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The Monkey Island box set from Limited Run Games


Udvarnoky

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So, this is something we have to contend with in October. A big, physical collection of the first four Monkey Island games (Why exclude Tales? It is over ten years old now and shouldn't pose special rights issues...I think?) that is poised to attack our wallets with ravenous hunger.

 

Judging by past LTR releases, there could be any number of weirdly conceived collectible extras. Will we finally possess our own Monkey Bucks, or perhaps a Planet Threepwood coupon? Speculate.

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On 8/8/2020 at 9:30 AM, Udvarnoky said:

Why exclude Tales? It is over ten years old now and shouldn't pose special rights issues...I think?

The rights to Tales of Monkey Island were purchased by LCG Entertainment/Athlon (Telltale 2.0). The rights to the other four games remain solely with Lucasfilm Games/Disney.

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That's pretty cool. Kind of ironic how relied upon the fan base has become for official releases, whether it's for keeping the games runnable (GOG and Steam versions bundled with ScummVM) or collectibles. It is a testament to the professional caliber of your work, though it also raises the troubling question of whether they have access to the source art themselves at this point.

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Given that there were obviously very high-quality reproductions made of the MI1 artwork via the promo poster, it surprises me that these aren't easily available on some database server. Granted, these were the early years of Lucasfilm Games and before storing stuff digitally being the norm, so maybe not everything was deemed important enough to archive properly. And for taking a trip to the archives to dig out an old artwork to scan and possibly restore, a licensed product might not appear lucrative enough.

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22 minutes ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

 

Did you get any compensation, or even a notice from them?

After I made them aware of the fact that it's my restoration of the artwork they were using on their promo material, they were VERY humble about it. In fact, they found my version on Google and assumed it was the source artwork (and Disney apparently were okay with them using whatever they couldn't deliver themselves). They even had one of their artists remove the logo from my version, so they were somewhat shocked when I linked them my logoless version. Anyway, yes, I've got compensated and am now doing more or less regular paid work for them. I've contributed artwork to their releases of "Jedi Knight", "X-Wing" and "TIE Fighter". We'll see how much artwork Disney can deliver for the Monkey Island collection, and if I can contribute to that as well. Their reaction to my complaint made clear that this is a group of fine folks, well aware of the value of fan contributions (hell, they are fans themselves, otherwise they wouldn't put effort into releasing old games).

 

Another discovery I made was when watching a flip through of Bitmap Books' Amiga compendium on YouTube, spotting my Monkey Island and Simon the Sorcerer restorations in there. I felt a bit silly bringing it up to the author 6 years after the release of the book, but it turned out Steve Purcell himself directed him to my poster thread. Ah well, in an artwork heavy book like that I understand that those two artworks are just a drop in the bucket.

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This is reminiscent to me of how Don Giller, the David Letterman superfan who has every episode of the original Late Night show recorded on tape, became the show's unofficial archivist to the point where Letterman people would reach out to him for help with an old episode/clip. Meanwhile, the actual master tapes for Letterman's 80s run may well be rotting in an NBC vault in an outmoded format until it passes the point of being digitizable.

 

It's a little chilling to think that some obsessive fans are the last line of defense against this stuff simply being lost forever. I am hoping Disney just found it more convenient/inexpensive to use's Laser's work than to disinter the original piece for an archival scan. It is a much more comforting thought than the possibility that the painting itself is history. Same with all of the original artwork for LucasArts games, released or unreleased.

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Tim's praise for Lucasfilm's archival efforts when Double Fine went searching for original assets for the remasters of Grim/DOTT/FT was very heartening. On the other hand, there was at least some reliance on things developers had saved themselves in personal archives, and some stuff was outright lost and had to be recreated (certain textures).

 

And that is just the virtual assets for the games themselves. When it comes to artwork, we have seen enough examples of artists having originals in their personal possession to conclude that some folks walked out the studio with materials, so some of this stuff is scattered around. Promotional art and stuff associated with unreleased games come with their own level of uncertainty. Is the fabled Ken Macklin background art for The Dig, for example, still just sitting unloved in a filing cabinet somewhere? Hope so!

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50 minutes ago, Jake said:

I bet Spiffy was a dpaint file on Purcell’s PC and never made it anywhere else, beyond being copied to a floppy disk for marketing to put on the box. There’s no evidence of that closeup anywhere else. 

 

I think he was in the game at some point (like that room in MI that was recently found), but cut for disk space reasons. There's dialogue on the screenshot he appeared in. I'm guessing they were sad to see him go, but decided to to include him on the box instead. Of course in the mad rush to deliver the final game, I doubt anyone was wondering how best to archive him :) Maybe Aric has a backup somewhere... #neverlosehope

Edited by ThunderPeel2001
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1 hour ago, Jake said:

I bet Spiffy was a dpaint file on Purcell’s PC and never made it anywhere else, beyond being copied to a floppy disk for marketing to put on the box. There’s no evidence of that closeup anywhere else. 

 

Considering there are a bunch of missing rooms in the MI1 resource files, I wouldn't be so cynical. (Though I might be if the whole Secret Project thing was actually true and I were a developer with a financial incentive not to talk about it. But that's clearly insane.)

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42 minutes ago, Remi said:

So basically this...

 

spiffy.jpg

I think I took the image from the back of the box and tried to paint out the parts that were covered up (there's a monkey and a sword over the lower part) so it would look as close to the original image file as I could get it. But I'm no @Laserschwert so it doesn't look particularly good!

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