Chris Baker, who worked as a studio publicist for LucasArts in the mid-2000s, shared an interesting memory with Craig Derrick on Twitter today...
It’s a shame. The game would have been a beautiful fit on that handheld. Alas, in 2006 LucasArts had other priorities, such as Thrillville and hating you. But hey, with Return to Monkey Island being a bona fide instant classic and all, we live in a more optimistic time where no-brainer ports are concerned.
Source: Twitter
Man, a fella could get used to reporting on Monkey Island articles at Lucasfilm.com. As part of its “Defining Moments” series, the official Lucasfilm web presence has gone and blogged about The SCUMM Bar, and I say good on ‘em.
Among other ruminations on the iconic Monkey Island location, the author makes an interesting attempt to tie in The SCUMM Bar with the theories of Joseph Campbell, whose concept of the monomyth was famously an influence on George Lucas’s approach to stories:
The SCUMM Bar has similarities with other Lucasfilm stories as well. In Star Wars: A New Hope, Obi-Wan Kenobi introduces Luke Skywalker to the settlement of Mos Eisley, describing the spaceport as a “wretched hive of scum and villainy.” The dusty cantina they visit lives up to the Jedi’s blunt description. At an early stage in the journey depicted in Willow, the small but courageous Willow Ufgood carries the baby Elora Danan into a foreboding tavern full of human-sized Daikini. He finds no one caring enough to help him, and some are even openly hostile. And of course, we can all remember more than one instance when Indiana Jones wanders into a local watering hole.
All of these moments are examples of “crossing the threshold,” a phrase coined by mythologist Joseph Campbell (a friend and important influence on George Lucas) in his discussion of the mythical hero’s journey. Campbell illuminated how this story structure is common to ancient myths and legends from around the world. This crossing from the familiar safety of one’s home into the strange and dangerous wider world marks the start of an adventure.
Speaking of Willow – and go ahead and take in the effing BALLERINA-LIKE GRACE of my masterful segues here – we have Joanne Whalley dishing to Entertainment Weekly on her return as Sorsha in the upcoming sequel series. And did we mention Christian Slater is in it? House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings are putting forth a strong face, but we know they’re quivering on the inside.
Mixnmojo: Proving the theory that if you stubbornly stick around for enough decades, Lucasfilm will eventually grow bored enough to once again acknowledge the stuff you actually care about.
Source: Lucasfim.com
One of those names that seems to always be in the credits, Brad Taylor has had a crucial role on just about every SCUMM game from The Secret of Monkey Island onward, both at LucasArts and Humongous. Alongside Aric Wilmunder and SCUMM's originator Ron Gilbert, he was a key figure in the maintenance and maturation of the celebrated story system over its long years of service, all while preserving its critical separation of complexity from the designers, writers and artists so that their focus could stay on the creative aspects of the games.
So when Arcade Attack publishes a 100-minute conversation with the guy, it amounts to something close to self-care that you watch it:
Source: Arcade Attack
Perversely, there appears to be an institutional expectation that there should be reviews of Return to Monkey Island beyond our own. But hey, we’re easy, we can play along. So check out our roundup of today’s many reviews beneath this rockin’ Nintendo launch trailer:
Since April they’ve taken questions from the professionals, mitigating the risk of death with regulation harnesses and safety nets, and now at last they’ve worked up the nerve to go BASE jumping. Or as the hobbyists and civilians call it: a Mixnmojo interview. Don’t bother releasing your Monkey Island game without one.
Join acknowledged heartthrobs elTee and Marius (in his Mojo debut!) as they chat up Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman about their much-ballyhooed return to the shores of Monkey Island -- a sequel which is so hotly anticipated, we’re actually starting to have to consider paying our server costs up through its release date (Footnote: You know, the one that’s days away, for goodness sake?). I’m rather excited myself to see how much of the interview ended up making it past the Lucasfilm brand director, so let’s all enjoy it together.
If you've been following Aaron on Twitter, it's pretty clear that his efforts to emulate Grim Fandango (in its original, shipped-in-1998 form) for presumed DREAMM support have made material progress. Perhaps the clearest sign of that is this morning's implication that he's already started down the path of standing up the second of the GrimE engine duology, that undisputed crown jewel of the LucasArts adventure pantheon, Escape from Monkey Island:
Bless him.
Source: Aaron's Twitter
A lot went down at PAX in Seattle over the weekend, and as you may have gleaned if you’re one of those social media types, good times were had by all who attended. As with Gamescom last week, an elaborate booth devoted to Return to Monkey Island – a wooden replica of the High Street of Mêlée Island – was on hand for photo opportunity and general shock and awe:
This time, the team was also in the hall for fans and press to mingle with, and the panels were evidently no slouch either: You may have caught the livestream of the expo’s much-touted gathering of influential old people, otherwise known as “Adventure Game Heroes & Legends.” Moderated by Frank Cifaldi, the hour-and-a-half-long conversation featured Ron, Ken Williams, Roberta Williams, Al Lowe, Dave Gilbert and Jane Jenson. If you weren’t tuning in live, you can find it archived below:
As for ReMI-specific coverage, so far there’s a pay-walled interview with Ron from Rock Paper Shotgun (what the hell, guys), and presumably more to come, but you’ll probably find the real gold on the developers’ Twitter accounts. Highlights include the ReMI team photo (probably the first time many of them were physically together since the game got started), the starstruck gushing of Neil, Druckmann, and hands-down the event’s best T-shirt.
The benevolent madness was said to have culminated in a ReMI wrap party, which Mojo may have technically attended by abstraction if the rumors (or, you know, photo evidence) that Jake weaseled his way past the bouncer are true. I’m getting the light here, so in closing I’ll steer two interviews out of Gamescom that we'd overlooked your way: one from publication Heis Online (original German here; English translation here), and another from Hobbyconsolas (original Spanish here; English translation here).
Those of you who didn’t have the spending money to hit PAX should have plenty of material from the expo (occurring as we speak) to look forward to soon. Even ahead of it, though, the ReMI press tour sailed on with a new interview from webzine GamersGlobal featuring Ron, Dave and Rex. The article is in German, the official language of adventure games, but here’s an excerpt from Google’s loose English translation:
GamersGlobal: In Return to Monkey Island you didn't just make decisions about the graphics that maybe not everyone likes. For example, the new part is not a sequel that takes over all the decisions and events of the predecessors. One or the other should be difficult for the fans to swallow.
Ron Gilbert: I don't think that's true. In other words, there were already a number of discrepancies between the previous parts. One of the first things Dave and I talked about in the beginning was which part of the canon we were going to follow and which part we weren't going to. Because a lot of the Monkey Island canon came from a time when Dave and I were no longer responsible for the games. We do not agree with all ideas. Others are clear fan favorites, like Guybrush and Elaine's wedding. While I personally feel that this should never have happened, I am against this marriage - but we cannot seriously backtrack and undo it. We briefly considered whether they might be divorced in our part. Or if they could never have married. But we quickly dismissed that. Fans love the idea that they got married. There is no turning back.
Another example would be: I never understood why Guybrush should be afraid of china. Serious? But we said what the heck, we won't deal with that. Dave summed it up very well: You ignore canon whenever it gets in the way of storytelling. So we respect canon as much as we can, but if it gets in our way... we don't hit it or anything, but we just don't pay it any attention at that point.
Though the noun came out the other end of the AI as “china,” one ascertains that Ron isn’t the biggest fan of the porcelain joke, and thus this trait of Guybrush’s will be censored in ReMI, which is just how Ron rolls.
There’s more great stuff in the interview, including the surprisingly open-ended position Ron takes on the series’ future (Relevant: Beloved, you-thought-he-was-dead community member Captain Mystery has triumphantly returned to notice that the descriptor “conclusion” has been artfully expunged from ReMI promotional spiels), so do read the full article for maximum cognizance of all Monkey tidbits.
Source: GamersGlobal
Though the movie is still almost a year away, the score for Indiana Jones 5 is currently being recorded, and John Williams got permission to play a piece for a live audience at The Hollywood Bowl. A rogue cell phone then did what it must. Enjoy “Helena’s Theme,” which belongs to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character:
And let me round up a few items while I’m here by pointing out that the Willow series was recently previewed by Entertainment Weekly. Meanwhile, The Dig gets its turn being rotated into the Prime Gaming catalog. Nice to see they’re getting to seemingly every last one.
Source: YouTube
DREAMM was originally intended as an emulator for the DOS-based SCUMM games, but Aaron just couldn't abide a missing title, so he walked one last barefooted mile in broken glass, emulating just enough Win32 to support The Curse of Monkey Island.
Without promising anything, it seems he's being plagued with another itch:
Though the geography of the Edison mansion makes about as much sense as the Overlook Hotel when you try to diagram it out, the principles of sound engineering haven’t stopped amusing attempts at visualizing some parody of a floor plan. Take, for example, this loose stab at the impossible from the game’s Nintendo Power preview back in the fall of 1990:
Well, it looks like you’ll be seeing another attempt to map the mansion, along with the overworlds to 35 or so other NES games. It’s all part of the upcoming book Video Game Maps: NES & Famicom: Greatest Hits Edition, which appear to be a curated version of a larger book. Here’s a promotional tweet that shows Maniac Mansion made the cut:
Pre-order the book here.
Source: Retro Game Books
Show your love for the Fatherland and enjoy Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, available on Prime Gaming as part of the August batch of titles:
It doesn't make up for cancelling Truth Seekers, but I suppose Amazon accidentally knows what it's doing now and again.
Source: Prime Gaming
You might not consider Hitman 3 fertile ground for a Monkey Island easter egg, but with the launch of the new extra-piratey location, Ambrose Island, that has very much changed.
Eurogamer reports of a gravestone in the level, for one "G Threepwood, Mighty Pirate," and not only that, an associated treasure hunt you can engage in to dig up some treasure from our favourite swashbuckler's grave.
Apparently they do it in this very long video, but I took literally minutes to look through it and couldn't find it, so I'll leave that as a little challenge for YOU, the reader.
Source: Eurogamer
It's all in this tweet:
The correct answer is clearly "monkey6.exe", but I can be a good sport and carry on the fiction of democracy by encouraging you to cast a vote yourself.
Source: Twitter
So this showed up on Twitter:
I dunno anything about DeathCharger, but these offerings look rather bootleggy to me, and Laserschwert seems to think that some of this stuff is derived from restoration work of his (thx, Jan), and faulty old versions at that.
On the other hand, history tells us that merchandise which is shamelessly fan-sourced doesn't necessarily mean it isn't authorized, and here we have a Lucasfilm employee promoting it, so it's hard to know what to think.
For my money, the only item of interest here is the recreation of the vintage long-sleeved T-shirt that few mortals have had an opportunity to own since 1991, so it'll be interesting to hear how well those came out. And can we do the Maniac Mansion one next?
Source: DeathCharger
The British quiz show "The Chase" had a Monkey Island question the other night, and someone on Twitter has the proof:
Source: Twitter
If you’re not paying attention to samandmax.co.uk, you’re decidedly not part of the cool crowd. The site’s latest feature is an interview with voice actor Chuck Kourouklis, a recurring cast presence in the Telltale catalog. His more notable roles were Mr. Norrington in Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse and the Ferryman to the pirate crossroads in Tales of Monkey Island.
What were the recording sessions like for Sam & Max?
Damn difficult in one respect – like many of the best-written projects, you fall apart like Harvey Korman in a Carol Burnett skit (am I giving you all some wild stuff to Google and YouTube or what?) Seriously, you just break up and collapse laughing in the most inopportune moments, and Sam & Max was MURDER that way. I hope at least there was a writer gratified to hear how he wrecked my professionalism, somewhere in the creative chain…
Read his recollections in full, and look forward to re-experiencing his Sam & Max performance in higher quality whenever Skunkape can get that Season 3 remaster to you.
And speaking of Sam & Max voice actors, let me quickly work in this month-old tweet of a fan’s happy run-in with Bill Farmer, the original Sam and parenthetically the voice of Goofy.
Source: samandmax.co.uk
Twitch hostess extraordinaire Cressup is continuing to notch her belt with sensational long-form interviews. This time her subject is your lawful Guybrush and internet friend Dominic Armato, who so badly wants to share more about Return to Monkey Island than he's allowed to, but the sheer enthusiam he gives off is sales hype enough. Watch and be delighted.
Source: Cressup
This is a rather momentous year, and was shaping up to be that way before we came down with an aggravated case of Return to Monkey Island. That announcement would have been enough to dine out on through December 31st, but you might recall that we were already celebrating the 25th anniversary of The Curse of Monkey Island*, the third and in some respects most influential Monkey Island game.
And while we can’t speak for how you were celebrating it, we were doing it the Mojo way: By kidnapping Jonathan Ackley and Larry Ahern, trapping them in a giant bottle, foisting 600 questions on them to answer in longhand, and occasionally reminding them that air holes are for closers. The end result is right here for your discerning entertainment. If Lucasfilm doesn’t see fit to give this game a remaster, you know who not to blame.
*Not to mention Mixnmojo itself, as the fan scene and CMI are very much joined at the hip in that babymaking heyday of early internet access that was the mid-to-late-90s.
Bill Tiller has decided to acknowledge the aforementioned availability of A Vampyre Story on Zoom-Platform with some cool art. Hey, whatever pretext he needs. Check it out:
Source: AVS Facebook Page