Screenshots :.
Revisiting: Monkey Island
Matt
06-01-2009
"And the secret is... is... IS?!?"
"Ah, Booty Island. Good times!"
"With your breath, I imagine they suffocated!"
You’d have to presume, what with it being 2009 now and getting toward a decade since anything happened on the Monkey Island front, that Guybrush Threepwood must be sat at home on Melee Island with Elaine kicking his feet up in front of the fire and enjoying a life free from having to use random objects on random people and having to trade insults with the native pirates. Having been chased around by a ghost/undead/demonic pirate and had to, amongst other things, dress like a woman, be tricked into thinking he was a boy in a carnival, walk around town whilst tarred and feathered and the like, perhaps he has earned it.
Still, as a young scamp back in the day who fell in love with the original game it is a hard fact to accept that, despite Lucasart’s reassurances, Monkey Island 5 may never happen. Quite what it was about the original that tickled my fancy I will never know, and to be honest at the age I was at the time most of the humour did slide slightly over the top of my head, but the clever puzzling and slapstick comedy moments left a lasting impression.
It wasn’t just the puzzling, either. The music that jauntily jittered along in the background sunk into your brain and ended up being whistled at numerous points for the REST OF YOUR LIFE, and with Michael Land (who seemed to drop the Z from his name somewhere between 2 and 3) manning the ivory-tinkering duties for all four of the games you were constantly bombarded with the same kinds of highly catchy Caribbean tunes throughout. For those not familiar, listen to this and see if you can get it out of your head. Point taken?
Having thought that the original game was the bee’s knees and that it couldn’t possibly be bettered, it was as nice a surprise as biting into a Kit Kat to find no wafer inside when it turned out that the second game, subtitled LeChuck’s Revenge, was actually insanely brilliant. Having defeated the aforementioned pirate in the first, series hero Threepwood had kicked off a quest to find the legendary treasure of Big Whoop when things went slightly awry after he got himself mugged. The following hours were spent hypnotising monkeys, cheating at drinking competitions and watching a curiously hypnotic dance performed by two skeletons, and every turn was filled with laugh-out-loud humour and references.
It then went quiet on the Monkey Island front, with Sam and Max and Day of the Tentacle amongst others getting their chance in the limelight. It wasn’t until 1998 that the LeChuck and Threepwood show got its third outing, by which time the world was beginning to turn away from point-and-click adventures and series head honcho Ron Gilbert had departed, taking how own version of Monkey Island 3 away inside the vaults of his creative mind. Despite this, the new (and rather lovely) cartoon graphics and voice acting bolstered the thing nicely, and some great moments of comedy still cropped up throughout, so it managed to do quite well for itself critically at the time. The return of the first game’s insult-slinging sword battling was a nice touch too, as was the introduction of the completely bonkers skull Murray, who was basically a slightly more adult version of Boney from awesome kids’ telly show Trapdoor.
Whilst the third game kept the Monkey Island fires burning nicely enough, the fourth game was set to divide series fans right down the middle (although not physically – that would be horrific). By 2001 point-and-click was pretty much dead and hence LucasArts went for a Grim Fandango-esque keyboard scheme that was pretty clumsy, as well as an average-looking three-dimensional visual style that didn’t really carry the familiar Monkey Island atmosphere particularly well. The story itself wasn’t quite as comedic as before either, dealing with commercialisation and the like instead of silly treasure hunts. Perhaps in trying to give the series a new, fresh and modern slant, LucasArts took the game too far away from what people loved in the previous three.
Hence, we are now approaching eight years without any sort of Monkey Island game visible from the crow’s-nest. Despite a hoax perpetrated by a website in cahoots with Guybrush voice actor Dominic Armato and the occasional dismissive statement saying that there probably will be a fifth game in the series, it seems that these days if your game doesn’t feature force powers and a large hairy wookie then LucasArts aren’t going to be interested. A shame indeed, but hey, it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all!
… I guess.
*sniff :-(*
Still, as a young scamp back in the day who fell in love with the original game it is a hard fact to accept that, despite Lucasart’s reassurances, Monkey Island 5 may never happen. Quite what it was about the original that tickled my fancy I will never know, and to be honest at the age I was at the time most of the humour did slide slightly over the top of my head, but the clever puzzling and slapstick comedy moments left a lasting impression.
It wasn’t just the puzzling, either. The music that jauntily jittered along in the background sunk into your brain and ended up being whistled at numerous points for the REST OF YOUR LIFE, and with Michael Land (who seemed to drop the Z from his name somewhere between 2 and 3) manning the ivory-tinkering duties for all four of the games you were constantly bombarded with the same kinds of highly catchy Caribbean tunes throughout. For those not familiar, listen to this and see if you can get it out of your head. Point taken?
Having thought that the original game was the bee’s knees and that it couldn’t possibly be bettered, it was as nice a surprise as biting into a Kit Kat to find no wafer inside when it turned out that the second game, subtitled LeChuck’s Revenge, was actually insanely brilliant. Having defeated the aforementioned pirate in the first, series hero Threepwood had kicked off a quest to find the legendary treasure of Big Whoop when things went slightly awry after he got himself mugged. The following hours were spent hypnotising monkeys, cheating at drinking competitions and watching a curiously hypnotic dance performed by two skeletons, and every turn was filled with laugh-out-loud humour and references.
It then went quiet on the Monkey Island front, with Sam and Max and Day of the Tentacle amongst others getting their chance in the limelight. It wasn’t until 1998 that the LeChuck and Threepwood show got its third outing, by which time the world was beginning to turn away from point-and-click adventures and series head honcho Ron Gilbert had departed, taking how own version of Monkey Island 3 away inside the vaults of his creative mind. Despite this, the new (and rather lovely) cartoon graphics and voice acting bolstered the thing nicely, and some great moments of comedy still cropped up throughout, so it managed to do quite well for itself critically at the time. The return of the first game’s insult-slinging sword battling was a nice touch too, as was the introduction of the completely bonkers skull Murray, who was basically a slightly more adult version of Boney from awesome kids’ telly show Trapdoor.
Whilst the third game kept the Monkey Island fires burning nicely enough, the fourth game was set to divide series fans right down the middle (although not physically – that would be horrific). By 2001 point-and-click was pretty much dead and hence LucasArts went for a Grim Fandango-esque keyboard scheme that was pretty clumsy, as well as an average-looking three-dimensional visual style that didn’t really carry the familiar Monkey Island atmosphere particularly well. The story itself wasn’t quite as comedic as before either, dealing with commercialisation and the like instead of silly treasure hunts. Perhaps in trying to give the series a new, fresh and modern slant, LucasArts took the game too far away from what people loved in the previous three.
Hence, we are now approaching eight years without any sort of Monkey Island game visible from the crow’s-nest. Despite a hoax perpetrated by a website in cahoots with Guybrush voice actor Dominic Armato and the occasional dismissive statement saying that there probably will be a fifth game in the series, it seems that these days if your game doesn’t feature force powers and a large hairy wookie then LucasArts aren’t going to be interested. A shame indeed, but hey, it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all!
… I guess.
*sniff :-(*
