
Happy Birthday Monkey Island - alblue
http://grumpygamer.com/monkey25
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dirktheman
Ah... Monkey Island. I have such fond memories of not just MI, but also other
Lucasarts/Sierra adventure games like Day of the Tentacle, Sam&Max, Full
Throttle, Willy Beamish, King's Quest, Space Quest, etc. I owe a large part
(if not most!) of my English skills to these games.

Recently, I bought my daughter an old '99 ibook Clamshell on a yard sale. I
upgraded the RAM and substituted the hard drive for a CompactFlash card. Most
of these games are free downloads these days, so we spend hours playing them.
Some of them look a bit aged, but generally they hold up pretty well. The
experience is still as captivating as it was back then.

~~~
justquestions
I thought these were all DOS-based (Intel CPU) games...

How are you running these on a PowerPC/G3?

~~~
dirktheman
They are mostly pre-intel based games, as Apple switched to Intel in 2002.
They are free for download through sites like macintoshgarden.org. Otherwise I
use an emulator (Basilisk/SheepShaver) on my own PC/Mac.

~~~
justquestions
Thank you. I remember playing some of these on a 486DX-33MHz in the early 90s.

I wasn't aware there was a Motorola CPU based version.

As others have said, there goes my weekend. Time to dig out my old G4 laptop,
or the PowerBook 520c I seem to have kept for some reason...

Did I say thank you?

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benjaminva
Monkey Island 1/2 still remain one of the most influential games for myself. I
triggered my strong interest in game programming and later programming in
general. All I wanted in the 90s was to come up with programs that showed
sprites moving around. Later I progressed to different fields of programming
but I guess a part of me still dreams of programming an equivalent game like
Monkey Island some day (2D of course!!!)

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inDigiNeous
Chipping in on the memories. Lucasarts Adventure Game Pack on 5 floppy disks
IIRC was the first game I ever purchased with my own money for our Compaq
Presario 386-SX 25Mhz back in the day.

They used to remind to take backups of your floppies before doing anything
else, so I purchased a 5-pack of 1.44 MB floppies to copy the diskettes unto.
I will never forget the pain when I realized that I accidentally formatted one
of the original diskettes in the process, and I could not install Indiana
Jones and the Last Crusade ever.

My imagination ran wild when I looked at the photos of this game in the
contained cleverly disguided walk through that was in the format of a story,
and I longed to install that game and play it but nobody had it. Luckily I
downloaded it later from a local BBS and finally got to play it.

But back on the subject, seeing Monkey Island logo on the screen, with
glorious 256-color VGA, the PC Speaker playing the theme music, in the dark
cellar where our PC was, was just pure magic. Nothing has ever come close to
that moment and will never come, it is one of the few rare memories that I
wish I could re-live, to feel the magic of entering that Island and being
there again, for the first time.

Monkey Island 2 came close, but the magic of playing my first really graphical
adventure had already passed. Oh, I wish to share that feeling with my child
in the future :)

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guybrushT
As my username probably reveals, this is my favorite game, and one of the most
enjoyable / funny gaming experiences that I have had. The part that I still
remember, after all these years is sword fighting insults. Till today, my
friends and I sign off our emails with some of these dialogue writing gems [1]

"Nobody's ever drawn blood from me and nobody ever will." "You run THAT fast?"

"People fall at my feet when they see me coming!" Even BEFORE they smell your
breath?

"I'm not going to take your insolence sitting down!" "Your hemorrhoids are
flaring up again eh?"

What a great game, and what a great era for gaming.

[1]
[http://monkeyisland.wikia.com/wiki/Insult_Sword_Fighting](http://monkeyisland.wikia.com/wiki/Insult_Sword_Fighting)

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hdivider
"I don’t know if I will ever get to make another Monkey Island. I always
envisioned the game as a trilogy and I really hope I do, but I don’t know if
it will ever happen. Monkey Island is now owned by Disney and they haven't
shown any desire to sell me the IP. I don’t know if I could make Monkey Island
3a without complete control over what I was making and the only way to do that
is to own it. Disney: Call me."

I wonder if anyone high up in Disney could be persuaded to give Ron Gilbert
enough control to make MI3a. Would surely boost their brand and create a
community of grateful fans.

If selling the IP is a no-no, maybe there's another way.

~~~
toyg
There is no other way. MI is too close to the _Pirates of the Caribbeans_
franchise to let _anyone_ run wild with it. Disney will keep it as buried as
possible, and strictly under control.

Ron is publicly begging for it (and not even for the first time) because all
other avenues have failed. It's easy to predict nothing will change as long as
Johnny Depp is alive and working.

~~~
lobster_johnson
Related bit of trivia: MI was heavily inspired by Tim Powers' novel "On
Stranger Tides" (which is a classic piece of secret history, involving
Blackbeard, the Fountain of Youth, and of course zombie pirates). For the
newest Pirates of the Caribbean movie, they bought the rights to the novel --
but pretty much the only thing they kept from the book was the title and the
Blackbeard character. Everything else has been changed, for the worse. (So
much worse.) So Disney's two pirate franchises are related, in a weird way.

~~~
WorldMaker
Pirates of the Caribbean movies heavily borrowed from "On Stranger Tides" from
the very first movie, so it was only fair that they eventually actually
licensed the book, even if only to mostly just use the (fantastic) title,
because they'd already picked so much of the book apart.

Also, further mutual inspiration trivia between the two franchises: Ron's
never made it a secret that Monkey Island was also directly inspired by the
original Disney Pirates of the Caribbean attraction. (The influence of which
can be felt strongly throughout, but which most directly manifests itself in
the complicated and controversial MI2 ending.)

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midgetjones
I was so lucky to have grown up during this time and I hope it's not too
pretentious to say it affected my life in many positive ways.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Agreed, as a kid with a short attention span MI 1 & 2 must have been pretty
special to have kept me glued to my Atari ST every night for weeks on end. I
still haven't found a game series that appeals so much to my bizarre sense of
humour. Or maybe it was MI that made it what it is today? ;)

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ddispaltro
I still to this day think Guybrush Threepwood is the greatest character name.

~~~
e1ven
One of the things I love about Guybrush's name is that it he was supposedly
named accidentally.

    
    
        From Wikipedia:
        
            The origin of the name "Guybrush" comes in part from Deluxe Paint, 
        the tool used by the artists to create the character sprite. Since
        the character had no name at this point, the file was simply called 
        'Guy'. 
            When the file was saved, Steve Purcell, the artist responsible 
        for the sprite, added 'brush' to the filename, indicating that it was 
        the Deluxe Paint "brush file" for the "Guy" sprite. The file name was
        then "guybrush.bbm", so the developers eventually just started referring
        to this unnamed 'Guy' as "Guybrush".

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Plishar
I worked at Software, Etc. when these games were released. I was in high
school, and I got my first promotion to Assistant Manager.

I enjoyed all the adventure games during that time, but then Civilization was
released, and I was hooked! Adventure games seemed flat compared to the
endless possibilities in Civilization.

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scott_s
Ron Gilbert was recently a guest on Retronauts, and he talked about making
Monkey Island:
[http://www.retronauts.com/?p=1147](http://www.retronauts.com/?p=1147)

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huhtenberg
Recent remakes of Monkey Island 1 and 2 are _really_ nicely done with superb
voice acting. Played through them last summer with my kids on the iPad and
enjoyed every moment of it. Highly recommended.

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bane
A great interview with the creator is here

[http://www.retronauts.com/?p=1147](http://www.retronauts.com/?p=1147)

I remember getting a demo floppy with it on it and being absolutely blown away
by it. I had played Sierra games before that, and the artwork and interface
made those games look and feel absolutely stone aged in comparison.

The excellent writing was icing on the cake.

I must have played through that short demo a hundred times before getting the
retail game for a present. It's kind of amazing how much fun fit into such
little disk space.

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yannk
Hello, Craig Thomson? Are you here? Did you, indeed, become a programmer?

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dasboth
Has anyone played Broken Age? It's nowhere near as difficult as the adventure
games of old, it feels more of a casual adventure game, but the story,
characters, art and voice acting are superb. My favourite game genre by far,
happy birthday Monkey Island!

~~~
lobster_johnson
Broken Age looks and sounds great, but I really hated how the whole game runs
on rails pretty much from the beginning. You can't wander around much, so it
feels less like a world and more like a movie where you occasionally help the
plot along by clicking on things.

The original LucasArts games were only occasionally like this. They invited a
lot of trial and error (some of it extremely unintuitive; Zak McKracken had
some of those), exploring areas you couldn't access yet, and so on. They were
difficult, and they never held your hand.

Unfortunately, this dumbed-down form seems like a fairly new trend in games.
(Double Fine's The Cave, which looked fantastic, failed partly because it was
just too simplistic.) I suppose they are afraid of losing audiences if they
are too hard.

~~~
dasboth
You're right, this isn't quite the same genre anymore, it's more of an
interactive story. The trend towards simplicity has definitely crept in. I
really enjoyed Broken Age, but not for quite the same reasons as the Monkey
Island series.

Monkey Island 2 was incredibly frustrating at points and for whatever reason
(shorter attention spans probably) there is less of a market for that type of
game; people are more likely to stop playing after the first bit of
difficulty.

I'd still play that old style of game because the more time it takes you to
figure the puzzles out the more immersed you get in the game world, but for a
lot of people that's not fun.

~~~
aidenn0
I think a big reason why MI2 was so hard was the lack of an internet. I knew
one other person who owned MI2 so when one of us got stuck we would have to
wait until the other got caught up to see if they could figure it out.

I think i spent over 6 months of real-world time suspended over the cauldron.

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egypturnash
oh god that font choice. Really, Ron? The c64 font in the eyestrain-inducing
default blue? Do you really want to wallow in nostalgia for _that_? And
Safari's 'reader' view isn't working.

 _edits the css manually so she can actually read this_

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jug
Dear Mr Gilbert,

We do own the Monkey Island brand, but we are of course ready and willing to
let go of the three headed monkeys and scary voodoo curses once again. You
have our blessings. And curses.

Sincerely, Disney

(oops, looks like we accidentally posted on Hacker News, sorry, won't happen
again!)

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DrNuke
Old fart still dreaming of Lucifer's Realm, Fifth Eskadra and The Bard's Tale
on Apple //c here eheheh Monkey Island good though, even if more a Carmen
Sandiego kind of guy tbh eheheh

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0x4a42
"It amazes me that people still play and love Monkey Island."

I'm still playing Monkey Island 20 years after the first time I discovered it
on the Amiga.

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_nedR
The real way to celebrate a happy birthday is with a 90% off sale (on the
remastered version)! Keeps fingers crossed.

~~~
unhammer
He writes that Disney owns the rights and isn't showing signs of wanting to do
anything about it. However, check out the first reward-tier on his new game:
[http://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/backer](http://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/backer)
:)

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compactmani
I love the music. You need a Creative Music System / Game Blaster or Roland
MT-32 for the best experience.

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mbajkowski
The Monkey Island series along with Loom and Zak McKracken bring back some
super fond memories.

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onedev
This is one of the first games that completely captivated me. It was almost
magical.

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imranq
While 1 and 2 are OK, Curse is by far my favorite...so many fond memories

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carbide
My name is Guybrush Threepwood. Prepare to die!

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PSeitz
Where is disk 22?

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benihana
If anyone is unaware, they've got some pretty good versions of MI 1 and 2 on
the Apple App store. I played it on my iPad a couple of years ago, and it was
great. The adventure format works really well on a tablet. You can even play
with updated graphics or in classic mode. Easily worth the 10 bucks or however
much it costed.

~~~
crivabene
Unfortunately Disney pulled the iOS versions from the App Store in April.

[https://help.disney.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/About-The-
Secret-...](https://help.disney.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/About-The-Secret-of-
Monkey-Island-Special-Edition?section=Games)

~~~
pimlottc
Ah, the "Disney Vault" is alive and well...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault)

~~~
jedberg
The best part of that article is the end:

See also: Artificial Scarcity

