Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 260: Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge

Episode Date: November 18, 2019

Our informal LucasArts miniseries rolls on with another episode exploring the developer's adventure game output! This time, we focus on 1991's Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, the second entry in the Monkey Island series, and one that marked the departure of creator Ron Gilbert from LucasArts. Though it only came one year after the original game, LeChuck's Revenge expands on this formative adventure in some big, bold ways, and still remains an incredibly impressive showpiece—in terms of both design and production values—nearly 30 years later. On this episode, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, and Fangamer's Nina Matsumoto as the crew journeys off to find Big Whoop and discovers the real treasure was the filthy lucre they found along the way.

This week on Retronauts, we sit in our screaming chairs. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I am your host for this one, Bob Macky, Today's episode is all about Monkey Island 2, La Chucks Revenge. And in case you missed our past episodes on LucasArts Adventure Games, I am doing an informal mini-series about all of them, not in any order, just depending on who I can get and whatever we're doing at the time, whatever is most convenient.

But we're going to go through them all, even the bad ones. But today we're doing a really, really good one, Monkey Island 2, Lechukes Revenge, 1991's Monkey Island 2. Before I go on, any further, who is our special guest today, right across from me here? Hi, it's Nina Matsumoto. I was on the Secret of Monkey Island episode. That's right. That was just a few months ago. So as of this recording, there has been one about the Secret of Monkey Island. There is one about Loom. And I probably won't redo Maniac Mansion because I did a very long episode about that, maybe in like 2016 or 2015. So it's never too early to redo. I got to wait at least five years, five whole years. But yes, who was just talking on the microphone there? Hi, I'm Jeremy Parrish. And I started my day by playing. bubsy on Atari Jaguar.

So I'm ready to talk about some good video games. You flew all the way out here to play Bubsy? I did. That was confusing. How do you have access to Bubsy here? So a few months ago, my friends who live in Alameda, I tend to stay with them a lot when I travel here, one of my friends was out walking her dog, and she saw this stack of video game system boxes, and she sent me a photo and was like, hey, would any of this

stuff interest you? And I said, holy crap, yes. Like there's a Jaguar complete in box. That's like a $3 or $400 system these days. So she grabbed them and took them home. And now that I'm here again, I bought a copy of Bubsy because I thought, what is the most iconic and, you know, like just perfect thing to pair with an Atari Jaguar? Of course, it's Bubsy.

So I bought that cartridge and I brought it with me. And this morning I plugged it in. And even though the cartridge or the system is kind of caked in dirt and built, it worked. And so now I can explore Atari Jaguarks or something. And now people are going to know there's a house somewhere in Alameda with the Bubsy cartridge. So your friends are going to get broken into repeatedly. That's true.

I mean, it's one crisis here after another. There's fires. Now there's bubbsy. It's just there's no respite. I'll take fire over any bubsy bobcat epidemic. But yeah, so Jeremy's on the hook for a bubsy episode, I guess. Oh, we're all in the hook, my friends. Oh, God.

There's only, what, three games, right? I believe there's four. There's Bubsy, Bubsy, Bubsy and Clause Encounters of the furred kind. There's Bubsy 2, Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales for Jaguar. That's an exclusive, my friend. I'm going to bring that system while you play it. Bubzy 3D. And then Bubzy 3D.

And then there's the more recent Bubzy, the reboot, which I haven't even played. So that's real bad. That's a quintology. My God. Talking about Bubzy, I'll make this game seem even better than it is. And it's already an amazing game. So Monkey Island 2. So before we continue, I want to talk about everyone's experience with this game.

And if you listen to my Monkey Island One podcast, I played Monkey Island three first, course of Monkey Island, and then I basically got like the mail order CD-ROM with Monkey Island One and Monkey Island 2 on it. So, Nina, what was your experience with Monkey Island 2? I know you played Monkey Island 1 on a really creaky old computer with two colors to rub together. Yeah, I talked about that in the last episode I was on. I wanted to stress the fact that I never actually finished the Secret of Monkey Island. Island on that, creepy old computer, I wouldn't tell there was a better version.

No, because it's impossible to play the whole thing through. Oh, really? I think. No, not like literally impossible, but it's way too slow. Anyway. No human could do it. Yeah, so Secret of Monkey Island series, or just Mike Kelly's series, is my favorite video game series of all time, like I explained in the last episode. And this one is my favorite video game of all time.

Oh, wow. A favorite video game, period. Yeah. Oh, wow. No wonder you wanted to be on this one. Yeah, of course. I've played this like a billion times. I played it when I first came out. And I remember being so excited for it because I loved the first game so much. And this one, like just from looking at that amazing box, you could tell there's like so much more to it compared to the first one. The graphics were way richer and it just seemed so much darker in tone, which I really enjoyed. And you played this twice for this podcast. I want everyone to know that. Yeah, like the last time I was on this, I played Secret of Mike Island Special Edition twice before coming on this.

And for this one, I played through the Special Edition again, the Special Edition for Mike Island 2 twice, first in its original form, like even with the voice acting, and the second time with the voice acting and the new graphics. We'll talk a lot about that coming up later, the special edition, which is still available and probably one of the best ways to play it if you can't have illegal downloads on your computer, if the FBI is watching you. So when I play through with the classic graphics, I actually did listen to the commentaries whenever they came on. Those are a really neat addition. But even with those on, I finished the game in under two hours because I know this game so well. Like I said, I've played a billion times, and every time I play it, I just, I'm on. I'm constantly impressed all over again by how good the graphics, the music, the writing, and everything is. And you have the achievement to prove it that you know the most.

The achievos? Yeah, because you beat the game less than three. Let me get an achievement. Oh, right, yeah. That was the first time I played the special edition version. You're the true monkey master in this room. Now, Jeremy, there were five video games to play on your Macintosh in 1991, and this is one of them. And yet somehow the Monkey Island series is the SCUM franchise that just never appealed to me.

I just never played it. I meant to, I was really intending to play this game in preparation for the podcast, but then I spent the week dead from the flu and playing bubsy. Oh, man. That'll make you sicker. I'm sorry, I miss, I misprioritized things here. Actually, I forget your, you know, I'm very familiar with, you know, the whole scum universe and LucasArts and so forth.

So I can take the outsider perspective, I guess. Yeah, what is your experience with these kind of adventure games, LucasArts adventure games? I think I forget. I'm not really an adventure game fan in general, but LucasArts are probably the most enjoyable for me, the most maybe tolerable. They have age the best. Yeah, like I played Maniac Mansion.

That was my introduction on NES and really liked it. And so, you know, I played The Dig. What else? Salmon Max. Salmon Max. Okay. Played full throttle, quite a few others. You know, like you said, you know, in the mid-90s,

it was basically like me and a Macintosh and the five games that people were releasing for it. And I didn't want to play Burn Cycle, so it was pretty much Marathon and LucasArts. So, yeah, like, I have enjoyed the scum games, although I think the only one I've ever actually finished all the way through was Maniac Mansion. But I enjoy the animation, the anarchy, the voice acting was always great. Oh, you know, the Indiana Jones games also. Like, those were a lot of fun. It is a spectacle for 1991.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Probably up there with, I would say, like, in the top three prettiest games released that year. So it was 91. That actually predates my owning a MacaDoh. So that's probably why. I got a Mac in like 93. You didn't have $4,000? No, believe it or not. My Macintosh was my graduation present from high school. My parents paid for half of it. And I paid for the other half. They said, well, we'll help you pay for half of a computer or half of a car. And I said, I am a nerd. Please get me a computer. We're going to talk about how much computers used to cost a lot on this miniseries. Especially Macintosh. You would not believe it. Like everything has deescalated in value and price. computers especially. So let's talk about the brief history of this game before you dig into the design and the graphics and the sound. So

this game was released in December of 1991 for many platforms. I believe MSDOS came first, but there was also a Mac version, FM Towns version, Amiga version. There was no console port. I think there was one planned because the Secret of Monkey Island had a Sega CD port, which I don't think was very good, just because of all the loading. This was the only Monkey

Island game you could play in your car in your car. In your car. With the car marty. Oh, there was a car Marty. Oh, man. That sounds dangerous. It sounds terrible, but yes, there was an FM Towns Marty that was installed in cars. So you could have played Monkey Island while cruising down the highway. Yeah, for whatever reason, FM Towns had like, had Maynac Mansion, it had Monkey Island and Loom. And there was like, I don't know if Japan ever cared about Western Adventure games after that, but FM Towns was like a place to go for those. So this is totally getting off topic, but there was actually a really big.

trend of bringing Western games over to Japan for PC. And that really kind of went away once DOS, or not DOS, but Windows took over. But when you had these kind of, I guess you'd call them indigenous platforms like X-68,000, FMTowns Marty, PC-9801, there were companies like Infinity that just specialized in taking Western games, American games, European games, and bringing them over, programming them, reprogramming them for Japan's native computers as opposed to to, you know, like systems imported. And it was a pretty thriving scene. But, again, it went away once Windows took over because that kind of standardized everything.

And it was a lot easier. But it was definitely, it was a niche, but it was a thriving one, I think. There was definitely a core group of gamers in Japan who were like, yes, bring me that good American PC stuff. Out of all those microcomputers, Marty is the one I remember because it's named Marty and it's got an alligator. It's not like X68,000, whatever. It's not like a... And you could play it in your car. In your car, yes.

Not the preferred way to play this game, by the way. It's very complicated. Unless you want to... Well, I don't think you're supposed to play while driving. I think it's supposed to be for the passenger. Okay, okay. Like before we had, you know, road guidance, you know, GPS, we had Car Marty. Interesting.

Wow. I wish it would have caught on more then. So, you had all those releases in 1991, and then I believe it was briefly re-released on CD-ROM in 1990, I don't know, 7 or 8, whenever after Monkey Island 3 came out. But it was sort of missing for a long time until... the 2010 release of the remake, which is pretty good. It's better than the first remake of The Secret of Monkey Island, which came out the previous year. I think they learned a lot. They listened to Fan Feedback, and it's a better take on that same sort of remake.

We'll talk a bit about that more towards the end of this podcast. So this game had a very brief production cycle. So The Secret of Monkey Island released in October of 1990, and this sequel came out a little over a year later, but a lot of change tech-wise. It's funny to think in our modern times, like things are changing very fast. but a game from 1991 can be very, very different tech-wise, and a game from 1992. In our modern times, you can't say, like, oh, that's a 2017 game. This is a 2018 game.

Like, things move so fast, and it's incredible to see just how much is different tech-wise between a 91 game and a 92 game on similar technologies. We'll see how things go once Scarlett and PlayStation 5 launch, and we'll see if those bring massive changes. I feel like we've kind of hit a point where you're not going to see, like, wow, everything is radically different now. So this is created by the same team as the first Monkey Island.

Ron Gilbert is the director and designer. This is his final LucasArts game. He left fairly early. In fact, he left while it was still Lucas Film Games, I believe. I believe this is a Lucas Film Games game. Tim Schaefer and Dave Grossman were working on the additional design for this game. And, of course, they would go on to do Day of the Tenticle, full throttle. Tim Schaefer, of course, has double fine now.

Dave Grossman did work a telltale. Now does his own things. So Tim and Dave did the majority of the writing. and Ron Gilbert left after this game ended to form humongous entertainment. He was very happy at the company, according to his own words, but he thought there was a space for children's adventure games, and he was right because those humongous games sold billions, I assume way more than LucasArts games,

because as much as we like these games, and I think I've pointed out too much on this miniseries, they didn't sell very well. They were just allowed to do whatever they want as long as they didn't lose money and their games never lost money for LucasArts. So he kind of went into competition with, like, cyan worlds basically or had cyan worlds

pretty much at this point decided actually what we want to do is make more mature games and stop making kid games what did science cyan worlds make before the the manhole I think

and there was another game but yeah before missed they were like cool advanced CD-ROM based kid stuff these were more like Freddy the Fish and Put Putt and things like that

like if I was five years younger I would probably have played these but I was just like a little I was probably like They're made for four-year-olds and I was a nine-year-old when he was making them or a 10-year-old or 11-year-old. But, like, if you're an actual millennial, not a fake millennial like me, you'll know what these are and you'll have a lot of affinity for them. And Ron Gilbert definitely made a ton of these. It was really neat that he found a space and was making games not for kids of my age, but I do feel like we lost him for about a decade.

If you were not a, you know, children's game player, he would come back with Thumbweed Park and wearing the awesome t-shirt for the Nina designed. But, yeah, he was sort of only making kids games for about a decade. and making a lot of money. And those kids' games, from what I've heard, are very good. Like, they're very well designed, and there's a lot of nostalgia for them. So this game also had the first grouping of some major LucasArts composers who would stick with the company for a long time. So Michael Land is returning from the first game.

There's also Peter McConnell and Clint Bojackian, I think you say his name that way. We'll be talking about these three plenty throughout the future of this LucasArts series. And they needed three composers because this is the first LucasArts Adventure game with wall-to-wall music instead of just occasional music. And there's a very good reason for that, which we will talk about later, all these upcoming future exciting topics in this podcast. But we'll talk about the iMuse. It needs its own spotlight. I've frankly talked about it too much on Retronauts. But yes, it's weird to think that in 1991, it was a novel idea for a computer game to just have music in every scene. But it was a new idea. It was something

that not every computer could do. I mean, did you hear computer music that came before 1991? It wasn't something you wanted to have wall-to-wall. people need to look up just look up a YouTube of like PC speaker music it's less advanced than a doorbell and usually there'd just be one song uh like maniac mansion and monkey island if you're playing those on a computer with just a PC speaker which is not a speaker it's a little box in your PC tower that buzzes they would usually have okay here's the maniac mansion song here's the one monkey island song that plays over the credits it's all you'll get and you're you feel like it's been merciful because you only get one song you don't want to hear any more than that but yes there's a lot of of music in this game and really long soundtrack, really great, and doing lots of interesting stuff tech-wise. We'll talk more about that later. So a lot of other returning people like Steve Purcell, the Sam-Mex creator, he is now at Pixar and also Peter Chan, who basically just works on every animated movie.

He's a freelancer. He lives on a weird island in the middle of the ocean. He's hard to get in touch with. I felt super lucky that I got to interview him for my day of the tentacle oral history because he never gives interviews. He's not the liquid television guy. Is he? He is not, no.

Was that Peter Chang? Peter Chun. Chen, okay. Yes, so this is Peter Chan. But an equally talented anime. Very, very talented. Like, these guys are doing backgrounds. They're doing animation.

They're doing spray artwork. So this entered development a month after the original game wrapped and with no knowledge of how well the game would sell. And they were able to make this game because Ron Gilbert said, at LucasArts, you basically just started a project before anyone could say, hey, this should be a Star Wars game. And eventually, they would just become a Star Wars Game Factory. At this point, they were just like, well, you know, we create companies to play with technology or the game version of that for Lucas.

And so this, Jeremy, said this is a Scum game. He was not making fun of it, of course. If this is your first entry into the series, you might have been confused. But Scum is the engine that a lot of the LucasArts games ran on. It's called the script creation utility for Maniac Mansion because that was the first game to use it. And basically, it was a very adaptable engine that let designers easily plug in and prototype different ideas without having to do a lot of programming work. It was just a very, very useful set of tools that let you just try things out and see instant results, which is why they're able to do so much improvisation in their design.

Yes, I was being jargoning, not pejorative. Yes, exactly. Scum is a weird, fun name to name a game engine. I wish our current engines had fun names like that instead of Unreal and the white engine and luminous and things like that. I want Scum. Everything's all inspiring. It's boring. Yes.

And so the sequel to Scum was Grime. We'll talk about that later. That was the Grim Fandango bed, but trying very hard 3D engine. So the original Monkey Island was a very good looking game that started with a 16 color EGA version, but here they were able to start with 256 colors VGA instead of rolling out a lower tech version first and then doing the VGA version. And you can listen to the commentary track on the remake, and the artist just didn't know what to do starting with that many colors.

We have so many colors to use at once. Going from 16 to that many must have been an incredible. like sort of intimidating problem for them in order to make a very pretty looking game like what do we even do with all these colors and this is a very colorful game as a result of that. Yeah, I feel like that's kind of the early 90s equivalent of making

the transition to HD. They couldn't have towns. How can you have towns with that much detail? Just like Final Fantasy 13. Yes, but luckily they have many discs to play with this game. So because they were part of LucasArts, they had access to a lot of high-tech gadgets like

then-new at the time, color scanners. And because of this, all of the in-game background art was created first on paper and then scanned in for a look that is very unique to this game. So in the future, other backgrounds would be created first on paper and then scanned in. But in this game, they weren't really sure what the resolution would do to their images. So they were created very details. If you look at these backgrounds, you could say they're kind of flawed and kind of grainy. But the amount of noise and the amount of just sort of, I would say, messiness to them is very charming, I think. And if you look at future backgrounds from, like, Sam and Max, there's more, like, big blocks

of color and not as many details. They want to make sure everything reads if it's scanned at a very low resolution. But here, they weren't as concerned. So this game has a very interesting, kind of warm and grainy look to it. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of Final Fantasy 7 where every house you go into in that game has, it's, like, uniquely designed and crammed with detail. And you're like, I can't even tell what this is, but it looks. lived in. There's stuff here

and it's so dense. There's garbage everywhere. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of detail in these, so it's... Yeah, I really miss that. Like, you know, you don't see that a lot. You know, games like Grand Theft Auto or whatever, like it's just you know, copy-paste when you see interiors. If it were to make a game, it would look like this.

In fact to make a game, it would look like this. In fact, when I tried to make my own game once, like a point-and-click adventure game, with Adventure Game Studio I think I tried to emulate the look of Mike Yenalyn too to do that I would paint backgrounds at a very small resolution and then blow it up

so it's all pixelated and it looked exactly like how it looks in this game yeah you can sort of see things you won't see in future games as much like there's like a lot of artifacting I guess you would call it even at this scale they are like technical flaws but I think it makes for a very interesting game you can see they're trying to make the most of their

technology and somehow the sprites look good against these backgrounds, too. They really work. They don't get lost at all. It's very interesting. I don't know how they made that work. Really good color design. I think that's what it is.

Yeah, yeah. They really pop against the background. So, yeah, what they do ditch in this game, and Nina has a few notes about this, is that... So the first game, their show-offy thing was occasionally, maybe like, five or six times during the game. When you would talk to a person, it would cut to just them, their, like, kind of photo-realistic face, which looked good even with 16 colors. Here, that is, everything is usually at the same scale, except there's just a few close-ups. Like, one is of a corpse, and the second glory shot in this game is of the overweight governor who is fed with giant tubes, which I guess is like, that's something you don't want to see up close. That's like a Baron Harkonan thing.

Is that a Star Wars guy? A Dune. Okay, Dune. I think it is a Dune reference. Maybe, yeah. No, until you brought it up, I didn't really even think about that, the fact that the only time you see close-ups is when you see these two. really grotesque-looking things. Yeah.

And I think that kind of speaks to the tone of the game, too. Everything is just a lot darker and grosser, and it's about death and decay. Yeah, and I think it's also, like, it is weird to play the first game and be like, oh, these are all real people. Once you see a close of a real person, like, oh, my God, like, guy brushes a guy. In this game, it feels a lot more cartooning where it's like, no, these are all cartoon characters in this world. Yeah, as much as I love the close-up shots in the first game, it does feel a bit out of place. Yeah, yeah.

Especially since they're so beautiful. Yeah, yeah. And it's weird to think about these real people doing the things they do in that cartooning world. So, yeah, what also is part of the great graphics of this game is I was just, my jaw was on the ground looking at these character animations again. So there are so many very specific character animations. At this resolution, somehow they are able to make all of these re extremely well? And on the commentary, they're really crediting artists like Steve Purcell and saying, like, he could take four pixels and make it mean anything you want. Like, he was very, very skilled at pixel art.

Especially since there's a lot of parts where Guy Brish is very tiny on the screen because he's far away. And I love how, like, there are so many moments where he will look at the camera and smile. And his smile is probably like two pixels, but you can tell what he's doing. Yeah, like playing it on a 4K TV, just, like, really blown up. You can see, like, okay, they can change one pixel and it can change the meaning of a face. It's very, very interesting. And the faces are all very, very small in this game. Their bodies and heads are in proportion to each other.

I think a less confident artist would just give the character a giant head so it would read better like expressions, but they can still make them read very well. Like a big head mode? Yeah, yeah. So the character sprites were drawn at each scale as opposed to like a sprite that was just scaled, shrunken up and down, right? They had scaling technology. So the sprite that you see on the screen is basically the biggest it can get. But if you move like in the background, the hardware can adjust it.

Okay, so they're not individually rendered. at different distances. Yeah, and that was like a huge thing. I believe Monkey Island won was the first game to actually incorporate scaling with characters. Like you mentioned, I do love all the unique animations, and a lot of them only come up once in the game. And I think it's great that they put those in there,

even if they're, you know, like I said, they come up only once. And I just have a list of, like, some of my favorite ones here. Like, when Giber sneaks into a window at one point, and he comes out of the window he like trips a bit and he kind of looks around like oh did anyone see that but that's the only time he does it

and it's super easy to miss because he's so tiny on the screen too but I've always loved that part it's like one of my favorite parts in the game like at one point when he like saws off a peg leg of one of the men of low moral fiber and the guy wakes up and sees it there's a very unique animation where he's surprised and then the guy's next to him react

and they didn't need to go that far with those Yeah, they have unique frames of animation just for that like two seconds. Yeah, there are some really fun things where when you pick up an item in the world, normally he just puts his hand out and the item's gone and you have it. But for bigger items or like if you're picking up animals, there will be an animation of him like trying to put it in his coat, like very cartoon character style where it will just disappear into his body. There's one point where he puts something very heavy up on a counter and you can feel the weight of it because he's like struggling as he pushes it up. And that's the only time you see that animation. Yeah, so a lot of like very unique animations. you just see once and just that attention detail is astounding.

I don't even think they would go that far in future games of this level of Sprite art. Also, I've noticed that there's a lot of characters who are sitting behind a desk or a counter in this game. Oh, you're right. Yeah, like Wally, the Barkeep, Mad Marty, the librarian, the hotel receptionist. But it's not out of laziness because you do see their legs at some point. But usually for most of those characters, they only come up behind their desk like once, and that's it.

It's not a Rob Leifeld thing. No, no, no, no. See, first look, and draw feet. Their whole body is there, and they're fully animated and everything, too. But you only see them once. Yeah, and they go through the trouble of animating their entire body. Yeah, having, like, a walk cycle and everything. Yeah.

In one case, like, seeing the character's bottom half is, like, joke. The guy with the crocodile, like, he's running the hotel. And when he walks away to get the crocodile, you see he has, I think he has two peg legs. Or maybe just one. I think he just has a one. Yeah, but that's the joke that, like, the crocodile bit off his leg. And he's called old peg spider. Yeah.

I always, I don't know, that part weirds me out. because his pants are too flesh-colored. I think at first I thought he was, like, not wearing any pants. And that was the joke. Yeah. This game, there weren't ratings yet, so they'd get away with that. So I want to talk about the music and sound effects. So as we stated earlier, this is the first LucasArts game with just wall-to-wall music,

and they really focus on this aspect. So we pointed this out in earlier episodes of the spinning series. We'll be talking about it a lot because this was a very important aspect of the PC gaming landscape. But you couldn't just expect a computer to play music outside of the box. Just like, if you bought a computer in 1991, 99% of the time, unless it was just like a deluxe model with things, you know, built in, you would normally just get the PC, quote unquote, speaker, which could buzz at you. So Monkey Island 2 was basically a showpiece of a game for anyone who sunk $100 or more in 1991 money into a cutting edge sound card. So for this podcast and for others, I just, I love looking up what things cost, what computer hardware costs back then 30 years ago. and $100 was the lowest end sound card.

They were going up to $400. This is not adjusting for inflation. This is 1991 money. So like the five richest dukes of Europe could play Monkey Island 2 in the highest quality. And I was looking up just like, what is just an IBM PC cost in 1991? Roughly like mid grade, 2,000 to 3,000, depending on what you want, of 1991 money. Again, was that like $6,000, $7,000 today, I'm guessing? Something like that. It's kind of hard to draw real equivalencies with 90s money versus modern money.

It was like monopoly money. People had more spending power back then. We could actually own houses as opposed to needing rent loans. I can't imagine. Now you can build a pretty okay PC gaming computer for like $6, $700. I will say I got the kind of low end. In fact, it was called the LC3, low cost Macintosh in 1993. And my half of the investment in that was like $1,200. And I spent. like $400 to upgrade RAM from four megabytes to eight megabytes. Oh, my God. It was crazy. But, you know, that was the low end of the Macintosh market. Computers were just more expensive, you know, as they've become commodities, they've just become way, way cheaper. They really were.

And I think games like this, like LucasArts games, they were basically like, I think the agreement between you and them was, you bought a really expensive computer. Here is something you can use to show it on. And because of that, Lucas's name on it, and you know, like, this is about spectacle. So this game may look very primitive to 2019 eyes, even though it's doing what it can, the best it can, with these sort of graphics. But in 1991, this was, like, cutting-edge graphics and sound. Like, nothing looked like this, nothing sounded like this. This is right before CD-ROMs exploded, and you were buying computers just to show off, you know, full-motion video games and things like that. Like, these games were showpieces.

They were, like, boutique items. So you would spend extra money to get a sound card to bring your phone. friends over and be like, this game has music for the entire game. And it changes in various cool different ways. So let's talk about that. So I've mentioned this on several podcasts because it's a really cool feature in this game. So this is the first LucasArts game to use the iMuse engine, the interactive music streaming engine. It's kind of a cheat for an abbreviation. We'll let it slide. This one takes the most advantage of it. And so I've said this a lot on podcast before, but I need to repeat it in the context of Monkey Island, too. What this engine does is it

makes organic transitions between musical pieces as you switch scenes. So these aren't canned transitions. These aren't like fading one song down and the other up. These aren't like eliminating instruments like, you know, jumping on Yoshi and hearing the bongos, jumping off losing the bongos. This is the game engine, the music engine rather, coming up with an organic transition based on where you are in that song to transition to the song that you're transitioning to. It's basically your tiny DJ.

Exactly. Exactly, exactly. Mixing two records and figuring out how to match beats and stuff. Yes, beat matching is what I was thinking of. So the highlight of this engine is up front in the town of Woodtick because there is a theme for Woodtick and then there are like six locations. And each location you go to is a different, you know, arrangement of that theme. And when you jump from, you know, room to room, it will gently transition into that new theme. It's very, very cool even today to the point where even the remake, if you're playing with the old,

old music. It has to fake it because it's not emulating iMuse. It is doing its own thing. So it does an okay job of faking it, but if you want to see how well this worked, you have to basically pirate the game and play it through Scum VM. And that is the way to play it with like full iMuse powers. That's God intended. Yes. And it is so cool. And I think Ron Gilbert said it on a podcast I did with him almost a decade ago, but they didn't go this far again because nobody noticed. And I think nobody noticed because they did it so well. It's just like, oh yeah, this is what music should sound like in a game. Okay. Yes. I mean, I Muse definitely showed up in other games. I remember playing Star Wars Dark Forces and being kind of amazed how, like, all of a sudden,

you know, stormtroopers would appear and you'd go from this kind of like background melody to, just like in the movies where all of a sudden there's like, you know, kind of a sharp chord and the tempo rises and things like that. And it was very organic and then it would drop back down once you cleared out the enemies. So, you know, they put it to good use, although again, not as dramatically as here. Yeah, it would be used very effective. throughout the future of their games, but here they were like, this is our new technology, let's like knock people out with it

and then nobody even noticed. People just don't appreciate music. Yeah, I think so. I think they don't think about like the challenge of making that happen within the context of a game. They just think, oh, when I watch TV, the instruments do the things are supposed to do when people are moving around.

You know, they don't think about how that is different in a game. Right. That's so sad how they felt their such a granted accomplishment wasn't recognized by people because I definitely noticed. And like you said, Woodtick is the best area to hear it in action. And I remember going in and out of rooms just to hear that transition and being like amazed by it and wondering how they did that. Did LucasArts invent the sort of structure of a lowercase vowel

at the front of a word to denote technology like iPad, E Mac, UPlay, etc? Yeah, I don't know why the I and I muse is lowercase. But it is. They revolutionized technology. And like, where would Apple be without them? But MUSC, I believe, is Caps. Does Apple do that too or no? No, I guess not. Yeah.

They should have copied that part. But I mean, it's, it's a caps because it's an abbreviate, it's a, you know, it's an acronym. Whereas iPad is like, I and then, you know, I Mac, that sort of thing. It's like the I in front of a word. I don't know. I don't know. But these are the sort of things that we lost when music became, you know, canned, recorded, instrumental things. Like, there is, for, in the future of games, we're moving towards the point where, in 1991, where game music will be a, you know, a pre-recorded thing.

You just plop down, like, you know, level one that MP3, and it won't be as in-depth as telling a music engine to say, okay, play this song out, fade this one down. But at the time, you couldn't do that with floppy disks, so this is them pushing that MIDI technology as far as it will go. So, Nina, what is your favorite music in the game? what stands out to you in this game. I've got a few that I really like. Yeah, I love the soundtrack so much that I just like putting it on just to have while I'm working. It's also like a super long soundtrack too. Yeah, exactly.

So some of my personal music highlights, I do love the woodtick theme. My favorite part of the woodtick theme is when you go into the woodsmith shop and you hear like three rhythmic taps, I guess, to like indicate him working on things. But this is lost in the special edition version, though. which I thought was really sad. You don't hear that part anymore. Instead, you just hear him, you just hear like sound effects of tapping.

But it's not along to the beat with the music. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah, he, like the animation, so that was another part of my music. It could sync up animation and music as well. I also like when you, when you're rowing into the skull at the swamp.

The swamp song is a different version of one of these songs from the first game. Like when you're going through the woods or sometimes when you see, like when you see the ship heading towards Mikey Island that song is then made into the swamp theme in this game and when he rose into the skull-shaped hut

that's where the voodoo lady is so there's a bass line and then when the the coffin boat goes up into the skull it's to the tune of like these three notes but then when you go when you row into it the three notes has to play like in beat with the music

And so the game waits until the perfect time before you go up in there. I thought that was always neat. Like that, again, is also lost in the special edition version. You row in and immediately brings you up into the skull. I'm like, no, it's supposed to wait for the perfect musical beat before it does that. Yeah, so much thought was brought into. That's the one thing I didn't mention until you started talking about, Anina, is that, like, I Muse is very much about, like, synchronizing animation and assets with the music, too,

not just, you know, transitioning between songs, but saying, like, how do we make this more? to be scored like a movie or a cartoon. Yeah, exactly. That's one of my favorite parts of IMEU's, and it was a bit sad to see that loss in the special edition version. Also, I love the musical cues when you're trying to sweet talk Elaine.

You're supposed to say the right things to her, and in the music, you can hear when you've said the wrong thing because it goes into like these clunky notes. That's right. I love that. And also, I just like the jug baseline in Rum Rogers' Cabin, because it reminds me of, like, Lisa, playing the jug.

Oh, yeah. I think this, I mean, they use a few public domain songs in the soundtrack because there is two hours worth of music, but I think that's blow the man down. Oh, yeah, yeah, it is, but it's a very nice rendition of it. And it's funny because, so Stan's theme, so Stan in the first game was the U's ship salesman. He appears as a different cheesy salesman in every game. And this one, he's the used coffin salesman. And his theme is the old folks on Go Tell Aunt Rodey, the old gray goose is dead. And that would remain his song throughout the rest of the series, even though he doesn't sell coffins anymore. I never really thought about that.

They don't reuse that song from the first game. And the funny thing is when Resident Evil 7 was coming out, there is like a dark version of Go Tell Aunt Rody. That's right. Yeah, except they say that everybody's dead. And I laugh because I'm thinking like, you're talking about a folk song about a dead goose. And you're selling Resident Evil 7 with that song. So my personal musical highlights, I looked at the soundtrack on YouTube. This has an ungodly amount of music for 1991.

So I looked up another 1991 game. Final Fantasy 4. which, again, that is another game that is sold as a spectacle for 901. It's like, here is one of our coolest composers working with a new sound chip, making a very long and varied soundtrack. That soundtrack is only 54 minutes. Monkey Island 2 is almost, sorry, it's more than twice that. So that is a ton of music, very uncommon for the time for a video game. How much of that is reprised themes?

I mean, like Final Fantasy 4, there are different versions of themes. I was going to say, they seem like they're both very heavy on light motifs. Yeah, they really are. But even so that at the time, like Final Fantasy 4, that was a lot of music for a console game, but this is even more music for a computer game. So this game only came out about a year after the first Monkey Island, but it is so much bigger in scope. And I could tell, I don't know if he said this,

but I think Ron Gilbert really wanted to go out with a bang before he started working on much smaller adventure games. So this is a very similar structure to the first monkey island, And that it starts out with a very small, so relatively small and closed first island in which you have a set of puzzles to finish before it kind of sets you free. But in the case of Monkey Island 2, once you're free, it is very open-ended. And there's sort of a scavenger hunt you have to do to actually get to the final parts of the game. You said you like the first part more, the second part? I tend to like, especially with this game, although I had an easier time this time, I tend to like the smaller adventure game you start with because I feel like it is. very, very satisfying, and there's not as much

wasted time in terms of backtracking or trying to find what you need. Like, it's all there. You just have to know how to make use of it. Well, what I think is great about this game is, you're right, it is similar to the first game, but then it's just so much more to it.

Because in the first game, you start on Mele Island, and I think Scab Island is supposed to be like Mele Island in that it's always at nighttime, and there's a specific goal you've got to do. And I love I love the atmosphere of the Caribbean nighttime. I mean, that's why it is the most pirates of the Caribbean part of the game because it's a nighttime pirate city.

And also, Guy Brish wants to get off of the island to go find what he's looking for. And in the first game, you then go from Miley Island to Monkey Island, and then that's it. Whereas in this one, once you leave Scab Island, there were three islands to explore. And I remember being blown away by that. I was like, well, there's like so many choices. There's so many new places to go to. I love that so much. I'm always a fan of when sequels like take kind of the feel and the vibe of first game in the series and then are like, oh, but also there's all of this.

It's, you know, like, you know, Zelda, too with, like, keeping all of Hyrule from the first game in, like, this tiny little area or, what's another example? I just have the other night. Yeah, 70 of the night. I was funny. Final Fantasy Six. No, I was thinking of something else Oh, Finalopi-C-7, like Midgar. You could think Midgar is the entire game

and then get out to the world map. But I was kind of thinking of like containing, you know, basically the first game and then, oh, like, you know, when you see the post-game in Pokemon. Oh, Donkey Kong 94, right? That's a good one. Yeah. I was thinking like Pokemon when you beat the game

and then you've basically got all of Conto to explore again. It's like, oh, yeah, you had this adventure, but also there's this entire other adventure. Yeah. It's always just like a, I don't know, I guess it was more exciting back in the day when I had more free time. Now I'm kind of like, oh, no, I have to keep playing. I don't think games are allowed to surprise you like that anymore

because they want you to know in the marketing like, no, you'll have this many hours and you'll be able to play through this stage. And here's the big surprise in our preview. I don't know. I saw someone this week complaining that someone mentioning the fact that you could unlock the original medieval in the medieval PS4 remake is a spoiler. I say, come on. Don't play either.

Yeah. It doesn't matter what you do. It's going to be wrong. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So yeah, in this game, I like how it opens. So in the end of the first game, you beat the ghost pirate Lechuk. You get the girl. In this game, it starts off with Guy Brush. Basically, he's dining off of the story of having beaten Lechuk, seemingly for a long time now. He's grown a beard. He's had some adventures. But he really is just a tedious person cashing in on the one heroic thing he did. And he is off to find a new adventure and presumably a new story to bore everyone. with. But the game starts off with like, I want to find the treasure a big whoop. It's not here, so I have to leave. And the entire first part of the game is leaving this island or finding a way to leave the island. And there's a new

villain. But even before all that, it starts in the immediate res. Yes, that's right. So, yeah, not only playing with the scope of the adventure game, Ron Gilbert opens with, basically, it opens with a scene at the 90% part of the game where Guy Bruch is hanging from a rope off the cliff and Elaine, his ex-girlfriend, basically repels down and she's like, what are you doing here? What's going on? And he's like, well, it's a long story. And that's how the game starts, him basically telling the story, although it only cuts back to that scene once. Is that correct, Nina? Yeah. Oh, I wanted to mention like that all that happens before, even the intro too. So it's like

a cold opening, which I never seen in a game before. Yeah, a cold open. Yeah. And at that point, you don't even know what's happened between Guy Rish and Elaine. Did Final Fantasy 10 kind of rip this off with listen to my story. Oh, yeah. And basically you get to the point where it turns out it's just Titus telling everyone and everyone's like, I don't care. Except it was less for humor

and more for like setting a melancholy tone in Final Fantasy 10, right? Well, it seemed that way at first, but then you actually get to the point where he's, you catch up to that point in the story and everyone's like, yeah, we were there. Yeah, yeah, why is telling us story? It is kind of like this humorous anti-climax.

A little bit of a joke in the game. I never thought of that. In Final Fantasy 10, like you constantly hear back to Titus narrating. the game, whereas in this game, it is very easy to forget that it's supposed to be Guybers telling Elaine the story of what happened to get to that point that you see in the beginning of the game. So, yeah, it does only flashback once to that point, but it's very easy to miss. So I'm guessing you haven't seen this. I probably did at one point.

I must have missed this playthrough. Okay, so much later in the game, like close to the end, actually, you're placed in this torture device. And if you spend too long there... Oh, I knew I'd solve that puzzle, so I didn't spend... If you spend too long. Yeah, if you spend too long without figuring out the solution, at one point the trap goes, not the trap, but the whole device goes off. And then you're slowly lowered into like a pit of acid and then it fades to black.

And then it fades back to the very beginning shot of the game. And then Elaine is like, I don't believe you. Why are you still alive then? So it was just Guy Britch kind of embellishing his story. That's an awesome Easter egg in case you don't finish the puzzle in time. It kind of reminds me of drowning Guy Bruch in the first game. Yeah, yeah. Except in this one, you don't actually die.

You can drown them in this game too, right, for that underwater section? I didn't try it because I didn't want to wait for 10 minutes, but there's a part where you are underwater. I don't think you can. Oh, really? Yeah. I think I try that one, so it didn't work. So another case where a square RPG kind of ripped this off is in Xenogers, there's a part where, like, Faye is telling kind of like a story about some sort of heist that he did or something or like some sort of escapade.

and if you screw up when you're doing it it's like jumping onto a train or something if you do it wrong he's like no no that's not how it went and it fades out and then it gives you another chance to do it interesting I like that idea it's interesting that like I'm kind of hearing all these resonances with games by Square

I wonder if there were Square like fans of Monkey Island at Square. Were they making games for FM Towns? Was Square making games for Epitowns? I think by that point they had pretty much gone all console but they did start out on computers so I feel like you know the folks who are working on Final Fantasy games you know, they cut their teeth on PC-88 or whatever, so, you know, X-1.

So they probably kind of kept in touch with with PC games, you know, from the West. I'm seeing a future lawsuit happening here. And I guess Square did make adventure games, right, at some point? They did. Back on, like, Famicom disk system, yeah. Interesting. Okay, well, I like these comparisons we're making here. I never thought of this.

But then also, that means most of this game is told through an unreliable narrator. That is true, yeah. In a sentence, although then it flashes, at some points throughout the game, it flashes to the point of view of Largo and Lechuk. And it's like, well, how does guys know what's going on there? Is he just like making this up in his mind? And then there's a narrator. There's all their other narrator. So maybe they didn't think too much about it.

But we'll get to a comment later, and I kind of agree with it, like, this game is sort of nihilistic in a way where it's just like nothing really matters. It's just sort of like a fun exercise and, like, destruction and deconstruction. Yeah, it's true. I mean, I was going to bring it up later, but, like, most of the game, you're, like, trying to find four map pieces. But in the end, it doesn't matter because your destination, you get to it without having to sail there or anything. That's true, yeah. Actually, I wanted to bring up the box art, which is really awesome. It's, like, my favorite video game box art ever.

Then we'll take our break. Yeah. So it doesn't actually depict what happens in the game, which was very common for, you know, PC game box art back in the time. No, I was looking at the time. I was looking at it again, I'm like, wait a minute, this scene happened underground, right? Yeah, and even then, it's like, it doesn't look exactly like that. But that's Steve Purcell, correct? Yeah, and I just love that piece so much, especially because it's so dark.

Like, I'm going to keep talking about how, like, grim and dark this game is, because it is like that. And the box art doesn't show, like, how comedic and cartoony the game actually is. But anyway, yeah, you're never on, okay, so the cover shows Guy Bisch and Letchuk on a giant pirate ship. because, you know, it's Monkey Island, but you don't actually go on a giant pirate ship at any point in the game. All the ships you're on are very small. Yeah, it's true. Like, every time he's on a ship, you're right, it's like a tiny, tiny ship. And there's, like, one point where he keeps making fun of the person who owns a ship, which I'll bring it up later.

But I think it's the only Monkey Island game where you don't sail on a big ship, actually. And the only big ship you see is at the bottom of the ocean. That's the mad monkey. That's right, yeah. Or the ones that would tick. That's right, because the entire town is just, like, ships. It's made up of ships, which is such a cool touch. That's a really cool idea.

You don't really even notice it if you just take it for granted. Like, oh, I'm just walking all these doors. If you look closer, they're all just like ships in a bay. Really neat. Which in general, it's just such a nice design. Yeah, I love it. It's one of my favorite locations. So we're going to take a break real quick.

We'll come back. We'll talk about the design of the game and get to some of your questions and comments. Thank you. So we're back. Island 2. And if you go back to our Monkey Island one episode, you can hear about Ron Gilbert's manifesto about like, here's why Adventure Games suck, and here's how we can make good adventure games. And one of the things he outlines is basically make the player's goal clear at all times. And that is what happens in the, both the first half of this game and

the last half of this game, in which Monkey Island One had a sets of three goals, correct, Nina? Three goal set structure in terms of like, you know, pass the three trials, get a map a ship in a crew. There are usually three goals. Right. In this game, there are four, which I found interesting. So I don't know if that's him being too clever or just being like, well, we can do more. So here's each of your two sets of puzzles really in this game. There are four overarching goals for these two main sets of puzzles. So the first set of goals is you are in Scab Island and you have to leave Scab Island, but there's a guy named Largo LaGrant who is sort of, you know, taken over the island. He was Lechuk's former first mate. And in order to defeat him,

you need to assemble four things to make a voodoo doll from him. And that's the first puzzle. So there are a lot of like puzzle chains that will lead you to getting those four parts and assembling them to make the voodoo doll. And that's essentially what the first part of that game entails. And it's all enclosed on one island. And you want to talk about the first half of the game, Nina? I never really thought about it before, but I thought it was interesting. how you brought out the fact that, yeah, there's a lot of sets of four in this game. There's the four pieces you need to collect to make the voodoo doll at the beginning. Then there's four islands and there's four map pieces and the whole game is in four parts.

I don't know why it was four, but it's an interesting choice. It's one more than three. That's true. And the first game at three. And Thumbwee Park, how many goals did that have? Oh, man. Seven? Too many.

Yes, there's a lot of goals. One per character, I think. One overarching goal. But yeah, so, yeah, there's a four-girl structure. Again, the first part of the game is probably like, I would say, you know, 25% of the game, would you say, Nina? And the rest is, like, the rest of the game. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, like, the beginning.

Well, I just wanted to say I absolutely love how mean this game is. I don't mean by how mean Gairobi himself is, but, like, it's mean towards a player, too, in a fun way, not in a Sierra cruel kind of way. Okay. And I love how at the very beginning you start off with tons of, tons of money in your inventory. Yeah, like your entire inventory is just like everything, every piece of item, every item in your inventory is just a different kind of money. So it could be a pile of coins. It could be like jewels. It could be like a crown.

Like it could be gold bars. And you can like, the first thing you do when you step into the town is you can look at all the money and then you take a few steps in and then you immediately lose all of it. That's awesome, because especially because in the first game, a lot of that first island set of puzzles was getting money, like earning money to do things, like taking on jobs. Yeah. So it starts you off with a ton of money. And then you just lose all of it immediately.

And I think that's so fantastically mean. So very Metroid Prime-ish. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, guy versus all of his powers. Well, it actually reminded me of something at night. Oh, yeah, you're right. Except it's taken away by a stinky pirate and not death. I could see Lechuk saying,

We'll meet again. So again, yeah, you do need money in this game, and you need 20 pieces of aid to charter a ship to get off of that first island. And you can actually make money by polishing the men of low moral fiber guy's pegleg. Yeah. So he gives you a piece of eight to polish a pegluck. So you use that piece of eight to buy wood polish. And then every time he polish a pegleg, he gives you a piece of aid as thanks.

So I once tried to see if I can get 20 pieces. of eight by doing that. But at number 19, he says, oh, I'd give you a piece of eight, but I'm fresh out. That's true, yes. It's a great, it's fun cruelty. I actually thought that was the solution to the puzzle. It's like, ah, I have to wax his leg 20 times, and then you have to find another piece of eight somewhere else.

Yeah, and it's weird because that wood polish, you don't really need it for anything. It's a big red herring. That's true, yeah. And this game doesn't have a lot of those kind of items in it. There are a lot of useless items, though. That you can pick up? Pick up or buy. Okay.

Yeah, I guess you can buy useless items. There's so many items in this game. There are a lot of items, yeah. And I think that kind of makes it artificially harder, I guess. Yeah, especially with some of the later puzzles where it's just like, I have so many things to sort through. I'm not even sure like what could apply here. And yeah, there are a few items where by the end you're like, oh, I never used that. I wonder why.

And that's one of the pieces, one of the things is the wood polish, because you get that at the very, very beginning of the game. And they end up never really using it. I mean, you can use it to get the one piece of eight from the guy each time. but then you don't have to. Yeah, yeah. I guess they don't do a great job of taking items away from you. Yeah, I feel like maybe they had bigger plans for that wood polish. It was going to be the final item you needed.

Right. Well, the funny thing is, like, in this game, it's called Lechuk's Revenge, and Lechuk is not even an element in the first part of the game where you're like, Guy Bruch's dining out in this Lechuk story, he's telling everybody about it. It's his one claim to fame, everyone's sick of it. And he just basically wants to get off this island. Lechuk is not even an issue.

and he basically defeats Largo Grande with this voodoo doll and he's like, I'm the guy who beat Lechuk, and Largo's like, I don't believe you. And he takes out Lechuk's wriggling ghost beard, and basically Largo takes the beard from him to revive Lechuk. And then Lechuk is a problem after that. But basically, Lechuk is just separately away from everything else throughout the game. He's not kidnapping anyone. He's not a threat. He's in his, like, fortress away from everything Guy Brush is doing.

So it's kind of a fun idea that the... the villain is so far removed from anything the hero is doing. And the hero just sort of shows up on his doorstep much, much, much later in the game. You only see him in the cutaways, even though this is supposedly Guy Bres telling you, like, what's going on. No, I do love how Gai Bersh is so, like, arrogant and douchebaggy in this game. But nobody really, like, gives him credit for killing Lachuk. Like, they don't believe him. Either they're sick of hearing his story or they don't believe him.

Maybe they're sick of hearing his story because they don't believe him. I don't know. But you mentioned you brought the fact that when he brags about it to Largo, that's when Largo gets a piece of the beer. But Largo doesn't believe him because, according to Largo, the voodoo lady took credit for killing Lechuk, which is never then addressed. Like, I wish I never confronts her about that and says, like, hey, why did you lie to everybody? I think there's no real media at the time, so you could just be like, oh, yeah, that was me. Right. I killed Billy the kid.

I wondered why she said that. Was it to protect Guy Brish, maybe? Maybe, yeah. It's sort of a drop line, but it doesn't really lead anywhere. Yeah, I always wondered, like, why she said that. I wanted Guy Brish to ask her. You would think he would ask her. You think it would come up because it does lead to, well, it's not her fault that Lechuk gets revived,

but it's something that he should kind of, you know, bring up a conversation. I do like at that point, it's that the game then takes you to the voodoo ladies hut, and then you kind of come into that mid-conversation. Yeah, yeah. Like in the first game, if it wants you to go something, somewhere, it'll often just do a cinematic cut to that area instead of saying, okay, now walk over here, now go in this building, and then the cutscene will start. It's like, no, we'll just fade to that area.

It's very sophisticated for 1991. So you talked about cruelty to the player. I want to talk about this later about it. I was talking about it now. Guybrush, the game doesn't even like underline it or comment on it or it's not the point of the game, but Guy Brush is especially sociopathic in this game without even thinking about it, without even like making like an aside about it. Like there are so many things you do in this game.

I think it has one of Guy Bruch's most ghastly sins against mankind. So Guy Brush steals the monocle from, you know, a guy that has, you know, bad vision. He cuts the leg off of a pirate who is not doing him any, like, harm or anything. He kind of buries a man alive, sort of, or like, he leads to a man being. He gets buried alive later. That part's not Guy Bruch's fault. As you find out in the third game, but, yeah. But he basically gets a man in a coffin and nails it shut.

there are a lot of things that Guy Brush does in this game that just like if you look at them in the abstract outside the context of the game you're like wow he is awful and I didn't really think that of him in the in the first game I don't know how if they're just being cheeky or if they're saying okay like as an adventure game protagonist you have to be the worst person ever not only are you stealing everything you are also just like hateful towards anything but your goal yeah it's pretty much playing on the fact that to do, uh, to be an effective adventure game character, you do have to be sociopathic. You have clear goals and you don't want anyone to get in your way of that goal. So you're going to inconvenience everybody to get those things done. And you know what? As

much as I do defend, defend it, uh, there's some, that's something the Kings Quest series lack, I think. They make the characters like, uh, motivations in the Kings Quest series too sincere and good. And for me, it's not fun playing a goody-goody. Like, I want to steal stuff and, you know, inconvenience people for my own goals and needs. Yeah. The Guy Brush ultimately just wants a new story to tell because everyone's getting sick of the Lechuk story, so he's off to find a new adventure. So it's Untitled Guy Brush game. Yeah, exactly. He's not as, as chubby as that goose, that adorable goose, but he steals everything. He is like an adventure game. It really is, like adventure slash stealth game kind of thing. But, yeah, like I remember in the

Commentary that's on the special edition, I think it was Dave Grossman's pointing out, like, when he made kids adventure games, they had to, like, underline the fact that the things you're picking up aren't being stolen. It's like, because in venture games, you have to pick everything up. But if it was like a pajama Sam game and you wanted to pick up, like, the, I don't know, the shovel, you have to have him say, like, I'll return this to whoever it belongs to or whatever. Like, you couldn't have the child character just picking up items in the world and taking them. You had to make sure, like, there's a reason he's doing this and he will, you know, return it when he's done. It's interesting how even though you play a pirate, you don't ever steal money in this game. No, you don't. He's not a very good pirate. He's more of like a treasure hunter. But the way you get the most money in this game is by being a complete jerk to the poor cook. Yeah, yeah, that's true. He ruined his life.

You make a man lose his job, you in prison, a person just trying to sell, like, boat tours. You can let her go. You can let her go, but you don't have to. I keep her in there. Yeah, yeah. It's, there are so many things you just have to, you know, do the worst thing you can to another human to solve a lot of these puzzles in this game. And that's what makes it so fun.

It is fun. It is fun. Yeah, I actually wanted to talk about what Big Whop even is. Although I guess that's more about the ending of the game. Like, I found it interesting how in the commentary for the special edition, Ron said he had no plans for it and didn't think players would latch on to it so much, even though that's the goal of the entire game is to find Big Whop. Yeah, but it's funny that taken outside of it.

of what that expression actually means. It might sound like, you know, an extravagant treasure, but it's ultimately like Big Whop. Yeah, yeah. Like, the meaning of the treasure is who cares. It's like calling it a red herring. Yeah, exactly. I have to find a big red herring.

And I never understood why Lechuk wants to prevent Ghyber from finding Big Whop. Because then you get to the end of the game. It's like, oh, he didn't want to define this, but why? This game, oh, sorry, Jeremy, go ahead. I was just going to say the real treasure is the lives we ruined along the way. Exactly. We might not get to the comments. That could be safe.

a future episode, because we're talking a lot about this game in this podcast, but somebody said this is a very nihilistic adventure game, and it sort of now reminds me of the Big Lobowski, where it ultimately amounts to nothing, like no progress is made throughout this journey, but the events that happened along the way were entertaining of themselves, like the episodic contents are entertaining enough that you don't really care that the journey amounted to really nothing. Sort of like the first game, actually. Yeah.

Because in the first game, Givers could have stayed on that island the whole time, and Elaine's little plan to get Lechuk would have worked. That's true, yeah. But at least in that game, he's sort of like, there is a reward in the form of like, oh, he's with this woman now and presumably going to be living a happier life. In this game, it's sort of, he moves backwards in progress depending on how you view the ending. He gets a girl at the end of the first game and then it's taken away in the second game. Yeah.

Which is another thing I love about this. I could be being too high concept about this, but it could be them thinking like, what is an adventure game here? What is a video game hero? Because in the first game, it's like, here's our new hero. In the second game, it's like he's a loser. He lost his girlfriend. Everyone is tired of hearing about the first game. It's an interesting take on the video game hero, I think.

I think it's a realistic sequel in a sense. Like, a guy like Guy Rush would get his ego inflated by this grand deed he did. And then I like how, like, we can talk about this later as we talk more of the story. but I like how Elaine has left him in the second game, and it's probably because he's such a giant jerk. Yeah, you can see there's some sort of gaslighting scene in the puzzle where you have to win her back, you know? Yeah, yeah.

It's like you sort of have to just, like, wear her down a stand style with compliments for her to eventually, you know, bend. Yeah, and he's so proud of his beard that he's crone. Yeah, they're like beard-tugging animations too, like beer-touching animations. He constantly mentions his beard and strokes his beard. and it kind of like says a lot about his character right there. He's like, look how much I've accomplished. Look how much I've matured.

But he's still just like this. He's still just a little kid in a sense. Like he's only 19 years old. And he's trying to get alcohol with a fake ID. And this is before the current age of beards we live in today where that's not a very impressive beard. That's true. It's not a very good pirate beard.

It's more like a little bit of scruff on his chin. And then he never has one again for the rest of the series. Yeah, yeah, he's clean-shaven. I was so sad when he lost that beer in the third game. Well, you got a lot of problems of the third game. Yeah, it's true. He's a giant bird man in that game.

I like him. I like him a lot. We can talk about that later. So the second part of the game, let's move on to that. Now, this is a very interesting part of the game because it is very open-ended where you're told basically, okay, you're off of Skab Island. You need to get four pieces of this map in order to find a big whoop. Here are two other islands and also you can go back to Skab Island, go to every location, talk to everybody, do every puzzle. and it's very ambitious for a game of this genre,

especially compared to the first game. And I will say I was sort of dreading this part because even though I like this game, I feel like this is the part that has the most aimlessness to it. I'm also not a fan of Simon Max's second half where that second half is also a scavenger hunt that's very open-ended. But I found that they were very smart

about making the islands compact in a way the first game didn't, in which you're not wandering around too much. There's not as many glorious panning shots of backgrounds you slowly walk through. It's all pretty compact, but you still have to do a lot of backtracking to the point where even the designers are like, we just wanted to make the game longer. Like, we wanted to make sure you needed to visit every island to solve every puzzle. True, but it's so beautiful and the music is so great that I almost don't mind wandering between islands.

I found it interesting in the commentary when they said they made sure every single puzzle you had to have, you had to go to each island to get a piece to solve that puzzle. But then they felt that maybe that was a little bit too much. Yeah, yeah, I feel like I don't know how much I like this game, if I like it more, if, okay, now we're going to move you on to the next island, do everything on this island. Okay, now we're going to move on to the next island, do everything on this island. I kind of like the idea of it being that open-ended, especially for the time. But it does lead to a lot of like, oh, I needed this thing and I have to go back to this island. Luckily, travel is very fast. And it doesn't take that much longer, but it is kind of a pain where you're like, oh, I have to go to this one room on this one island in order to solve this puzzle and come back to the island I was at. Do you have a favorite and least favorite island? I don't think I like Fat Island that much. I don't like Fat Island

either. Yeah. It's kind of dull compared to the other ones. And it's kind of meant to be dull. Yeah. It's run by like this fascist dictator. Yeah. And there's like two locations really. There's like, well, I hate the library. We'll talk more about that later. I like the library.

The jail library, the governor's mansion, and like some wilderness. too. Well, that's one part of the game where I feel like it takes too long to get to the next screen, so to speak. Yeah, yeah. He walks really far in the distance and it takes forever. It's the one distance, the one instance where it feels like the first game where there's

just like a glorious, like, panorama you walk across. It's very pretty, but it takes you a long time to get from point A to point B. And like the music isn't as great either. Like, when I think about the music, when you get to Fat Island, it's like, how does it go again? It's more ambient compared to the other islands. Yeah, it's sort of,

you're right, Ambient's a good word for it. And it's cool. Like, you didn't really hear ambient music that much in 91, but at the same time doesn't stick out as much

as the stronger themes throughout the game. It is home to two of the harder puzzles than a game. The card catalog stuff, like you mentioned, they didn't like. Didn't like it, no.

And the hand puzzle. But we can talk about those later. Yes, I have that, I have a special puzzle section coming up. So we're just going to go through the story part of this game, then we can move on to puzzles.

So essentially, after getting all the pieces, you end up, so there are like three more segments of the game once you get the map pieces. So you basically end up in Lechuk's Fortress. And this is the one instance of the game in which there is a maze. And I think this is like one of the last LucasArts games or perhaps the last that would have a maze. But like the first game, the mazes are inspired.

It's not like a very, you know, time wasting maze where it's a very clever maze. So it's sort of an echo of the first game's dance step puzzle in which you use this song lyrics that you write down earlier in the game in order to pass this maze in order to go through the right doors. And so it doesn't really take up that much time. And it's a pretty interesting puzzle, although if you played the first game recently, you could be trying to solve it with the same technique. And if you are, you will fail. So yeah, there's LaTrux Fortress where there's an inspired, you know, puzzle. Sorry, there's an inspired maze. There's Dinky Island, which has another maze, but a pretty brief one. Like, these are all very

self-contained little islands, like you're not traveling after this part of the game. And it's at this part of the game on the commentary, Ron Gilbert, it's like, why do we make the game this long? Because I think it does stretch out a little bit too long at this part. It's not as long as I remember it being. It was actually fairly well-paced, but it does seem like Dinky Island maybe a step too far. At least when you get lost in the jungle of Dinky Island, it's very easy to get out of there. Like, you take too many wrong turns, and the game just kind of spits you back out to the beginning. Yeah.

And there's that great hint line joke. Yeah, when you can actually call, well, they changed the number because it no longer exists, but the number used to be 100 Star Wars in order to call Lucasfilm games hitline. And that's like, that only happens if you're like completely lost in the maze. So I actually haven't seen that part in a long time because I do know exactly where to go. Oh, okay. That is great, though. That is great that they actually include, you can call the hint line in the game.

And that's just one of the many anachronisms in the game that I love. And then, yeah, on Dinky Island is where the treasure for Big Whop is. And then once you find it, using the directions you get from a parrot, that's where the game picks up where the prologue is, where you're hanging from that rope. And when you fall through the hole, you end up in the ending, the ending section where it is you and Lechuk in this series of corridors. And you basically have to do what you did in the first part of the game in an impromptu way, in an improvisational way by building a voodoo doll of him. I thought that was, like, extremely clever. It was, yeah. There are some issues of that puzzle I don't quite understand.

understand, we can talk about that when we talk about the puzzles in the game. I think it's great how, like, you get the voodoo recipe from the voodily at the beginning of the game, and that's one of the things you constantly have in your inventory. So then when you get to that part, you realize, oh, this is what I could do. And actually, I remember taking it, taking me a long time to realize you're supposed to make a voodoo doll. Like, did it, was it, was it hard for you to figure that out? I think I was so frustrated by the fact that he kept catching me that I looked up the

solution. That last part, even like when I was a kid, I really hated that part because of the anxiety. It's still, it's still like, so like you basically have to assemble a voodoo doll of the chuck while he's chasing you around and you don't die. Like if he finds you, he has a voodoo doll of you that he stabs and you basically warp to another room. It can be kind of frustrating when the random number generator puts him where you, you know, immediately warp to and you have no time to grab anything. But other than that, yeah, it is pretty stressful even knowing you can't die or get, you know, it's. lose any progress. It's legitimately scary. Yeah. Because you don't have much time to react when he enters. And as soon as you enter there's a huge music, musical sting. Yeah, it made me jump a few times even now. Yeah. It's very well done. I still find it very

stressful to go through that part. But now it's like frustrating in a different way because I know exactly what to do at that part. But there are certain parts where you want him to show up because you've got to do something to him. And sometimes I'll just stay in a room like waiting for him to show up and he never does. It's true, yeah. Or

like I said, he were you away from where you need to be. Oh, and then it's like, oh, wait, now I have to walk back. The journey to get where you need to be, he appears again and warps you somewhere else. Yeah. There aren't that many rooms in that corridor, and it is a very clever puzzle, but I feel like it could be a little frustrating. Usually, I mean, it doesn't take that long to finish if you know what you're doing,

but if you're just trying to figure out what you're doing, you have a lot of time to sit on a screen and look at items and figure out things out. I don't like time-sensitive things in video games. Yeah, it's weird that that's in a wrong Gilbert game, time-sensitive puzzles. He's usually against those. Yeah, I guess they just want to shake things up at the end. Yeah, yeah. And it is effective at, you know, creating that sense of dread and horror,

which I think they wanted more of in this game. Yeah, I think so. So the ending, we have to talk about this ending because it is perhaps the most notable thing about the game. If you mention Monkey Island 2, normally the first thing people will bring up is the ending of the game. And I feel like it was before Metal Gear Solit 2, one of the most infamous polarizing, talked about game endings of all time. So essentially, after you beat Lechuk, you walk out of the area you were in, and before that you find out, Lechuk was your brother, correct?

Right, yeah. And I thought it was interesting how you thought that was a joke. I thought it was a joke because we're living in 2019 and, like, Luke, I am your father is like so overdone. It doesn't stand out anymore. Just like, okay, shrug. But I didn't know that was a reference back then. Yeah, right. I was a kid.

So I was like, whoa, that's a cool twist. But essentially, it is posited that this entire adventure and perhaps the first game as well was Guy Brush's imagination because after you leave this area that you fight Lechuk in, you are a child and Lechukuk is your brother and you meet with your parents and essentially that's how the game ends with like, was it all a dream? Was this all a fantasy? Was this all in Guy Bruch's head? And people were, I think, understandably a little upset by a game that was already sort of nihilistic. and sort of shrugging at consequences. Yeah, there are lots of things in the game, like hinting that Guy Brish is a child

who's been making everything in his mind. Like the theme park at the end that you see as his parents, it does look like the shore part of Bouti Island. And like the underground tunnels that they're in are all the futuristic, and those are based on the underground tunnels in Disneyland. And, oh, there's also these, like, rooms that house amusement park junk.

and the elevator leads up to the alleyway in Melley Island That's right, yeah. Secret of Monkey Island. And all of that also ties in with the theme parking elements of Secret of Monkey Island that you brought up

in our episode about that. So it all does kind of tie together that theory that it's all just in a child's imagination. But then the game hints that oh, maybe it's Lechuk putting you under some kind of curse. Yeah, and I think people tend to forget

that when they're talking about this ending because it's very much much underlined that so like as you're walking away with your family, your little brother or big brother rather, does like a demonic face towards the camera. And then during the credits, there's a cutaway to Elaine saying, where is Guy Bruch? Like, I hope, you know, he's under a spell from Lechuk. So they're underlining like, this is an illusion. Something is happening here. This is not reality. But I don't know why people read that so literally when there are two moments in that ending that say, this is not actually happening. Would you have really?

whether they took those parts out, do you think? You know what? I'm not really sure because I played the games after knowing, you know, there would be more games. And I think eventually, I don't think Ron Gilbert was like dropping the mic. I think he knew they would try to make more. And maybe LucasArts said, make this kind of open end, it leave something more because we might want to make more of these. But the people who made Monkey Island 3, Ron Gilbert and Tim Schaefer and Dave Grossman were not part of that group, they had to figure out a way. to write themselves out of that hole.

And I think, given what they were given, they did a fairly good job. Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's not the best explanation, but it's like, what else can you do with what they were given? Yeah. And, like, Ryan Gilbert did say,

if he were to make more Monkey Island games, he would start off from the ending of the second game because he doesn't consider anything made after that game to be his canon. Yeah, he has his own Monkey Island 3 in his head, and he won't tell anyone what it is, until Disney sells the game back to him because this is a Disney game, remember?

We have to keep telling ourselves that it started off making fun of Pirates of the Caribbean, now it's part of the family. Which is why we won't see any merch for it ever. No, no. But just like how they dress up Haunted Mansion like The Nightmare Before Christmas, I want them to dress up Pirates of the Caribbean

like Monkey Island, but it will never happen. No one said we have Jack Sparrow in there. Yeah, get him out of there. Yeah, though. The way you describe this really does sound like Middle Gear Solid too. Yeah. You know, because Kojima was dropping the mic on that one. And he, you know, basically said, oh, everything is about the Patriots who are apparently the presidents of the United States.

What the hell? And that's where the game ends. And he wasn't planning to do Metal Gear Solid 3 himself, but eventually got pulled back into that, then got pulled back into four. And it took him, you know, a decade and a half to be able to create his game about delivering packages and a crap-filled, piss-filled, baby-filled. A Pee-B-Sill tech hole, right? Yes. Yes, throwing your own pee is the new future. of gaming until you make movies.

But, yeah, it was, I think until like 20 years, sorry, 10 years later, this was like the most, like, write your top five list for whatever.com. What are the most polarizing video game endings? It would be this in Metal Gear Solid 2. Speaking of anachronisms, listicles didn't exist back then. No, they didn't. Boy. It was a pure time.

It was a moneymaker for about five years. So at the end of Secret of Monkey Island, you don't really figure out what the secret of Monkey Island is. That's always been a running gag, I think, people asking. what is the secret of looking out because it's never explicitly stated what it is. And also at the end of this one, you don't really know what Big Whop is. There is a treasure chest that Gyrrige is holding onto at the beginning of the game, which then gets smashed and there's an e-ticket inside, like an e-ticket from Disneyland.

Yeah, yeah, which in case anyone doesn't know before Disneyland was just like general admission, do whatever you want. You would go to Disneyland, I think pay a little to get in and then you would buy tickets to go on the rides. And the e-tickets were the, like, premium tickets for the really good rides. So the popular fan theory is that Guy Brich is a little kid who really wants that E, who wants to win that E ticket. And that is his biggest, that is the biggest treasure in his mind. Any kid would love that.

But then it's never really said, like, what that ticket is in the game. He's like, oh, it's just a ticket that says E on it. Yeah. And there's no use for it in that section. No, no. There are a lot of interesting, like, little clues dropped in as to what all this could mean. And again, why does Lechuk want to prevent him from finding Bugwop? There's nothing there.

Does he not want to find the secret, which is that it's all made up in his head or something? I think further games would develop what the secret is and things like that. I think Hearst really plays around with that idea. It's been a while since I replayed it. And I'll replay it again very soon for this podcast. But I think they eventually do try to nail more stuff down lore-wise when Rod and Gilbert really didn't care. He was more of a – I wouldn't say – I said nihilistic before. I don't think Ron Gilbert was just like, you know, screw everything.

attached no meaning anything, but I don't think he was like as attached to a concrete world with lore and history and things like that. He was much more playful, I would say. Playful is probably a good word for it. I think the whole Lechuk being Garish's brother thing was entirely dropped for the rest of the series. Yeah. Even though you need it as part of the puzzle,

you need that knowledge in order to make the voodoo doll. That is true. That's one of the puzzles I didn't like. So let's talk about puzzles really quick before we go. There's still some stuff we have to cover. Unfortunately, we are running a little short on time. But we will get to your questions and comments. in the future, in a future questions and comments episode.

So thanks for leaving them. They're all very, very good. And they gave me a lot to think about and thinking about this game. I did want to start with the bad puzzles in this game because there are some I don't like that much and I want Nina to defend all of them as the number of my gallon fan in the room. I'm ready.

Number one, the card catalog puzzle, which, number one, only people in 1991 will understand what a card catalog is. So this is not, I wonder like if a modern day kid played this, they'd be like, what am I looking at? Like, because people don't look up books on card catalogs anymore. People don't look up books at all anymore. There are no books.

Even I didn't know what it was when I was a kid because I didn't use card catalogs back in then. Yeah. Even when you were a kid? No. Really? Interesting. I don't remember how I took up books or looked up books.

I don't think I needed to look up books. I think I just had Dewey Decimal memorized it. No, I just like go to up to the shelf and see like, oh, like what kind of books do I want to, do I want to take out today or go to. You weren't doing serious research as a five-year-old. Well, we had a library. at my elementary school, and I remember there was a card catalog there, but I never needed to use it. I just asked a librarian.

So you don't like this puzzle because card catalogs are obsolete? No, no. What I'm saying is I'm just making a joke that, like, this is not a puzzle for anyone in 2019, but what I don't like about this puzzle is, so in this game, you need two books for puzzles in this game, and in order to get the books, you need to take them out of the library. To find them, you need to use the card catalog. And essentially the card catalog is like 200 jokes. It's a real card catalog that you look through a drawer at a time. And the jokes are so good.

The jokes are good. But my issue is it's not a puzzle. It's just like, can you use a card catalog? The entire puzzle is like, what subject do you look up to find the book you're looking for? Which to me, it's not using things within the game. It's using outside knowledge of how a card catalog works, which is kind of a lame puzzle. But I don't think it's meant to be a puzzle. It is a puzzle because you need to actually use a card catalog to find a book.

I think this is kind of a traditional blind spot sometimes for adventure game developers is like creating puzzles around specific cultural knowledge. Zork, too, I think, was sort of famously guilty of that. There's a puzzle based around baseball. And if you don't live in the U.S. or Japan and don't really follow baseball, like the description of it, it's all very abstract. Like if you know baseball, you'll be like, oh, it's a diamond-shaped thing. there's like bases and stuff, okay, I get it.

But if you don't have that cultural context, it's very difficult. So when that game was localized into other languages, people would really get hung up on that. Yeah, I can understand that. And for this especially, it's like one of the puzzles I think is you have to find where a shipwreck is in the game. So you can give that information to the person doing like the treasure hunting tours. And I think you look up V for voyages and then look up the right book. But there are so many like possibilities in that section, you can take out, you can take out any of the books available to you. So I feel like there are too many variables, and then you have to go back to the library to check out books.

You can take out any book, and then Guy Rich will read it and comment on it. If you won't read the text in it, he just like make a comment about it. No, you know, I just don't consider it to be a puzzle. I feel like if they were... That's why I don't like it. No, like if they were like lazier about it, as soon as you were told, like, oh, you should take out this book from library, then that would be a dialogue option when you talk to the librarian and then she would get it for you. But I think they just wanted to have some fun with it.

and write all these jokes and use that as an excuse to write all those jokes. It is a good excuse to write jokes, but I think it's not a good puzzle, because I don't feel like it's a puzzle, really. But I don't think it's supposed to be a puzzle. That's why I don't mind it. It's still something can get stuck on, though. So we have to agree to disagree. But I love, like, you know, back when I had all this time,

which is a good time to play adventure games like this. It was so fun to look through every single title and then take out certain books to see what Guybridge would say about them. It's made for, like, a player in 1991. to just mess around with. But I guess, like, in today's world, you don't have as much time to like... Twitter for jokes. Exactly.

It's like constant jokes coming out. You're not stop. So, Nina, please explain the hand puzzle to our audience because this, I feel like, is also not a puzzle because I don't know. I just don't like this puzzle very much. It's also cut out entirely in the easy mode version of this game, which is not a special edition. Exactly. And I will say what I like about this puzzle is that adventure games are all about. overthinking everything. The solution to this puzzle is don't think too hard about the solution.

Okay, so the hand puzzle, so a guy, you're supposed to like get the winning numbers for a roulette game, but first you need to say the password. And so a guy sticks out his hand and sticks out his hand from out of a little slot and a door. He's the one who gives you the right number. He holds out, like let's just say, for example, he holds up two fingers and says, if this is three, what is this, and then holds out five fingers. Or he holds up five fingers and says, if this is four, what is this? And then holds up one finger. And the answer is a number from one to five that you can select from Guy Rish's dialogue there.

And if you start writing down which two numbers he flashes with his hands, and then the correct number, you start to see a pattern. And the pattern is, the solution is the number of fingers he holds out at first. It's the first time, yeah. That's all it is. You're not supposed to listen to what he says. You just count how many fingers on his first hand, and that's the answer. And I do think, like, yeah, it's tough. But, again, if you start writing down the way I explained, you start seeing the pattern right away.

So I think it's, like, not that hard. Yeah, I think when I tried to solve it legitimately upon playing this game for the first time, I was overthinking. I'm like, oh, this must be like a math problem. Like, like a math brain teaser. But it really isn't. It's like a trick question. It helps because he actually does, if you get the answer wrong, he gives you the correct answer. Yeah.

And you also get to see another guy giving the right answer too, like when you follow him into the alloy where you get the password from. Yeah, like, no, I think it's really clever. And he says, watch closely. I think that's a hint as to what you're supposed to do is like not think about the numbers. He says, watch closely. I'll do this again. Okay. But that's the only hint the game really gives you.

Right, right. I still don't like it very much. I mean, I understand why it's a puzzle a lot of people hate, but I think it's clever and fun. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, now that I know the solution, I will never get stuck on it again. But I guess just like writing down, writing it down recognizing a pattern is what you really need to do. Yeah, that's really all it is.

And I am absolutely terrible as math, and I hate numbers and counting. It's a very visual puzzle. and that's what I like about it. It reminds me of like a professor Leighton puzzle where I just think I'm the dumbest person ever after I learned a solution. She's like, no, it's actually this. But like if you know this, if you know this series well enough or adventure games well enough, you'll know that they're not going to throw out a math problem at you. It's probably something more clever to it than that.

And so the last puzzle I want to talk about really quick is something that Ron Gilbert apologizes for, which is the monkey wrench puzzle in which you have to turn, what do you turn the monkey wrench of nuts? I think it's a nut you turn a nut with a monkey wrench but you don't use a monkey wrench you use a monkey and the problem is monkey wrench does not localize well monkey wrench is something

we call a certain tool in America and that pun spanner in other languages right? I think it's a spanner yeah so the idea to use a monkey to do something a monkey wrench would do does not translate universally to other languages so like we got some comments like how I was finished playing this game

and of course Metro games are huge in Europe. So the kids that were playing this game and not English speakers, this probably just was like lost on them completely. Or even just other dialects of English. Like British English, it's a spanner, not a monkey wrench. And even even knowing what a monkey wrench is, I wouldn't think to use a monkey, even in Monkey Island, too, to turn the thing. Yeah. I'm not sure what it's called in Canada, but I definitely got stuck on this part for a really, really long time. And at that point, I was just trying, like throwing everything at that pump in the game. and I tried Jojo, the monkey, and it somehow worked.

I didn't understand why. I'm like, okay. The Sprite graphics convey a lot of great information. They're very communicative. But I feel like when you pick up the monkey, the monkey is like in the shape of a monkey wrench once you pick it up. But I still don't think it looks enough like a monkey wrench for you to immediately make the connection. Like I think you can only do so much with those sprite graphics. And turning a monkey into a monkey wrench shape is very difficult to convey.

Even knowing the solution, I'm like, that barely looks like what it needs to look like. When Guybrush kind of angles his tail, so he looks more like a monkey wrench. Even that, it just kind of confuse me. Yeah. The only hint the game really gives you aside from the monkey wrench pun is the way Jojo's arms are positioned in the inventory. Like, that's supposed to be a hint. However, in the special edition version, he's redrawn, so his arms aren't even positioned

that way, so it makes it even harder to figure out. So, yeah, before we go, we can talk about the special edition really quick and that came out in 2010 back when they were remaking these games. I don't know how they got permission, but it actually happened. And I feel like this is a very good improvement on the original's remake that came out in 2009. In that, you can play with the original graphics and music, but also with the voices. So in the last remake, you can play either old version with no voices, old music, or new version with, you know, new music, new graphics and voices. This one, you can play old look, old music and voices, which is how I played it.

And the voices, I think, are all very good with a few questionable lesser characters that aren't are just weird choices, I think. The voodoo ladies' head is huge. Yeah, yeah. In the, I will say, so the remade graphics are an improvement over the original. But what they are doing with the remade graphics in this one, like the original, are sort of, it's like a reimagining of the background art and a reimagining of the character sprites. In the remakes of things like full throttle and day of the tentacle, they're like, we're going to clean these up and present them in a higher resolution. In this one, it's like, no, no, we'll just make our own art that's similar to the old. art.

Yeah, like they play with the proportions and kind of match it to how they look, the characters look in Crystal Monkey Island. It's harder to do. Like, I can understand with the graphics being more basic, not basic, but a little simpler and easier to read, like the backgrounds and day the tentacle and full throttle, a lot of like, you know, not as much detail, a lot of like, you know, big swaths of color, much easier to remake an HD. These, remaking a painting in HD based on a 320 by 200 assets, I can understand why they

recreated the graphics from. scratch. But because of that, you don't get the sort of handmade touch, the warmth, the grain that I think really makes these backgrounds interesting. Like, I don't want to rag on the special edition graphics too much because, like, the voice acting and all that is great. And the graphics are, the special edition graphics for this one are better than the special edition graphics for Secret on Lincoln Island. But with Chuck, how he looks and sounds, I really, really don't like it because they made him so like broad-shouldered and like physically intimidated looking in the remade graphics and his voice is too lively to me yeah i mean like you played

the chrysumachalan first so you're used to his voice but i played this game for so long uh for so many years i played so many times i imagined lechuk's voice being more half dead and growly and very slow and maybe almost like Darth Vader like and how slow in medicine it would be. He's a corpse in this game. Yeah, and he moves like a corpse. He's like spitting when he talks,

like dragging his foot. Yeah, the foot dragging is so good. And then, but then he sounds super lively and, like, I love Earl Bowen's performance, but it's just not what I pictured for zombie pirate Lechuk. I don't think he was directed with the right intentions

based on what the character was at that point. And he moves too quickly. Yeah, I think so too. For some reason in the special edition graphics, I guess because of like, like how many frames he had to put in there. I don't know. That just felt off to me and it disappointed me.

He also doesn't look as grotesque. Like he's so green and he's spitting all over the place. And in this remade version, he looks too strong, I guess, physically strong. Yeah, he's like broad-shouldered and like, yeah, it's a weird, I don't know why they went that direction. Yeah, I will say like the original game, there is so much intentionality behind every pixel and so much care put into like every little bit of the graphics in the original game, it's hard to go to someone else's, you know, interpretation of those. I love looking at this game on a big new TV. It looks so beautiful. I mean, I feel like we can now, like 10 years after this

remake, we can now appreciate Sprite graphics. Like, you needed new graphics to sell this game 10 years ago. I don't think they would have went this far now remaking the game. I think they would have just like offered it in its old designs and old, you know, music. Yeah, I do recommend the special edition, though, if only for the voice acting. Yeah, yeah, it's Dominic Armato as Guy Brush again, and a lot of the old regulars are back. And there's so many lines in this game. Yeah, that's true, because like a lot of the jokes in this game, because they expand on the dialogue a lot in the sequel, a lot of the jokes in the humor in this game is like, yes, we wrote an

answer for every one of these dialogue options, or yes, you can have all of these options when you're talking to a character. In the first scene, a character can sing a million models of beer on the wall, and you can just keep going and going. You can throw out a new number and he'll start from that number. They had to figure out a way to do that with audio editing to do that procedurally or whatever. There's a lot of useless dialogue in this game. And I mean useless as in, you don't need to go through the dialogue in order to solve any of the puzzles. That's why, like, if you know what to do, you can go through the game in, like, under two hours like I did. But it's like for someone with a

lot of time, which is what a lot of people were back then without the internet. It was just a fun way to like go through the game and like replay um it just has a lot of replayability to him because there are some dialogue that you can only um see if you replay that part and i don't know like having to like record all of that because they didn't expect people to be voice acting for it no no like the card catalog he had to like record every single one of those titles yes there's a lot this game was written before the advent of voice acting and infinity games for the most part so like it was written, like Ron Gilbert says on the commentary that, like, improvisation in video game design stopped when voice acting started because you had to have everything nailed down before the

voice acting begin. And that's the last thing I'll say about this remake, because we've got to go, is that there's a commentary track for different scenes. And I feel like in 2009, 2010, it was sort of like, oh, can we do commentary tracks in video games? And they just decided not to do that anymore. Although they're really cool. Very few games have them, but I always like seeing them.

And they feel like that was a time when people were starting to do them. really haven't pursued that anymore. But, yes, we are out of time, and that is our Monkey Island 2 episode. We still have things to talk about, unfortunately, but we'll get to your questions and comments in future episodes, so I thank you for writing in to talk about those. So, Nina, you're our special guest today. Can you talk about where we can find you and all of your great stuff? Sure.

I'm on Twitter as Space Coyoteo, that's Space Coyote with an L at the end instead of an E. You can see all my art at spacecoyote.com. If you go to fangamer.com, you can see all the video game merchandise that design. If you go to collections, artists, and Space Coyote. I've done a few things for Thimbleweed Park, like the shirt that Bob is wearing right now that he mentioned. Oh, yeah, it's beautiful. Thank you. So as for us, we are Retronaut, and we are a fan-supported Enterprise.

If you want to support the show and get every episode one week ahead of time and ad-free, please go to Patreon.com slash Retronauts. You can get just that, and you will be supporting our show. We're in our seventh year independently. as an independent podcast, away from a major website. I really appreciate anything you can do to help us, and we want to keep going in the future. We're going to be on our official 300th episode fairly short of here, and we thank you for everything you've done for us over the years.

Again, that is patreon.com slash retronauts. Jeremy, you've got a lot going on. What's up with you? Sure, I have nap time coming up. No, you can find me on Twitter as GameSpite, and you can also check out my Retronauts video works on YouTube where I've been cataloging a lot of different game systems chronologically, look up Jeremy Parrish.

That's one R in Parish, not two. That's not a real word. And you would enjoy that video series if you enjoy this podcast, although I do not talk about adventure games there unless they... One day. You know, like maybe something

about Kim Kosega, but that's about it. Those are good. So as for me, I've been your host on this episode, Bob Mackie. Find me on Twitter as Bob Sarvo. I also do other podcasts about old things, old cartoons, as a matter of fact. If you go to Patreon.com

slash Talking Simpsons, you can find those. I do Talking Simpsons, a chronological exploration of the Simpsons, and What a Cartoon where we look at a different cartoon for different series every week. Nina's been on the show, Jerry's been on the show. We've been going for almost two years now, so if you enjoy cartoons, I'm sure we'll find an episode you like of What a Cartoon. But again, that is patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, lots of bonus podcasts for you there,

including our newest mini-series, Talking Futurama Season 2, only for patrons. That's it for us. We'll see you next week for a brand new episode of Retronauts. Thanks again for listening. Thank you.