Gins

👕 I beat #Mojole #218 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 3/6 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤💚💛🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

I had Secret only in English, Revenge in German. At one point I wrote Secret into a short novel, using my translated dialogs, when I was around 10-12 😂

As I read your post I was getting ready to post "Yeah! Like, just look at Princess Bride!" and then you mention it yourself. Although, being on Monkey Island board and thinking of Princess Bride isn't inconceivable. It could even be considered one of the classic blunders not to! On the topic of a parody, I don't think it's a parody in the classic sense. I'd put it rather as a comedy adventure, more like maybe Last Crusade, less like Airplane! which is a spoof of a specific film and similar works. SMI is to me (now literally) a theme park coming alive in the imagination of a child, full of wonder and simplified, romantizised pirate stuff.

I was like 8 and I didn't understand it so I was disappointed. I also might have forgotten about this completely because I didn't really "play" MI 1 and 2 back then. My dad had the games on his PC with a bunch of saves and I just loaded them non-linearly and played around. It took me years to complete these games and I had to use the UHS system for almost everything (printed out). It also didn't help that I paused every single line and translated it word for word into German with a dictionary (in book form). When I was older and I could read English fluently, it made more sense. And yet I loved these games even before that.

I think this post from the Details thread is also quite relevant here, for completeness.

👕 I beat #Mojole #217 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 4/6 💛💚🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤💚🖤💚💛 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

I think I was too young to interpret much else other than what Elaine spelled out. I found it weird that they were brothers. Spell. That Mêlée is reachable through the elevator? Spell. The treasure being a ticket? Spell. And I was disappointed, and was so happy when CMI explained it all away. Only years later did I understand the implications. And MI2 became layer after layer discovered and peeled back my favorite MI game and one of my favourites, period.

Yeah it definitely fits the whole substitution game that is constantly played throughout Secret, perhaps that alone is hint enough as you've substituted countless things to get to that part. You substitute so many things in Secret and without checking, I'll hypothesize that you substitute less in later games. In Return I'm not even sure if you substitute anything at all. Maybe the sign of a more grown up mind who has a harder time playing along with that. Or I just misremember 😆

Ah that explains it. It probably didn't translate well to my culture (Austrian) so I missed these, even though I played in English. I kinda got that it references root beer (because I knew the solution from earlier playthroughs), but I'd wager it was quite more on the nose for Americans. Thanks!

Would be cool but so would water or grog. Also it was established in MI2, that root beer only works on ghosts, not zombies, as you can douse LeChuck in it and he doesn't die. (The new leaders didn't get the memo though 😂) Related to root beer though, something that I've missed maybe throughout my many playthroughs: What are the hints that root beer is a substitute for the magic voodoo root? Just the color and the "root" in its name? Or were there more elaborate clues?

👕 I beat #Mojole #216 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 2/6 🖤💚🖤💛🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

Fangames recently came up in another topic and they seemed a good topic to make a ... topic about. I played a few back in the day. I remember in particular having played The Devil's Triangle and M:I2, but my memories of these are quite hazy since it's been perhaps over 10 years since. I was also working on a fangame myself at some point but abandoned it for other projects before I showed it to anybody. And now I spent some time today thinking about that one and what I would do differently if I'd do it today, hypothetically. Most likely I will never do it, but there is a certain itch... Also, there seems to be a list of some of the most relevant MI Fangames on Mojo, which put a smile on my face (https://mixnmojo.com/media/filecategories/Fan-Games), and if I saw that right, despite many of these old creators' pages being offline now, Mojo still seems to have mirrors. Too bad there are no screenshots to find some more easily. That said, I was thinking about maybe revisiting some of them that I might still have somewhere in my old Downloads folder, to make up for not mentioning much more here than just the title of two games I remember. So how about you guys? Any fond memories of some creative fan games?

Touché too 😁 I do hope that Guybrush didn't actually ruin people's lives and burned down attractions. If he did, and both Elaine and Stan are so casual about it, it doesn't put them in a much better light either 😄

"I know you've looked forward to this new game/attraction in the Monkey Island series/amusement park. I'll do some work/cure scurvy in the meantime and then go to bed/home. Take your time and enjoy yourself, just make sure you turn on/off the dishwasher/lights when you're done, ok? Love you honey 😘" You're right that would be weird in real life 😉 Bonus: "I wanted to surprise you and fixed you old code wheel/ship from Monkey Island 1 with some tape/tape."

Like a McDonald's in the middle of Disney World. Also a foreign takeover by an Australian who has influence over the whole world at once, with Mêlée changing too and the Monkey Head maybe being a giant robot because of executive meddling. Also explains why in Return there is like, NO trace of anything from Escape's changes (the shipyard, LUA bar, etc.) because they simply built back again after the original manager, or someone sharing their vision, returned.

👕 I beat #Mojole #215 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 3/6 💛🖤🖤🖤💚 💛💛💛🖤💚 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

What I also really like about this is, that it even canonizes various fangames, e.g. The Devil's Triangle (I don't know if anybody here has played it too, or if there is even still a way to find them these days). There were some that I played and enjoyed tremendously back in the day, which try to fill in the gaps between e.g. MI1 and MI2 (how did Guybrush end up with all this money and how did he split up with Elaine?). Hypothetically somebody, or really, multiple independent people, could make fangames with the goal of ticking all the boxes on Ron's "If I made another Monkey Island" blog post. And all of them are kind of canonized by Return to Monkey Island, since they are all possible stories that Guybrush could have made up in the theme park, that he daydreamed about, that he told Boybrush, that Boybrush is reenacting, or that might just have actually happened, and it's up to a fan to pick and choose what stories they like best. Monkey Island is no longer a series of games with a strict canon, with Return it entered the realm of mythology, where you can make up all sorts of stories featuring the Gods and explore their core personalities and interactions from so many different angles, that it doesn't matter what the canon is, you're simply using mythical characters of legend to tell a good story, or explore some scenario that nobody might have thought of before, and some fans might elevate to the status of "plausible enough to be canon" and others might simply get a good story out of it regardless. What sours this a bit is that I am quite sure Disney is quite likely to crack down on such fangames than the old Lucasfilm would have been back in the day ;_;

👕 I beat #Mojole #214 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 6/6 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤💚💛🖤🖤 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 💚💚🖤💛💚 💚💚💚🖤💚 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

Sounds like a good thread title, to keep these separated 😁

👕 I beat #Mojole #213 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 3/6 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 💚🖤💚🖤🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

I think one of the messages of Return, even if it is an uncomfortable one, is that, as you age it becomes unhealthy to remain invested in fantasy worlds the same way you've been as a child. As in, you can still be invested and have fun, but try to not get real life issues take the back seat to questions such as "what is the Secret of Monkey Island"? Of course, many players already realized this for themselves, so they don't want to be reminded of this uncomfortable idea while trying to enjoy the limited free time they still have as adults. ("Congratulations on figuring it out too Ron...") There are those who know this and it resonates because of that ("Yup Ron totally gets me"), and I think this group might just enjoy Return the most. Then there those who didn't think about it that way before and they say wow and might change their lives because of it. ("Ron is a genius!") And you have those who got their bubble burst and refuse to accept that message. ("Don't judge me Ron.") I want to make sure to say that I don't intend to mean any judgment, and that the quotes in brackets are just there to paint a picture, not to put people into boxes. I just tried to formulate the four quadrants of two arbitrary categories and probably most players can freely put a dot for themselves anywhere on that space. And of course such that dot can likely move about over time. My guess is that those in the first and last quadrant tend to be more disappointed with the game than those in the second and third, and that the emotions are stronger for those in the third and fourth.

👕 I beat #Mojole #212 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 5/6 🖤🖤🖤🖤💛 💛🖤🖤🖤💚 🖤💛💛🖤💛 💛💚💚💚🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

👕 I beat #Mojole #211 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 5/6 💛🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤💚💛💛🖤 💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

I imagine if a team wanted to do this again after Return, they could. So it's hard for me to fully see the extreme reactions to it's ending, since it could just be undone with a quick throwaway intro. E.g. Boybrush could simply be abducted by LeChuck in the beginning of the next game. Boybrush: "But dad said he made you up!" LeChuck: "You will find I am quite real." Boybrush: "Like the graphics of my new Playstation 6?" LeChuck: "Perhaps... but maybe more like... your uncle!" Boybrush: "Noooooo!"

What a great write-up and thanks for your honest (😜) opinion on Tales despite working on it. I remember how excited I was about it, and it really picked up around episode 3. I still remember fondly the LeSinge escape room, the manatee, the "technical limitation" jokes (Guybrush tossing items into Anemone's fountain to avoid animating a giving animation 😂), Morgan LeFlay was an amazing character and I'd have loved her to return in Return. I also remember how, due to how I perceived Elaine and Guybrush's marriage, I was rooting for Guybrush to split with Elaine and get with Morgan in the end. Was such an outcome ever considered in the writing room or was I just reading too much into it? I believe I really need to replay Tales and maybe distanced from the times back then, it might surprise me. It was after all my favorite Telltale game. Thanks for trying so hard in the face of the limitations @Jake