5 ms·

The creator of Monkey Island plays and narrates his game, 20 years later.

104 points by shadytrees 17y ago

nwjsmith 17y ago
Who else thinks this would make for a great iPhone port? I really hope Lucasarts jump on that. It did great things to revive Myst.
- psadauskas 17y ago
  If you've jailbroken your phone, you can: http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/IPhone http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/IPhone
  - ensignavenger 17y ago
    Thanks! I can't wait to load Day of the Tentacle onto my iPod Touch!
- pygy 17y ago
  The SCUMM engine (aka Spu(TM) or SPUTM) is a VM, and the game is fully scripted using the SCUMM language. You cannot use runtimes not officially supported by Apple in iPhone apps. There is an iPhone port of ScummVM, but you'll need to jailbreak your phone, and to get the original data files. http://www.scummvm.org http://www.scummvm.org But the touchscreen interface isn't that good, because your fingers actually hide the cursor and the bottom part of the screen where contextual info is displayed. Edit: psadauskas beat me to it.
pygy 17y ago
In the same vein, I remember seeing online the storyboard of the game, where each puzzles were detailed, but I can't find it anymore. It's very instructive for would-be game designers.
- andygeers 17y ago
  Are you sure that was Monkey Island and not Grim Fandango?
  - pygy 17y ago
    That's possible, my memories are somewhat foggy.
- cliff 17y ago
  Yeah, that was Grim Fandango. (Fascinating) design doc is here: http://cache.kotaku.com/assets/resources/2008/GrimPuzzleDoc_small.pdf.zip http://cache.kotaku.com/assets/resources/2008/GrimPuzzleDoc_...
wallflower 17y ago
I know it's not the same game but I have fond memories of whiling away hours lost in Space Quest and Roger Wilco.. Thanks
- dc2k08 17y ago
  Same for me with space quest and all the king quests too. Yesterday I bought Another World ('Out of This World' in the states) after some comments on reddit stirred old memories. What I didn't know was both Hideo Kojima of Metal Gear and Fumito Ueda of Ico (my two all time favourite game developers) both cite it as a huge influence. Playing through it again, I could see why.
- e1ven 17y ago
  The Space Quest games were always wonderful for me- In particular, I loved the multitudes of ways you could die in the most horrific possible way.. I'd often try things I knew would kill Roger just to see what the writers dreamed up as a Death. Space Quest 1 in particular was special to me, since my father and I played through it together- It was a great learning experience and a fun way to interact with a story together. In the early 2001-era, I actually started up a project to create a new Space Quest game.. (Sq7.org). We got Josh Mandel, one of the original SQ authors to write us a script, and dozens of animators around the net to donate time. It went pretty well, but fell apart over a disagreement with Vivendi- They offered to let us release it, but only if we turned over the Copyright.. We had promised Josh and others we wouldn't ever do that, so we were a bit stuck. That lead to disappointment all around, which was acerbated by the now dated look of the project, due to the long dev time of a Fan game. I'd still love to release a SQ game some day, though- It's such a wonderful premise- The not-so-heroic everyman who bumbles and bungles his way to saving the world. As an aside, we had also tried pitching Vivendi to do commercial remakes of the Space Quest games, on the (Then band new) Nintendo DS. We had a nice discussion with them about it, and worked our arses off on the proposals, but ultimately, they didn't think it was worth it. To my mind, TellTale games is really carrying forward the spirit of Sierra adventure games. The new Wallace and Gromit is wonderful, not to mention Sam & Max, etc. I'm excited by their engines, their storytelling, and their sense of fun, and can't WAIT to see what they do for the Monkey Island continuation.
abl 17y ago
I feel monkey island was the most captivating out of all those type of games (except maybe leisure suit larry?)
- froo 17y ago
  LSL definitely wasn't the best of the Sierra characters. I broke out the Space Quest series again recently. Roger Wilco is hands down my favourite character in those adventure games.
  - justinchen 17y ago
    Tis hard to beat Roger Wilco. Quest for Glory was pretty fun also.
daveungerer 17y ago
Am I just looking at the past through rose-coloured glasses or have they stopped making games like these? Spent hours on games like Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Space Quest etc. as a kid. Any good modern ones, or should I just replay the old? EDIT: And preferably with OS X support, as it seems the TellTale games only run on windows! What a bummer, was actually at the point of buying a game for the first time in years.
- e1ven 17y ago
  I went and picked up a $200 PC this week, primarily to run the TellTale games. The engine is wonderful- It's precisely what a modern Adventure game should be. If you can try the W&G demo under VMware, it might work for you, depending on your setup.
- marcusbooster 17y ago
  I agree, but maybe it was just the sudden gameplay paradigm shift. I remember when Wolfenstein3D came out and I thought it looked cool enough, then Doom, then the rest... all first person shooters. It was enough of a jolt that I lost my kid fascination with games as story-telling and started just seeing them just as toys to pick up every once and awhile. I'm not saying that era was the end-all-be-all of gaming, just when the "magic" was lost for me.
- Rabidmonkey1 17y ago
  I have some hope for the adventure genre yet, even after being seriously let down by Monkey Island 4 (make sure you've played Monkey Island 3 and Grim Fandango though; they're both excellent!) That said, I've heard Psychonauts is good, though I haven't played it. My understanding is it's free on Gametap. One that I missed when I was growing up was Touche: The Adventures of the 5th Musketeer - it's just about as good as the Lucasarts games - Note: there is a version with full voice acting, and this is the only place I know where you can actually get it: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/3557929/Touche_-_The_adventures_of_the_fifth_musceteer http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/3557929/Touche_-_The_adventu... I haven't played this, but it's supposed to be very good as well (made from ex Lucasarts members): http://www.vampyrestory-game.com/ http://www.vampyrestory-game.com/ I found the Sam and Max series from Telltale very underwhelming and disapointing, so I never played past episode 4 in the first season. On a somewhat related genre note, I've also found the game Beyond Good and Evil to be as immersive and entertaining as the MI series.

104 points by shadytrees 17y ago

Who else thinks this would make for a great iPhone port? I really hope Lucasarts jump on that. It did great things to revive Myst.

psadauskas 17y ago
If you've jailbroken your phone, you can: http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/IPhone http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/IPhone
- ensignavenger 17y ago
  Thanks! I can't wait to load Day of the Tentacle onto my iPod Touch!
pygy 17y ago
The SCUMM engine (aka Spu(TM) or SPUTM) is a VM, and the game is fully scripted using the SCUMM language. You cannot use runtimes not officially supported by Apple in iPhone apps. There is an iPhone port of ScummVM, but you'll need to jailbreak your phone, and to get the original data files. http://www.scummvm.org http://www.scummvm.org But the touchscreen interface isn't that good, because your fingers actually hide the cursor and the bottom part of the screen where contextual info is displayed. Edit: psadauskas beat me to it.

pygy 17y ago

In the same vein, I remember seeing online the storyboard of the game, where each puzzles were detailed, but I can't find it anymore. It's very instructive for would-be game designers.

andygeers 17y ago
Are you sure that was Monkey Island and not Grim Fandango?
- pygy 17y ago
  That's possible, my memories are somewhat foggy.
cliff 17y ago
Yeah, that was Grim Fandango. (Fascinating) design doc is here: http://cache.kotaku.com/assets/resources/2008/GrimPuzzleDoc_small.pdf.zip http://cache.kotaku.com/assets/resources/2008/GrimPuzzleDoc_...

wallflower 17y ago

I know it's not the same game but I have fond memories of whiling away hours lost in Space Quest and Roger Wilco.. Thanks

dc2k08 17y ago
Same for me with space quest and all the king quests too. Yesterday I bought Another World ('Out of This World' in the states) after some comments on reddit stirred old memories. What I didn't know was both Hideo Kojima of Metal Gear and Fumito Ueda of Ico (my two all time favourite game developers) both cite it as a huge influence. Playing through it again, I could see why.
e1ven 17y ago
The Space Quest games were always wonderful for me- In particular, I loved the multitudes of ways you could die in the most horrific possible way.. I'd often try things I knew would kill Roger just to see what the writers dreamed up as a Death. Space Quest 1 in particular was special to me, since my father and I played through it together- It was a great learning experience and a fun way to interact with a story together. In the early 2001-era, I actually started up a project to create a new Space Quest game.. (Sq7.org). We got Josh Mandel, one of the original SQ authors to write us a script, and dozens of animators around the net to donate time. It went pretty well, but fell apart over a disagreement with Vivendi- They offered to let us release it, but only if we turned over the Copyright.. We had promised Josh and others we wouldn't ever do that, so we were a bit stuck. That lead to disappointment all around, which was acerbated by the now dated look of the project, due to the long dev time of a Fan game. I'd still love to release a SQ game some day, though- It's such a wonderful premise- The not-so-heroic everyman who bumbles and bungles his way to saving the world. As an aside, we had also tried pitching Vivendi to do commercial remakes of the Space Quest games, on the (Then band new) Nintendo DS. We had a nice discussion with them about it, and worked our arses off on the proposals, but ultimately, they didn't think it was worth it. To my mind, TellTale games is really carrying forward the spirit of Sierra adventure games. The new Wallace and Gromit is wonderful, not to mention Sam & Max, etc. I'm excited by their engines, their storytelling, and their sense of fun, and can't WAIT to see what they do for the Monkey Island continuation.

abl 17y ago

I feel monkey island was the most captivating out of all those type of games (except maybe leisure suit larry?)

froo 17y ago
LSL definitely wasn't the best of the Sierra characters. I broke out the Space Quest series again recently. Roger Wilco is hands down my favourite character in those adventure games.
- justinchen 17y ago
  Tis hard to beat Roger Wilco. Quest for Glory was pretty fun also.

daveungerer 17y ago

Am I just looking at the past through rose-coloured glasses or have they stopped making games like these? Spent hours on games like Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Space Quest etc. as a kid. Any good modern ones, or should I just replay the old? EDIT: And preferably with OS X support, as it seems the TellTale games only run on windows! What a bummer, was actually at the point of buying a game for the first time in years.

e1ven 17y ago
I went and picked up a $200 PC this week, primarily to run the TellTale games. The engine is wonderful- It's precisely what a modern Adventure game should be. If you can try the W&G demo under VMware, it might work for you, depending on your setup.
marcusbooster 17y ago
I agree, but maybe it was just the sudden gameplay paradigm shift. I remember when Wolfenstein3D came out and I thought it looked cool enough, then Doom, then the rest... all first person shooters. It was enough of a jolt that I lost my kid fascination with games as story-telling and started just seeing them just as toys to pick up every once and awhile. I'm not saying that era was the end-all-be-all of gaming, just when the "magic" was lost for me.
Rabidmonkey1 17y ago
I have some hope for the adventure genre yet, even after being seriously let down by Monkey Island 4 (make sure you've played Monkey Island 3 and Grim Fandango though; they're both excellent!) That said, I've heard Psychonauts is good, though I haven't played it. My understanding is it's free on Gametap. One that I missed when I was growing up was Touche: The Adventures of the 5th Musketeer - it's just about as good as the Lucasarts games - Note: there is a version with full voice acting, and this is the only place I know where you can actually get it: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/3557929/Touche_-_The_adventures_of_the_fifth_musceteer http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/3557929/Touche_-_The_adventu... I haven't played this, but it's supposed to be very good as well (made from ex Lucasarts members): http://www.vampyrestory-game.com/ http://www.vampyrestory-game.com/ I found the Sam and Max series from Telltale very underwhelming and disapointing, so I never played past episode 4 in the first season. On a somewhat related genre note, I've also found the game Beyond Good and Evil to be as immersive and entertaining as the MI series.