Dead-ends in LucasArts adventures

[Huz]

It's famously impossible to get stuck in a dead-end in LucasArts adventure games - or is it?! Research commissioned by Mixnmojo has cast doubt on this bold claim. You can get stuck in The Secret of Monkey Island.

 

"But how?!" you may be crying in anguish, particularly if you're one of these guys:

 

Well, it's pretty simple. On the ship, the game only lets you burn some of your flammable items (necessary to fire the cannon), and it's possible to put them all in the cooking pot, destroying them. No fire, no cannon, no Monkey Island. As a guy explains in the Twitter thread, there's a failsafe item the game prevents you from cooking - the Melee treasure map - but it's possible you never obtained it in the first place. If you "unlock" the forest by following the storekeeper, you can find the treasure by trial and error, so you don't need the map.

 

Don't believe me? Well, go on then. Get past here. I dare you.

monkey-ega.s06

monkey-vga-amiga-1.s07

 

EGA and Amiga ScummVM saves for your enjoyment.

 

Are there other dead-ends in any of the adventures? I can't think of any, and I'm definitely the sort of moron who tries really hard to break a game. I don't think I've managed it on a LucasArts adventure game - until now.

[Scummbuddy]

I think you mean to already exclude Zak and MM, correct? I mean, those can be detailed here. One from MM is if you get one teen killed and another is stuck in prison, I believe, the third teen could find themselves in a dead-end. Zak, I think you can run out of money for plane tickets?

 

Those can be better detailed later, but for your MI point, I don't recall the MI treasure map being an ingredient. Is it?

Edited May 30, 2022 by Scummbuddy

[ThunderPeel2001]

Nice find. I swear I put something important into the fire on my old Amiga playthrough and got stuck... but I was probably just not understanding what I was doing. (I had an earlier save thankfully.)

[ThunderPeel2001]

3 minutes ago, Scummbuddy said:

I don't recall the MI treasure map being an ingredient. Is it?

 

I think the point is that you can burn it to light the canon?

[Thrik]

Yeah, if you consume everything else, the treasure map is basically the only thing that the game prevents you from using prematurely. However, if you never pick it up in the first place you are stuffed.

 

@Huz weren’t you looking into some Otis business?!

[Trapezzoid]

https://mixnmojo.com/news/A-dead-end-monkey-style

 

Looks like you can end up stuck in LeChuck's torture pit if you sidestep getting the mixed drinks.

(Someone commented on that Mojo post from 2008 referencing the MI1 fire dead end, so it's been known for a while.)

 

Am I remembering correctly, can you waste all your money in the grog machine in MI1?

 

[Huz]

Yes you can! And as Thrik alludes to above, you can also give it all away to worthy causes Otis, one coin at a time.

 

If you give it all away it disappears from your inventory, but you can also give just enough of it away that you can no longer afford items you need, like the sword and shovel.

Edited May 30, 2022 by Huz

[Huz]

10 minutes ago, Trapezzoid said:

https://mixnmojo.com/news/A-dead-end-monkey-style

 

Looks like you can end up stuck in LeChuck's torture pit if you sidestep getting the mixed drinks.

(Someone commented on that Mojo post from 2008 referencing the MI1 fire dead end, so it's been known for a while.)

 

 

And haha, that's a great video! I was just looking at the limit on polishing the peg-leg. I knew it topped out at 19 pieces of eight before you charter Dread's ship (one short of what you need), but I didn't know the limit gets raised later. It looks like they intended to set the limit close to what you need for Kate's ship, just enough to tantalise you, but they overlooked the ability to sell stuff back to the antique dealer.

 

Another dead-end!

[dwa]

The Ultimate Talkie Edition may have unintentionally added a new dead-end to Monkey Island 2 (not the Lite Mode). If you steal Wally's monocle and then forget to pick up the model lighthouse lens in Phatt's Library, then when Dread brings you back to Scabb at the end Wally will never be able to read the map. I think the original just silently gives back a monocle to Wally in that case, but this doesn't work in the Ultimate Talkie Edition, or something like that.

 

My nephew actually found that… I plan on analyzing this a bit more at some point, if there's really a problem there then I'll try submitting a workaround in ScummVM.

 

EDIT 2022-08-05: Well, that was actually an original oversight of the game, but it would only happen in the Ultimate Talkie edition because it was hidden by a second bug that the Ultimate Talkie edition fixed. So this dead-end has been fixed in ScummVM 2.7.0.

Edited August 5, 2022 by dwa
new info

[Marius]

8 hours ago, Huz said:

Yes you can! And as Thrik alludes to above, you can also give it all away to worthy causes Otis, one coin at a time.

 

If you give it all away it disappears from your inventory, but you can also give just enough of it away that you can no longer afford items you need, like the sword and shovel.

Oh man, it would’ve been funny if they scripted it so that you can, if you lost all your money, return to the circus and do the cannon stunt again.

Edited May 31, 2022 by Marius

[ThunderPeel2001]

11 hours ago, Trapezzoid said:

Looks like you can end up stuck in LeChuck's torture pit if you sidestep getting the mixed drinks.

 

 

But you can't win the spit contest if you don't create the green drink?

 

Edit: Oops. I see what you mean now.

Edited May 31, 2022 by ThunderPeel2001