The Secret of Monkey Island

[Joshi]

Originally posted by Xippion

I tend to think now that it's blatantly obvious that Monkey Isl is different to Melee. Melee has a few out of place things, but they're probably just red herrings. This could be implied from the use of the red herring on Melee. Monkey however is in a different boat. Everything about it is "wrong". Someone waiting to be rescued while he has his own boat... monkeys in the Caribbean... vegetarian cannibals - how is such a thing possible? and of course the giant monkey head.

 

Then there's the navigator head, the key to the giant monkey head - which somehow fits into Guybrush's pocket (the latter games would have you believe Guybrush can pick anything up and stoe it away). Everything is centred around the giant monkey head, there are idols there - that's where LeChuck's base is located, and even the name of the isl is Monkey Island. Yet it isn't in the centre of the isl at all! In fact, it's all the way off to the side - so much so that only a strip of beach separates it from the main-land.

 

Um, just to point out, the vegetarian cannible thing only came about in CMI, a game you decided to disregard in this discussion and therefore has no relevance to your argumant. The cannibles in SOMI were definately meat eaters.

 

And the rest of that which may be "impossible", no no, not impossible, funny is what we're looking for. This game is not meant to reflect real life, it's meant to be, if anything, a pirate parody, a spoof if you will. I Guy who is trapped on an island and has his own boat but can't use it because he has to be rescued, its' in the rules, not only is that funny as hell, but it's also there to annoy you a bit because he spends most of his time whining to you about how he got stranded for so many years and so one only to find out he could have left any time he wanted.

 

And you can't call a game 'monkey Island' without having monkeys, and you can't have pirates, without being in the caribbean (remember this whole game was based on the Pirates of the Caribbean Ride) and so they just put the two together. it's not meant to be historically or geographically accurate, it's a funny game made to entertain.

 

And I don't know about you, buit the idea of a fish and a chicken down guybrush's pants is just funny.

 

and yes, everything is centered around the giant monkey head, figurtively speaking though. that's not to say that the monkey head has to be in the fricking middle of the damn island, it just means that everyones lives are effected by the monkey head.

 

Trust me, you're reading way too much into this.

[elTee]

Joshi's right. This isn't some ancient mystery - the fact that the Monkey Head isn't the centre of Monkey Island means squat.

 

Alien, I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels like that

[freddie]

This is all much ado about nothing.

[Alien426]

Originally posted by Joshi

Um, just to point out, the vegetarian cannible thing only came about in CMI, a game you decided to disregard in this discussion and therefore has no relevance to your argumant. The cannibles in SOMI were definately meat eaters.

Au contraire! They argued about the cholesterol content in human flesh.

[hibernatus]

I am looking forward to your game.

BTW, i think i read in an interview that Ron Gilbert first planned the end of MI2 for MI1, but nobody liked it so he chose a different one. I was pretty sure about that, but now i can't find where i read it, so i'm not anymore.

[Joshi]

Actually, Ron and others had first planned the entire MI1 and 2 story to be mergred into one game (The Secret of Monkey Island) but that would have taken up too many floppy disks at the time (seven was already borderline of really long) so he left it at the SOMI but then started production on MI2 straight away to finish the story. Sort of like Kill Bill.

 

And Alien, borderline vegetarianism isn't the same as actually becoming vegetarians. All this suggests is that they were more civilized than your average cannible which just added to the humour and didn't suggest anything more about the story or game (like the origins of Monkey Island started in space or something, oh come on, you know that sooner or later the secrets bound to be that, what with all of this over analysis os a simple early 90's computer game, I can just smell it, next we'll find the historical referance and philosophical relevence to how Space Invaders is a metaphore for the meaning of life or something.)

[Drigo Zoxx]

Originally posted by Joshi

Actually, Ron and others had first planned the entire MI1 and 2 story to be mergred into one game (The Secret of Monkey Island) but that would have taken up too many floppy disks at the time (seven was already borderline of really long) so he left it at the SOMI but then started production on MI2 straight away to finish the story. Sort of like Kill Bill.

 

But at least one year passed in the game between the two stories. Guybrush has become more adult in Monkey Island 2, he's got a beard and long hair, lots of money and a new jacket.

They can't be seen as the first two volumes of the Lord of the Rings or such.

[Joshi]

Well, obviously after they figured out that they needed to do two games, they pribably thoughtt his was a chance to grow guybrush a bit and change him, make him fresh, I mean who wants to play two games with a character only to have him look the same in both games.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Where are you getting this information, Joshi?

[ATMachine]

Well, I've heard that the very, very earliest screenshots of MI2 - before even the slideshow demo - actually had MI1 Guybrush used in them as the Guybrush sprite. This probably was intended to be replaced with the final one from the outset though.

[ThunderPeel2001]

ATM has just reminded me: Early previews of the game (including advertisements if I'm not mistaken) claimed it was LeChuck's brother who was out to get Guybrush, so when did they have this all "planned" exactly, Joshi?

[Remi]

The MI1-like Guybrush was in the ads (possibly just as placeholder graphics), while the "LeChuck's hellbent brother" was in mags like Amiga Power and CU Amiga. I suspect some PR person might have gotten things mixed up there, as those previews never had any interviews with the development team.

 

And yeah, MI2 is built on a lot of the stuff they couldn't fit into MI1, as confirmed by Ronnie around the time that MI2 was released.

 

Bonus info about that! When the MI2 news first broke in... I believe it was Amiga User or something? Don't quite remember what the mag was called anymore. Anyway! They had the "first exclusive MI2 screenshot in the world!", but had made an error, and put in an early FoA screenshot instead.

[Joshi]

Thunderpeel, I don't claim to have vast amounts of knowledge on the production of both games. Chances are, what Remi said is right and I just got a little muddled. I do remember reading somewhere (be it an interview or comment, or even something someone on these boards said a long time ago) that the whole things was meant to be one game at first but they couldn't fit it all onto their seven or eight disks and so left a lot out of the first game only to make another. I also remember reading somewhere that they started production of MI2 even before the release of MI1 for some reason, possibly because they wanted to carry on/finish the story.

 

I had no idea about the whole 'lechuck's brother' thing but stories change over the course of production, and that goes for most things, games, movies, even books and so the whole Lechucks brother thing would ahev changed and so on. I never said that they had the entire story mapped out from the beginning of MI1, only that they had intened for there to be just one game but didn't put in a lot of things and then, put them in the second game.

 

My whole point was, there is really no need to over analyse this game, when i bought it (actually a friend leant it to me and then said I could keep it, the fool) I got it for entertainment reasons and when I played it, I was entertained.

 

But you know what, that's me, if you want to look deeper into it then by all means, do so. And I'm not trying to hold you back from your project, if you want to make the game by all means do so, I haven't seen a very decent monkey island fangame out there so maybe yours will be the exception. I'll play it anyway.

 

Keep on moving.