
Monkey Island – Insult Swordfighting Game - ddb
http://www.int33h.com/test/mi/
======
cstuder
Fun fact/veiled attempt to ask for money: Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossmann are
creating a new adventure in the style of Maniac Mansion:
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thimbleweedpark/thimble...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thimbleweedpark/thimbleweed-
park-a-new-classic-point-and-click-adv)

(No affiliation, I'm a backer though.)

~~~
TomGullen
I remember Maniac Mansion, I played it as a kid. It was a) extremely scary and
b) impossibly hard. Although I imagine that was because of my age mostly!

It came in a bundle with Monkey Island, Loom and Zak McKraken.

Zak McKraken and Maniac Mansion were the two I couldn't make any progress on!

~~~
Kurtz79
For me the most impressive thing about Maniac Mansion is how more advanced in
terms of gameplay it is, compared to many graphic adventures that came later,
since you can select different characters and still beat the game, by solving
different puzzles.

Later adventures had better graphics/story/characters, but were more linear
than MM.

Thanks to the parent for the kickstarter heads up: I will be backing as soon
as I get home!

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BaronKarza
Hello, I am the programmer of this little game. I wanted to thank you, it is a
great satisfaction to be on HN! If you want you can take a look to my other
small demo/game that can be found linked just below the game: these are all
projects that I did in my spare time, just for passion! Again, thank you so
much!

~~~
vvpan
Very, very cool! So you extracted images and dialog from scummvm game data and
programmed the interactions? Or you are interpreting scummvm data straight
out?

~~~
BaronKarza
I took a lot of screenshots from scummvm, many many screenshots, it was a
nightmare! Luckily there was no antialias or something so I was able to crop
the sprites easily.

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soneca
Oh, I had a hard time playing through this part. My english was just basics
and with the all the colloquial speech and puns, I just couldn't understand,
or even make sense of the sentences.

Took me some time to realize I was just supposed to fight through different
enemies to gather the right answers and use them on the later battles. And
even so I was just trying to match keywords between sentences to realize what
was answer to what.

Oh, how much fun one miss playing adventure games not speaking english.*

*(TWPFWP - Third World People, First World Problems).

~~~
andrey-p
Likewise - I learned a lot of my English from classic adventure games.

For me there was also the additional challenge of growing up in an ex-Eastern
Bloc country where you could find dodgy pirated copies of games more easily
than the real thing.

So you'd end up in a situation where you're trying to beat a bootleg Legend of
Kyrandia translated to Russian by looking up walkthroughs in English and
somehow trying to match up both without knowing either language very well.

Those were the days.

~~~
narag
Heh, now I'm going to learn Dutch thanks to some Minecraft server chat, where
most of the players are from the Netherlands.

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pcthrowaway
Fun fact time: The dialogue for all the insults and responses in MI1 was
written by Orson Scott Card!

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eviluncle
Really? That's really interesting. Do you have any more info/background how it
came to be that he wrote them (and only them?)

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pcthrowaway
I don't know anything more than that he was involved with writing the insults
in MI1 and had some involvement in several other LucasArts games including the
Dig, which I never played.

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rantanplan
Ah The Dig. Such a nice premise, but a very disapointing execution.

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kabouseng
Why do you say that, I quite enjoyed it, way way back... :D

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rantanplan
Well I do have fond memories of it, I just try to forget the awkward parts.
Especially the weird [dinosaur|dragon|bird]-like higher beings that you manage
to wake up. They had a nice sci-fi premise and ruined it with some fairy tale
mumbo-jumbo.

I do remember though that it had, some harder than usual(for a Lucas Arts
game) puzzles, that I really enjoyed.

~~~
aidenn0
> They had a nice sci-fi premise and ruined it with some fairy tale mumbo-
> jumbo.

A common criticism of Card.

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TazeTSchnitzel
My only problem with this is that the pirates (and you) don't move around as
little dots on the map screen, having random encounters. Clicking on portraits
is less fun.

~~~
jzzskijj
Luckily there are us who don't mind minor details like that. For me it was so
much fun to complete this and to get Swordmaster to say "OK, you win. Well...I
hope you’re happy."

The best lunch for a while.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Oh, it is fun and brings back memories, for sure. But it'd be even better with
the dots. :)

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jzzskijj
Perhaps. But on the other hand, then I would have been hunting down the moving
dots and spending less time on the actual insults. And I probably wouldn't
been able to finish it in reasonable time to call it a lunch break.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Fair point. They could add an option to skip that.

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logfromblammo
It isn't quite the same when I'm not holding a rubber chicken with a pulley in
it.

I always thought that the insult fencing mechanic of Monkey Island games was
fun and amusing, but it always felt like a gratuitously inserted grind to me,
with the need to wander around the island to find new retorts. It would have
been better to add new retorts to progress gates, such that the player is
guaranteed to have them by the time he or she needs them.

If you prefer your jokes bluer and your graphics cruder, there is always the
"insult beer pong" portion of the obligatory pirate subquest at
[http://www.kingdomofloathing.com/](http://www.kingdomofloathing.com/) .

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tripa
And I still know most of the retorts after all these years. Way too much time
spent on those!

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matthewbarby
This was what I spent most of my childhood playing on my Amiga! A few years
back I got an emulator working and completed it again - it's such a difficult
game!

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tempodox
Very appropriate. The right insult at the right time is what makes the
decisive impact on closing that deal or fixing that bug in 71% of all cases.
This is a good pedagogical means to teach our youngsters the importance of not
just wielding the power of wit, but to apply it right. Bravo :)

~~~
tempodox
Someone got it completely wrong. Down-voting my previous comment is not the
right insult and not a show of wit. I am disappoint.

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LTheobald
Doesn't quite work for me. The answers aren't right - they never change. So
whatever insult I have, I get the response for the dairy farmer & shish kebab
one followed by ones like "I am rubber, you are glue". I don't see the right
one to choose

~~~
zorbo
If I remember correctly, you're always allowed to start the first insult. Pick
an insult you don't know the answer to. Hopefully your opponent knows the
correct response. If he does, you learn a new response to an insult. If he
doesn't, you win that round. That means you will advance a bit, and the enemy
retreats a bit. If you win enough rounds (insult - retort), you win the fight.
Win enough fights and you get to play against the sword-master, who knows all
the insults and reponses.

~~~
LTheobald
That's how I remember it too. But it doesn't seem to be learning any new
ones... Let me try again.

~~~
viewer5
If I remember right, it's a very time-consuming, grind-y process, pretty out-
of-character with the rest of the game. Just gotta be persistent through it.
The feeling of success from finally beating that puzzle is great, though, due
to the time investment.

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alxuseche
This is my favorite game ever! This is one of the best parts of Monkey Island
of course, so I thank whoever created and shared this. I just wish they
brought back "The Curse of Monkey Island" for iPhone and iPad some day..

~~~
bkmn
I guess you already know it, but at least The Secret of Monkey Island is
already on iOS ([https://itunes.apple.com/se/app/secret-monkey-island-
special...](https://itunes.apple.com/se/app/secret-monkey-island-
special/id390454624?mt=8)). I'm pretty certain there are emulators if you're
jailbroken though...

~~~
shmerl
ScummVM has iOS version.

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iconfinder
Here's a soundtrack for this game: [https://soundcloud.com/martin-leblanc-
eigtved/monkey-island-...](https://soundcloud.com/martin-leblanc-
eigtved/monkey-island-reggae-remix)

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philnash
The best part of the game, bookmarked for future nostalgia too!

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timje1
I'd really love to know the library used to get these lovely pixelated
graphics - did this gentleman write his own, or are there mature options out
there?

~~~
BaronKarza
Hello, I've used the createJS library
[http://www.createjs.com/#!/CreateJS](http://www.createjs.com/#!/CreateJS) For
the graphics, I ripped it directly from the original game.

~~~
timje1
Excellent stuff, thanks for responding

~~~
BaronKarza
If you want to take a deeper look, the full source code is available directly
from the game page (it's just below the game)

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vblord
This was one of my favorite games growing up. There was something about it
that was just fun and addicting. Thanks for sharing the link.

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rrradical
"I got this scar on my face during a mighty struggle!" "I'm glad to hear you
attended your family reunion."

No dice. :(

~~~
jmelloy
"I hope you learned to stop picking your nose."

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Daviey
Wow, this brought back some really good memories. I was surprised how many of
the answers I remembered!

I miss my Amiga. :)

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Yuioup
My favorite part of Monkey Island is the music. I could listen to MI2's sound
track all day.

~~~
iconfinder
Did you hear mix remix? [https://soundcloud.com/martin-leblanc-eigtved/monkey-
island-...](https://soundcloud.com/martin-leblanc-eigtved/monkey-island-
reggae-remix)

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thomasfl
"Welcome. Stay a while. Staaay fooorever!" Brilliant!

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D_Guidi
not bad at all! not sure it's legal, thought

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kossmoboleat
So awesome, thanks a lot!

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DiabloD3
Aaaaaaaaaand there goes my productivity.

~~~
sdoering
Ohhh yeah. Sitting in a Seminar, listening goes down the drain... ;-)

