How many times have you asked yourself, “Self, I wonder what the CMI audition material looks like?” Odds are never, because who would even think about anything like that. Turns out spielbergfan1 did, as he has gotten his grubby hands on 70+ pages of the stuff. To quote:
This took some time to fully collect, but the bundle is FINALLY complete! Behold, the original audition copy, character sketches, some cutscene storyboards, and even an unused background plate/game sequence angle thrown in for good measure for "The Curse of Monkey Island!" An immense thank you to my contact, who worked on this game, for providing me with all of this! "The Curse of Monkey Island" is very near and dear to my heart, and I’m beyond elated that I have the honor of getting to preserve this material from the LucasArts days of old (it makes me sad to type that out). Anyway, I hope you enjoy this blast of nostalgia. I know I did! Here’s hoping we one day get more games (and even a movie or two) from this franchise!
As the man of fine taste he is, he decided to send it all to us. To wit:
Thanks spielbergfan1! #2 is just an ass in our book.
Thank you so much spielbergfan1 for obtaining this and sharing it!!
I'll definitely look to add that actually-alternate version of Haggis (along with the Captain Rottingham) to the doodles on my take on the Insult Swordfighting pages.
Haggis here has a slightly different coat/buttons along with a tuft of chest hair, compared to the other concept art of the three Barbary Coast pirates.
Kroms
The sketch of King Andre and Cruff looks like Steve Purcell's work, doesn't it?
The Voodoo Lady in the news post (presumably) definitely is.
The dialogue changes are so interesting. Guybrush going gaga over Elaine ("You are the wind my sails. The treasure in my heart. You are the...lime for the scurvy in my soul") is a wise cut ("plunder bunny" is a better version of the same joke), but they actually wrote dialogue that gestures at Guybrush escaping the carnival and then—again, wisely—cut it. It's illustrative of Guybrush that you have the faith he somehow escaped...on a dodgem, with a balloon in his pocket. It'd be random, except you'd played the first two games, or at least about to use bubblegum and that balloon to steal a gold tooth.
The sketch of King Andre and Cruff looks like Steve Purcell's work, doesn't it?
What a treasure. Thank you, again.
It's kind of chilling that this stuff survives only because it fell into the hands of a fan with enough character to understand its importance on a preservation level. Is the implication that it would have just been left to decompose otherwise? On the one hand we have a number of examples of Lucasfilm boasting state of the art archival standards, and on the other we have situations like this, or old SCUMM design documents seemingly existing only because Aric Wilmunder thought to keep them, or the neoprene Ben Throttle display getting saved from a dumpster because a programmer happened to notice, etc.
I shudder to think of how much one-of-a-kind material related to these games is already lost, and how much of a role sheer luck and happenstance will play in minimizing those losses going forward.