Laserschwert

Nope, the poster was only using scans of game releases. Mainly the manuals of the Korean and Taiwanese version of MI2, plus several box scans. If I had access to scans of the original painting, the quality would be much, much higher. Noteworthy: The Korean manual seems to be the only available source of an unobstructed "LeChuck's Revenge" banner.

I guess it depends on what was used for the paintings. Acrylic paint basically turns into plastic once dried, so that should last a while. Oils are obviously more problematic, although it's not like these are renaissance paintings from a few hundred years ago. The painting surface can be the weak spot though... canvas, cardboard or MDF usually aren't water proof unless sealed. But as I understand it, the Lucas archive is a professionally cared for, temperature-controlled facility, so most stuff should be safe. As a matter of fact, Craig Derrick told me he's planning a trip to the archives soon. I asked him to especially look for boxart - originals and slides/transparencies - to at least make sure these are properly stored and modern scans could be made. I doubt that he's in a position to share anything for the poster project, but it would at least ease my mind a bit if these works can be confirmed to be safe. As for the quality of slides: Just look at the quality of the new MI poster. That one was most definitely created from a slide. The detail is very good, but as I mentioned above, there's still room for improvement. But that would require going back to the original painting, because all those shortcomings are now baked into those slides.

Yeah, MI1 is important enough to warrant multiple versions.

The big thing I'm thinking of are of course the original paintings. At least we know that MI2, FOA and Rebel Assault 2 are still in Purcell's and Eaken's possessions. As for stuff like MI1, MM, Zak or The Dig, they must be stored somewhere... I hope. Loom is an interesting one, because it's not a painting but a coloured pencil drawing. So most likely it was done on paper and is thus not as sturdy as paintings made on cardboard, MDF or canvas. Interestingly, GameHistoryOrg's Frank Cifaldi did initially have the MI1 poster photographed at a specialized vendor, but the quality couldn't compete with a flatbed scan, so he ended up scanning it on his A3 scanner. Edit: According to Frank, Steve Purcell confirmed that the poster's colors are accurate. So that settles that.

As great as this version of the artwork is, you can see the shortcomings of 80s physical film/optics and digital scanning technology. Some colors bleed into one another and edges aren't as refined as they could be. The MI2 artwork we derived from the magazine poster already looks more detailed. (Edit: Having finished the restoration by now, I've got to retract that statement. The MI2 art is a much rougher painting, with generally less detail than the finer brushwork of the first artwork. Of course, this might be due to being a cheaper reproduction as a magazine pack-in.) I'd wager that a modern scan of the artwork (or as I understand it, paintings are most of the time photographed instead of flatbed-scanned) would result in even more detail and much better colour reproduction. Color-correcting this will be a challenge too, since the different releases use many different color schemes for the art. Personally I'm partial to the Sega CD version's colors (which my current restorations leaned on heavily), though with this poster being a more definitive source, the end result will probably land somewhere inbetween.

It's the officially released promo poster, available back in the day through the Lucasfilm merch store.

Thanks to Jake, I finally got a chance to scan the official Monkey Island poster: Now there's a lot of cleaning up to do. Plus this is merely a starting point for creating a much better expanded and textless artwork.

I still haven't played much of the first game, because the controls feel so incredibly janky. So I'm afraid to not get the full dose of familiarity with returning characters and plot threads, thus diminishing my enjoyment. Is the sequel heavy on nostalgia for the first game?

My best guess is they shot themselves in the foot by promising certificates hand-signed by Ron Gilbert, and then accidentally selling multiple thousands of boxsets.

Sorry, I had nothing to do with it.

It's only been gone for a month or so, but it's still good to have it back.

My old MP3s were all encoded at 160kbps, which is hardly up to modern standards. Also my own arrangements aren't probably cutting it anymore either. Anything new I make already goes up on my SoundCloud (like my on going HtR soundtrack arrangement). It's a bit sad that I had to get rid of all the SW and Indy music, because I probably won't be able to add them in a theoretical reboot of the site. After all it was a direct order (if a polite one) by Lucasfilm.

It's been abandoned for quite some time. I think archive.org still has a somewhat working version of it available, plus most soundtrack links should still work with a little URL renamery.

If you are willing to take care of logistics of ordering, collecting the money and shipping them forward (as I imagine this might be crowd-funded through the forums as well), I'd be happy to design that box.

To everybody mad at not being a part of this: This was a project we really wanted to keep small to avoid any legal problems. Had we made this known on an international forum like this one, or even social media, it would have exploded in scope and surely would have been shut down by Lucasfilm. Originally my friend only wanted to have big boxes to put the DVD case in, maybe adding a poster to it. But I proposed more goodies we could add, so it already grew bigger than expected. Packing and shipping 30 of these was a big undertaking in itself for a single person (my friend did that, I only designed the stuff), so having to do this for hundreds or more would not have been possible.

Germany got a classic big box release for ToMI, but it was a limited edition. We've used https://www.pack.ly for these, which are relatively cheap (and one of the few allowing for small print runs). Also, the boxes are only folded together, not glued, which makes assembly much easier. By the way, no, I won't share any print files for this, as it would somewhat devalue the whole project.

Here we go: So, this was basically a crowd-funded project a friend of mine and me did with a few collectors (only 30 boxes got produced). I did all the designs and layouts, aside from the map (which was drawn by the wonderful Cristina Urdiales, which I then digitally "aged" for the print). Also, the great CanvasQuest helped me to get the enamel pin produced, and you'll soon find it in his store as well. All the other artworks used are obviously not mine, but sourced from all over the Special Editions.

Nothing official, no.

Also, judging by the fact that ILM recently hired YouTube-DeepFaker "Shamook", I'm positive that they are now going to deep fake stuff like that, instead of going full CGI-face (like Tarkin, Leia, Luke), which in turn preserves much more of the underlying actor's performance.

Custom MI:SE box? I wanna say "Hold my grog", but it will have to wait for just a liiittle while longer.

You mean like these? (Laverne and Hoagie will follow soon) I think the Indy games would offer the best chance for proper merch. A leather-bound grail diary, an actual grail-replica, the knight's shield rubbing (for LC), Nur-Ab-Sal necklace, horned statue, orichalcum sugar beads (mmh), stone disc replicas.

Welcome! And I didn't even know there was internet in 1982.

I would say this painting is more along the lines of his Telltale artworks in terms of detail. He pretty much ditched the colored outlines for those as well, plus HTR mostly shows the acrylics (or oils?) and less of the pencil work, whereas the VR and Telltale artworks prominently feature the pencil line work.

Yes, I've scanned two different versions of it, but it's a lot of work to clean it up.

I could probably get a scan of the other shirt sold.