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Vainamoinen

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Posts posted by Vainamoinen

    Which Monkey Island has the smallest number of monkeys?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    2 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

    Could this chicken be both rubber and dead? Was it ever rubber and alive? Was it first alive and fleshy, but then transformed into dead and rubber?

     

    Let me ask Gunther von Hagens about this.

     

    * ring ring *

     

    "Hello, Gunther? Vee hav an interesting der kwestshun for you [...] "

     

    Well, good news. Gunther says that plastination is possible with chicken as well. He's just not too certain about the sound effects.

     

    • Like 1

    Which Monkey Island has the smallest number of monkeys?

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Vainamoinen

    15 minutes ago, BaronGrackle said:

    Your honor, I'd like to introduce a new piece of evidence: Mike the Headless Chicken

     

    Who, unlike every chicken shown in Secret, was both headless and alive for a sustained period.

     

    I will not admit this new evidence to the trial. It is the court's understanding that Mike was the result of a failed beheading attempt that left the chicken with almost its entire brain stem intact. 

     

     

    Return to Monkey Island

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Vainamoinen

    2 hours ago, Toymafia88 said:

    Find out about the lost Monkey Island 5 that Telltale developer's said happened inbetween.

     

    Fictional Monkey Island 5

     

     

    There was just a single dev quote, I don't even remember who said it exactly (neither does the Monkey Island wiki), to explain the very basic concept of the in medias res beginning of the Tales. And somehow that idea took fans' brains hostage. It was everywhere. People kept parrotting it on the forums. They talked about how that would affect canon. They wanted Telltale to "do Monkey Island 5 next" so that horrible gap would be closed.

     

    The Telltale forums mod squad spent ridiculous amounts of time trying to get rid of that false info that Tales was "actually Monkey Island 6". And see where it led us. 🤣

     

    Maybe planting the seed is easier than removing the tree, so I think I'll start talking about a "fictional Indiana Jones 1" in which he finds Shorty and the Nurhachi.

     

     

    On 7/8/2022 at 11:08 AM, Vainamoinen said:

    I really really need to put a damper on my enthusiasm until my platform is confirmed. But as this thread hasn't had a new post in two days (!!), here's some things that I don't expect from Return to Monkey Island, but would love to see. Maybe you have a few "I don't think they will, but I'd be over the moon" ideas of your own.

     

    • Guybrush's diary / "quest log" in the main menu, scrap book style, chronicles his exploits in his own words.
    • Ghost pirate violinist lady voiced by Sarah Hamilton.
    • Finally, the return of the "Lookout" musical motif from The Secret of Monkey Island.

     

     

    By the way! ;)

     

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    Return to Monkey Island

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    3 minutes ago, Niemandswasser said:

    It's really starting to sink in that in two weeks' time that question mark that's lingered over MI2's ending since Ron stepped away will metamorphose, for good and all, into an exclamation point.

     

    Pretty sure they will not substitute that question mark with an exclamation point. I think they'll just change the question mark's font. 🦊

     

    • Like 4

    Return to Monkey Island

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Vainamoinen

    17 hours ago, BillyCheers said:
    Nice that we’ll have closeups from time to time. :) 

     

    It certainly gives the game a bit of a cinematic vibe. I hope they're also doing closeups of Guybrush once in a while (which would be notably different from TSoMI).

     

    17 hours ago, Toymafia88 said:

    One of my favourite things about Monkey Island was picking the silly dialogue choice but going by the recent clip the dialogue options all seem very tame with no wacky answers.

     

    I won't try to find that interview again, but at one point in the last months Ron said that he loves how they've put a team together where everybody has some input and they can rather spontaneously insert a wacky idea somebody has at any point in the game creation process (heavily paraphrasing, but I think that was the gist). Pretty sure you won't have to worry, these nooks and crannies and bells and whistles will be there, and not just in fourth wall breaking stuff that we won't live to see missing in any Ron Gilbert game. 😉

     

    12 hours ago, Niemandswasser said:

    It's my fondest hope that this won't be the case, but based on past trends I feel like it probably will be. The adventure game genre has spent so much time looking backward to the "golden era" and referencing, reflecting on and relitigating its own history that I don't think there's a fresh thought, insight or observation still out there to be made.

     

    It's become so customary to self-reference, comment on, jump to the meta level, to lament the downfall of adventure games. As I said above, we'll have to expect certain in-jokes as Ron will not do without, but I don't think that is what's teased at here. Return is probably not a game about the personal lives and careers of Dave and Ron, it may just allow the analogy.

     

    In the same vein, the new pirate leaders could symbolize the game industry if you wish to interpret it that way, no problem. If we're going for the kind of analogy that high literature would give us, it could be overt AF but would never be spelled out for us, but it also wouldn't be to the detriment of the storytelling.


    Let's attempt to interpret the new pirate leaders as "the gaming industry" for a moment, because I think we're running into some really interesting roadblocks.

     

    So let's assume Guybrush wants to get his game, I mean expedition, financed. He turns to the people who once were his patrons (say, an analogy for the LucasArts of old). But those were anything but perfect patrons. They were just higher ups who looked for some doofus that made the work for them, handing out honorary titles in return. They were just leeching of of Guybrush! So he presents this expedition to the new pirate leaders, asking for substantial amounts of money to finance it. The new pirate leaders are not interested, because Guybrush is trying to do exactly the same game/raid he did 30 years ago. He wants to go to Monkey Island AGAIN (= make a point & click adventure game). The new pirate leaders' rejection, therefore, is just, because Guybrush/the game idea is essentially completely unoriginal. At the same time the new pirate leaders will, without a second thought, finance the 15th expedition to the final fartasy fairgrounds, so at the very least there's some bigotry involved.

     

    9 hours ago, JacquesSparkyTail said:

    Or is he just going to unleash kraken lechuck and get everyone eaten in the first 10 minutes. 

     

    Well, wouldn't that be bizarre.

    • Like 3

    Which Monkey Island has the smallest number of monkeys?

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Vainamoinen
    The Late Correction™

    On 9/3/2022 at 1:06 PM, BaronGrackle said:

    I was referring to the Monkey Kombat section, in which Guybrush encounters timid monkeys, smelly monkeys, strapping monkeys, and brawny monkeys in infinite amounts.

     

    Then again, what in the game says that it's not the same timid monkey, smelly monkey, strapping monkey or brawny monkey? It's of course absurd but I always seem to employ an ensemble cast kind of logic here. One monkey actor for "the smelly monkey", one monkey actor for "the monkey who walks in the background", and all the waving arms, legs and tails don't count because OF COURSE they're animatronics.

     

    Anything else would go way over budget! Those monkeys don't come cheap, they're unionized. 💸

     

     

    • Like 1
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    Which Monkey Island has the smallest number of monkeys?

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Vainamoinen

    So I think we've got the TSoMI count down, plus minus one (5 + 1).

    Three heads on one monkey (3) + Donald Duck hat monkey (1) + Banana swing monkey (1) + optional wedding bottom monkey.

     

    LeChuck's Revenge is at 3 and that will pretty definitely make it the winner. That must mean I'm going to cast my vote now. 😘

     

    Escape has doesn't have "infinite", of course, but a definite count may still pose a serious problem. If only we had an Escape expert @madmardi around.

     

    A definite count for Tales is impossible, as there is definitely overlap that we can't fathom. I'm still wondering where all the additional monkeys on top of the thirteen Montevideo monkeys are coming from.

     

    Can we get a definite count for Curse, provided that (a) background monkeys are the same, they're just making their rounds and (b) arms and legs are just prosthetics waved into the screen (don't you know anything about movies?)? On that note, are the monkeys in the theater the same as on LeChuck's ship? Certainly you have an answer.

     

     

     

     

    • Like 1

    Which Monkey Island has the smallest number of monkeys?

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Vainamoinen

    1 hour ago, Marius said:

    I have another angle that that causes even more confusion!

    What about the box-art Monkeys? Do they count? Do we have to seperate "Logo Monkeys" and "In scene Monkeys"?

    @Vainamoinen please clarify!

     

    box-Monkeys.jpg

     

    According to that Escape box the chicken looks very much alive! Thank you, Playstation 2 version, for clearing that up.


    Authoritative Word on the Matter of BOX ART for the purposes of this thread, by N. G. P. Vainamoinen

     

    1. Steve Purcell is wholly incapable of painting box art for a Monkey Island game without any monkeys on it. We've known that for some time. In Rex' key art for ReMI, the lack of monkeys with pirate hats, eye patches, peg legs, pipes, swords, or sai is frankly disgusting.
    2. Come to think of it, has it occurred to y'all how we're seeing all sorts of animals in the Return to Monkey Island teasers, trailers and screenshots, but never once a proper monkey? Guys, I'm telling you, ReMI will be about bringing the monkeys back.
    3. These special cover/poster/key art Purcell monkeys are of course not represented in the game, but we have to ask ourselves whether the none-embellished ones on the TSoMI and LCR covers actually are. I think the TSoMI BA monkey could be one of the Jojos, even though his/her eyes are woefully unblue. But no way is the monkey to the left of the LCR BA the Jojo in the game (he's not nearly stiff enough).
    4. In the case of Escape from Monkey Island, the playstation cover doesn't throw off our count because infinite plus ten equals infinite.
    5. So with a certain prejudice I'd say there's no monkey that's not in the game on the TSoMI box, two new monkeys on the LCR box, one unseen monkey in the ToMI key art and whogivesashit in the Escape artwork you're showing (which I have seen for the first time, thank you for that).
    6. The rules state that the live monkey heads counted has to be IN THE GAME. Box art isn't. So Box Art doesn't count. Funny, I should have made that the first point, but here we are.

     

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    PC vs. … Switch? (What will be your way of playing ReMI?)

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Vainamoinen

    5 hours ago, Niemandswasser said:

    I certainly don't think Valve is any better than CDProjekt, but it always seemed like CDPR embraced and welcomed the reactio ...

     

    Let's ... give other forumites the opportunity to keep some cans of worms tightly shut. I'm trying to keep this short, but I will fail. 🥴

     

     
    1. I never used Steam in my life, and always pointed at the quasi-monopoly that has taken over PC games distribution almost completely. Making a PC is a complex matter, but Valve doesn't make PCs, like Microsoft makes the Xbox or Sony the PlayStation, hence the cut of the platform shouldn't be that great and consolidation of sales on that one platform would eventually be to the detriment of PC games culture as a whole. Well, that was my reasoning for over ten years, before February 24th at least. I choose not to buy from Steam. I am aware that may eventually mean no more PC games for me.
    2. I do not and will never judge anybody for buying games from any platform including Valve's Steam. I don't even judge the streaming dudettes and dudes. I'm aware like none other that PC gaming today is near synonymous with using the Steam platform. Imagine I feel the prick of a needle every time Steam gets another game as a factual PC exclusive, that's how aware I am.
    3. GOG doesn't have an 'odious' nature any more than Valve does. Marcin Iwiński himself is a pretty cool and, let's call him "woke" for lack of a better word, guy. I am absolutely certain that Mr. Newell is an equally cool dude. Ethical production in late stage capitalism and so on.
    4. Valve just retained a better public image even though being a mega corporation. If Valve got the same kind of shit from customers for not doing Half Life 3 as e.g. Ubisoft for their on/off/on/off/on/off development of Beyond Good & Evil 2, they'd probably stop making games altogether.
    5. Similarly, the Devotion hickup exemplifies how exempt Valve is from criticism. Valve just straight up deleted the game, customers accepted it. GOG announced the game, made the fucking effort to be the right rebels for once and - probably for the first time in their business - felt China's icy cold squeezing hand on their throats. In shock, they retracted. And bam, shitstorm. They did get a whole lot of twitter flak from Chinese accounts before, so they could actually truthfully say those "gamers" were there that called for cancelling the release. They folded, but they never had a choice. China's influence is fucking absurd and they have every opportunity to censor especially American media wholesale. China made Valve fold immediately, GOG/CDPR poked the bear with a stick, but it was never in doubt they'd eventually have to run.
    6. The higher ups on GOG/CDPR make a lot of crappy decisions, as one does when you're a higher up. GOG tried a "hands off" policy for their forums, which may have been great until 2014, but dumped the whole community in the trash come 2014.
    7. GOG's confusion with the new situation was exemplified by their ever changing community managers with vastly different approaches to keeping the community at bay. The g*merg*te thread was going on for hundreds and hundreds of pages, then was closed by a new community manager named Fables. But Fables was ripped to shreds after the community found out she didn't have a dick, therefore couldn't be a gamer. The thread was later reopened, I think, but people didn't post in it much longer. In came Linko as one of the many community managers, a dude with a fairly fine attitude towards moderating the forum. He threw out the reactionary assholes for a bit, and they accepted it, because hey, he had a dick. Unfortunately he bothsided the whole thing in public statements and was wholly incapable of also doing GOG's social media shit. He co-opted a trans hashtag and tweeted gamergate references (back then I didn't, but now I actually do believe he didn't know what he was doing). The suits threw him out. He still haunts their forum to this day, which is ... odd.
    8. At present, I feel that they're really making an effort. Political discussions are now off limits, and hear ye hear ye the present moderators understand how the political elements pervade the discussion of pop culture, which is why they recently even closed a Rings of Power 'discussion' thread. I got a little conk on the head by the new mods as well, wholly understood why, and with the removal of downvotes I think the community has a fighting chance again. I started posting there again as soon as the downvotes were out.
    9. The community is still fairly reactionary and a whole lot of work lies before the new community managers. They had their Pride month sale, I am really certain that they meant it, and they of course had the Pride month sale thread swarmed with fucking nazis, I mean legitimate and civil critics of modern LGBTQ+ culture. I hope it's not way too late for them to learn the new ways of the internet.

     

     

    • Like 2

    Return to Monkey Island "continues" or "concludes" series?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    We've debated that it uses the word "conclude", but we didn't debate that they've changed it.

     

    Back then I said that a successful series will never be concluded, but marketing is of course hell bent on telling people that the narrative will give you closure.

     

    It's interesting that they changed it, because it raised exactly the right, diffuse idea in the customers' heads: That this would be the final last crowning finishing ultimate Monkey Island game and if they're not on board, they will have eaten fries and slaw yet not the fried chicken. 🍖

     

    It doesn't mean that part seven is in the works, it doesn't mean that they got a gazillion pre-orders and will definitely continue. But it's nice to think that was the case.

    PC vs. … Switch? (What will be your way of playing ReMI?)

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Vainamoinen

    9 hours ago, Niemandswasser said:

    Personally I don't think this is an oversight--I think allowing it is intentional. At best CD Projekt has tended to look the other way with the crowd who do this; at worst they have a history of soft-catering to them. 

     

    They've developed their platform 14 years ago, back when we really had no clue what power a disgruntled (non-)customer really has, and how destructive to social media the mere downvote is. That was the good old time when games were mostly sold in boxes from brick and mortar stores, when 'freespeechy' wasn't an insult, and Leigh Alexander had not yet spoken the immortal words about creating or curating a culture in your spaces. GOG has recently removed downvotes from their forums, so they've finally seen the error of their ways, but I don't think that right now they even have the budget to rectify the review situation. They have a whole system set up with a verified owners rating, an all reviews rating, and a "combined score" that means jack shit because a few positive owners' ratings can not counteract a tide of review bombers who don't own the game. You remove a nail, the whole system collapses.

     

    From my perspective, Valve also has a history of looking the other way for the very same reasons GOG/CDPR did: They always tried to look like an advocate for the customer against the industry bigguns. Although that was always an obvious and a bit pathetic marketing ploy, it has worked out marvellously for Valve, what with the Lord Gaben and ambrosia from heaven sales memes. Glorification and even deification by the customer for a power hungry monopoly, I don't really see many other companies that achieved that besides maybe Apple back in Jobs times. I don't blame CDPR for trying to step in exactly those footsteps, obviously, but they never had the fanbase, the budget nor the developers to make it work. They should have reacted wayyyyy sooner to the rise of the shitstorm, but I think their options were always limited. They couldn't risk upsetting their customers. Valve eventually bowed to their business clients with sensible and solid safeguards against review bombing. I kind of dread the unavoidable shitstorm when GOG finally introduces those very elementary and extremely necessary culture war blow softeners.

     

    Valve eventually introduced those safeguards, GOG stuck to allowing everything because they couldn't risk upsetting their customers. But to be fair, Valve can dictate the market entirely on its own and won't have to ask their gazillion business clients when they introduce e.g. no questions asked refund policies, "bigger cut for higher sales" exclusivity fostering/competition squashing mechanisms, or continues sales to Russia. CDPR/GOG never had any of those options.

    • Like 1

    PC vs. … Switch? (What will be your way of playing ReMI?)

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Vainamoinen

    59 minutes ago, Jake said:

    It’s fun seeing that era come up in discussion now, twenty years later, in places like Reddit comment threads. So many embarrassed now-adults who were teens or kids at the time, saying “well I was extremely wrong and behaved so badly, it turns out that game was a stone cold classic.” Honestly it gives me a tiny bit of hope for all of us, that the “looks more like Celda, not Zelda!” brigade actually grew up and had some hindsight. 

     

    That was a time when 4.3 million copies sold was perceived as a moderate success or even a disappointment by Nintendo. Ah well. Let's hope Return to Monkey Island sells 4.3 million copies. 🤑

     

     

    16 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

    Was this about Bosco's voice in the remaster?

     

    Mostly, it was about coarse ground shit. Some self declared investigators found a handful of lines cut from Season one to be "censorship", then went on and wrote that lines were cut from Season 2 as well even though that wasn't the case. I wrote to GOG, but before they even replied they had all the respective reviews deleted already. At the time, the most upvoted review claims that Season 2 is "still censored", because of Bosco's voice. Which is a claim they can make, because it's true, but a one star rating because of that is of course still coarse ground shit by a pathetic loonie who didn't buy the game. If GOG finally deleted all reviews that aren't written by game owners, they'd have 80% more positive reviews, and that is that.

     

     

    Which Monkey Island has the smallest number of monkeys?

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Vainamoinen

    11 minutes ago, Remi said:

     

    The black one wears a hat so it's obviously the same as Smirk's, but the gray one could be a different one. Elaine ostensibly could have smuggled the Monkey Island one onto the ship -- or it could be the same type of monkey picked up elsewhere.

     

    She must have collected them from somewhere at least. It might not be far fetched to think of the monkey cast as an ensemble. Elaine could have collected Smirk's Monkey and the one she found hanging around the great monkey head. And those blue eyes ... maybe we should wait for official word (it's pretty obviously the same monkey in the Special Edition, but by my own rules, the SEs don't count 😬).

     

    On that note, @Jake can surely rectify our ailing ToMI monkey count?

     

     

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