MurraySchull

I never got on the EMI hate train. It may not fit 100% alongside the canon of the rest of the series, but I've always enjoyed playing it and think it's a great game and story in its' own right. The music and voice acting especially is as pitch perfect as any of the games have been, and there's still more than enough positives in the writing and humour for me to enjoy replaying it every so often.

I've got it! The game begins with a cutscene. Guybrush is at the Big Whoop carnival. He becomes lost. The Voodoo Lady appears, telling him he has the option to turn left or turn right. His choice in this moment will change his destiny. "And... what happens if I turn left?" "You'll find the Big Whoop dodgems. Be careful! I hear one of them is not securely fastened!" ... "Uh huh. And what if I turn right?" "Who knows..." ... "Sounds cool! I'll take it!" The game begins.

I wouldn't worry too much. It's a lot more lively than the MI1SE by the animation alone, which is much more flowing and stylised than something like MI1SE, which was 1:1 in terms of animation frames, which works for pixel art but not so much a HD restoration. There's a much nicer marriage between the animation and the still graphics of RMI. And re. if the character up on deck might be Guybrush... the number of times that he walks back and forth, and seeing that concept art on the previous page, I'm thinking it might be! It is a "teaser trailer" after all. I'm not in love with that original concept design as it's pretty abstract compared to his other appearances. I hope he'll at least be more recognisable as the same character visually in the actual game. Also wasn't Mojo's 2003 April Fools gag entitled Return to Monkey Island? It's come full circle!

🥲

Well, this is an out of the blue surprise! I remember the "drop everything I'm doing" moment I had when Tales was announced in 2009. This felt the same. I've had lingering feelings for a while that something may be going on (i.e. cryptic tweets from the team of "yeah, it'd be great to do more" etc) and not to mention the occasional prophetic dream I had that always felt real when I was in it! But I've always dismissed the possibility of a new game given how many years have passed, since this is by far the longest hiatus the series has had, etc. But it looks like something was able to be worked out! Hopefully soon we'll get some answers on if this is completely Ron's game or if other hands are involved. It really seems like we're getting the best of all worlds in regards to the team as well. Land, McConnell and Bajakian being onboard means that we're likely going to get another soundtrack with the production values of Curse and Escape. That alone is reason enough to be excited. No disrespect to Tales, as it had a lot of fantastic compositions in it, but the synthesised instruments didn't always do justice to them. (I also wish Land/McConnell and Bajakian could've had a bigger hand in the SE soundtracks too for the sake of consistency, but I was still very happy with what we got!) A new Monkey Island OST with them, however, means it has the potential to reach the level of Curse and Escape's soundtracks. Not to mention, a new recording of the main theme? Escape simply re-used Curse's theme, so after 25 years, we'll finally have a new version... Thrilled that Dom is back, and Denny Delk is a welcome surprise too given how many years have passed, but one that I would never suggest recasting. Would love to know who, if anybody else, they manage to get back from the other games too (British Elaine, Herman Toothrot, MI1-3 Stan, etc.) . The big question mark, in my opinion, is Earl Boen. His performance as LeChuck across the whole series is utterly perfect (and upon replaying the series over the Christmas holidays, I've made the decision that he's one of the most perfectly cast voices I've ever heard in a game) but in reality, the guy is 80 years old and has been retired for a while now. His most recent voiceover credit, according to Wikipedia, was 2017. So based on that, maybe there's a slim chance, but I wouldn't be shocked if LeChuck was recast for this game, or even if Boen decided to decline to return. Which is completely understandable, of course, given his age, but at the same time, something really would be missing if we didn't have him. I really hope they've worked out a good solution in terms of the voice of LeChuck. The art style is different, yet familiar, yet retro, yet modern, yet good! It's 2D, which I feel like people would flip out if it wasn't(!) and seems to have a more immersive feeling in the sense that the background moves, the elements are on different planes, etc. Something I wish the Special Editions could've taken more advantage of at times. Very curious to see how the rest of the games visuals shape up and how the main characters might look in this new art style. That's all I have to say for now! Sorry, but this called for a rant!

True. Winslow’s voice was iconic, but then again, so was Bosco’s at the time. So it’d probably be up to Skunkape to review the decision. I personally don’t think Tales will ever be revisited (same with Curse/Escape) beyond rereleasing them occasionally, but in the event that Tales was to be remastered, I think those two characters’ voices would be up for consideration. It’d need to be the MI1-MI4 Voodoo Lady, however, not a new actress, if just for the sake of completion.

I remember the original plan being for the Boen version to replace the downloadable version on the TTG site (with Boen being the default and the Harrington version becoming the “rare” edition). But then one thing after another happened (S&M3, the Universal deal, The Walking Dead deal, the “New” Telltale) and I guess it just slipped further down their priorities list until it fell off completely. I’ll need to use an older computer to get the TMI DVD files from it, but for the timebeing, Benny’s patch works great! (A few glitches in the timings, but nothing the right-click skip button can’t fix!) Slightly off topic here, but speaking of recastings, in the event that Skunkape ever gets the opportunity to remaster Tales in the way they’re remastering S&M (unlikely, but one can dream!) I wonder if they’d recast the Voodoo Lady for the same reasons that they recast Bosco. I say this because TMI is the only game in the series where her character was re-cast (likely due to the original actresses inability to commit to monthly recording) but if they were able to bring in the original actress to record the Voodoo Lady’s TMI dialogue now, that would give her continuity across the series, so I’d absolutely be open to that being done should we ever see TMI Special Edition. With Curse and Escape, I’d be happy with merely a resolution increase.

Wow, thanks so much! I’ll try this out tomorrow. Just tried loading in my 2010 DVD and my modern machine doesn’t recognise the disc! Looks like this may be my only shot now! Don’t worry about the lip sync, it was never Telltale’s strongsuit at that point in time anyway! Replaying the series now in full for the first time in 8-9 years. Damn, Boen as LeChuck is absolute pitch perfect casting. Almost all of the voicework in the series is great, mind, but Boen is flawless across the board, even with all of his dialogue in MI1SE that can be awkward to read aloud.

That is a shame, thanks for confirming. It’s the one thing that holds this set back from being the ultimate collection of all five games. (Not that the set itself is perfect, there are a few things here and there I’d have liked to have seen done differently, but it is the best we’ve ever gotten.) I know Boen was patched into/initially released on other platforms, but for PC, I believe the only way to play the TMI1 Boen version is the original TellTale DVD release, and the downloadable version from the website was never updated, is that right? Luckily I still have my DVD copy, otherwise I guess I’d be out of luck.

An easy way to tell the difference between the two versions, as well as Harrington’s HAR HAR HAR’s, is the way the music is timed in the opening scene. Since Boen’s delivery was generally faster, they had to reposition the music in that first scene to account for it (Guybrush’s first line of “Alright, LeChuck, put down the monkey...” is timed to roughly the same part of the music in both versions, and the timings before and after then vary.) You can tell it’s the Boen version if you hear the first few notes of music over the Telltale Games logo. If the music only begins after LeChuck says “At last!”, then it’s the Harrington version. Very curious if there are multiple versions of the USB/CD contents out there if other people have the Boen version. Would be worth checking over, I think. If a downloadable PC Boen version of TMI1 exists, I’d prefer to play that one. Otherwise, this is 100% the ideal way to own and play the whole series. And while Harrington wasn’t bad, per-se, there is only one Earl Boen, and his version really should be present in a complete set like this. P.S. The Murray figure IS a really evil looking doorstop!

Recieved my set in the UK today. Merry Christmas to me! Arrived in great condition and the product itself looks really cool. So great that this finally turned up after ordering about a year ago. The USB and CD's seemed to work fine for me as well. HOWEVER, one thing that I noticed upon loading up Tales. Episode 1 is still the original Harrington version, both on the USB and the CD. I saw that Mojo has listed in their newspost that the Boen version is in this set, and I also remember an interview with Limited Run where they stated they thought that would be the case too, but upon loading up the two versions of the game found in this set, that doesn't appear to be the case. I haven't seen anybody else bring this up yet, so I thought it was worth flagging and seeing if anybody else happened to have the later version of Tales with this set. (I did check to see if a setting had been incorporated into Tales to choose between which version to play, but no such luck. I doubted there would be any additions/enhancements in any case, these are basically direct ports of the games as-is.) Aside from that, the box itself is bigger than expected. The face on my Guybrush statue looks normal, thankfully! Murray is about 3-4 inches tall and is, appropriately, a candle holder. The artbox is very cool, it's great to have physical posters of all of the official game art at last, Will be checking out the book over the Christmas holidays, but it looks like a lot of work went into it! It's a real shame that the order of the games on the side of the box is incorrect. They are correctly ordered on the back of the CD case, so lord knows how this error was made. But yeah, overall, great looking set, and of course... official, physical Monkey Island merch for the first time in... maybe ever? I couldn't say no to supporting this. P.S. From dispatch to arrival, it took eight days for the set to arrive from overseas.