My brain is slightly breaking with the news that: 1) a new Monkey Island game is coming; 2) it's led by Ron Gilbert, the designer of the first two piratical comedy adventure games; and 3) it's a direct sequel to Monkey Island 2, a game which already has a sequel. Remarkable news. Come watch the trailer announcing Return To Monkey Island.
]]>Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge will always be among my favourite LucasArts games. The sequel to The Secret Of Monkey Island was where things got a lot more Pythonesque. But it's a lot more than just a treasure hunt and a barrel of laughs, it was very clever for its time.
]]>Raised By Screens is probably the closest I’ll ever get to a memoir – glancing back at the games I played as a child in the order in which I remember playing them, and focusing on how I remember them rather than what they truly were. There will be errors and there will be interpretations that are simply wrong, because that’s how memory works.
Something had gone terribly wrong: a PC had arrived in my house, primarily for use as a word processor, and for the first time it had seemed like I might be bang-up-to-date for gaming. Instead, the opposite had happened.
]]>Isometric-turn-based-point-and-click-platformer is a string of words taken for dead. Sent to the abattoir. They’re all huddled for warmth, waiting for the reaper, when along comes the sausage man and snip-snip-snip he sets them free. “Go on,” he says as he pats their bottoms. “Go back home.”
Recent years have seen remastered versions of Baldur’s Gate, Monkey Island and MDK, Steam and GOG have provided new platforms for old titles, and the most successful Kickstarter projects have been new games in old styles. ‘Classic’ games are seeing a surge in popularity and it’s a trend that’s so far been largely attributed to nostalgia - to people wanting to play the games they remember from their childhood. Is that all this is?
]]>Writing a long post about how you'd remake Monkey Island sure is a funny way of demonstrating that "I have no plans to make another Monkey Island." Threepwood co-parent Ron Gilbert's done it anyway, and while I believe him when he says he's currently not working on any such game, it's hard not to tin-foil-hat-read his post as essentially a public pitch to Disney now they've taken LucasArts down to the bottom of the garden. He even mentions Kickstarter, for heaven's sakes. This is calculated. Whether anything will ever come of it is anyone's guess - I would imagine it's less a case of resistance at Disney, and more one of corporate wheels turning too impossibly slowly and safely to even notice this sort of thing.
Anyway, the main event: how Gilbert would tackle a Nu-Monkey, given the opportunity.
]]>Are you interested in what you should be thinking about the new Monkey Island 2 Special Edition? Fortunately I'm here to tell you - what a spot of good news. My review for PC Gamer has made its way onto the Jaunty RPS Tribute Site PCGamer.com, over here. I say:
]]>The second special edition complete re-mastering of the Monkey Island games came out last week, and I thought since we're not going to be Wot I Thinking it, it'd be worth having a quick look at and seeing how seaworthy this once-flagship of the genre is with its new lick of paint. Because... well, I'll go out on a limb here and say that, for a sub-section of our readership, it'll be their favourite adventure game of all time. Possibly the last great classic adventure they ever played. It's certainly mine.
]]>The Special Edition of Monkey Island 2 has produced a collection of new screenshots. They're the compare-and-contrast types, so you can see the original, then tut about some aspect of the new ones that aren't precisely as you want them, most likely involving someone's hair being a tiny bit wrong. Meanwhile no one complains about the controls being awful, and then gives it 100% because they remember enjoying the original when they were seven... Oh dear, I appear to be venting some frustrations in an inappropriate manner. Of course, we don't know about the controls for MI2: SE at this stage, and I super-hope they've been fixed. So, to the new pics. They look rather good. Have a peek below to see what once was, and what will be.
]]>It seems that the Secret Of Monkey Island Special Edition must have been enough of a success for LucasArts to pursue the idea further. It's been announced that the sequel is receiving the same treatment, now called Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: Le Chuck's Revenge. And it's arriving in the Summer.
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