
Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island - D_Guidi
https://grumpygamer.com/thirty_years_ago
======
huhtenberg
> _The day has come and gone and I didn 't get a happy birthday card from
> Disney with the Monkey Island IP tucked inside._

Disney got the Monkey Island IP when they bought Lucas Arts. The first thing
they did with it was to pull an _excellent_ MI remake off the iOS Apple Store.

The explanation was that it was diluting their Pirates of the Caribbean
brand... which is clearly some Grade A bullshit.

So I really doubt that Ron will ever have his wish granted :(

~~~
chrisseaton
> The explanation was that it was diluting their Pirates of the Caribbean
> brand... which is clearly some Grade A bullshit.

If you're convinced it's bullshit, what do you think the real reason is
instead?

~~~
lostcolony
I think you misunderstand what he's calling bullshit.

He's not claiming they don't actually believe the reason they give. He's
saying the reason is bullshit.

~~~
chrisseaton
Oh right - was going to say they kept the other games up so they obviously
aren't doing it because they hate games or out of spite. Reasonable to believe
their stated business reason.

~~~
ppod
I just noticed recently that in American English "bullshit" often means
"unfair" or "trivial" where in British English it usually means "untrue".

~~~
tombert
It usually means "untrue" here as well, but it's often used as a synonym for
"extremely ridiculous".

------
coldcode
It was a great game.

I also remember making gold master floppies for our products going back to
1987. It's actually a scary process because if you made any mistakes, you got
back thousands-millions (depending on who you were) worthless disks back. Even
sending out updates cost money and often we had to charge people in order to
pay for duplication, packaging, shipping and sometimes a manual update. Often
updates were the entire package of N disks; if lucky you can manage a patch
disk.

Thinking back now I think there were still dinosaurs on the earth at the time
too.

~~~
joezydeco
It could have been worse. I know of one studio that sent a debug version to
the duplication factory by accident. It killed the company.

~~~
dylan604
Did the company not have insurance?

~~~
bch
Now I’m curious: what kinds of insurance would such a company have?

~~~
mjevans
I think I've heard of this in relation to housing contracts on TV (back when I
watched stuff like Holmes on Homes).

Errors and Omissions insurance?

------
LifeIsBio
When I was growing up my brother and I used to spend a week each summer at our
cousins' house. They had a copy of Monkey Island and each summer we would tell
ourselves, "This is the year we're going to beat Monkey Island." Each year we
never made it much further than the first Island. Eventually our cousins lent
us the game and we beat it over the course of a few months.

Interestingly, I think about Monkey Island a lot because I often tell people
(only half jokingly) that the way that I think about learning conversational
skills is by using the same mechanics as the sword fighting challenge in The
Three Trials. As you gain experience sword fighting, you pick up new phrases
and you eventually learn the situations in which you yourself can apply those
phrases appropriately to defeat the other swords[wo]men. Similarly, I've found
it quite effective to watch how other people use techniques to illicit
specific reactions from people. After a while of seeing the same technique
applied by different people for slightly different reasons, you can start
using it yourself. Eventually you have a big bucket of techniques you can use
whenever!

~~~
will_pseudonym
I enjoyed your anecdote, as someone who has never played Monkey Island.

Just FYI, the word you're looking for is "elicit", not "illicit".

~~~
LifeIsBio
Ah, for sure. Thanks! Too bad the editing window is past.

------
amichal
I never shipped gold floppies but I did ship golden master CDs on a 1x (maybe
2x?) writer for a very early ebook publisher (sometime in late 1990s). I was
young and inexperienced in the business side of things. The machine doing it
was underpowered and frequently overran it' buffer. I remember that one late
night when more sr folks had gone for drinks and i was left to do burn, I went
through a stack of 16+ blanks trying to get a single disk to verify. This took
hours and at the time blanks were something like 20$ each. I spent the whole
night stressing I would get in trouble for spending so much and maybe I should
have waited for someone who knew the process better. CTO told me the next day
what being a single day late to get them to mfg would have cost and I felt
better.

~~~
hinkley
The senior guys should not have gone for drinks until someone had verified the
copy. They could have dinked around the office for an hour until the first one
failed. You got left holding the bag. A very expensive one from the sounds of
it.

~~~
amichal
Yeah, that particular configuration of SR guys didn't really work out. Why
they went drinking and left me to finish up is a longer story, life lesson. I
quit within months and went to work with a couple of the more dedicated of the
bunch.

------
thefaux
When I was 9, in 1993, I hurt my eye and couldn't go to school for a week
while it was healing. To make it bearable, my dad somehow got me a pirated
copy of the secret of monkey island from a coworker (he worked at a PR company
so I still find that mildly surprising today). The game had a copy protection
feature where there was a spinning wheel and you had to input some text that
was revealed when you combined the top of a pirate's head with the bottom of a
different pirate's head (IIRC). This was defeated by the office photocopier.

Eventually I got stuck on a puzzle that I just couldn't figure out. Rather
than giving up, I sent a physical letter through the USPS to Lucasarts
explaining where I was stuck and asking for help. A few weeks later, I
received a response with Lucasarts letterhead with the solution to the puzzle.
I actually ended up sending two or three letters to finally complete the game.
Talk about a different time and place.

Of course a few years later I racked up $30 in hint line charges while making
my way through Sam and Max Hit the Road. It took a lot of chores to pay my mom
back for that.

~~~
Cakez0r
I also sent a physical letter to Lucasarts when I got stuck as a kid. They
kindly sent me back a full walkthrough! I wonder how many other kids must've
done this...

~~~
brianwawok
I mailed Nintendo for a dragon quest puzzle and they wrote back. Was great.

------
acd
Monkey Island brings back very good game memories and who the whole Lucas Art
series had good stories!

I learnt a lot of English from playing text adventure games. It was a fun way
to learn a language. Whenever I encountered English words I did not know I had
an English dictionary by the side of the computer and looked up the word I did
not understand. Of course I am also thankful to my official English school
teachers but playing text adventure games was a very fun way to learn a new
language! You had to comprehend the text in the game to be able to play. It
was somehow a bit hard but you got the reward of playing from learning.

~~~
andrewzah
Games are such a great way to get people to naturally learn language.

I do the same thing nowadays with games like Animal Crossing and Ace Attorney.
It's easier now than ever to find translations for other languages than
English.

------
jedberg
In the middle it links to the post he made on the 25th anniversary, which
talks about how they would ship the gold masters to Europe.

He says they didn't have time in the schedule to mail it, so they would go to
the airport, find a flight to London, walk up to the gate and find a passenger
and ask them to carry a pack of disks with them, and tell them someone at the
other end would meet them at the gate to pick it up!

Man how times have changed in 30 years.

~~~
myself248
A friend of mine had this happen with a processor card for a telephone switch.
A bad software update had hosed up the primary card in such a way that it also
made the standby unable to function, and they were capital-D Down for hours.
The manufacturer was in Texas, the switch was in Michigan.

The soonest flight was a passenger flight, not a cargo flight, so they bought
the box a ticket and sent it on its way. At the receiving airport, a logistics
company picked it up and drove it straight to the office in need.

Thing is, the logistics company sent a semi. Because they hadn't been told the
size of the shipment, just its declared value, and they reasoned that anything
worth mid six figures must be big. So this intrepid truck driver couldn't (in
a timely fashion) get close to the building, and ended up jogging across the
parking lot with the card under his arm, as the tech headed down the elevator
to meet him at the door.

"Sign here. What the heck is this thing, anyway?"

"Twenty thousand people's ability to call 911. Thanks, gotta go!"

~~~
jedberg
For most of my career, I've worked in ops for companies where every moment of
downtime would mean the loss of a lot of money.

But I always tempered the anxiety by reminding myself that no matter what
happens, no one's life was on the line from any downtime I might be
responsible for.

------
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I first played Monkey Island well after its time, but it held up and I enjoyed
it immensely. I recall specifically being impressed by the twist in the
insult-sword-fighting mechanic that occurs when you fight the Sword Master. I
maintain that the game holds up even today, though obviously nostalgia bias
probably applies.

~~~
willismichael
We're in the middle of playing this game for the first time with our kids,
after literally decades of having people trying to tell me that I really need
to play it. As a first-time player I can say that yes, almost everything about
Monkey Island stands the test of time, no nostalgia required.

~~~
kej
How old are your kids? I'm wondering if mine are ready for this (I've also
managed to avoid playing it for decades, despite many attempts to get me to
play it).

~~~
willismichael
We have a spectrum of ages. I think the seven year old is the youngest one who
"gets it" enough to be involved with solving the puzzles.

------
germinalphrase
I was just the right age when ‘Monkey Island’ and ‘Indiana Jones and the Fate
of Atlantis’ appeared in my life. That kind of in-world puzzle solving seems
absent from a lot of what I see my early-teenage nieces/nephews (choose to)
play now.

~~~
dudul
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is the true 4th Indiana Jones movie in
my book. And yes, I'll die on that hill.

~~~
rpeden
Better to die on that hill rather than in a refrigerator like Indy should have
given how hard that thing landed.

~~~
LukeShu
People give it a lot of crap, but honestly: It's better than Temple of Doom.

~~~
detritus
Horses for courses, I guess - I thought the story wasn't great and the movie
marred by miserable CGI effects.

------
kvn_95
Wow this really brings back memories! If Ron Gilbert is reading this, thanks
for all your hard work on this game. This game was definitely one of the
highlights of my childhood.

As to what makes the game great, I think it's the perfect combination of
humor, pirates, and difficulty level that feels just right for a kid in the
early 90s. It also has an amazing soundtrack.

Look! A three headed monkey!

~~~
throwaway287391
> difficulty level that feels just right for a kid in the early 90s.

You must've been a clever kid and/or I'm a bit dense :) When I played most of
the Monkey Island games as a teenager / young adult there were definitely
several times when I had to resort to GameFAQs.

~~~
kvn_95
Oh there’s like 5 of us playing it on the same pc so there’s always ideas
thrown around. If nothing works then start clicking on everything :)

I don’t recall it to be as frustrating as say King’s Quest but then again it
might be nostalgia.

~~~
herman_toothrot
The King's Quest games were absolutely brutal. Actions performed early in the
game could prevent you from winning at the end. I found this list:
[http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Wiki/index.php?title=Unwinnab...](http://www.thealmightyguru.com/Wiki/index.php?title=Unwinnable_state)

The only reason we beat these as kids was having a near infinite amount of
time to waste.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
ADOM had similar issues. You kill a cat any time, you miss out on a later
quest. Instead you just had to fight the cat lord. Missed out on a very
powerful ring.

And it was so, so easy to kill a cat. You use the automatic repeat-move key
and auto-hit when you collide with a monster, and if you ever find a cat
anywhere that way, its dead. People would rage-quit and start all over, it was
that frustrating.

------
blaz0
Working on Monkey Island Special Edition in 2009 while at LucasArts is one of
the highlights of my career. I have really fond memories of my time there on
the team (Team 3!). I wish I had worked on the original but that was way
before my time.

The game is actually running the full original code alongside the new Special
Edition stuff. We didn’t want to disturb the original codebase, so we ran it
basically unchanged on another thread and the new game loop would surgically
peek and poke some state every frame (animations, etc) to get synchronized.
That’s how we essentially layered all the new art and sound on top of the
original game. There was a lot of reverse engineering of data and asset
formats that we had to do because all the original authors had since left,
perhaps with the exception of EJ.

The F10 hotkey to transition between the old and the new art was actually a
debugging feature that our lead rendering engineer wrote during development,
but everyone agreed that it was too good not to ship it as an actual feature
of the Special Edition.

~~~
technofiend
For those who didn't experience it the first time or perhaps would like to do
so again, I feel obligated to mention your version is on sale for $3.49 at
Good Old Games aka gog.com. No affiliation myself other than a customer and
someone a bit in awe of what you guys wrought.

[https://www.gog.com/game/the_secret_of_monkey_island_special...](https://www.gog.com/game/the_secret_of_monkey_island_special_edition)

------
goberoi
Monkey Island and its sequel are some of the defining games of my childhood.
My brother and I played all the Sierra Games, and Lucas Arts games, and while
we have many loves (Heroes Quest/Quest for Glory, Indian Jones), Monkey Island
was by far our favorite.

We few years ago we were lucky enough to meet Ron at PAX when he was there
promoting Thimbleweed Park. Since then, I saw him fairly often at a
neighborhood coffee shop here in Seattle.

Earlier this year, at the start of the pandemic, my brother and his partner
ended up making an adventure game in the style of Monkey Island. It's almost
an homage and has a few shout outs to those in the know. Check it out here:

[https://www.landlubbersgame.com](https://www.landlubbersgame.com).

Thanks Ron and team for the good times!

------
dleslie
I'm still not willing to accept that it's all the imagination of a child
running wild at a theme park.

~~~
Trasmatta
MONKEY ISLAND 2 SPOILERS

Didn't the ending heavily imply that the theme park was just a trick of
LeChuck? I never interpreted it as being what was actually going on.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Didn't the ending heavily imply that the theme park was just a trick of
> LeChuck?

Yes. As they walk out into the theme park, LeChuck looks at the camera and his
eyes glow.

I think this is just another entry in the genre of "there was no plan, so the
writers added several different plot hooks on spec".

~~~
Trasmatta
Also, during the credits, doesn't the game switch back to Elaine who says
something like "I sure hope LeChuck didn't cast a spell on Guybrush"?

------
marban
The thing I always wonder is how testing/QA worked back in the days for
cartridge/disk games. I mean, there've been a few quirks here and there but no
game I can recall ever became unplayable — As opposed to nowadays where you
can't even launch something before applying 50GBs of fixes.

~~~
nsxwolf
I remember Quest For Glory IV shipped with a game-breaking bug that required
downloading a patch from a BBS and possibly starting with a new save. I never
finished the game because of that one.

Much worse when it was ROM media - Impossible Mission for the Atari 7800 is
literally impossible to complete because of a bug that made it into the
release.

Still, this stuff was really rare. Very different QA mindset when recalling
the product is impossible or expensive.

~~~
anthk
>Impossible Mission for the Atari 7800 is literally impossible to complete

Well, they were right.

------
BLKNSLVR
A rubber-chicken-with-a-pulley-in-the-middle is still the most memorable item
I've ever come across in a game.

Thanks Ron.

~~~
Intermernet
Also "Mug-O-Grog"

------
gwbas1c
Just curious: How would I go about playing Monkey Island today? I know DOSBox
comes to mind?

But, is there an official port, like the "remastered" versions of Final
Fantasy that are in the Play store?

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Steam [0] and GOG [1], at least, have Monkey Island 1 & 2 special editions.
Looks like GOG has them 65% off right now too.

[0]
[https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/6588/Monkey_Island_Col...](https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/6588/Monkey_Island_Collection/)

[1]
[https://www.gog.com/game/the_secret_of_monkey_island_special...](https://www.gog.com/game/the_secret_of_monkey_island_special_edition)

[1]
[https://www.gog.com/game/monkey_island_2_special_edition_lec...](https://www.gog.com/game/monkey_island_2_special_edition_lechucks_revenge)

~~~
deeblering4
I don't have a link handy, but there is a "monkey island 1 ultimate talkie"
version of the original Monkey Island that I highly recommend.

My understanding is that someone backported the speech from the remastered
version into the original game. So you can play the original MI1 in SCUMMVM,
with speech. It's great.

edit: this might be the link
[https://archive.org/details/MONKEYISLAND_201903](https://archive.org/details/MONKEYISLAND_201903)

~~~
spatulon
Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I prefer playing the game without the voice
acting.

It's a bit hard to describe why, but there's a lot of both dry and surreal
lines in the game, and hearing Guybrush deliver them all in the same bemused
voice can get a little monotonous, and makes the character come across
differently from just reading them.

------
Razengan
Considering how successful Thimbleweed Park, the spiritual sequel to Maniac
Mansion, has been, Ron Gilbert, Tim Schaffer and Dave Grossman could just
reboot Monkey Island with a different name, say Ape Archipelago or something.

Fans would only love a chance to return to that world as envisioned by its
original creators, and even if all the character etc. names have to be change
it would be better than waiting forever for Disney to do anything with the IP
given how it conflicts with Pirates of the Caribbean.

------
aresant
For anybody that needs to scratch the nostalgia itch after reading this post I
highly, highly recommend the free web series "Double Fine Adventure"

It chronicles Tim Schafer (ass't designer on Monkey Island and designer of
numerous other LucasArts classics) and Ron (early on, he eventually leaves)
building out their kickstarter adventure game.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVwg-9WL3dE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVwg-9WL3dE)

------
Bayart
I played Monkey Island ten years ago, when they launched the Remaster. It was
such a great game. And I've got to say the follow up ranks as one of the best
games I've ever played.

It's funny that having played Monkey Island 1 & 2 well into my adulthood, I
still get somehow very nostalgic and tender vibes from it.

------
kuon
I really loved the Lucas Art point & clicks. I remember being stuck for hours
in those games. Eventually, I finished most of them (or I remember I did, but
maybe I didn't, honestly I don't remember).

I want to deeply thanks everyone who worked on those games. Thank you.

------
dep_b
I remember my brother playing (and me dicking around a bit with) Zack
McKracken first and then Monkey Island. It's always the sword fighting part I
remember the most. It's a pity I don't have time for anything anymore, I would
love to revisit them some time.

~~~
jansan
I loved Maniac Mansion,Day of the Tentacle and Zack McKracken. A modern game
that may be comparable is "Trover saves the Universe" by Justin Roiland,
probably best played on the Oculus Quest. I haven't had that much fun playing
a video game for a few years.

------
andi999
Love it when something is labeled 'final 1.1'

------
deeblering4
You make final gold masters like a dairy farmer

~~~
danra
I'm shaking, I'm shaking

------
raldi
This is a nice (short) post, but the one with the great storytelling was
2015's celebration:
[https://grumpygamer.com/monkey25](https://grumpygamer.com/monkey25)

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> For the younger readers out there: These are not USB devices and you can't
text your friends or watch TikTok videos on them. I know. Crazy.

Tsk. Please. We've all seen CD disks before, you know.

~~~
gre
Fun fact, the D stood for disks, so you're literally saying "Compact Disks
Disks".

~~~
myself248
The D stood for Disc.

Consensus at the time was a disk with a K was writable, a disc with a C was
read-only.

~~~
smegcicle
Or disc for optical, disk for magnetic

------
rburhum
Monkey Island, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and Sam n Max made me
want to study CS away from my home country. I _loved_ those games as a young
teenager. 30 years later I still do...

~~~
mistrial9
.. better than Batman Gotham ?

------
Andrew_nenakhov
Monkey Island was great. To this day I occasionally use insults learned during
the swordfighting part of the game. Also, the MI theme was once my ringtone on
a good old Siemens S65i

~~~
haecceity
You fight like a dairy farmer

~~~
Andrew_nenakhov
How appropriate, you fight like a cow!

------
savrajsingh
is this it?
[https://www.retrogames.cz/play_492-DOS.php?language=EN](https://www.retrogames.cz/play_492-DOS.php?language=EN)

------
FpUser
Oh sweet memories. I did not play the game, my daughter did. But I absolutely
loved the music and still have it in my playlist.

~~~
kvn_95
I played it using a basic Soundblaster card in the 90s and it’s already
amazing. Lately I used DosBox with the MT32 emulation and was blown away by
how good it sounds.

Here’s an instruction on DosBox MT32 emulation if you’re curious:
[https://blog.zyrain.org/2016/11/roland-mt-32-and-
emulating-i...](https://blog.zyrain.org/2016/11/roland-mt-32-and-emulating-it-
in-old.html)

Here’s a clip of the MT32 opening soundtrack if you just want to have a listen
[https://youtu.be/i3dB0qEcG20](https://youtu.be/i3dB0qEcG20)

------
bengalister
Guybrush Threepwood, Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle so many good memories.
I remember the anti-piracy message in Guybrush where the main character was
sent to jail, the inner game (Maniac mansion) in Day of the tentacle.... I
think Monkey Island was the game I spent the most time with, it was full of
humour.

------
gerdesj
Ahh that takes me back. For the kids, here's how you use those things:

You slide back the metal shield to expose the surface of the disc. Carefully,
you engage the read head or "needle" as we used to call it - a joke riffing on
those archaic record player things that mum and dad danced to. We would of
course be listening to our modern cassettes in our dodgy knock off Walkmans
and rubbish headphones.

You will notice that there are two small square cut outs on each disc. That
means that grumpygamer had access to the latest double sided discs. When you
got to the end of side A, you turned it over and engaged side B to continue
loading.

That thing is known as a floppy disc, which was pretty rubbish marketing,
given that the 5 1/4" effort was actually ... floppy. I don't miss them at all
but I still have a few around the place.

------
dariosalvi78
which reminds me that I still need to complete Thimbleweed Park...

------
antaviana
I spent two months trying to cross the bridge at the beginning of the story
keeping all money, gold, treasury bonds...

I had a real ball playing this game.

------
ginko
>> It would be great if you could release the source code under an open source
license

>Yeah... talk to the Mouse. I don't own any of it.

------
bastijn
> For the younger readers out there: These are not USB devices and you can't
> text your friends or watch TikTok videos on them. I know. Crazy.

Makes me remember this open day we organized a year or two back at work. We
had some floppy disks laying around and this one kid pulled his dad's jacket
and told him that we had 3D printed save icons here.

------
ilovefood
Love that footer :) wouldn't dare copying it for my websites!

------
sicnus
Thirty years ago today and I was in Saudi Arabia getting ready to go to Iraq.
It would be another 4 years before I started using my first computer and a
year after that my first Linux OS.

------
curiousllama
Tangentially related -

For some reason, I love the universal impulse to throw ironic shade at
millennials/Gen Z whenever a floppy disk comes up. Like, we’ve all
independently decided to embrace our deepest boomer tendencies when it comes
to a single innocent topic.

It’s nice.

------
deeblering4
> For the younger readers out there: These are not USB devices and you can't
> text your friends or watch TikTok videos on them. I know. Crazy.

I know that this is a joke, but let's remember to be inclusive and kind to our
younger readers and take the time to explain (reiterate even) what pieces of
old tech are, and what they were used for.

Computers have a long and complicated history. And the technical parts are
being abstracted away more and more.

I think it's important to help people understand how we got to where we are
today, and why it is (or isn't) an improvement from the way things used to be.

~~~
robertakarobin
I hate this stereotype. "Hurr durr, stupid Millenials don't even know what a
book is, amirite?"

~~~
ksangeelee
I think it's more a moment of realisation that a lot of time has passed, that
things have changed to such an extent, and that it's hard to imagine something
so large having so little function, relative to today's tech. I don't think
it's written in the spirit of the stereotype you suggest.

