5 ms·

Emulators are one of the best things to ever happen to gaming. They can expand your library by tenfold on newer systems. No amount of appreciation would be enou

Emulators are one of the best things to ever happen to gaming. They can expand your library by tenfold on newer systems. No amount of appreciation would be enough for the hard work of the people who make these (and make them available for free!) Now someone get on making Monkey Island 3 please.

Pete_D 7y ago
> Now someone get on making Monkey Island 3 please. They already did, or am I misunderstanding? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Monkey_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Monkey_Island
- Razengan 7y ago
  We do not speak of that here. Kidding aside, Curse wasn't too bad, but it wasn't where the original creator(s) intended to go with the story. And now that Disney owns LucasArts, chances of them supporting a franchise that conflicts with their own Pirates of the Caribbean (one of the inspirations for Monkey Island in the first place) are slim indeed. :( How come there haven't even been any other games (that I can recall right now) based on pirates and voodoo and traveling between different islands?
  - hprotagonist 7y ago
    CoMI ranks very highly on my list. The voice acting and score alone are worth it, but despite the change in director it was still in line with the spirit of the thing. I’ve logged countless play-throughs. Monkey island 4, though... i’ve only played that through twice.
  - toyg 7y ago
    I thought the story went that the ride was an inspiration for the game, which was then an inspiration for the movie. I’ve not been on the original ride but some Pirates characters are straight out of the game. I think it would be supercool if Lucasarts made a “Pirates of the Caribbean and the Secret of Monkey Island” game that is essentially a Monkey Island adventure, somehow incorporating Guybrush, Marley etc in the POTC universe and then giving them a cameo in the next movie.
  - shakna 7y ago
    > Kidding aside, Curse wasn't too bad, but it wasn't where the original creator(s) intended to go with the story. You could always go one worse with Escape [0] or Tales of Monkey Island [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_Monkey_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_Monkey_Island [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Monkey_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Monkey_Island
    - Razengan 7y ago
      > Escape or Tales of Monkey Island I will not tolerate that talk in my house. Tales did have 1 or 2 good things (I liked the French scientist) but Escape was brand assassination through and through.
  - galeos 7y ago
    Curse was still very good - Murray the demonic talking skull was hilarious and the art and sound design was great.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - pier25 7y ago
    I loved Curse as much as the others. There I said it.
- mhd 7y ago
  I think this is a "Highlander 2" kind of thing. Sequels we wish they'd made but the only thing we got were weird things from alternate timelines.
tus88 7y ago
ScummVM isn't an emulator though. It's a game engine implementation for modern OSs.
- benj111 7y ago
  Is ScummVM not an Scumm emulator? As I understood it the difference between a VM and an emulator is that a VM runs cpu instructions directly, which seems not to be the case here.
  - tus88 7y ago
    No it's a Scumm implementation. It's closer to a VM but really we just call it a game engine.
    - benj111 7y ago
      So from a theoretical perspective, what's the difference between an implementation (on different hardware) and emulation? And when does a game engine, become a language, become a (virtual) machine. As I understood it, scumm was basically an interpreter, where the instructions don't really bare any resemblance to processor instructions, so a virtual machine is impossible (or the distinction meaningless).
      - tus88 7y ago
        A virtual machine does not have to simulate real hardware. So long as it processes instructions and has a state it can be a VM. DosBOX is an example of an emulator. It is not an implementation of DOS, it just pretends enough to trick games to run. Emulators usually just translate high level semantics without simulating the real system in any way.
        tus88 7y ago
        Another way to imagine an emulator - think of a thin layer of software that read Python byecode, and then dynamically translated it to Ruby bytecode on the fly. This would be neither a Python implementation nor a Python VM - but it would be a Python emulator for the Ruby VM. But if someone wrote their own Python interpreter, like PyPy, this is a new Python VM implementation.
unixhero 7y ago
In a sense its done. Buy Thimbleweed Park. It's essentially, and meant to be, as if it was a lost LucasArts game.
- jug 7y ago
  It even includes a Monkey Island 2-esque controversial ending!
  - Razengan 7y ago
    Oh ffs... not again!
jkoudys 7y ago
I do wonder if, for this reason, we're going to see a big uptick into recompilers soon instead of emulators. Creating a modern VM to replace an old VM is great because you can actually improve performance (compile using modern cpu extensions, OpenGL, etc), but reimplemented hardware as software is always going to be slow. It can run fast because hardware now is much faster, but we'll often do things an old cpu could do in 1 cycle in hundreds to thousands of cycles. Clocks haven't changed much in years, so if we're not taking advantage of multithreading or new extensions like we should, newer old systems will be tougher to emu. For the most part new emulators are looking more like VMs too.

Pete_D 7y ago

> Now someone get on making Monkey Island 3 please. They already did, or am I misunderstanding? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Monkey_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Monkey_Island

Razengan 7y ago
We do not speak of that here. Kidding aside, Curse wasn't too bad, but it wasn't where the original creator(s) intended to go with the story. And now that Disney owns LucasArts, chances of them supporting a franchise that conflicts with their own Pirates of the Caribbean (one of the inspirations for Monkey Island in the first place) are slim indeed. :( How come there haven't even been any other games (that I can recall right now) based on pirates and voodoo and traveling between different islands?
- hprotagonist 7y ago
  CoMI ranks very highly on my list. The voice acting and score alone are worth it, but despite the change in director it was still in line with the spirit of the thing. I’ve logged countless play-throughs. Monkey island 4, though... i’ve only played that through twice.
- toyg 7y ago
  I thought the story went that the ride was an inspiration for the game, which was then an inspiration for the movie. I’ve not been on the original ride but some Pirates characters are straight out of the game. I think it would be supercool if Lucasarts made a “Pirates of the Caribbean and the Secret of Monkey Island” game that is essentially a Monkey Island adventure, somehow incorporating Guybrush, Marley etc in the POTC universe and then giving them a cameo in the next movie.
- shakna 7y ago
  > Kidding aside, Curse wasn't too bad, but it wasn't where the original creator(s) intended to go with the story. You could always go one worse with Escape [0] or Tales of Monkey Island [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_Monkey_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_Monkey_Island [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Monkey_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Monkey_Island
  - Razengan 7y ago
    > Escape or Tales of Monkey Island I will not tolerate that talk in my house. Tales did have 1 or 2 good things (I liked the French scientist) but Escape was brand assassination through and through.
- galeos 7y ago
  Curse was still very good - Murray the demonic talking skull was hilarious and the art and sound design was great.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- pier25 7y ago
  I loved Curse as much as the others. There I said it.
mhd 7y ago
I think this is a "Highlander 2" kind of thing. Sequels we wish they'd made but the only thing we got were weird things from alternate timelines.

tus88 7y ago

ScummVM isn't an emulator though. It's a game engine implementation for modern OSs.

benj111 7y ago
Is ScummVM not an Scumm emulator? As I understood it the difference between a VM and an emulator is that a VM runs cpu instructions directly, which seems not to be the case here.
- tus88 7y ago
  No it's a Scumm implementation. It's closer to a VM but really we just call it a game engine.
  - benj111 7y ago
    So from a theoretical perspective, what's the difference between an implementation (on different hardware) and emulation? And when does a game engine, become a language, become a (virtual) machine. As I understood it, scumm was basically an interpreter, where the instructions don't really bare any resemblance to processor instructions, so a virtual machine is impossible (or the distinction meaningless).
    - tus88 7y ago
      A virtual machine does not have to simulate real hardware. So long as it processes instructions and has a state it can be a VM. DosBOX is an example of an emulator. It is not an implementation of DOS, it just pretends enough to trick games to run. Emulators usually just translate high level semantics without simulating the real system in any way.
      - tus88 7y ago
        Another way to imagine an emulator - think of a thin layer of software that read Python byecode, and then dynamically translated it to Ruby bytecode on the fly. This would be neither a Python implementation nor a Python VM - but it would be a Python emulator for the Ruby VM. But if someone wrote their own Python interpreter, like PyPy, this is a new Python VM implementation.

unixhero 7y ago

In a sense its done. Buy Thimbleweed Park. It's essentially, and meant to be, as if it was a lost LucasArts game.

jug 7y ago
It even includes a Monkey Island 2-esque controversial ending!
- Razengan 7y ago
  Oh ffs... not again!

jkoudys 7y ago

I do wonder if, for this reason, we're going to see a big uptick into recompilers soon instead of emulators. Creating a modern VM to replace an old VM is great because you can actually improve performance (compile using modern cpu extensions, OpenGL, etc), but reimplemented hardware as software is always going to be slow. It can run fast because hardware now is much faster, but we'll often do things an old cpu could do in 1 cycle in hundreds to thousands of cycles. Clocks haven't changed much in years, so if we're not taking advantage of multithreading or new extensions like we should, newer old systems will be tougher to emu. For the most part new emulators are looking more like VMs too.