Thrik

The whole thread?! You truly are a fan. Welcome. 😄

This background in particular is one of the all-time greats. The way it forces the perspective, gives a real sensation of depth, and all done with such basic tooling at the time. It reminds me a lot of the way Puerto Pollo looks in CMI, looking great as a whole but when ‘zoomed in’ like the MI1 scene so you can only see part of it, it feels so three-dimensional. Phatt Wharf is another example: It’s a recurring motif in the original three games that the two-dimensional backgrounds have a tonne of life and depth breathed into them by clever framing and perspective, and of course the engine’s ability to effortlessly scale and clip the characters so they look part of the scene. (Generally, MI2 and CMI don’t look so far removed when comparing those particular scenes.)

Yes that has been turned on for now, only if multiple posts are submitted within 15 minutes of each other. It prevents the thread being bumped repeatedly, which can also trigger excess notifications for those subscribed to new posts. If you’re looking to address multiple conversations, probably the best way of avoiding confusion is to use the ‘+’ icon next to ‘Quote’. This allows you to build a chain of quotes within a single reply, making it clear which conversation is in play.

As an aside, a discussion broke out on our Twitter about the topology of the island, and how exactly LeChuck gets his ship in and out of Hell. Someone suggested that it’s a ghost ship so it can just glide through the land, however the presence of Elaine on board somewhat defies the notion. Of course the ship could have fantastic powers that make its inhabitants ethereal temporarily. It was noted that the Monkey Head sits upon a large hill in MI1: You can see the same on the overhead map: So Hell might actually be a misinterpretation of Hill, as Remi put it. Anyway, if you look at the island it’s clearly developed around a line of volcanic activity, with what looks to have been an active volcano on the left end, and perhaps a budding volcano on the right which instead merely leads to the bowels of death. I did wonder if perhaps the left volcano also once featured a Monkey Head, long ago. We then got on to trying to figure out where LeChuck might take the ship, to travel at sea level through the island to Hill. Someone pointed out the water outlet at the bottom, where the ridge you get the oars from is. I then noticed this area of disturbed water with no obvious source unlike the other cracks and rivers across the island, where there may be a route in through the side of the former volcano, going right through the island. In fact, who’s to say LeChuck’s ship isn’t parked beneath the old volcano, and Guybrush gets there via the catacombs?

I’ve been enjoying Horizon Forbidden West, and man this music that plays in some old pre-apocalypse ruins made me think of the underground tunnels from MI2 (approx 0:45–2:15). 😆

Yes I always thought the same. At one point I looked at them more closely and they do seem to be two entirely different paintings.

I think it was @Marius who first connected some dots around this (and the fact that you start MI2 next to a weenie hut), but anyway… Is the entrance to Big Whoop actually the Melee Island arch, where Guybrush meets the blind lookout? Okay, but Big Whoop sure looks like Booty Island too, right? Where there’s… a deaf lookout? And is it possible that, actually, I am insane?

It seems daft but yes the palm tree thing struck me too, given the prominence of Melee Island’s pine forests in the original game. The Special Edition naturally covered the overhead map in palm trees.

Speaking of EMI…

https://imgur.com/Jz1Hed6

What about the beloved EMI we were just talking about?!

Oh, but it’s so charming and really captures the hustling town atmosphere…

I definitely hear what you’re hearing regarding the docks music being pried out of the map music. It’d make sense for that to be a more general theme used across Melee for sure.

God, this is really verging on seeing too much now. But I'm not sure how much I'm not seeing. Is Melee Island a brief chapter or a big chunk of the game? In any case, I can't stop looking. 🥲

I had the odd thought that maybe the real purpose of the rubber chickens is to be used with a spell that summons a spiritual cable from the ether, allowing the user to glide between any two destinations they please using the conveniently placed pulley. It’d explain how the fortune teller gets around so quickly, anyway.

I did a little Guybrush. I’m trying to get my head around using Procreate on an iPad and using such things as colour, rather than the ‘doodles on paper’ approach which is about as far as my art has ever gotten. 😅

I noticed while checking out music in another thread that it only seems to be the CD version of Monkey Island 1 that has an extended version of the LeChuck theme, where they mess around with the keys to riff off of the same underlying jig. Here’s the original EGA music (with MT-32), where it just repeats the same tune. But now listen to the CD version. The first time it plays the tune, it’s the same. But the second and third times are each different variations that have never been used again since to my knowledge.

I might be mistaken but I believe the audio was made using an MT-32 which supports 8–16 tracks, and then other mixes were essentially derived from that. The MT-32 itself was specialist/enthusiast equipment really, so few would have played it that way back in the day, and the shipped game needed an optional add-on to use one. However it’s a very nice way to play it nowadays, which ScummVM and DREAMM support as long as you can obtain the sample files.

I’m probably pushing it here — it was created in the ReMI era but isn’t specifically ReMI — but it’s not like the thread is heaving. I can’t say I’ve heard of this instrument before.

https://instagram.com/doodle_mitzy

Title card!

I can take or leave Elaine. While her role in the first game is clear and essential, that isn’t really the case for MI2 (where it feels like more of a cameo) and she’s virtually a MacGuffin in CMI. They clearly tried to do more with her in EMI and TMI, but it always felt a bit ‘how do we make this character actually good’ to me and those are my less preferred games in any case.

It isn’t really Return to Monkey Island-related so probably warrants its own thread. https://mixnmojo.com/features/interviews/Jonathan-Ackley-and-Larry-Ahern-talk-25-years-of-CMI/ Fantastic work from Jason pulling this together, leading to so many awesome answers.

For anyone who didn’t see it on Twitter or the newsletter, I compared all the returning locations over the last week. Some great synergy with Remi providing supplementary Amiga shots and Jake creating the moment to bring them all together. 😀 https://twitter.com/i/events/1544313501044224000?s=21&t=Wi0U_Mm80uuFAEbUkTMY8A

Oh dear. I didn’t back (WHAT A BASTARD) so I haven’t seen what any emails might say.