Oh,
Monkey Island... you taught me all the best lessons when I was growing up. Like how to poison dogs, which protective gear to use when being fired out of a cannon, and how to survive a fall from a cliff. Also, just a heads up: trying to win a fight in real life by slinging insults does not always help.
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The Secret of Monkey Island is a
1990 point-and-click graphic adventure game developed and published by
Lucasfilm Games. It takes place in a fantastic version of the
Caribbean during the age of piracy. The player assumes the role of
Guybrush Threepwood, a young man who dreams of becoming a pirate and explores fictional islands while solving puzzles.
The game was conceived in
1988 by Lucasfilm employee
Ron Gilbert, who designed it with
Tim Schafer and
Dave Grossman.
Gilbert's frustrations with contemporary adventure titles led him to make the player character's death almost impossible, which meant that gameplay focused the game on exploration.
The atmosphere was based on that of the
Pirates of the Caribbean theme park ride. The Secret of Monkey Island was the fifth game built with the
SCUMM engine, which was heavily modified to include a more user-friendly
interface.
Critics praised The Secret of Monkey Island for its humor, audiovisuals, and gameplay. The game spawned a number of sequels, collectively known as the
Monkey Island series.
Gilbert, Schafer and Grossman also led the development of the sequel
Monkey Island 2:
LeChuck's Revenge. LucasArts released a remake of the original in 2009, which was also well received by the gaming press.
The Secret of Monkey Island is a 2D adventure game played from a third-person perspective. Via a point-and-click interface, the player guides protagonist Guybrush Threepwood through the game's world and interacts with the environment by selecting from twelve verb commands (nine in newer versions) such as "talk to" for communicating with characters and "pick up" for collecting items between commands and the world's objects in order to successfully solve puzzles and thus progress in the game. While conversing with other characters, the player may choose between topics for discussion that are listed in a dialog tree; the game is one of the first to incorporate such a system. Like other
LucasArts adventure games, The Secret of Monkey Island features a design philosophy that makes the player character's death nearly impossible.
LucasArts released a remake with updated audiovisuals titled The Secret of Monkey Island:
Special Edition in July 2009 for iPhone,
Microsoft Windows, and Xbox
360 exclusively via digital distribution.
PlayStation 3,
Mac OS and iPad versions followed early in
2010 for download on their respective services. The remake features hand-drawn visuals with more detail, a remastered musical score, voice work for characters, and a hint system. The developers included the
function to switch between 2009 and original audiovisuals at will.
The voice actors included
Dominic Armato as Guybrush Threepwood and
Earl Boen as LeChuck; most had provided voice work in sequels to The Secret of Monkey Island.
LucasArts's game producer
Craig Derrick and his team conceived the idea of the remake in 2008. After researching the Monkey Island series' history, they decided to make "something fresh and new while staying true to the original", which resulted in the idea of The Secret of Monkey Island's remake. The developers tried to leave much of the original design unchanged. Any changes were intended to achieve the level of immersion desired for the original. To that end, they added details like a pirate ship or pirates talking in the background of scenes.
Like the original release, The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition received positive reviews from critics. Sean Ely of GamePro praised its updated audio, and said that the new graphics "blow the old clunker visuals
... out of the water". He cited its script, humor, plot, puzzles and balanced difficulty level as high points, and finished, "The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition is impressive, hilarious and downright worth your money."
Daemon Hatfield of
IGN wrote, "
Almost 20 years after its release, [The Secret of Monkey Island] remains a blast to play." He called the new graphics "slick, if a little generic", and noted that the "original graphics have a certain charm to them that the fancy pants new visuals just don't." However, he enjoyed the redone music, the new hint function, and the added sound effects and voice acting. He summarized it as "one of the best times you'll ever have pointing and clicking", and noted that "few games are this funny."
The Secret of Monkey Island. (
2015,
December 11). In
Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index
.php?title=The_Secret_of_Monkey_Island&oldid;=694815777
- published: 21 Feb 2016
- views: 120