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Monkey Island To Return
Briareos was one of several readers to write with news that TellTale Games, along with LucasArts, will be bringing new Monkey Island games later this year. Tales of Monkey Island will be a series of episodic games released for PC and WiiWare in the coming months, and The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition will be a remake of the original 1990 game, available on the PC and Xbox Live. A trailer is available for the former, and this is what the press release says about the latter: "The development team at LucasArts is bringing the game into the modern era with all-new HD graphics, a re-mastered musical score, full voiceover, and an in-depth hint system has been added to help players through the game's side-splitting puzzles. Purists will also delight in the ability to seamlessly switch between the updated HD graphics and the original's classic look." Grumpy Gamer has a nostalgic look back at the franchise.
One of the original designers, the original composer and a few other members of the original team, plus the voice cast from games 3 and 4, are in this game's development team.
I'm hopeful.
Every other story that has been run lately has been about games.
That happens around video gaming trade shows such as E3. Expect it to die off by the end of the week.
TellTale have done very well with the Sam & Max games. If they're involved, I'm a lot more confident that this'll turn out well.
Please don't ruin it.
The "re-imagining" special edition looks like a slam-dunk. Same locations, same script, same puzzles - you can even toggle between the original presentation and the new one on the fly. They've re-recorded the dialogue, arranged the chip music for real instruments and recorded that, painted HD scenery and animated HD sprites.
The video at http://www.lucasarts.com/games/monkeyisland/ convinced me: this is something I want to pay money for.
Conversely, Telltale's Sam & Max games were OK, but a pale reflection of the original LucasArts game, so I'm less excited about their new episodes of Monkey Island.
Many readers of TFA won't realise that 'Grumpy Gamer' is Ron Gilbert, one of the creative geniuses behind Monkey Island. His blog post is fascinating.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Monkey_Island#Running_gags
er... Dune 2 was already remade once with the Red Alert engine. See: Dune 2000. Then again, even the remake is over 10 years old...
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
they recruited Tim Shafer to help manage the project. He was there for MI 1 + 2. This guy had a talent for helping producing some of Lucas Art's more creative adventure games: Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, and Full Throttle ... skip the last one, they force him to do that. Since Lucas Arts killed their adventure games department and focused on rehashing Star Wars themes, its been hard for me to get excited about anything they announce lately, as it's probably motivated by money more than anything else. Oh well, at least Brutal Legends is coming out soon.
Then change slashdot preferences to not show Game articles.
Lucasarts isn't making it. It's being made by Telltale Games, which is mainly composed of the same people who originally did all the good games from Lucasarts way back when.
They are the same people who recently did two seasons of new beautiful episodic Sam & Max games and are gearing up for a third.
Technoli
"That pig shaped bush frightens and confuses me."
- Guybrush Threepwood, Escape from Monkey Island
"That's the second biggest monkey head I've ever seen."
- Guybrush Threepwood, Escape from Monkey Island
"Somehow I knew that in hell there would be mushrooms."
- Guybrush Threepwood, Monkey Island
http://www.quoteaddict.com/
But later I learned that both Monkey Island and the POTC film were referring to much earlier source material: the POTC ride at Disneyland.
The broad outlines of the pirate adventure were in place while the Black Flag still flew over the Caribbean:
Captain Charles Johnson and The General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates [1724]
Doug Fairbanks made a memorable Black Pirate. [1926] Errol Flynn's Captain Blood [1935] and The Sea Hawk [1940] are as good as it gets.
Stevenson's Treasure Island was published in 1883.
It has never been out of print, never left the theatrical stage in all the years since. Film, radio, and TV adaptations are almost beyond counting.
Wallace Beery for MGM in 1934 and Robert Newton in 1950 became Long John Silver for two generations of kids.