dwa

Cool, but once again they don't mention which releases are going to be included, so have fun pre-ordering some unknown content. Maybe they're going to detail it a bit more in some online interview somewhere, but never of their own website of course, duh… I guess it's going to be the English FM-TOWNS version, and at least the V2 DOS version, as on GOG. Providing the original FM-TOWNS executable, and also its Japanese release with its unique stuff would be cool, and same thing if the music could be ripped as lossless FLAC instead of lossy MP3s (as do GOG and Steam). Having as many releases as possible would be cool for game preservation, too. I like what they're doing, but for that price (and their usual lack of quality control) they could maybe be a bit more verbose about what they're going to do, maybe reach out to some hardcore fans first for advice, instead of selling it first, and then figuring out what they're going to put in it… sigh…

…and ScummVM 2.7.0 has now been released with this really nice feature! And shaders for that retro CRT look too! And as a sign that we still very much care for the various SCUMM games, have a look at its entry below 😜 https://downloads.scummvm.org/frs/scummvm/2.7.0/ReleaseNotes.html

You may be interested in this. This was more about DOTT, but DOTT very likely reused the ideas behind the Monkey Island special editions: and then the slides: http://www.p1xelcoder.com/resources/GDC_2017_Remastering_DotT_and_Grim.pdf And then there's also: and its slides: http://www.p1xelcoder.com/resources/Reboot_2016_From_Monkey_Island_to_Broken_Age.pdf

Probably something like this: Excellent: Monkey Island 2 Very good: Monkey Island 1 / Curse of Monkey Island Nice but flawed: EFMI / Return to Monkey Island Embarrassing: Tales

Fortunately, the Ultimate Talkie release put it back! By the way, looking at what's currently cooking in the ScummVM kitchen… these old menus you like are going to come back in style…

That's also a good time to mention some missing VGA objects that LogicDeluxe found back then! https://lucasforumsarchive.com/thread/205018-missing-graphics-in-monkey-1 And yeah, they've been put back / drawn again for the Ultimate Talkie Edition… truly a labor of love.

I probably prefer the VGA version (with the updated inventory and verbs), not for the realistic portraits, but because it's pleasing to look at, in general. The EGA version has its charm, but once you reach daylight all that yellow on Monkey Island becomes quite painful to my eyes (Loom EGA remains the best example if I want beautiful minimalism). I don't care for Stan's theme, but the original audio CD music sounds pretty cheap/bland in some scenes (the Special Edition is better in this regard, especially for the second title). I'm in the Adlib minority here; since the graphics are limited and not realistic, I think that limited and unrealistic music suits the general feeling better. Adlib is the Fastpass to my wild child-like imagination theme park. Roland MT-32 is reverby stuff that's nice for theatrical/serious games such as Indy4, but Loom and Monkey Island are tales, to me, so they need to sound like a nursery rhyme.

I feel like I remember one of the original developers (Tim? Dave?) saying that they chose to include the earliest possible release for each language, for maximum retro effect, yes. I have no idea where I may have seen that, though… And yeah, looking at the keyboard, that computer in Ed's room is probably meant to be a C64! Yes. I wonder if it's as badly cracked as the English V2 version that's sold on GOG (i.e. it breaks some other puzzles along the way). When I was a kid and I was playing DOTT, using Ed's computer really freaked me out. My nice funny game was suddenly replaced by something really ugly, I thought it was a virus or something! And I had no idea how to quit that, so I Ctrl-Alt-Del and never triggered this action again, for years!

Very nice post! This article also makes some very interesting comparisons. For the non-English releases which had an official V2 port, that version was used instead for the original DOTT easter-egg. (As usual, the modern remaster didn't bother to include any translation for the original Maniac Mansion, as fas as I can say, and GOG doesn't want to sell any original translation of Maniac Mansion either…). Also, I seem to remember that a joke on the character selection screen was a bit lost when the game was upgraded. The description for each character would come in two parts, and for some characters, the second part of the sentence was making fun of them ("Michael - award-wining photographer… / …for the college newspaper.") The V2 releases would just display this at once, but part of the joke was in the original pause between the two lines.

Investigating the floppy VGA/CD releases a bit more, it looks like the original VGA releases were the only ones (besides the excellent Ultimate Talkie Edition) fixing the Jolly Roger continuity error in Part 2! You know, that part: The first time you see the Sea Monkey, it should be there, but once you're err… done cooking or quitting your crew, it shouldn't be visible anymore, since you must have picked it at this point (unless I'm messing something obvious…). This continuity error fix appears to have been lost when they ported the game to SCUMM v5, though (i.e. the releases with the new verbs and inventory). The Special Edition didn't fix this either. So, I'm working on bringing this original fix back to all the other releases within ScummVM (here's the code if you're curious), but this means that I must play Part 2 in all the different 6 game releases I have here! And yeah, you can tell ScummVM not to enable these enhancements if you prefer the original behavior, don't worry. EDIT: Ha! And it looks like only some versions of the VGA floppy release had that fix… My French VGA floppy version still has the buggy script.

What I miss the most in the CD version is the verb interface becoming red when you're in the Monkey Island catacombs. Both the EGA and VGA floppy releases had it. I really liked that dramatic effect the first time I reached that part of the game, but they've dropped it with the new verb interface of the CD release.

The Ultimate Talkie Edition may have unintentionally added a new dead-end to Monkey Island 2 (not the Lite Mode). If you steal Wally's monocle and then forget to pick up the model lighthouse lens in Phatt's Library, then when Dread brings you back to Scabb at the end Wally will never be able to read the map. I think the original just silently gives back a monocle to Wally in that case, but this doesn't work in the Ultimate Talkie Edition, or something like that. My nephew actually found that… I plan on analyzing this a bit more at some point, if there's really a problem there then I'll try submitting a workaround in ScummVM. EDIT 2022-08-05: Well, that was actually an original oversight of the game, but it would only happen in the Ultimate Talkie edition because it was hidden by a second bug that the Ultimate Talkie edition fixed. So this dead-end has been fixed in ScummVM 2.7.0.

He'll ask you for help (with several lines) if you're down the stairs but haven't talked to him yet. It has even been dubbed in the Special Edition, although nothing triggers that script. I think they just forgot to completely cut it (since Guybrush will still "discover" that it's Wally once you get closer to the cell, and his "lost" lines are pretty uninteresting), and the Special Edition just dubbed every line, even if unused. It also appears to use an earlier costume for Wally behind held there. Well, the palette bug was there in the Amiga dump from Limited Run Games. Maybe there was a later Amiga version which fixed it.

Thank you for setting up this list! I've just fixed this particular point in ScummVM development version. ScummVM is much more open about fixing/improving this kind of things, nowadays. There's quite a lot of work going into that direction, lately, and there's also a new toggle option that lets you choose between fixing original SCUMM bugs vs. keeping the original behavior, whenever this is possible (I'm also working on improving this part a bit more). Of course, this is a volunteer project, so improvements and fixes will always come from someone's spare time and work, in the end. And developers also need access to legitimate copies of the games: Zak is the only LucasArts title where the FM-Towns version can be bought at a sane price (on GOG), for example 😕 Anyway, I know that some original bug reports were closed quite abruptly, years ago, but nowadays it's worth it to report things again, in my opinion. Not that reporting things mean that they get immediately fixed (you still need someone's skills, time and motivation), but at least having them tracked somewhere (with enough context to reproduce/compare things) will always be helpful if someone is motivated in contributing a fix, at some point Anyway, thanks again for this list! I can't do much in the graphics, UI or sound area for example, but for some SCUMM script issues I'm always glad to help when I can.

I had a look at that missing Elaine line, within ScummVM. Thanks to Serge for this wonderful analysis, by the way! Can anyone else owning that Amiga version confirm that the problem actually doesn't show up with ScummVM? (I have that version from the Limited Run Games set). Because it's fine here. Which is strange, because I can't see any intentional fix for that in ScummVM code; it looks like it work there because of some implementation difference, side effect, speed difference, luck, or whatever I fixed that Amiga palette bug last month, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lennSAcOqag (and if you want the original bug to be preserved, there's a new "Enable game enhancements" toggle for that in ScummVM UI). As for comparing the scripts of various Monkey2 variants, the ScummTR/ScummRP tools may be of some help, here (e.g. scummtr -g monkey2 -cw -h -of text.txt). I didn't really explore the Amiga version yet, but for example the Macintosh version fixes some original typos, and yeah, it looks like the legal team got involved in the Special Editions too (see LogicDeluxe's comments here; the Ultimate Talkie version lets you choose between the original and err… "updated" text). And there's also some untriggered text in the game (either because of a script error, or because they forgot to completely remove some ideas that they chose not to keep for the final game; in the case of Monkey2 I think it's often the latter). For example, type script 201 run in the ScummVM debugger just before you walk down the stairs to see Wally in LeChuck's fortress; you'll have some extra lines from Wally.