Laserschwert

Coming from a good source, a film can look spectacular at 1080p, which is proven by the many great Blu-rays that were released in the pre-4k days. Granted, through all the 200X and 201X most movies were finished at 2k resolution (which is close to the same res of 1920x1080 that we know as HD), after applying visual effects and digital color grading, and it was good enough for the cinema. The SW Special Editions and Episode 1 suffered from not-yet-great digital-to-film processes, so the quality of the VFX was even worse once transferred back to film.

The Phantom Menace got so many VFX (or just digitally altered) shots, most of which didn't go far beyond 1080p either. Some where even created below that res (because rendering capacity was severely limited), so short of re-compositing or re-rendering all those shots at a higher resolution, that movie will never be fully 4k either. (But unlike Eps 2 and 3 most of the footage was shot on 35mm film, so in theory the live-action and model shots at least exist at higher res).

*yawn*

To be fair, Full Throttle used that interface first.

A test with replaced texts:

Yeah, I've already played around with keying out the sky to reduce the texture there. But after all, they are still supposed to be paintings, so even the sky would have texture. Looking at the DOTT marker paintings, I've noticed that texture gets stronger the darker the color is - which makes sense, as the paper gets wetter, it roughens more. I'll incorporate that in my next version. Until then, enjoy some aspect ratio-corrected screens with some hastily upscaled Sam & Max sprites (until someone more capable than me redraws them in HD).

I've added a bunch more backgrounds. You're right, the (automatically generated) brush strokes aren't ideal (apart from location, like on the truck above, because those were randomly masked across the image, without much manual placement). Generally, I mostly wanted the brush strokes there to fake a bit more detail. I know that marker or watercolor paintings wouldn't have them, but when placed manually (like in my latest additions), they could at least suggest a bit of texture on stuff like wood or rock. If I took this further, I'd actually use different textures for different parts of the image - basically the hi-def version of the pixel-art paint overs the original backgrounds got. A lot of this stuff on my latest additions was automated in After Effects, including random placement of the paper texture, with manual masking of the paint strokes afterwards.

I'm pretty sure MI6 will get a proper soundtracks release, because lately Disney has done this a LOT (especially most of the latest Star Wars games all got official releases). Monkey Island is still the crown jewel of LucasArts' classic IPs, so I could see the release of MI6 giving enough momentum for more love towards the other games of the franchise.

The very first step is a simple 4x upscale with the PixelPerfectV3 model (available HERE, in the Legacy folder - V4 smooths the image too much for my taste) plus some sharpening with ArtClarity. After that, it's only Photoshop work. I wouldn't rule out there being even better models out there, and sometimes a blend of multiple models (at different levels, in different areas of an image) gives the best result. I'll keep investigating.

And while the original DOTT background paintings had a lot of texture to them, they were much less detailed than MI2's backgrounds. So DF did right in rebuilding the backgrounds, but I agree that trying to make them look like physical drawings would have improved the look a lot. To be fair, these upscale tools weren't widely popular or available when they worked on the remasters.

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):

Man, it's really life-like.

Which AI are you using for this?

I've added all the maps (at their current states) to the opening post. I'll probably update the FOA map eventually with cleaner versions, and further color options (based on the box/manual and poster).

Still amazing how much subtle coloring they managed to pull out of that EGA palette (like the distance haze).

Technically back then there wasn't a way to filter halftone out, short of blurring the image, so yeah, it might have been another reason why it's blurred. Depending on which fuzzyness you mean though, it's either the camera noise or the halftone from printing the box.

Done! I've updated the previews above and added a link, and I'll add them to the opening post eventually. This looks like a very minor cleanup, but filtering out this heavy halftone was tricky. Plus a lot of work painting out 99% of dust, dirt and scratches. Thanks @Jake for great scans and a suffering wallet.

No... looks like Eaken wasn't around in the 1800s.

And clean-up of @Jake's scan is coming along nicely as well. Original colors: Approximating the box/manual colors: It's weird how the box "feels" almost monochromatic, when there's actually still a lot of color in there. I guess the colorful artwork and design elements of the box just cause the map to become less prominent. Edit: All done! 600 dpi PNG versions can be downloaded HERE.

Oh yeah, better look:

There's also this on the manual. Is it EAKEN? Has Bill Eaken colored that map?

Reported.

So I guess the guy from Free Etheral Delivery Exhumation (FedEx) had his day off?