Jake

Monkey Island 1 and 2 both are pretty grounded architecturally, and then push the style of the rendering to exaggerated fisheye perspectives. Curse takes that and starts applying it to the architecture itself. In Plunder Island, the buildings start stacking vertically and haphazardly, so that the architecture is getting increasingly implausible in support of the visual style. It's only a tiny step in that direction really, but I think it's notable. (I dont think this is a bad thing! It's just interesting to watch happen across those 3 games.)

Yeah it is probably that*, but the buildings on the left are in a different style that definitely seems to be trending into the DOTT zone. Someone was interested in exploring more abstract shapes. To my eyes it almost looks like an evolution of the wonky perspective of Melee in Monkey Island 1, but seen through the lens of the Monkey 2 artists (who went on to do backgrounds for DOTT and Hit the Road). It really does evoke some of the reference art posted earlier in the thread, but with a different end result than we got in DOTT. Ultimately Monkey Island 2 ended up looking like the right side of the image, but it’s clear that less realistic approaches to representing the world of the game were being considered even during (what appears to be) the transition time between Monkey 1 and 2. * (originally known as Crooked Island in those early days I believe)

I think it’s a safe bet that “Monkey 3,” had that been made right after 2 instead of DOTT, would have pushed into a more stylized space, but what exactly that space is can never be known. It is clear from everything they did afterwards, the LucasArts art department was interested in pushing the limits into more stylized spaces. They also seemed uninterested in repeating themselves. It’s unlikely that Monkey 3 would have tried to look like a Chuck Jones cartoon, but it’s very unlikely it would have looked like “more Monkey Island 2.” Everything they did afterwards pushed for more illustrative and bigger characters for example. (Except The Dig but that doesn’t count because it started production before all of its contemporaries.) Again that doesn’t mean a Monkey 3 definitely would have shared that, but the odds are decent it would have at least been explored. This image was recovered as part of the VGHF dive into the Monkey Island 1 and 2 source, and nobody was able to divine what it means or what it’s from so please don’t draw conclusions. It’s NOT from any Monkey 3 project. Its impossible to say what it was for beyond a quick style exercise. It was actually found in the source files for Monkey 1, and the reason for that is hard to know (it could have just been a filing mistake, or not?) but it shows that even during production of Monkey Island 1 and 2, the artists were starting to explore pushing into more stylized looks. It really does feel like once scanning paintings was added to their repertoire, the sky was the limit on style exploration.

I thought the way hints worked in Thimbleweed Park was really good.

That was a great interview.

Nice!

From the recent interviews it sounds like Boen gave a formal blessing to recast, so I don’t think actors would feel like they’re stepping on his toes if they were asked to carry on an impression of his version of the character.

I like to imagine that at some point the real Captain Marley shows up and it transpires that Herman’s “revelation” in Escape was caused by him being hit over the head too many times.

On Tales Steve said he thought Ryan Jones’ rendition of Guybrush was complimentary to how he saw the character at the time, and Steve and Ryan worked together on The Devil’s Playhouse. Of course Steve, Ron, and Dave have worked together before too believe it or not, so who knows! I’d love to see a Steve box, but I’d also love to see what Rex Crowle would do!

The Thimbleweed Park Delores source is available already!

I can’t recall the interview that’s from but I asked some of the other Mojo folks and they backed me up. To my memory it was a random pirate who ended up looking George-like, then that rumor started and was canonized in the Special Edition… but again, I can’t remember the source of this story.

Yep. The Thimbleweed release sort of snuck out without Nintendo certification. The snapcase inside met the requirements but not the outer box, so now they do the sleeve thing. Glad you like the feelies!!

This is what would happen, for consistency. The actor in the game did a great job but the team would have preferred to use the original/canonical characters where possible especially for leads like the Voodoo Lady (those decisions were not ours to make, for budgetary reasons! Thank you to the fans for being loud about Earl Boen at the time, it was the ammunition the team needed to get him back for episodes 4 and 5). As far as other principals, Stan is recast all the time so that one seems more okay to be sloppy, and I really liked the actors performance in Tales. I don’t think anyone else would change. Thats my guess at least! Anyway, how about we Return to Monkey Island…

Nope, I asked, he had no idea.

No it’s not… (source: I liked it just now) also woooo more monkey island!!!!

Let’s make a new thread so this isn’t forever the grumpy gamer April fools thread. also hell yes.

Not quite as 😎 as thunderpeel but still 😎 👕 I beat #Mojole and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 2/6 🖤💛💚💛🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

Glad you like them! Know that the Switch version has an outer slipcase around it that required a modified design to meet Nintendo’s certifications for game packaging, but inside the slipcase it has the same full two piece box with the same layout as the PC version (but the platform sticker says Nintendo switch).

I love this. Those pictures would make a very very challenging quiz. “Name the lucasfilm game from its marbled paper background.” I think I would have only got Night Shift.

HashtagCollectibles renamed themselves to Uncute a couple years ago. Same people, same product.

This looks fantastic! Ordering immediately. As far as I know ScummVM’s switch version is written using the Switch home brew APIs, not Nintendo’s official ones, so it would never pass cert. And I believe there’s no real way for a developer to use it as a starting point to do an official port that uses the official APIs, because they’d have to publish their code publicly, which I believe would violate Nintendo’s agreement for how developers are allowed to use the official code. If I got the details wrong there I apologize, but that’s my understanding of the gist of it: It is a bummer.

I think the Broken Age boxes are in line with some of the US lucasarts boxes, but not the oldest ones which were built like a rock. They switched to that folded up style later.

I think Tales of MI was on the cusp of not being included because it’s not a LucasArts-owned game and so much about Telltale was in flux for a while there. That would at least partly explain why it gets short shrift in the book. But I’m personally glad the bulk of it is dedicated to MI1 and 2. They’re the games that truly predate the World Wide Web, and the least dissected in real-time by fans and journalists when they were released.

Glad that poster actually did look nicer and yield an improvement!

I’d always assumed that was in regards to versions of the box that had just the logo and none of the credits, as opposed to a purely clean painting that didn’t present as a box at all.