New Monkey Island game announced today by Ron Gilbert et al., the original creator of the series. It will pick up where Monkey Island 2 has ended in 1991! Here's the teaser trailer: >
oh interesting it continues from Monkey Island 2, that one had the best theme music IMHO. Why is it continueing from 2 and not 3? I only ever played the first one really.... and a bit of a 2nd one. >
Good question, although I didn't know there was even a Monkey Island 1 or any Monkey Island game tbh until Tass posted it up.
Monkey Island 1 easily is my favorite game ever. You're missing out if you haven't played it. It's a great game, with a ton of humour, sword fights, and a nice dig at the competitor Sierra. Oh, and unlike some game that has been promising beer for over a decade, in Monkey Island you get to enjoy Grog! "My name is Guybrush Threepwood and I'm a mighty pirate!"
I highly recommend playing the EGA version, like God intended. The remakes (to me at least) all seem to miss something. Yes, they look better. But somehow it didn't feel as exciting as when I played the original (I played both again not too long ago, just for a comparison). https://www.gamerscreed.com/resources/the-secret-of-monkey-island.132/updates You can compare screenshots from both the VGA and the original EGA version here.
Many thanks for that. Last time I played any EGA games was on an old IBM AT in the 80s that had a EGA video card and 20MB h.drive, so takes me back a bit. I also had no idea about the gamerscreed site which seems very good.
Sorry I played the VGA version... EGA was only ever a legacy mode for me for any game unless it didn't support VGA at all. I did see this interesting video recently about EGA which explained that it wasn't as yucky looking as people think it was, because it was originally output via composite or something, and as a results stuff mushed together to look much better. I guess it's a bit like the whole pixel art thing these days with the crisp square pixels that never actually existed in the past. Put a CRT in the mix and everything is smooth.
Yeah, there's some interesting science behind the old pixelart. I personally started with the EGA versions of most of the adventures, and prefer them over the remakes/"upgrades". Even the VGA version of Monkey Island looks less authentic to me, and somehow that makes it feel less immersive as well (yes, that is completely subjective). The same applies with the VGA remakes of Police Quest, Kings Quest, Larry, and what not. The old typing of a command (to me) really adds more fun to the game than the newer point-and-click method. I also noticed the difference in the engine between (as an example) King's Quest 4 and King's Quest 5. Sure, things looked better, but gameplay mechanisms felt far less smooth, and the puzzles became far easier. I guess a lot of the charm of the old games to me was always getting stuck at certain points of the game, and having an entire group of friends try to work on something together. Due to the text-input parser, the amount of options were far greater, and thus it was far less likely for you to accidentally stumble upon the soluition. The liited scope of the newer interfaces ensured "brute-forcing" a puzzle was a viable option. That's just the Sierra stuff, though. For Monkey Island, the game and puzzles were the same. It was just a graphical overhaul, and personally, I prefered the older 16 colour version. The game itself is still fantastic. I actually just fired up Monkey Island 3, which had a whole new look and feel from the earlier games. I love the addition of speech and ther introduction of the talking skull Murray (easily one of my favoruite game characters ever), but the carftoon-ish graphics and new interface are not necessarily an improvement in my book.
I agree, I never felt at home with the graphics style of Monkey Island 3 though but I remember a friend playing it and he really liked the game from what I recall
