elTee

I think in reality there's a big problem with this, simply because there ARE bad actors out there who will weaponise ANY THING THEY CAN to perpetuate a culture war. Things like the race of a voice actor vs the race of the character are prime fodder for them, because they can use it to craft a narrative that white people are being oppressed in some way. They're doing this to push against the concept of "white privilege" because it's a privilege that these same people ENJOY HAVING. What I am trying to say is that I think Skunkape were damned if they did this, and damned if they didn't. Recast and piss off the white supremacists, or don't recast and piss off the people who find this type of thing offensive. And anyone who simply prefers the original voices (for whatever reason) gets caught in the crossfire. I guess Skunkape simply prefer to be damned by far-right trolls than by decent inclusive people. That was a brave choice and one I respect them for. As others have said, I also think it's objectively the RIGHT choice.

By all means guys, feel free to discuss the Skunkape projects however you like. I didn't want to shut the discussion down, but I had started seeing references to things like the holocaust and slavery, and those subjects are not up for debate, that's all. I think we're all mainly on the same page here, anyway!

I think this undermines your point in the previous post about the holocaust. You're entitled to your opinion and I'm grateful that everyone is trying to keep this civil, but I think the truth is that the Mojo forums are probably not the place for this discussion. I hope one day you can find a way to enjoy the Skunkape re-releases, and if not that's okay, because you will always have the original version. But let's all try and move on from this if we can please.

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.

Yes I second this. It's always a pleasure when a new entry goes live, especially when it's a game I remember!

In fact, if anyone is interested in a TMI box designed by laserschwert could you just DM me? I'm not going to make a post for it or make any promises or anything right now, I'm just curious to see how many people would be interested (in addition to myself and laserschwert). I get a feeling the interest in this would be quite low, but let's see!

That's a very generous offer - let me look into this a little and I'll get back to you. Like everyone else I don't want anything to get out of hand and have lawyers get involved! But I'm sure we'll probably be able to make something work.

Thanks! I'm going to check this out ASAP!

That's come out really nicely. I always wanted to do something like this for tales of monkey island, using Steve Purcell's cover art. Were the boxes produced/printed by an online service or was it something more labour intensive?

I wonder if the pandemic has caused all these rare items to become available? I've not seen the t-shirts for sale ever. That's a pretty beat-up DOTT box, though. And I could swear it had a CD sleeve rather than a jewel case but I could easily be mistaken about that.

Yes thank you @Lagomorph01, let's stay on topic. I don't think any of us are in the mood for a manufactured argument that tries to suggest recasting a small role in a video game is equivalent to slavery and institutional racism. You'd have to be an idiot or a stooge to even suggest it.

Me too, I've waited a long time for this! Thanks laserschwert, you're the best!

They're basically a museum, I can almost guarantee this will be publicly available at some point.

I found some images of this a few years ago and Jason reminded me to share them - here you go!

Yes! This is one I've been personally waiting for for YEARS and didn't realistically expect us to get a decent scan of. Well done laserschwert!

Wow! Nice

Ticket bought. Really high hopes for this event!

Hee Benny, it's only a Kixx box! It's worthless. I will do whatever needs to be done to get a flat scan 😉

I did actually do that, but unfortunately the box is in pretty bad shape. I'll have another attempt as soon as I can, though - in the worst case I should be able to get 2 or 3 images that, combined, have the blurry sections removed.

And typically, the Kyrandia 2 scan is over the file size limit for the forum. I'll look into finding somewhere to put this so you can access it. In the meantime, I scanned the manual at 600 DPI too as it seems to be arranged slightly differently.

Okay @Laserschwert here we go, I made them as flat as possible, 600 DPI, PNG with no image processing of any kind. Thank you so much for your continued brilliant work on this project!

Excellent, I'll try and get those done for you within the next 24 hours. Should be able to get it done early tomorrow evening. As for Lure of the Temptress, I am more than happy to let Longcat try and tackle that one!

And finally, I found that I have a large poster for Revolution's Lure of the Temptress. It's folded up inside the box, which gives it creases, and it will be an absolute bastard to scan it. BUT if people happen to like this game, this is probably the highest resolution the art is available in. I've scanned the first two quadrants of the thing to demonstrate; if anyone is seriously interested in this I can have a bash at scanning the whole thing, but it will be awkward... Luckily though, this is not the most popular or fondly remembered game on these forums.

While I had the scanner out, I scanned this box, which is my favourite of the weird variants they did for the second Kyrandia game. I am aware that not everybody likes this one!

Okay, did a quick scan for you - my copy of this box isn't in the best condition, I just bought it for the floppy disks, but if you feel this is usable and would like me to try and make a better copy or in a specific file format / resolution / etc just let me know and I'll be happy to help.