Secret of Monkey Island 2 was my first PC game on a 486SX and VGA monitor. The sound came out of the PC speakers... One day I got an Adlib card and was blown away. Go ahead and download the remake on steam and notice something that kind of doesn't exist in any game (that I know): when you enter the scene on Scabb Island, the relaxed reggae beat changes ever so subtly depending on the bridge, the carpenter shop, the mapmaker, the bar, etc.
For example, you enter the mapmaker and the Wally music comes on, which is the same reggae bagdrop to a clarinet or oboe, the music is a little deeper in the carpenter shop, there's an evil background tone when Largo LaGrande shows up and a more subtle one in the hotel, etc.
With gorgeous hand painted digitized art.
They don't make games like that anymore. Can't wait to see if they actually did.
> the relaxed reggae beat changes ever so subtly depending on the bridge, the carpenter shop, the mapmaker, the bar, etc
That is cool! They don't receive a ton of attention, but other games do get into some fun stuff with music too. One such game is NieR: Automata. They built a pretty remarkable tone filter that seamlessly turns the playing music into an 8-bit equivalent via digital processing when the player starts hacking:
https://www.platinumgames.com/official-blog/article/9581
A more common thing you'll see are games that have dynamic battle music, which will add or remove elements from the soundtrack as the player encounters combat, encounters a boss, or leaves combat.
I'm not aware of other games that have nice little leitmotifs for so many scenes, though. That's great.
Earworm [0], released by JCO and Neuro at the Evoke 2011 demoparty is a game that puts this kind of sound mechanic at its core. The music gets more frantic and changes style as you increase in "level", and as you approach danger the drumbeat gets more insistent, sounding ominous and inducing anxiety.
I still play it to this day, quite a unique experience and a fun game to boot!
FAR:Lone Sails, and Changing Tides also have very dynamic music. I would go so far as to say music is 50% of the experience of the game, perhaps almost all of the emotional experience. Not to detract from the environmental storytelling which was also excellent.
Some games does change things depending on "action" in the game and such, but tends to be very basic variables + actions.
I think GTA V for example actually changes the actual music as the action goes up, like when your wanted level changes.
There is a racing game that does something even more basic (Trackmania maybe?) where they have a low-pass filter that opens up more and more the faster you go.
It was one of my favourite things about Zelda breath of the wild. Some sessions I felt more like a conductor, depending on what I did in game, I could control the music. It was an amazing system to give you a clue on what was in your surroundings.
Pillars of Eternity 2 allows you to choose either letting the songs in the soundtrack play out, or to dynamically chop and change based on the scenes. The sea shanties while you're sailing around the map are a nice touch.
This was exactly my experience, first time I had ever heard sound out of an audio card.
Between these games and everything Sierra ever released, I really fell in love with both gaming, and computers in general. They led me to learn more about programming, and today I'm still at it.
I used to have LeChuck's PC speaker theme as my cell phone ring.
But the concept of a ringing phone has evolved. Originally, the ringing of a phone was supposed to attract your attention, even if you were far away. You wanted a piercing, obtrusive sound.
Today phones are carried around with you while you hang out with a lot of other people who are also carrying their own phones. Rings and alerts need to be unobtrusive, which makes older-style rings inappropriate. :/
Quite true, and yet I'm saddened by it.
Currently have my smartwatch at the repair center, so I'm actually relying on ringtones again after years of silence and vibrations, and it kind of annoys me that I can't just blast the tetris soundtrack as a ringtone anymore...
I was delighted to see that this level of love for detail has been upheld by other design studios:
Here is a documentary [0] of the development of the orchestral music done for "Creaks" by Amanita Design, famous for "Samorost" and "Machinarium".
They contracted musicians from the Hidden Orchestra who went on to create music that develops and progresses based on how you progress in the game. Watch the documentary, it's really worth it.
Two other examples I can think of are Pokémon (the fifth edition I believe?) on the Nintendo Gameboy where the game will blend the low hp warning beeps into the music when it gets into the critical zone, but then quickly fade it into the background so it won't be annoying. In Nitronic Rush, the predecessor to Distance, the music will adapt to how cut down the players car is and in what mode it is. Flying, driving upside down and on walls will all introduce their own instrument mix.
Disappointingly, the successors of both games didn't feature those mechanics.
So far the puzzles have been fun, but not very difficult. The plot is a bit heavy with references to the story of the earlier games, but perhaps not too much (my partner enjoyed it too, having only played The Curse of Monkey Island, but not the others).
The "new" art style is a bit odd at first but it's nice and consistent and it has a style of its own. All the earlier games had a different art style to each other too, partly because the early installments had technical limitations they had to cope with (and then there was that thing with the 3d graphics).
The sound track is very nice with some tunes you'll probably know.
This is a great video essay. I especially enjoy seeing how they used progressive enhancement to take advantage of the leading hardware at the time, while still accommodating older systems.
I never enjoyed these types of games as a kid, and I never beat them. I'm thinking specifically of Myst, its sequel, and Monkey Island. I'm not an idiot, but whatever particular type of problem-solving skill is required to enjoy these games, I just don't have it. I can enjoy the most complicated and convoluted strategy games or RPGs, but somehow those skills don't translate to knowing which thing to click on with which other thing. I can't be the only one, right? A reasonably smart person who outright fails at point-and-click puzzle games?
I never got them either - but they seem to be to be like cryptic crosswords, where the logic of the puzzles is a thing that exists divorced from the (apparent) context, and it's about understanding a bunch of conventions specific to the puzzle designer and the subculture around them.
Exhaustive search is as much the solution to Point & Click adventures as save scumming is the solution to action games / RNG-heavy games - you can beat the game that way but it isn't the intended way and probably not the most fun one. That is unless by exhaustive search you mean you need to explore other scenes available to you when you are stuck somewhere.
While some adventure games do rely on so-called "moon logic", the solutions are pretty much never completely arbitrary but rather require you to think out of the box, take descriptions/names/etc. literally even when that would not make sense in the real world, always look for possible puns or other jokes. Play enough of them and you will quickly get an intuition for these puzzles.
Of course, there are P&C adventures that go for more realistic puzzles if that is what you prefer. You'll still need a sense for puzzles though and won't always immediately know what to try next.
Many of the puzzles are illogical, or only make sense in "video game land" type logic similar to how Looney Tunes cartoons work with their own rules. So yeah, intelligence is not necessarily that important compared with obstinately trying everything. I was pretty good at them, but mostly due to being stubborn.
Personally though, I always had the most fun with these as a bunch of pre-teen friends standing around the computer throwing out ideas. I really struggle to play a lot of puzzle games now that I'm older since I miss that dynamic, and tend to stick to more straightforward ones like Tametsi/Hexcells (think Sudoku/Minesweeper).
Well, Myst is like 100 times more difficult than something lighthearted like Monkey Island. Those two games are almost different genres and not really comparable I would say.
I feel similarly, although I always felt the gameplay system itself was flawed, rather than blaming my own ineptitude. It felt like quite often I'd be stuck trying every combo of items with elements in the environment until some arcane combination unlocked the next bit pf story/gameplay. It seemed like such a shame because the design and scriptwriting were so good.
I completed a bunch of Sierra and Infocom games in my youth, 20 or so.
Can't recall many without reaching out for a hint here or there. There's always things in these types of games that are totally illogical. I'm suspect of anyone who says they beat these things with zero help at all as IME it's down to myopia in writing/design in most cases.
I played the prologue. The new engine is great although I'm still not convinced by the art style. It's not horrible by any means but I don't find it as charming as MI2 and MI3.
At the core of nostalgia it isn’t just about an specific object or event that we cherish, but also the ERA during which it occurred, and the special people from that age:
My uncle who introduced me to computers, his eccentric genius friend who built a DIY amplifier for me, my aunt who walked in and smiled as I was humming the game’s tune while paddling across the swamp in Monkey Island 2… my other uncle who helped me read my first novel, The Hobbit, fanning my interest in the weird and whimsy, and passed away just before Rings of Power aired…
Mortality’s a bitch. I’m grateful for these little time machines, and I wonder what long-awaited sequel or remake will come out after I’m gone.. :)
I won't disagree, but there's a bit of rose tinted glasses of nostalgia here.
A few years back I tried playing The Secret of Monkey Island again (special edition from Steam), and it wasn't quite as great as I remembered. The special edition has got voice acting, but the original script (which was for text) doesn't lend itself to voice acting (dialogue feels odd) and having it text only felt a bit archaic.
I replayed the remakes of 1 and 2 with my son 2
3-4 years ago and we both greatly enjoyed them. I think they held in up very well. Voice acting was great.
Alternatively, if you want to experience the previous games but don’t feel like playing them you can watch full playthroughs of the previous games on YouTube without commentary.
The same channel that posted said video has posted full play through no commentary videos of other games in the series also.
I watched a few of these a while ago during night time as while I was falling asleep. As a mix between background noise and something that I paid some amount of attention to. Same way that a friend of mine likes to put on movies sometimes when going to sleep.
In the main menu of the game, there's a "scrapbook" feature with a brief history of Guybrush Threepwood's adventures if you haven't played the earlier editions.
But the game (as far as I played it so far) contains a lot of characters and jokes that might be more fun if you've played the earlier ones.
If you want to play them, there are "special editions" of the first two in Steam. They have improved graphics and voice acting, with the option of switching to the original graphics and back with the press of a button.
To understand where the plot picks up, you should (re)play MI1 and MI2.
A few things I understand were borrowed from Curse of MI, but you don't need to know them beforehand. They were borrowed because they are charming and funny, not because they add something to the canon (cannon?).
MI3 may not have had Ron Gilbert’s involvement, but fits perfectly with 1 and 2. It’s an awesome game. MI4 was OK, but not memorable, and the 3D wasn’t a good fit for it.
> 3 4 and the Telltalle series... you won't miss much.
Fair enough about the others, but that’s a controversial opinion about 3, which is critically acclaimed and a classic for anyone played it as a kid in the late 90s. It only gets criticised because Ron Gilbert wasn’t involved.
The voice acting cast from it are nearly all in Return, along with lots of references, so it’s canon for Gilbert purists now too!
CoMI (which is 25 years old) definitely is a classic to my generation, who mostly played it before any of the other games. It just gets complained about by older folks who played 1 & 2 first because Ron Gilbert wasn’t involved - which I can understand, but it’s a shame because it’s such an incredible game.
I played 2hours and actually it is definitely so much for fans that I would say everyone should play at least the first one (secret of monkey island) first before playing this one (and then why not play the second one, too? :D).
So much I can say: This definitely feels like a Monkey Island game.
Game 3 and 4 (The Curse of Monkey Island and Escape from Monkey Island) come with the caveat that they are from the Windows 9x period. Getting them to run reliably on a modern computer is an adventure in its own right.
There was ResidualVM for Escape from MI which has been merge with ScummVM. I haven't tried in a while but it was playable from what I remember (even if controls were still a pain)
> Getting them to run reliably on a modern computer is an adventure in its own right.
I always enjoyed this meta game back when it was fiddling with config.sys and such. Shouldn't need that for a 9x game, but other fiddling would make sense.
The first two are wonderful games. Charm aside, they are quite fair for adventure games while not being easy (though if you want easy, walk-through guides are a click away)
Gosh, the writing in that game. So good. It and Disco Elysium make me yearn for better writing in other video games. It is so rare for me to feel that way – Dragon Age: Origins is another one.
You made my day. I did not even know about this. This is one of the series I enjoyed the most in my whole gaming life. And there has been quite a bit of that.
About an hour in, and I'm pretty happy with the art. Doesn't detract at all from the game. I liked the art style of Monkey Island 3 the most, but this is also good.
Of course, I wasn't expecting pixel art. I played the remakes with the new modern art and I liked them a lot. But this angular art is a bit too abstract for me. Hopefully it will grow on me or at least it won't detract from the game.
It seems to me like it kinda catches the art style of Day of the Tentacle better than DotT: Remastered did. It's pretty funny considering that Ron Gilbert wasn't a fan of DotT art style, but I think it works well here.
Agreed. I really don't like the art style. I've never played the original games though so I would like to get around to playing them before I play this though anyway.
Many people have troubles with it launching to a black screen on GNU/Linux (including Deck). Switching the renderer from Vulkan to DirectX 12 in config file seems to sometimes help.
Appears to work on Deck, although the Steam Store page doesn't list any compatibility information yet and protondb doesn't have any entries. But I'd say your chances are good that it runs on linux without issue.
Fantastic art style (although I'm not digging the character faces especially). The trailer is superb, makes you (me, that is) really excited for the game... something that cannot be said about a lot of game trailers these days.
Having played and enjoyed the originals (1,2), this is a disappointment to me. Not because it's terrible, but because we've seen it all before. It feels empty and a rehash of the past without reaching the same heights. A hollow cash grab if you will (those who played thimbleweed park will maybe understand what I mean).
But then again, Monkey Island was never really my favorite LucasArts series or even top 3. Day of the tentacle and Fate of Atlantis are for me the absolute pinnacle of the genre and the best of Lucas with Loom and Grim Fandango close behind.
Looking forward to playing, but there's no way in hell I'm buying this with DRM. Especially not a monkey island game. This I want to own properly, and show my kids one day. Not "rent with disclaimers".
Majority of Apple chips unlikely to be M1/M2. Apple started shipping M1 not until late 2020, so just two years of people being able to purchase them, compared to what, ~13 years of being able to buy Intel machines. Surely there are more Intel Macs out there still.
Anyone that doesn't like the art style, why? There's a controversy around it, and I don't see an issue with the art. The EGA era was my favorite era of PC gaming, but I like anything except obviously-3D games. Think King's Quest 8. They don't age well, and are awkward for games with a staged isometric viewpoint.
They just opened up the tech support forum [1]. Several people are complaining about it taking too much CPU, but luckily you can turn the wattage down and limit the FPS to alleviate that problem.
It took me an hour of switching between OS releases and Proton versions, but eventually it started to work on my Deck (initially the game ran but only showed a black screen).
Oh boy, this brings back distant memories, I remember playing Monkey Island and Day of the tentacles from Lucasarts. Too bad I don't have time to give this one a try but I will definitely watch some youtubers play it.
Are there any recommendations for similar games? I've been craving such games (on mobile and on PC) but I haven't found too many. Grim Fandango from the past was one of my favorites.
* Besides Grim Fandango which you already mentioned, Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle have also gotten remasters by Double Fine
* Deponia series, Edna & Harvey and the sequel, The Whispered World and Silence by Daedalic - too bad that they seem to have stopped making P&C adventures
* The Journey Down series
* STASIS, CAYNE and Beautiful Desolutation
* Paradigm
* Kathy Rain
* The Fall (you aim instead of clicking but otherwise it fits)
* The Longest Journey, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and Dreamfall: Chapters
* J.U.L.I.A.: Among the Stars
Of course if you some of these might be stretching the "similar" part a bit depending on what you are looking for.
Oh, this was not on my radar. What a pleasant surprise. I don't care for the last decades of 3D shooters, but this is a game I will finally check out again.
It's probably easiest to just say "yo ho" and find a pirate copy to use with ScummVM at this point, I did that with MI1/2 around the time the rereleases came out and it was super easy to find a good copy of both.
GoG, and I think Steam, have official releases that have updated graphics with a toggle built-in to switch between old graphics and new anytime you want.
Such a drag that Apple doesn't care at all about app compatibility and happily breaks iOS games every year, offloading a maintenance burden on developers, who have to keep updating their games/apps for every new iOS release just to keep them working at all.
The 32-bit apocalypse didn't help and I think it might have been what specifically killed the Monkey Island games on iOS.
Then Apple went to macOS and broke the 32-bit game libraries on Steam and the Mac App store...
MacOS would need a Tb of disk space to store all the emulators and libraries if every CPU architecture would have to be supported indefinitely. And Macs would be more expensive than they already are.
Secret of Monkey Island 2 was my first PC game on a 486SX and VGA monitor. The sound came out of the PC speakers... One day I got an Adlib card and was blown away. Go ahead and download the remake on steam and notice something that kind of doesn't exist in any game (that I know): when you enter the scene on Scabb Island, the relaxed reggae beat changes ever so subtly depending on the bridge, the carpenter shop, the mapmaker, the bar, etc.
For example, you enter the mapmaker and the Wally music comes on, which is the same reggae bagdrop to a clarinet or oboe, the music is a little deeper in the carpenter shop, there's an evil background tone when Largo LaGrande shows up and a more subtle one in the hotel, etc.
With gorgeous hand painted digitized art.
They don't make games like that anymore. Can't wait to see if they actually did.