on Flotsam. The effect animation I made to test this time of day transition looked extremely goofy at 10x speed (which is a common speed to run at in Telltales tools because it has a 10x/1x toggle hotkey for quickly getting through things without skipping over any keyframes or code) because of how LeChuck and the ships bobbled around, and became a video I dumped onto my personal YouTube the day before the game came out

The new game absolutely has to be pixel art and if it's not it will be totally ruined! 😠 Oh no, wait... The new art looks really cool and is making me even more excited to play the game. Now that's a plot twist I wasn't expecting considering what a nostalgia-loving-change-o-phobe I am 😁 In other news... I've never been keen on Escape but your comments have made me look forward to playing it again and being open to enjoying it even more this time! 👍 Also, hello everyone 👋 I'm new and I've just read through this whole thread. Right, back to your interesting discussions.

I'm sorry.

Not to resurrect a contentious issue that appears to have died down, but imma just say that I wouldn't get too hung up on trying to precisely nail down numbering/timeline/etc. I think it is elegantly handled.

One of my pandemic efforts. I had a really good surge of creative energy back in 2020. But, alas, didn't finish much. Back when I showed it around, one of the most common comments was "That's not Guybrush Threepwood!". I mean, I can't taylor the outcome that much to what's in my brain, but this one is coming pretty close to how I imagined high res Guybrush in the original The Secret of Monkey Island. Hope you guys like it ... ... because I have tons of that stuff back from 2020, especially Swordmaster sketches ... I have so, so many Swordmaster sketches ...

Hey all, thanks for giving DREAMM and try and for the great feedback so far! I've just released a new beta (1.0b3). Give it a play and let me know if it fixes any issues you encountered. Changes: • Added Hercules mode support for Maniac/Zak/SoMI. • Add integral scaling (Alt+I), on by default, which only stretches game screens horizontally by integral amounts. • Improved scaling logic to support 3x and 4x scaling in software to reduce jaggies and improve smoothness. • Improve overall smoothness of video updates. • The most recent configuration settings are now used for new games. • Report missing EXE files even when running from the command line. • Fix problems locating munt DLL when running from the frontend. • Fix long hangs/crashes in Sam & Max CD version. • Fix mouse wrapping at far edges of the screen. • Fix Unicode error when asking if you want to remove an entry. New beta here (it's linked above but links are pretty subtle here): https://aarongiles.com/dreamm/

It's finished, but since Limited Run Games are using it somewhere in their Collector's Edition (probably the book), I'll hold it off for now. Once pre-orders are through, I'll add it to the thread. I've cleaned it up quite a bit and extended it with all the sources I could find:

Here you can find my conversations with Greg Hammond, Vince Lee, Alexandra Boyd, James "Purple" Hampton, Larry the O, Julian Kwasneski, Peter McConnell, Mike Levine, Darragh O'Farrell, Khris Brown, Clint Bajakian, Annie Fox, Charlie Ramos, Ken Macklin, Michael Land, Malena Annable, Steve Purcell, Mike Stemmle, Dan Connors, Bret Mogilefsky, Jenn Sandercock, Anson Jew, Larry Ahern , Kyle Balda, Hal Barwood, Mark Ferrari, Ron Gilbert, Dave Grossman, Aric Wilmunder, Denny Delk, Noah Falstein, Bill Tiller, Gary Winnick, Graham Annable, David Fox and more! (December 22nd, 2024) A Conversation with Greg Hammond (December 8th, 2024) A Conversation with Vince Lee (November 24th, 2024) A Conversation with Alexandra Boyd (November 17th, 2024) A Conversation with James "Purple" Hampton? (November 10th, 2024) A Conversation with Larry the O (August 25th, 2024) A Conversation with Julian Kwasneski (August 18th, 2024) A Conversation with Peter McConnell (July 28th, 2024) A Conversation about Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix with Aric Wilmunder (June 16th, 2024) A Conversation with Mike Levine: (June 9th, 2024) A Conversation with Darragh O'Farrell: (April 28th, 2024) A Conversation with Khris Brown: (March 3rd, 2024) Another conversation with Aaron Giles (DREAMM v3.0): (February 18th, 2024) A Conversation with Clint Bajakian: (February 13th, 2024) A Conversation with Annie Fox: (February 4th, 2024) A Conversation with Charlie Ramos: (January 14th, 2024) A Conversation with Ken Macklin: (January 7th, 2024) A Conversation with Michael Land: (December 24th) A Conversation with Malena Annable: (November 19th) A Conversation with Steve Purcell: (November 12th) A Conversation with Mike Stemmle: (November 5th) A Conversation with Dan Connors: (October 29th) A Conversation with Bret Mogilefsky: (October 22nd) A Conversation with Jenn Sandercock: (October 1st) A Conversation with Anson Jew: (September 24th) A Conversation with Larry Ahern: (September 10th) A Conversation with Kyle Balda: (September 3rd) A Conversation with Hal Barwood: (July 16th) A Conversation with Mark Ferrari: (June 30th) A Conversation with Ron Gilbert: (June 25th) A Conversation with Dave Grossman: (May 28th) A Conversation with Aric Wilmunder: (May 14th) Another conversation with Aaron Giles (DREAMM Version 2.0): (May 11th) A Conversation with Denny Delk: (May 7th) A Conversation with Noah Falstein: (April 23rd) A Conversation with Bill Tiller: (April 2nd) A Conversation with Gary Winnick: (March 16th) A Conversation with Academy Award nominee Graham Annable: A conversation with LucasArts legend David Fox: A conversation with SCUMM legend Brad Taylor: A conversation with LucasArts alumni & emulation wiz Aaron Giles:

So, here are my restorations I've originally made for the inclusion in the LOOM LRG release: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1lW-KGbfLVHoctL9LS_Tvr6PGvryTEqKv?usp=sharing Granted, it was never guaranteed that these could be included, and I worked on these purely out of passion for it, thinking that IF these could be included, they should at least have the highest possible quality (that I could achieve). I've worked on these over the course of a few weeks, finishing up a few remaining ones in the last couple of days, and I'm pretty sure these represent the best preservations of these documents available. These are sourced mostly from brand-new 600dpi scans provided by several collectors (which I will credit once I've figured out who wants to get a mention and who prefers to stay anonymous), with meticulous manual clean-up done to remove dirt and damage, straightening the scans, while re-coloring some of the documents (like the color-coded hint books) and re-building some of the others (especially the Book of Patterns). The Books of Patterns (in German, French, Spanish, Hebrew and Japanese) are, for the most part, provided as 600dpi black & white version, suitable for printing, and 300dpi versions that included the original paper color/texture. The hint books (in English, Spanish and Japanese, at 600dpi) are available as both decoded versions (with the red overlay removed) as well as the original red-coded versions (except for the French hint book, which came as a simple B&W print out without any color-coding). The manuals (in English, German, French, Spanish, Hebrew and Japanese) are provided as 600dpi black & white PDFs, with some of them including the game's reference cards (sometimes for multiple systems). And yeah, that's it. Aside from the different game versions and the audio drama in all four languages, these were the files I was hoping could be included on the LRG release's USB drive. Sadly, it didn't turn out that way.

Frankly, I think Return added a lot of confusion to this topic. The perspective seen is nothing more than misdirection.

Before tackling some of the more ambitious Monkey Island related projects I have in the pipeline, I wanted to start with a project that wasn’t overly complicated and didn’t require a too great an investment in bricks and space. So why not start with the basics? The pixelated character design is such an integral part of the first two Monkey Island games and I’m always amazed how much character those sprites are able to convey with such a small number of pixels and available colors. Those perler beads mosaics are always great fun, and LEGO seemed like a close enough counterpart. But why not take it a step further? Although those character sprites are 2D, we get to view these characters in various poses, angles and movements (powered by the incredible animation), so I figured I might have enough elements to extrapolate a 3D pixel sculpture, as it were, and build it with LEGO bricks. And what better character to start with than with our beloved Guybrush Threepwood, as seen in The Secret of Monkey Island? So using the original animation cycles, I chose a pose and isolated three views of the character coherent with that pose: Now, when searching for reference material for this undertaking, I stumbled upon Neil Chapman’s work on ArtStation, and he had already gone to considerable lengths in conveying some of the main characters from the first two games into 3D Pixel Sprites: You should check is work here: https://www.artstation.com/vomo So I contacted him to collaborate on this project, and he kindly sent me his 3D Pixel Sprites, which now I had to convert to LEGO bricks: My absolute priority was to preserve, down to every single pixel, the look of Guybrush as seen in the first game, so that regardless of what side you were viewing the sculpture, it would always match the respective sprite in the original animation. Matching the colors took some work and apparently, using LEGO studs as pixels seemed obvious enough, but that meant these sculptures could not be in the standard, studs up, LEGO building style. As most of you probably know, a 1 x 1 standard LEGO Brick is not cubic at all, as it is a bit taller that its square base: So using 1 x 1 bricks as single pixels was absolutely out of the question, as the sculpture would become stretched up, the proportions would look all wrong and the fidelity of the model would be seriously compromised. I could increase the scale and make each pixel correspond to this configuration: but the sculpture would’ve become too massive and parts intensive. Besides, it is kinda fun and appropriate to make each pixel correspond to a single LEGO stud. Now, obviously, LEGO studs are square, so making the sculpture using a “studs-out” technique seemed like the best approach, as that would allow to retain the pixel-LEGO stud correspondence, and LEGO studs are square, the fidelity of the model would be kept. LEGO bricks and plates, however, are bit unsightly when seen from their underside, and I really did now want the sculpture to have a good side, at the expense of its back, so I decided to make the sculpture out of two, studs out, halves, that connect to one another in the middle, like a sarcophagus of sort. And this is the final result. I hope you find it fun: I will show some more 3D Pixel character sculptures in the next few days

Can i just say some of the jokes in Return have wonderful clues to the ending. For example, this joke reads differently with hindsight!!! 🤯

I've finally gotten around to gathering all the memo's and letters from Monkey Island™ and I've collected my paper crafted replicas too. I wrote the "legalese" for the rest of the letter. To: Herman Toothrot From: Yammer, Hem, and Haw, attorneys at law Re: Suit against cannibal tribe over malicious tossing of your oars into a chasm. I think we have a case here. We can probably soak them for emotional distress and possibly punitive damages as well. “Hmm. Sounds like Legalese. I don't think I can translate the rest.” Casus contra anthropophagos difficile est probare sine causa adducendi ad iudicium. Ex nostris monumentis monstraris in insula remota vivere solum cum anthropophagis et pirata larvae Lechuck loqui. Cum hic progreditur casus, vehementer commendamus ut omnes verbales et scriptae communicationes cum Anthropophagis desineres. Opus est ut artissimum iudicium de altero iudiciorum trium insularum interesse debeas; Judex PLANK. praesidebit. Should you require an inter-island visit pre case, please inform our office. Any return mail should be sent in the accompanying bottle. Yours Yammer, Hem and Haw P.S. Please allow 3-5 years for reply, the tides between here and Monkey Island™ can be unpredictable. Latin Translation: The case against the cannibals may be difficult to prove without the case being brought before a court of law. From our records you are shown to live on a remote island with only the cannibals and the ghost pirate Lechuck to speak with. Whilst this case progresses we would heartly recommend that you cease all verbal and written communications with the cannibals. You may need to attend the closest court for judgement on another of the Tri-Island courts, Judge PLANK. will preside.

Mojo: Stressing out Ron Gilbert since ‘97.

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.)

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.

Yeeting Guybrush will be the title of my memoirs.

Since the announcement of Return to Monkey Island I worked on the Monkey Island 2 Flash Film!! I just announced it with a little trailer, and will release the whole movie on monday.

Just a little heads up: The UK magazine Retro Gamer interviewed me for their latest issue, so be sure to check it out!

Thanks to a VERY generous collector, more stuff is in the works. Behold:

So, thanks to Laserschwert's wonderful efforts, I decided to print the poster art for the first two Monkey Island games and have them framed in old, piratey-looking frames I found in thrift-shops. This is the result:

It is self-adhesive photo paper A3 print at home on inkjet The box I make also it’s 2mm cardboard the box get very hard and sturdy. It can’t be folded so I cut and glue it. then print and cut the paper, glue it on, fold it and finish 😃 It just needs to be exact size so the box and wrap match