11 ms·
Happy Birthday Monkey Island
- hdivider 11y ago"I don’t know if I will ever get to make another Monkey Island. I always envisioned the game as a trilogy and I really hope I do, but I don’t know if it will ever happen. Monkey Island is now owned by Disney and they haven't shown any desire to sell me the IP. I don’t know if I could make Monkey Island 3a without complete control over what I was making and the only way to do that is to own it. Disney: Call me." I wonder if anyone high up in Disney could be persuaded to give Ron Gilbert enough control to make MI3a. Would surely boost their brand and create a community of grateful fans. If selling the IP is a no-no, maybe there's another way.
- Toenex 11y agoI guess he could propose a game to Disney and see if they bite. From his blog (the title of which includes the phrase "bitter ramblings") Ron appears opposed to working on MI3 unless given full control first. However, I would think his best course would be something like a kickstarter campaign which might demonstrate to Disney the kind of market MI3 could have.
- misnome 11y agoFrom the article: > Please don’t suggest I do a Kickstarter to get the money, that’s not possible without Disney first agreeing to sell it and they haven’t done that.
- Toenex 11y agoYes that is what I meant by 'appears opposed'. However, I wonder if he wrote that because even he realises that he will need to do more than just ask if he really wants to do MI3.
- hnal943 11y agoHe has written about it at length: http://grumpygamer.com/if_i_made_another_monkeyisland http://grumpygamer.com/if_i_made_another_monkeyisland There's no way to force Disney to sell. There's no reason for Ron to do a MI game that he didn't have creative control of, since it still wouldn't be his vision. There's just no good way to solve the problem at this point.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- zizee 11y agoI find it interesting that Ron doesn't consider "The Curse of Monkey Island" part of the trilogy. Anyone know the back-story there?
- toyg 11y agoWikipedia says "Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert parted ways with the series after Monkey Island 2, and the new project leaders were Jonathan Ackley and Larry Ahern, both of whom had previously worked on Full Throttle (the interface of the game was adopted almost entirely)."
- moomin 11y agoCurse was actually a pretty good game, mind you.
- on_and_off 11y agoMI 1 & 2 support several lectures of the story. Due to Guybrush inability to explain his real age and various weird occurrences, it can be read as a little kid snooping around a theme park. It explains why he has to think that hard before giving his age, why a tshirt would be a treasure given after vanquishing a sword-master, why some areas are closed off with modern looking out of order signs, etc. It can also be read as a pirate in a weird weird world. IIRC, the evil laugh of Le-Chuck and his read eyes were added just before the game shipped against Gilbert (and others) wishes. Curse and subsequent games completely disregard this and quickly brush it off as another trick of LeChuck. This side of the story telling is then totally absent from the various MI sequels (I don't think there was much involvement from the original team in any of the sequels, Gilbert was briefly consulted for the last episodic game but that's it). So if Gilbert were to make a new MI game, he would naturally like to take the story where he left it.
- foldr 11y agoThe thing is that whatever Gilbert thinks about it, the ending of MI2 sucked. MI2 was genuinely scary in places (http://monkeyisland.wikia.com/wiki/Screaming_Chair http://monkeyisland.wikia.com/wiki/Screaming_Chair), and the revelation that it was all a daydream just made everything you've done up to that point feel completely pointless. This put the writers of Curse in a difficult position, and although their solution was a bit awkward, I can't really see that they could have gone forward any other way.
- toyg 11y agoThere is no other way. MI is too close to the Pirates of the Caribbeans franchise to let anyone run wild with it. Disney will keep it as buried as possible, and strictly under control. Ron is publicly begging for it (and not even for the first time) because all other avenues have failed. It's easy to predict nothing will change as long as Johnny Depp is alive and working.
- hdivider 11y agoI understand your thinking. Yet I am still asking if there is another way, because in my experience, it's so easy to slap 'impossible' on something. Fell into this trap myself. HN isn't exactly a community of people who accept conventional wisdom. Wouldn't it be nice if, say, we figured out some way to attack this, connected with the right person to handle it, and take the idea somewhere? If not for Monkey Island, consider it an exercise in hacking supposed impossibilities. Anyone got something? What kind of conditions would compel Disney to un-bury the IP and listen to suggestions?
- lobster_johnson 11y agoRelated bit of trivia: MI was heavily inspired by Tim Powers' novel "On Stranger Tides" (which is a classic piece of secret history, involving Blackbeard, the Fountain of Youth, and of course zombie pirates). For the newest Pirates of the Caribbean movie, they bought the rights to the novel -- but pretty much the only thing they kept from the book was the title and the Blackbeard character. Everything else has been changed, for the worse. (So much worse.) So Disney's two pirate franchises are related, in a weird way.
- WorldMaker 11y agoPirates of the Caribbean movies heavily borrowed from "On Stranger Tides" from the very first movie, so it was only fair that they eventually actually licensed the book, even if only to mostly just use the (fantastic) title, because they'd already picked so much of the book apart. Also, further mutual inspiration trivia between the two franchises: Ron's never made it a secret that Monkey Island was also directly inspired by the original Disney Pirates of the Caribbean attraction. (The influence of which can be felt strongly throughout, but which most directly manifests itself in the complicated and controversial MI2 ending.)
- brink2death 11y agoWhy "3a" and not just 3? The Curse of Monkey Island, while being the third game released, was never officially called Monkey Island 3.
- SmellyGeekBoy 11y agoHis current Kickstarter project, Thimbleweed Park, looks very similar in tone, humour and gameplay. I really have high hopes for it. Maybe if it's successful it will prove that there is still a market for "retro" adventure games and help give Disney a prod in the right direction. That was certainly my hope when I backed it, anyway...
- DanBC 11y agohttps://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thimbleweedpark/thimbleweed-park-a-new-classic-point-and-click-adv https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thimbleweedpark/thimble... http://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/ http://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/
- hnal943 11y agoI hope you're right. However, I think Broken Age that even in the best possible conditions, there's just no real market for classic adventure games beyond the fanatics willing to kickstart it out of nostalgia (like me). At least, there's no market large enough that would make Disney reconsider its position.
- benjaminva 11y agoMonkey Island 1/2 still remain one of the most influential games for myself. I triggered my strong interest in game programming and later programming in general. All I wanted in the 90s was to come up with programs that showed sprites moving around. Later I progressed to different fields of programming but I guess a part of me still dreams of programming an equivalent game like Monkey Island some day (2D of course!!!)
- rightnow 11y agoBest.Game.Ever
- _nedR 11y agoThe real way to celebrate a happy birthday is with a 90% off sale (on the remastered version)! Keeps fingers crossed.
- unhammer 11y agoHe writes that Disney owns the rights and isn't showing signs of wanting to do anything about it. However, check out the first reward-tier on his new game: http://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/backer http://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/backer :)
- jug 11y agoDear Mr Gilbert, We do own the Monkey Island brand, but we are of course ready and willing to let go of the three headed monkeys and scary voodoo curses once again. You have our blessings. And curses. Sincerely, Disney (oops, looks like we accidentally posted on Hacker News, sorry, won't happen again!)
- midgetjones 11y agoI was so lucky to have grown up during this time and I hope it's not too pretentious to say it affected my life in many positive ways.
- SmellyGeekBoy 11y agoAgreed, as a kid with a short attention span MI 1 & 2 must have been pretty special to have kept me glued to my Atari ST every night for weeks on end. I still haven't found a game series that appeals so much to my bizarre sense of humour. Or maybe it was MI that made it what it is today? ;)
- PSeitz 11y agoWhere is disk 22?
- huhtenberg 11y agoRecent remakes of Monkey Island 1 and 2 are really nicely done with superb voice acting. Played through them last summer with my kids on the iPad and enjoyed every moment of it. Highly recommended.
- benihana 11y agoIf anyone is unaware, they've got some pretty good versions of MI 1 and 2 on the Apple App store. I played it on my iPad a couple of years ago, and it was great. The adventure format works really well on a tablet. You can even play with updated graphics or in classic mode. Easily worth the 10 bucks or however much it costed.
- d_t_w 11y agoOh boy. That's my weekend gone.
- on_and_off 11y agoIMO the updated graphics are an unmitigated disaster that ignore what made the original great. Since there is a classic mode, it is still a great way to play these games.
- eru 11y agoThe updated graphics work better for MI2 than MI1. That's because the MI2 graphics were scanned. (They even admit to that in the audio commentary.)
- organsnyder 11y agoI just played the updated versions a few weeks ago. I'm a lifelong MI fan—I first played MI1 on my family's Tandy 1000 (16 colors and 3-voice sound!). I also was disappointed by MI1, which felt like a cheap money grab more than a faithful remake. The remake of MI2, OTOH, was a masterpiece—beautiful graphics and less clunky overall. One really cool thing that both remakes offer is the ability to seamlessly switch between the remake and the original: At any point in the game, press the correct function key (F10 in MI1 and F1 in MI2—not sure why they switched that) and the game morphs between the remake and original without skipping a beat—down to the dialogue, music, etc. It didn't really add anything to gameplay, but it was really cool.
- jsingleton 11y agoThere is also a remake of Grim Fandango I saw on there. I haven't played it but I loved the original. Amazing game.
- dirktheman 11y agoAh... Monkey Island. I have such fond memories of not just MI, but also other Lucasarts/Sierra adventure games like Day of the Tentacle, Sam&Max, Full Throttle, Willy Beamish, King's Quest, Space Quest, etc. I owe a large part (if not most!) of my English skills to these games. Recently, I bought my daughter an old '99 ibook Clamshell on a yard sale. I upgraded the RAM and substituted the hard drive for a CompactFlash card. Most of these games are free downloads these days, so we spend hours playing them. Some of them look a bit aged, but generally they hold up pretty well. The experience is still as captivating as it was back then.
- justquestions 11y agoI thought these were all DOS-based (Intel CPU) games... How are you running these on a PowerPC/G3?
- dirktheman 11y agoThey are mostly pre-intel based games, as Apple switched to Intel in 2002. They are free for download through sites like macintoshgarden.org. Otherwise I use an emulator (Basilisk/SheepShaver) on my own PC/Mac.
- justquestions 11y agoThank you. I remember playing some of these on a 486DX-33MHz in the early 90s. I wasn't aware there was a Motorola CPU based version. As others have said, there goes my weekend. Time to dig out my old G4 laptop, or the PowerBook 520c I seem to have kept for some reason... Did I say thank you?
- lobster_johnson 11y agoNitpick: The Intel switch was in 2006.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- 11y ago
- DrNuke 11y agoOld fart still dreaming of Lucifer's Realm, Fifth Eskadra and The Bard's Tale on Apple //c here eheheh Monkey Island good though, even if more a Carmen Sandiego kind of guy tbh eheheh
- 0x4a42 11y ago"It amazes me that people still play and love Monkey Island." I'm still playing Monkey Island 20 years after the first time I discovered it on the Amiga.
- dasboth 11y agoHas anyone played Broken Age? It's nowhere near as difficult as the adventure games of old, it feels more of a casual adventure game, but the story, characters, art and voice acting are superb. My favourite game genre by far, happy birthday Monkey Island!
- romaniv 11y agoThe Secret of the Monkey Island is mostly a comedy game. And it's funny. There is satire, absurdism, meta-jokes. Something for everyone. But it also made very good use of interactivity for humor - something characteristic for adventure games and something Lucas Arts was very good at. Broken Age is far more bland in comparison. And while I'm not a fan of brain-wrecking puzzles, it could do with a bit more challenge. When it comes to point-and-click adventures these days I would recommend titles from Wadjet Eye Games. They're more serious overall, but still have that characteristic "adventure game" humor.
- lobster_johnson 11y agoBroken Age looks and sounds great, but I really hated how the whole game runs on rails pretty much from the beginning. You can't wander around much, so it feels less like a world and more like a movie where you occasionally help the plot along by clicking on things. The original LucasArts games were only occasionally like this. They invited a lot of trial and error (some of it extremely unintuitive; Zak McKracken had some of those), exploring areas you couldn't access yet, and so on. They were difficult, and they never held your hand. Unfortunately, this dumbed-down form seems like a fairly new trend in games. (Double Fine's The Cave, which looked fantastic, failed partly because it was just too simplistic.) I suppose they are afraid of losing audiences if they are too hard.
- dasboth 11y agoYou're right, this isn't quite the same genre anymore, it's more of an interactive story. The trend towards simplicity has definitely crept in. I really enjoyed Broken Age, but not for quite the same reasons as the Monkey Island series. Monkey Island 2 was incredibly frustrating at points and for whatever reason (shorter attention spans probably) there is less of a market for that type of game; people are more likely to stop playing after the first bit of difficulty. I'd still play that old style of game because the more time it takes you to figure the puzzles out the more immersed you get in the game world, but for a lot of people that's not fun.
- scott_s 11y agoRon Gilbert was recently a guest on Retronauts, and he talked about making Monkey Island: http://www.retronauts.com/?p=1147 http://www.retronauts.com/?p=1147
- ddispaltro 11y agoI still to this day think Guybrush Threepwood is the greatest character name.
- e1ven 11y agoOne of the things I love about Guybrush's name is that it he was supposedly named accidentally. From Wikipedia: The origin of the name "Guybrush" comes in part from Deluxe Paint, the tool used by the artists to create the character sprite. Since the character had no name at this point, the file was simply called 'Guy'. When the file was saved, Steve Purcell, the artist responsible for the sprite, added 'brush' to the filename, indicating that it was the Deluxe Paint "brush file" for the "Guy" sprite. The file name was then "guybrush.bbm", so the developers eventually just started referring to this unnamed 'Guy' as "Guybrush".
- guybrushT 11y agoCouldn't agree more.
- inDigiNeous 11y ago"Guybrush Threepwood? Ha ha ha!!! That's the stupidest name I've ever heard!"
- terhechte 11y agoYep, together with Zaphod Beeblebrox. Those two together mark the high end of fantastic naming and few others come close.
- Plishar 11y agoI worked at Software, Etc. when these games were released. I was in high school, and I got my first promotion to Assistant Manager. I enjoyed all the adventure games during that time, but then Civilization was released, and I was hooked! Adventure games seemed flat compared to the endless possibilities in Civilization.
- compactmani 11y agoI love the music. You need a Creative Music System / Game Blaster or Roland MT-32 for the best experience.
- imranq 11y agoWhile 1 and 2 are OK, Curse is by far my favorite...so many fond memories
- carbide 11y agoMy name is Guybrush Threepwood. Prepare to die!
- guybrushT 11y agoAs my username probably reveals, this is my favorite game, and one of the most enjoyable / funny gaming experiences that I have had. The part that I still remember, after all these years is sword fighting insults. Till today, my friends and I sign off our emails with some of these dialogue writing gems [1] "Nobody's ever drawn blood from me and nobody ever will." "You run THAT fast?" "People fall at my feet when they see me coming!" Even BEFORE they smell your breath? "I'm not going to take your insolence sitting down!" "Your hemorrhoids are flaring up again eh?" What a great game, and what a great era for gaming. [1] http://monkeyisland.wikia.com/wiki/Insult_Sword_Fighting http://monkeyisland.wikia.com/wiki/Insult_Sword_Fighting
- inDigiNeous 11y agoChipping in on the memories. Lucasarts Adventure Game Pack on 5 floppy disks IIRC was the first game I ever purchased with my own money for our Compaq Presario 386-SX 25Mhz back in the day. They used to remind to take backups of your floppies before doing anything else, so I purchased a 5-pack of 1.44 MB floppies to copy the diskettes unto. I will never forget the pain when I realized that I accidentally formatted one of the original diskettes in the process, and I could not install Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ever. My imagination ran wild when I looked at the photos of this game in the contained cleverly disguided walk through that was in the format of a story, and I longed to install that game and play it but nobody had it. Luckily I downloaded it later from a local BBS and finally got to play it. But back on the subject, seeing Monkey Island logo on the screen, with glorious 256-color VGA, the PC Speaker playing the theme music, in the dark cellar where our PC was, was just pure magic. Nothing has ever come close to that moment and will never come, it is one of the few rare memories that I wish I could re-live, to feel the magic of entering that Island and being there again, for the first time. Monkey Island 2 came close, but the magic of playing my first really graphical adventure had already passed. Oh, I wish to share that feeling with my child in the future :)
- bane 11y agoA great interview with the creator is here http://www.retronauts.com/?p=1147 http://www.retronauts.com/?p=1147 I remember getting a demo floppy with it on it and being absolutely blown away by it. I had played Sierra games before that, and the artwork and interface made those games look and feel absolutely stone aged in comparison. The excellent writing was icing on the cake. I must have played through that short demo a hundred times before getting the retail game for a present. It's kind of amazing how much fun fit into such little disk space.
- egypturnash 11y agooh god that font choice. Really, Ron? The c64 font in the eyestrain-inducing default blue? Do you really want to wallow in nostalgia for that? And Safari's 'reader' view isn't working. edits the css manually so she can actually read this
- onedev 11y agoThis is one of the first games that completely captivated me. It was almost magical.
- yannk 11y agoHello, Craig Thomson? Are you here? Did you, indeed, become a programmer?
- mbajkowski 11y agoThe Monkey Island series along with Loom and Zak McKracken bring back some super fond memories.