Monkey Island 2 Remake

[SyntheticGerbil]

Definitely agree Thunderpeel. Mad Marty was amazing to finally hear yelling at me. The librarian was great as well. When she yells "WHISPER!" I was cackling. Her response to me asking her to recommend me every book in the library had me in tears.

 

EDIT: Okay, I've got another random comment. Did anyone else really love the woodsmith's voice? I dunno what it was, but there was just some quality that made me want to just listen to him talk over and over again. He should do like books-on-tape or something.

 

Haha, I know what you mean. He was definitely soothing in a weird way. Too bad he didn't have too many lines the whole game.

[Rosefull]

Yeah, it was a shame. I actually looked up the VA (Phil LaMarr) and he's done all kinds of stuff, so I might check some of it out.

 

Oh, that librarian. She was hilarious. I also thought Wally's voice was great. Listening to him rant about his monocle had me in stitches.

 

And of course, as has been said, Dom's "Luke Skywalker" moment was beyond perfect.

[DAISHI]

I DID notice that some dialogue was changed. Mostly it was the LucasArts Legal lawyer types removing direct name references to product brands that were somehow okay in the original. In one case though, it was simply an attack of political correctness.

 

For instance, Guybrush originally asked the antique store owner "Do you take Visa?" Now he says "Do you take credit?" Sadly for grammatical sense, the response is left unchanged: "Yeah, like you have one."

 

Also, near the end of the game, when LeChuck shows up in the tunnels, and says that he has a "surprise" for Guybrush, one dialogue option was changed. It was originally "I don't suppose it's a Nintendo game..." but now "Nintendo" has been changed to "LucasArts."

 

Plus, in the end cutscene at the amusement park, Guybrush's mother originally warned him to beware "murderers and white slavers." "White slavers" must be too un-PC of a phrase for Lucas executives, as it's been changed to "ne'er-do-wells."

 

I also saw that the LucasArts Hint Line phone number has been updated to its modern counterpart, too. Edit: Actually, it's the same. I was thinking of a different LucasArts phone number, the one listed in MI1 when you try to "order Hint Book" after Guybrush drowns.

 

All these changes are to the game text strings, so they're sadly present in the Classic mode as well.

 

As well, there was always some dialogue missing in the CD version of MI2, when Guybrush gives the Phatt Island fisherman the fish from Elaine's kitchen: originally Guybrush pretended to catch the fish before handing it over, even making noises to that effect. Since the Special Edition is based on the CD version of the game, it's missing here too.

 

On a MUCH brighter note, the concept art gallery is amazing. As far as stuff I haven't seen before: There are several drawings surviving from the early design of Booty Island (since it was originally supposed to be at night), plus a few other backgrounds that were intended to be in the game but cut. These include a voodoo altar within LeChuck's fortress, and a MUCH more elaborate version of the underground metal tunnels linking Rum Rogers' house to Phatt Island proper.

 

One small thing that amused me was that Chester, the Hint Line worker, is male in the Special Edition, but female in Classic mode (and is thus voiced differently in each version).

 

The Guybrush making effects of fishing is present at least in my PC version of the game. It didn't happen the first time when I came back with the fish a long time later, but was present when I showed up at the dock with a fish already present.

[DAISHI]

The Bone song is up on youtube, I see.

 

Haha, someone really needs to fix this. If the mother's voice wasn't irritating enough, having it out of synch just makes it so much worse! If someone's planning on combining the voices with the music track to fix the synch problem, please put her a bit back in the mix, will ye?

 

I must be the only person who thought this was a purposeful design choice. This is akin to seeing any old person trying to keep up with the music. I mean, just got to a country church or something. See how badly older people keep up in terms of clapping their hands or singing along. That entire scene was in line with stuff I've always seen. Plus the fact that the song itself is not even a song, it's just a disjointed old diddy.

[DAISHI]

are there other problems like these ? I've found very annoying the excellent music from booty to be ruined like this is this fixable ?

 

As I understand it this was another design choice, to make the mardi gras music seem faded the further you were from the party.

[KestrelPi]

I must be the only person who thought this was a purposeful design choice. This is akin to seeing any old person trying to keep up with the music. I mean, just got to a country church or something. See how badly older people keep up in terms of clapping their hands or singing along. That entire scene was in line with stuff I've always seen. Plus the fact that the song itself is not even a song, it's just a disjointed old diddy.

 

There is absolutely no way in the world they would do that as a purposeful design choice. Apart from being annoying as hell, if you listen it starts out in sync and gradually gets more out of sync as it goes. This is suggestive of there being just slightly too long a gap between each phrase, so it slowly gets pushed further and further out of sync. If they'd wanted to make it sound like they were just bad at keeping time, they would have asked the voice actors to perform it like that. And finally, it would be insane of them to deliberately make a song that lots of fans have been looking forward to hearing with voices for the first time sound awful. It's a mistake, pure and simple.

[KestrelPi]

As I understand it this was another design choice, to make the mardi gras music seem faded the further you were from the party.

 

The music is still all present and correct at the fish fry itself. The music in town always seemed to me to be a slight variation on that (the tune is slightly different, but same structure, etc),. I don't mind it as a choice, I think it's enough to have one main version of that theme

[Snugglecakes]

I actually quite like the Booty music this way. Sounds spot on, that party-in-the-distance sound, and you can still hear it properly at the party. Adds a lot of atmosphere.

[s-island]

The Booty Island party music also had different melody lines depending on where you went in the town, which is lost in the new version. That bit often got bugged up in the original game though, so maybe they never got to hear it as intended when remaking it.... It's still odd that they chose to use the piano line from that original piece in the souvenir store because it sounds really weird when it just jumps in mid-loop when you enter the store.

[Monkey Mania]

Notice when talking to the fisherman he takes out two pipes. Guybrush can actually say something about it. Is that in the original game?

[Remi]

Notice when talking to the fisherman he takes out two pipes. Guybrush can actually say something about it. Is that in the original game?

 

It is indeed.

[Monkey Mania]

It is indeed.

 

Still discovering new things after all these years.

[Snugglecakes]

Finished it, and it's great. The first SE I just can't play, but this one is good. The thing that stands out most in terms of errors is the whole bone song sequence, with the out of sync singing, and also the music which just gets lost a bit when you know who arrives. That should be a much more powerful tune, you could hardly hear it in the SE. Same for the underground tunnels, needs much more oomph.

 

The timing issues need to be fixed too, I'm sure there are many people out there getting stuck on these puzzles. Overall, it deserves a patch because it's really very good. And dare I say... intro sequence *runs

 

P.S.

Why would they change

"Hi, I'm Guybrush Threepwood, Ghost Busting Stud" to

"Hi, I'm Guybrush Threepwood, LeChuck Busting Stud" ?

 

That was one of my favourite lines!

[sinus]

Finished it, and it's great. The first SE I just can't play, but this one is good.

 

Wow!

 

[simonsoup]

Perversely, Rock Paper Shotgun wrote a few kind words about the SE along with some unkind words about Monkey Island 2 - here. Obviously I think it's a dumb article.

[SyntheticGerbil]

P.S.

Why would they change

"Hi, I'm Guybrush Threepwood, Ghost Busting Stud" to

"Hi, I'm Guybrush Threepwood, LeChuck Busting Stud" ?

 

That was one of my favourite lines!

 

Haha, I heard about this one too. I guess I just figured it had always said LeChuck Busting Stud at this point. Apparently this may have been too close to Ghostbusters™?

 

But even then you can bust some ghosts without being a Ghostbuster™. They may have trademarked the action of actually busting the ghosts then.

 

I may be in legal trouble for even mentioning busting some ghosts in this thread.

[speon]

...and also the music which just gets lost a bit when you know who arrives. That should be a much more powerful tune, you could hardly hear it in the SE. Same for the underground tunnels, needs much more oomph.

 

While playing SoMI:SE, I bumped the voice volume down by 3 or so notches and then compensated overall with the master volume on my PC and/or TV setups to get the voices to "sit" better in the final mix. Afterwards, the NPCs sound more like they're nestled within the game's sound world, instead of overpowering it. Honestly (and this is coming from someone who really likes the music for MI2), the new ambient sfx for the special edtions is one of my favorite parts of the overall soundscape.

 

I've only played a few minutes of MI2:SE so far, but this method seems to work well for that game as well. I think I may have even bumped the sfx down 1, and the voice down 4, as the music felt a little more quietly mixed for this game.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Gotta say I'm with Schafes: The pant-dropping scene was never that funny.

[Rosefull]

Why would they change

"Hi, I'm Guybrush Threepwood, Ghost Busting Stud" to

"Hi, I'm Guybrush Threepwood, LeChuck Busting Stud" ?

 

That was one of my favourite lines!

I assume it was probably some sort of copyright issue, as was mentioned above. But the replacement is funny, too.

 

Funny story: Today at work (I'm working at a kids theater summer camp) we were playing a game where you have to just keep asking random questions until you can't think of anymore. I asked "What's the Secret of Monkey Island?" Like two questions later, one of the interns said "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck?" I wonder...

[ATMachine]

Haha, I heard about this one too. I guess I just figured it had always said LeChuck Busting Stud at this point. Apparently this may have been too close to Ghostbusters™?

 

But even then you can bust some ghosts without being a Ghostbuster™. They may have trademarked the action of actually busting the ghosts then.

 

I may be in legal trouble for even mentioning busting some ghosts in this thread.

Yep, it's most certainly a copyright issue, as with so many other minor dialogue changes.

[speon]

You can do it before you pick it up, otherwise use mouse wheel to scroll through all the actions to get the one you want.

 

Hmm...unless I'm missing something, nothing seems to happen when I scroll the mouse wheel while inside the inventory screen. Even when pressing the associated the hotkeys, there doesn't appear to be any way to do anything else other than the pre-determined actions while in the inventory screen in SE mode. :/

 

After using it for a while now, I'm still not a fan of the large, parchment square behind the inventory. Along with the visually obtrusive choice/options text strips below the box, they're too bright and block too much the background scene - especially with the whole arrangement aligned front and center.

 

I think it would work better if only the inventory icons were drawn over the game screen while the inventory was open, with perhaps some simple chevron brackets, bordering, and/or drop shadowing. Object interaction would work just as it does in the main game screen, where the cursor handles all of the possible options. This way, the choice lists wouldn't have to be truncated in any fashion.

[SyntheticGerbil]

This might only interest ATMachine and Thundpeel at this point, but...

 

Just to clear up the Monkey 1 backgrounds talk from earlier, I had e-mailed Steve Purcell about it and he just got back to me. Apparently he did do a lot of the the pixel backgrounds the first game. I was right about the Monkey Head stuff it turns out, as it did look a lot like his drawings to me.

 

I think the backgrounds were generally started and completed by the same person. With sixteen colors to work with on Monkey Island we learned early on that black was the most consistent color on different monitors so we used it a lot. Mark Ferrari was the master of dither, which meant, alternating different pixel colors in proximity to create the impression of a new color. I believe he created most if not all of the backgrounds in LOOM.

 

On Monkey Island I did a lot of backgrounds. I believe I did a bunch of the ghost ship stuff and the underground landscape and the giant monkey head. I also did Stan's with the Grog machine. I did draw and animate a bunch of characters including Stan, Guybrush and ghost LeChuck as well as some ghostey pirate extras. The close ups were challenging with the sixteen colors and I think mine look very stiff (except for the little dog that didn't actually appear in the game). When the time came to upgrade the game to 256 colors Ian McCaig redrew all the close-ups and got a lot more life out of them than I was able to.

 

I would guess Mark Ferrari still did most of the Secret of Monkey Island backgrounds though, putting it more in common with Loom still. I guess that rests the case of Steve Purcell not doing any background art for Loom as well (unless he remembers he did one).

[MusicallyInspired]

Monkey Island Adventures message from Facebook:

 

We're hearing all your feedback and will have news on much of it shortly. To clarify: MISE2 isn't planned for an OSX release at this time, will let you know if and when that changes!

[The Tingler]

Shame about Mac, but for the rest - excellent. Let's just pray that incorporates the title sequence. The ending should be easy to do, too - it's just text on a black background after all!

[Snugglecakes]

If they give us a patch, and fix all the bugs, this will get 9/10 from me. Put the intro sequence back in place and it'll get 10/10. It's so close to being the definitive version of MI2, but without those two things the original still pips it.

 

The pant-dropping scene was never that funny.

 

I thought it was absolutely hilarious