The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!
Let’s discuss the Monkey Island series. What is your favorite game? What aspects do you like about it? What doesn’t work for you? Are there games that gave you a similar experience? Feel free to share any thoughts that come up, or react to other peoples comments. Let’s get the conversation going!
If you have any recommendations for games or series for the next post(s), please feel free to DM me or add it in a comment here (no guarantees of course).
Previous entries: 8 Bit Era, Animal Crossing, Age of Empires, Super Mario, Deus Ex, Stardew Valley, The Sims, Half-Life, Earthbound / Mother, Mass Effect, Metroid, Journey, Resident Evil, Polybius, Tetris, Telltale Games, Kirby, LEGO Games, DOOM, Ori, Metal Gear, Slay the Spire
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MI is great, I played 1+2 when they were new (in the 90s), they were brilliant back then. These days, they’re probably still good point&click adventure games. There were some special editions or remasters which probably make them play well on modern machines. They belong to a long list of awesome LucasArts point&click adventures during the 90s and early 2000s. Most of these games are great. You should definitely try them out, especially if there are remasters available. But you can also play the originals using ScummVM most likely. Ron Gilbert is like the mastermind behind the series. He still creates adventure games to this day. And they’re all pretty good, but the genre is kind of niche these days. It wasn’t niche back then. It was just as big as action or soulslike games are today. The Monkey Island titles were probably the most successful or popular ones of the bunch. But there are some others which are equally good. Adventure games are rare these days but basically they are like puzzle games where you have to solve certain situations by combining items, finding items in the first place, trying different approaches, and so on. You kind of know once you’ve overcome a challenge when you were able to progress further in the game. There’s little to no handholding, but also little to no handholding needed. There’s one timing-based riddle in the original Monkey Island which I never liked that much, but it’s still a funny one. It’s not hard but it doesn’t really fit the genre well because nothing else is timing-based. It does fit the game’s art, setting and humor well though. The soundtrack is nice indeed. This is probably the most well-known track: https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=FoT5qK6hpbw
Man, I miss the golden age of point-and-click adventure games. My brothers and I played through so many together. PC Speaker version of the MI1 soundtrack for maximum nostalgia: https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=_cfPw3IL1sk
I’ve only ever played 3 and I really liked it when I did. Sad that one doesn’t get talked about much cause the art style is my favorite of the whole series I think.
It definitely had its fair share of batshit insane puzzles, but overall it’s a great game.
I have the remake (The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition) in my Steam backlog. I’ve been meaning to play it for a while, but it seems like a game that will require my full focus to not forget the story / puzzles. Once some of the games I’m currently playing are finished, I might give it a go. Also seems like a fun game to play during the winter times, so maybe I’ll get around to it in a few months.
I absolutely love this retrospective video about the series by youtuber Ahoy: RetroAhoy: The Secret of Monkey Island. I highly recommend it!
I played the first, maybe not all the way through, on my Atari ST. Later on, I got quite annoyed that the Amiga got the sequel but Lucasfilm Games days it wasn’t coming to the Atari.
I remember getting the PC CD-ROM edition of the original game and the music was lovely.
The next time I played was game three, Curse of Monkey Island. I loved the art style and completed that one.
I plan on playing the latest installment at some point. I downloaded it onto my Xbox.
There’s also a great program for playing old Lucasfilm faces on PC. You can load soundbanks into it because it can emulated different midi interfaces that I dreamed of owning back in the day. The tunes sound amazing.
That program sounds awesome, what is it? I love old midi tunes lol
It’s an emulator for playing the entire back catalogue of Lucasarts games. It’s very well documented and ready to use. As I said, if you had some kind of general midi set up or Roland MT32 back in the day, you’d be laughing. The music is awesome.
The program is called Dreamm.
DREAMM is a backronym for:
DOS Retro- Emulation Arena for Maniac Mansion (and other LucasArts Games).I have somehow never heard of this before today, I know where the rest of my day is going. Thank you!
I only discovered it myself in the last month or so.
For example, I loved X-Wing CD edition back in the day for the real Star Wars soundtrack but I need to try it with MT32 midi emulation. I bet the iMuse system sounds fantastic.
Monkey island is a series I got into relatively recently and I absolutely adore it.
I mentioned in another thread recently how humongous games was a huge part of my childhood. Pajama Sam especially was and remains some of my all time favorite games.
As I got older and learned more about Ron Gilbert (the creator of humongous and all of those things) I learned about Monkey Island and knew I had to play. I have yet to play the non Gilbert games (I know curse of monkey island is beloved by many) but the 3 Gilbert ones are all masterclasses of point and click in my opinion. I think they hold up very well, and the recent return to monkey island was a delight to play. I know some didn’t love the art style of the new one but I really enjoyed it.
Also have to say that monkey island 2 has one of my all time favorite OSTs. (https://youtu.be/pCWkOudkzu4?si=kh4e1g6elJDmvwOB)
Love that piece of sountrack you shared! Such a nice and melancholic melody!
I had the Secret of Monkey Island on a CDROM as a kid and the soundtrack of the original is burned deep into my brain.
Fun fact: you could put the game CD into a normal CD player, skip track 1 (The data track) and just vibe listening to the entire soundtrack while rollerblading.
I have nothing to say about this game other than thank you for reminding me about CONGO’s CAPER! I’ve been looking for the name of this game for years and this post inspired me to find it!
Love all the monkey Island games, my sister and I played 3 together at the same pc when we were kids and it is a fond memory, have since played all the others.
I remember reading a write up by the creator essentially saying that each game sort of reflected where the small team of developers were in their life at the time of each game, from the first game being young and ambitious to third being marriage themed and the most recent having child raising themes. I am paraphrasing badly but was neat insight either way.
My only gripe about the game is that whenever I inevitably use lines from the game in my real life it’s exceedingly rare anyone has any idea what I am talking about
Monkey Island has aged like a dairy farmer
How appropriate. You’ve aged like a cow.
I got this scar on my face cause the first game was such a struggle
For these discussions I think it would be good to link relevant communities.
I don’t think there’s a community just for Monkey Island, but there is !adventuregames@lemm.ee
I played the first Monkey Island as a kid with my family and still love these games. Great humor, puzzles, and music. #1 is probably still my favorite, all of them are great except maybe #4 I still need to play (now that it works in ScummVM it’s a lot better with modern computers). #2 is probably the hardest game in the series. Tales of Monkey Island is maybe the easiest but still good. Return to Monkey Island was also very good.
Spoilers for the newest game.
spoiler
The frame story of Returns, where Guybrush is telling an account of his life story to his son, is that a filter we’re now supposed to retroactively apply to the whole series? The end of this game, another “it’s all just Disneyland” ending like Revenge had, felt very pointedly like a cover-up.
The whole story is low-key building up this theme of Guybrush actually being a terrible person and his quest being both personally unhealthy and harmful to those around him, with little things like the game silently marking off the checklist of horrible things he did on the how-to-be-evil pamphlet he got from LeChuck and big things like Elaine confronting him with his actions while they travel together, so when the ending turns into such an anti-climactic non-sequitur it reads like he can’t bring himself to tell his son the truth of what happened and you hope it’s because he actually gave up the quest and knows that isn’t the story kids want to be told but fear it’s because shit got real in a different sense and he doesn’t want Boybrush to view him in that light.
With that in mind, now I can’t stop wondering if that’s what the Carnival of the Damned always was: an act of self-censorship by the hypothetical storyteller.
i remember vividly playing curse of monkey island at my brothers place and crying so hard at murray the demonic talking skull
I think this was one of the first games on PC that I saw and really wanted and never ended up playing. I gradually lost track of it and now that i have ScummVM and an emulator system i should get back to playing it.
