Articles

Bill updating Curse of Monkey Island backgrounds on spec? 03 Oct, 2020 / 6 comments

In the aforementioned Wireframe Magazine spread on Monkey Island for the series’ 30th anniversary (buy it here, or click here for a preview), a fairly remarkable tidbit is casually mentioned. In a section on CMI, a screenshot of The Barbery Coast is featured alongside a revamped, HD version of the location with the following text:

Bill Tiller has recently been repainting some of the game's backgrounds in the hope of convincing Disney to release a new HD version of The Curse of Monkey Island for fans to explore.

News image

This glimpse of the hi-def version is definitely appealing and unsurprisingly reminiscent of Tiller’s more recent adventure game work, although I question whether the spirit of Larry Ahern’s art direction really survives the choice to lose those pencil outlines. Like them or not, they are an elemental component of CMI’s look.

But whatever! The point here is that Bill Tiller has been redoing CMI backgrounds, and that’s headline news. I don’t know how successful he will be at getting Disney’s attention, but maybe the fans can help see this project through somehow. Godspeed, in any case.

I should also mention that there is another magazine spread on Monkey Island this month, published by Retro Gamer in their October issue. You’ll want to buy that too, surely.

Source: Wireframe Magazine

6

6 Comments

  • Avatar
    Rum Rogers on 06 Oct, 2020, 08:59…
    Yeah, the first thing I noticed is the lack of outlines. It's really bad for a game like Curse.
    But at least I'm glad to see a screenshot I personally took make it to the Mojo front page!
  • Avatar
    Kroms on 04 Oct, 2020, 14:09…
    As much as I love the new art, yes, it loses part of its old charm. Bring back the outlines, Bill! We love ya!
  • Avatar
    OzzieMonkey on 04 Oct, 2020, 01:05…
    I hope he succeeds in this. I honestly think the new art looks great, thw real test will be to see how the characters look against the backgrounds
  • Avatar
    ThunderPeel2001 on 03 Oct, 2020, 21:47…
    I’m excited by Bill Tiller taking another stab at his own work. I’d totally buy it!
  • Avatar
    TimeGentleman on 03 Oct, 2020, 16:48…
    Yeah, agreed. It's a nice painting, but the change in style doesn't work. I think the art is hi-res enough (assuming there aren't any originals to be used) that they could probably get good results by AI upscaling then polishing by hand, tbh.
  • Avatar
    Junaid on 03 Oct, 2020, 16:45…
    Ooof, I really don’t like the lack of outlines

Add a comment

What?! You're not registered? You better go and do so now! Or, simply log in: