Thrik

Yeah it’s weird. Melee Island in general had this very creepy quietness to it when I played it as a child, with no ambient sound effects like in the CD version, and slightly less music too. It was jarring to hear the music, although it is appropriate, as it was always an eerily still, lonely dock for me. Especially when you explore minus Stan.

Oh yeah, I somehow misread about half of this thread. 😅 Right. I haven’t seen any evidence of names for the leaders. You can figure out from the extracted resource files who is who, or the SE credits if you have a good ear for the actors. Phineas/Fin is the guy in the barrel. I’ll be gravely disappointed to not see those guys return.

We already know their names. 😀 The special editions have them credited as Freddy/Fred, Franklin/Frank, and Phineas/Fin. MI2 uses the shorter forms.

I’m not totally sold on Stan’s theme matching up to the rest of the soundtrack in terms of melodic power, but yeah it does fit in better, and damn that Cursed soundtrack is just generally fantastic once it has the harder hitting tracks to work with.

I was watching an Escape from Monkey Island video on YouTube recently, and not only were there people saying EMI is their favourite Monkey Island, the conversation somehow turned to Stan’s music and someone said the original game’s Stan theme was their favourite in the entire series. As you can imagine… I heartily agreed.

It’s worth noting the floppy and CD VGA releases are different. For example, some art was slightly recoloured for the CD version, and as you noted the CD version also saw the removal of the ‘sprites are an appropriate brightness specific to the scene’ tech. Not sure about an exhaustive list. I know we’ve observed many things over many threads here.

I do wonder what happened to old Bob. It looks like zombie LeChuck has reacquainted with his old ghost crew (unless it’s a new one) so maybe we’ll see his return. If I remember correctly, in one branch at least he was left behind on Monkey Island.

Yeah it’s a nice take! Although I have to say, for me it can’t beat the absolute chef’s kiss that is mostly just hearing slow, churning versions of the LeChuck theme throughout most of the game, aside from a truncated version after the bone dance, and then it ends with this (Sadly still a little truncated!):

While reading through some 12-year-old thread about the Ultimate Talkie for Monkey Island 2, I noticed an observation made about the PC Speaker soundtrack for MI2 being different in some ways. The major divergences I can hear are that the slow LeChuck’s Fortress music used during the cutscenes has been replaced with a much faster take on the LeChuck theme (more like MI1 and briefly the MI2 credits), and the ending medley uses different songs.

Those are some big hands.

Ah yes, like the Atari review that casually shared all the screenshots of Hell HILL, which as we all know is the real secret of Monkey Island.

You don’t want to fight? You literally signed up to our forum to post this: …and since then have done nothing but try to argue with people about how bad you think the art looks, seemingly with nothing else to say. And then of course, you don’t really care. You’re just relaxing in the sun. You totally aren't trying to stir the pot. You’re not here to fight. So chill. I’ve been giving you the benefit of the doubt that you’re not a troll who delights in winding people up, but sadly you have given nothing back but toxic negativity and provocation. We’re now getting private messages about the sad turn this thread is taking, so I’ve decided that it’s time for you to drop the art discussion and contribute something else to the discussion. That is a direct command, sailor.

I’d love them to bring back the multiple screen concept for Monkey Island’s map, assuming it has one. That island always seemed so vast because of it, and although EMI condensed the maps anyway like a theme park map, nonetheless it still felt wrong seeing it on one screen. Of course they could do some smooth panning this time. 😄

It wouldn’t surprise me if this were the case, that or in some early discussion Ron said anything can change apart from that sweep of hair!

Jawa, is that you?!

Ahh, the AdventureGamers Return to Monkey Island thread. It reminds me of what Stephen Fry once said: "Sometimes there just isn't enough vomit in the world.”

Bless you, old friend.

It was the originally written villain for MI2. You can read more about him plus some general MI2 draft story here: I decided to have a look at the trailer again. Ah man…

What a twist if we found out that this mute zombified pirate we’ve been seeing in all the promotional material is actually El Carlo?!

Although it doesn’t particularly change what you’re saying, it’s worth noting that the sprites reused in MI2 we’re the updated VGA sprites that were made closer to/concurrently with MI2’s development. The original EGA sprites wouldn’t fit in quite so seamlessly.

It is, truly. I tried to not watch this latest snippet, but I could not resist.

Haha, I’ve been hoping so much for a surprise Boen reveal. Although the circumstances were different, his initial absence and then appearance in Tales has put the idea in my head that it could happen. With that said, the guy playing the judge in the latest snippet has a few moments where he sounds like he has the range and style to pull off LeChuck. We ran a poll a while back where a surprising number of people said they’re up for spending thousands on merchandise for this game. They will be absolutely nuts to not put some awesome swag out there.

You’re in the wrong part of town, boy. Yeah I’m loving it. I quickly grew to appreciate what the artist was going for anyway, but seeing actual gameplay in motion really has just breathed life into it. I really love how alive that snowy scene feels. It just oozes atmosphere, which I’m sure the audio and music design will only enhance further. I also really like this idea that the scene zooms in when talking to characters. It’s a nice compromise between making costly close-ups for all the characters and having cinematic framing more often.

Now that’s something I haven’t seen before! It looks like it’d lend itself to some painting if that were one’s interest.

It was already mentioned but I’ll throw another vote to the Ultimate Talkie version. It’s a fan edition but it’s very popular, essentially adding the new audio to the original graphics, plus some minor improvements here and there. I’d be tempted to just go with MI2SE in enhanced mode as it’s a fine update, much more so than MI1SE.