Udvarnoky

A game by David P. Gray.

Oh, I'm sure we've all taken our turn indulging in that mindset a bit. Hopefully it's gratuitous for me to clarify that there's not the slightest bit of invalidity with preferring the Ron-led games or for feeling that the subsequent ones represented a departure in spirit, or whatever. That's probably a pretty common perspective -- maybe even a majority one for those who played the games in release order? -- but every "take" has its ugliest extreme. It's when people's preferences become tantamount to some sort of purity test that we enter The Dumb (technical term), and I take solace in the fact that it doesn't really show up in these parts anymore. Probably because the median age here is 153 now, but still.

I haven't visited Ron's blog in a while, but I remember the kind of comments he would get there and on Twitter whenever he would touch on his plans for another Monkey Island game. I can only imagine the merry nonsense he brought down upon himself now that there's something tangible to react to. My new joke these days is "Now it's Ron's turn to be the guy who ruined Monkey Island." It's a rite of passage, really. There's always been a contingent of fans who have judged the third, fourth and fifth games not on objective criteria, but against what they knew in their hearts Ron would have done differently. Discussing the sequels became an evaluation of their legitimacy. The "real" Monkey Islands vs. the imitation ones, and all that codswallop. And guess what, now that Ron is in fact making his follow up, those same people are going to turn against that one, too. Because Ron's not going to make the game they decided was the correct one -- either because he "sold out" or "lost it" or got soft or committed that unpardonable sin of growing more philosophical about (and thus accepting of) the other games or had to defer to all those modern ideas Lucasfilm forced upon him. There will be a reason, don't worry. It was a foregone conclusion; it can't be helped. The best thing to do as always is just enjoy the ride.

I'm just more excited than ever by the idea of Skunkape remastering TMI. Is there someone I can write to?

I'm pretty sure it was yet a third item, in addition to the manual and the Grail Diary. It looked like this. And yeah, LucasArts put out some budget reprints of their games around this time, which cut down on the paraphernalia included and exhibited cheaper printing choices. The disk labels on these releases are so generic looking, that sometimes when they show up on eBay people mistake them for bootlegs. Nope, the company was just that cheap!

I wonder if they figured the Grail Diary was piracy-discouraging enough, and saw an opportunity to save a few pennies by not printing out those cards.

Streaming exclusively on Mixnmojo: https://mixnmojo.com/features/sitefeatures/Indiana-Jones-and-the-Iron-Phoenix-The-Lost-Sequel-to-Fate-of-Atlantis

This is probably the last part of your post you expected to be replied to, but as a fellow Deadwood fan I'd point out that he probably couldn't break his commitment to Bosch to do it. Anyway, I'd sooner try to touch the moon than figure TV schedulin'. And after all, you can't go cutting the throat of everyone whose character it would improve.

I just figure Ron kept bonking Marley over the head with milk bottles until he started behaving like the character we remembered.

The Skunkape remasters are fantastic, have exposed new fans to Sam & Max, have instigated collectible physical releases by Limited Run Games, have come with the explicit approval of Steve Purcell, have sold well enough to guarantee that all three seasons will receive the upgrade, and have garnered excellent reviews on balance. Everything about these remasters has served to renew and steward the brand. But you've managed to develop the intriguing impression that the brand was in fact hurt by it, somehow. One can only pray that Tales of Monkey Island gets "hurt" like that some day.

That's wild. I guess Lucasfilm was just that sloppy. It's probably an irrelevant point to them, since ScummVM forces the security door open in cracked or uncracked versions of the game (though that leaves the impact on the other combos?), and ScummVM is the official intepreter at this point. Pipe dream stuff: It would be ideal if there existed an FTP repository that offered archival builds of every version of every SCUMM game (preferably KryoFlux streams and ISOs, but at the very least complete and unmodified filesets), as authentic builds are the only way you can emulate the games with exactitude. I don't deal with torrents, but my understanding is that even pirated versions of these games that get circulated around are often missing the executables. I suppose that some of the more obvious versions of certain games have uncompromised copies floating "out there," but what about the more obscure versions, the various non-English language builds? Their extancy may well be tied to the lifespan of rotting diskettes in a collector's attic. It becomes an archival issue. In a perfect world, you'd be able to show Lucasfilm a proof of purchase and gain access to that hypothetical repository. "Bought Loom on GOG or Steam? Click here to get as-is copies of all legacy builds to use as you like." Of course, it would be making a big assumption to think Lucasfilm necessarily has all that stuff handy themselves anymore. Maybe there's a hero out there quietly doing this backup work, though of course I would never endorse anything illegal.

I just ran the GOG version of enhanced Maniac Mansion through DOSBox (since an .exe is included) and you're right -- it's cracked to let any combination open the security door. This is my first awareness of an "official crack" of the enhanced version, unless Lucasfilm grabbed it off a random Warez site! I don't have my copy of remastered Day of the Tentacle installed at the moment, so I don't know if the Maniac Mansion resource files have an executable tossed in or not, but it would be interesting to see if it was cracked in the same way.

The original version of Maniac Mansion included with my GOG purchase does not include an .exe, just the .LFL files. Consequently you can only run it with ScummVM, which I think makes assessing whether it is cracked vs. uncracked unreliable. Complicating matters further is that there are "official cracks" of a number of these games. If memory serves, the version of Maniac Mansion (original graphics) included as an Easter egg in the original release of Day of the Tentacle forces the security door on the second floor landing to always be open. In the Classic Adventures Pack (1992), which includes the first five SCUMM games, the latter three (Indy3, Loom, Monkey1) are all cracked to bypass the copy protection. The remaster of Day of the Tentacle includes the enhanced graphics version of Maniac Mansion, running on ScummVM. Perhaps that version is "officially cracked" and is the same set of files that Lucasfilm went on to use when they offered Maniac Mansion individually on digital storefronts? On the other hand, ScummVM will force open the security door in legitimate versions of the game.

Because they're the obvious and sole precedent of a studio taking a game developed in an old version of the Telltale Tool and bringing it up to modern standards in a way that both looks/sounds fantastic and doesn't stomp on the spirit of what's being remastered? They're quite clearly the best if not only candidates for the hypothetical assignment of remastering Tales of Monkey Island.

Not to mention, he was the villainous King Forge in Armed & Dangerous.

Great news, everybody! The powers that be have been monitoring this thread in order to gauge what longtime fans of the studio would be most interested in, and now, all our wishes are being granted. ...Nah, I'm just joshin' ya. They're doing The Force Unleashed.

Have him voiced by Dom, and I approve! I'm hoping Guybrush bumps into The Men of Exceptionally Low Moral Fiber.

With the exception of TMI, the tradition with box art has been to have it handled by a member of the game's art team. I would hardly turn down another Steve Purcell Monkey Island cover, but it would be highly appropriate for Rex Crowle to get the assignment as well. It's worth noting that Purcell turned down the opportunity to do the cover of CMI because he was impressed by what the art team had come up with and felt they would better represent the style of the game.

I would guess it's less to do with some sort of lien on Tim than it is the simple fact that running a game studio is a full time responsibility. Dave on the other hand has spent much of his career as a contractor, so it would take fewer stars aligning for him to be able to participate.

Certainly not. It's specifically the No True Scotsman tack that I cannot help pushing back on. And it's only because I've encountered this line of thinking in the past and have seen what it metastasizes into if left unchallenged. Please feel welcome to brainstorm away uninhibited.

It wouldn't invalidate it if Ron has come to feel differently in the 25 years since CMI came out. I am not saying he did. But I do find this idea of "validness" in the first place a little disturbing. If Ron decided on it, then it's valid by defintion. Diagnosing the "legitimacy" of the content of this game on any other basis leads only to krazytown.

The premise that any deviation from "what Ron really wants" must be Disney/Lucasfilm influence is sketchy because we of course have no way of discerning what those supposed deviations are. I obviously have no way of knowing how much of a free hand Ron has been given (though the blunt "A Game by Ron Gilbert" is certainly Lucasfilm trading on the perception that he's the creative authority here), but it's very possible given past comments that he only agreed to this in exchange for final say. And if that's the case, who's gonna satisfy this need for a villain in the event of disappointment? What I'm driving at here is that it's highly possible that Ron with absolute creative carte blanche will be delivering something quite a bit different than what many people have already decided in their own heads is "the true vision." I think a lot of frustration can be avoided if people susceptible to that thinking can see the illogic of it. This previaling notion of Ron having a fixed, shrinkwrapped schematic for MI3 since his LucasArts days that exists outside of time and now needs only to be "let out" is a myth, and one that doesn't really acknowledge the reality of how game development works.

Ruin it for whom - your or Ron? I assume Ron is making the game he wants to make, but what that game looks like, and how he feels the other sequels may or may not factor into it, would surely have evolved over three decades. Heck, he's already indicated it has evolved substantially since 2013. I fear some people are going to judge this game against their conception of some mythical version of MI3 circa 1992 (a game that doesn't exist and never did), which is gonna lead nowhere pleasant or even responsible. What we're getting is the Monkey Island he's decided he wants to make today -- whatever that might mean. Enjoy the ride!

Here. Although, it's a major open question as to what that actually means.

It's got me mighty curious as to what Terrible Toybox was working on before, to everyone's disappointment, Ron pivoted to a Monkey Island game.