If you’re an avid Wireframe reader, this article should already be familiar to you. If not, get ready to dig into the many towns of the Monkey Island universe, from Secret to Return in a scholarly essay. An excerpt—and as this is The Year of “Escape from Monkey Island”, it seems like an appropriate example:
We wanted it to feel well-manicured and inviting. This is where all the ill-gotten pirate booty got laundered, and the banks, lawyers, etc. became a thriving society. While it looks bright, shiny, and happy, to Mike [Stemmle, co-director] and I, it was more of a cynical statement about ‘professional pirates’. We used images from tropical seaports and a lot of organic shapes and brighter colours. The idea wasn’t necessarily that it was an amazing paradise, but it wanted to look like one.
That’s from Sean Clark, speaking about Lucre Town. In fact, almost all the familiars are quoted in the article: Gilbert, Grossman, Fox, and so on and so forth. As far as Monkey Island architecture goes, it’s a must-read .
Author Konstantinos Dimopoulos might be familiar to some of you—he co-wrote Virtual Cities: An Atlas & Exploration of Video Game Cities which covered Grim Fandango’s Rubacava among other things. It got stellar reviews around these parts:
“DON’T BE SUCKED IN” — 
The LucasArts content is a bit limited, but if your gaming interest spans multiple genres you’ll find plenty to enjoy.