Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 300: The Curse of Monkey Island

Episode Date: May 25, 2020

Our LucasArts adventure miniseries continues this week as we explore the developer's first (relatively) high-res adventure: 1997's The Curse of Monkey Island. This late-'90s release had a lot going against it: the series creator had left the company years ago, the two guys responsible for most of the previous games' humor and design were busy with other projects, and this third entry in the trilogy went for an art style far more exaggerated than what had come before. And somehow, they didn't screw it up. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey and Nina Matsumoto (Thimbleweed Park cover artist and designer at Fangamer) for a super-size exploration of this once-long-awaited sequel. Be sure to pre-order Nina's newest book: Sparks! Double Dog Dare. Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get exclusive episodes every month, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon.

Retronauts is part of the Greenlit Podcast Network. For more information, please go to greenlitpodcast.com. This week on Retronauts, we roll through the gates of hell. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one, Bob Mackey, and today's topic is the LucasArts Adventure Game, The Curse of Monkey Island. That is right. We are now on another episode of our LucasArts Adventure Game miniseries because these are very

quarantine-friendly to record. So we've been doing a lot of them lately. Hopefully you're enjoying them. This is one of my favorite games, so I can't wait to start talking about it. But before I continue, who is with me as our special guest today? Hi, Bob, I'm your cursed fiancé, Nina Matsumoto. That's true. But if you were turned into gold, I could have you safely shipped over the border.

I think they would allow that. Yeah, that's a very good loophole, actually. I wish you were more cursed. Only living people are not allowed. Yeah, I don't know if gold can carry COVID-19, but I don't think they're worried about testing that just yet. But yes, Nina Matsumoto... No, if I could be turned into gold right now, I would do it until this is all... Oh, yeah.

I'm looking for medically induced comas that are safe just to get me through like August. and I think I'll be okay coming at the other end. Well, I already gave you the recipe for that. That only works in... One egg, pepper, hair, the dog that bit, yeah. That only works in one adventure game, and I don't want a dog to bite me. I don't need any new diseases. So I just wanted to say, aside from me being a huge fan of this series,

it's very appropriate that I'm the guest for this episode, because... So I replayed this game two days ago, and yesterday I watched the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and in both stories featured two main characters who are newly engaged, but are torn apart and need to find each other again, which is what's happening to us right now. Oh, my God.

Life is imitating art. Yeah, especially in the parts of the Caribbean movie, because it starts off with, you know, Kiraniteley and Orlando Bloom getting arrested during their wedding ceremony or afterwards. You don't actually see it happening. So throughout the movie, she's, like, drinking and saying things like, I should have been married by now. And that's how I feel.

That's what I'm doing. Suck in here. Because I am drinking and I should have been married by now because our marriage was supposed to happen in April and that had to be postponed. We don't know what's going to when it's going to happen. It's true. As of this recording in mid-May, so yeah, I mean, we're going to, like on this podcast sort of announced that we were engaged to the public because the public didn't know. We were keeping that a secret. But this ended up getting pushed past our actual wedding date this episode.

So people already know, but you listeners might not know that we demand gifts and pity. and money as well and there's places to send your money Patreon is a good place but yes I demand your pity and your money I will say Bob did propose to me

with a diamond ring with a gold band Not as big as the cursed one in this game though It came from a dead person So there is a light curse on it Oh yeah yeah It's your grandmother's ring

That's right She was not a pirate You think it's cursed? She was a seamstress So make up that way you will Well maybe there was a curse put on it Maybe that's why I know

When you had to be postponed All of this what's happening now is not my fault Okay, okay Despite your guy brisness I'm a hapless guybris style man But I did not curse the world All right But yes Nina Matsumoto is here with us

Nina you've been on all of our past Monkey Island podcast And some other podcasts as well Can you remind everybody out there Who you are and what you do Because you're more than just my fiancé Yes, I'm more than just your fiancé I'm more than just de-missus to your mister As some people might call me

Yeah, I'm an artist at Fang Gamer, so I design a lot of t-shirts. I was on an episode about video game merchandise and apparel because of all the shirts I designed, official shirt I design for video games, and I probably have designed something

that you, the listener, is wearing right now, possibly. Look down at your torso. There's a chance that she could have drawn it. There's a very high possibility that I am in your closet. So I do that. Not only just T-shirts, though, like also

key chains and I do some box art. I've done box art for things like Thimbleweed Park, which is connected to Monkey Island in a way because it's a Ron Gilbert game. I also do comic books. I've been, I did Simpsons comic books for for 10 years before that company closed down, Bongo Comics. And now I work on a children's graphic novel series called Sparks. The first one came out a couple years ago and I just finished working on the second one, which is coming out August this here, and I'm currently working on a third. And people can pre-order the second book. It's called Sparks Double Dog Dare.

Yep, that's right. Excellent. And you can plug that again in the outro, but people are excited for book two. I know my nephew wants it. He's been demanding it. Oh, okay. That's cool. Send him an advanced copy.

I think he'd like it. Just call him a reviewer. Actually, right now, because of everything, I don't think they're offering, like, physical advanced copies right now. I think it's all in PDF. Okay. Well, he wouldn't do that. Which is an easier way to distribute. That's true.

It's true. Well, we'll talk after the show. Your nephew use an iPad. That is true, yes. We'll talk about this after the show about, you know, advanced copies of Sparks, too. Maybe a lucky listener will win one. Stay tuned. But, yes, we're talking today about the Curse of Monkey Island.

And I've talked a lot about my, you know, LucasArts adventure game experience where these games were unreachable for me until we got a PC in 1996. And that's why, like, this is the first new LucasArts adventure game that I played. I remember playing the demo for it. that came in an issue of PC Gamer I think like in the summer of 97 and I knew I wanted it I bought this with my Christmas of 97 money

when I was a sophomore in high school I bought this at Best Buy. I have a clear memory. I'm guessing, sorry, I'm guessing it went to like the part where you can get Murray at the very beginning. I think it was just the like little tutorial section in the beginning.

Just that prologue. When you shoot the cannon and then I'm guessing it ends there. I think so. Yeah, I don't think you can see like the final cut scene. But, yeah, that was like my first taste of a real new adventure game after seeing them at the software store and being unable to play them. So, of course, I had to play this. And we talked about this on our previous Monkey Island episodes, but this is my first Monkey Island game I played.

So I'm approaching this, or I approached it 20 plus years ago with a very different context than you, a longtime Monkey Island fan had approached it with. So what was your experience with this game, Nina? Yeah, I go into more detail about this in my Secret of Monkey Island episode. but yeah, I started with Secret of Monkey Island and then, of course, Let's Chuck's Revenge, which is my favorite, I think. I keep flip-flopping back between the first and the second that's my favorite.

You're both so good, and then there was such a long gap between the second game and this one. I think the second one was released in 1991, like late, late 1991, and this came out in November, 1997, I believe. Yeah, there was about a six-year gap between the two games?

So you can imagine, like, there was much anticipation. After the second game, all the fans were like, when's the third one coming out? We were so clamoring for a third game. I was, I was, like, deep into the online Monkey Island fandom. I visited every website. It was on every forum. And so this came out, or when news of this came out, we were all so excited. And then because the staff is different and the look is so different, it was kind of a polarizing.

game. But I think a lot of people started, like you, started with this game as her first Monkey Island. Yeah, this game came out when computers were being much more available for the middle class Americans. They were getting cheaper in value. We talked about this before on episodes,

but like, you know, Dell and Gateway and they were making like lower cost PCs for the average American family around the mid-90s. And that's why I think you're right. Like a lot of people, this was probably their first Monkey Island game. It kind of feels like when games, most games on PC were on floppy disks,

it was less accessible. And then when more games were out on CD-ROM, that's when more people had PCs. Yeah, the CD-ROM drives, rather, they were a very attractive feature. The word multimedia was why you bought a PC just because of these games and interactive encyclopedias,

interactive storybooks, and so on. It was something you couldn't do on a television. Yeah, and CD-ROMs are definitely a better way to get a game than on like 15 floppy discs that is true they made so full throttle which is one of our last episodes we did but after sorry before Zach McCracken that was the first game where they were like no more floppy disc this is just going to be a CD buy a CD ROM drive please oh man if full throttle were on floppy disks there'd be like 20 of them yeah you'd need like you need someone to carry the box to the to your car for you so what was your uh did you buy this game new actually I just want

to break up like CD ROMs made games so accessible that you You said you got the demo disc through PC magazine, right? Yeah, PC Gamer. It was one of several demos on that desk, and I think I want to do an episode, maybe like half an hour episode about demo disc because I miss just getting a crazy demo disc full of things you've never heard of

and then end up wanting to buy some of those games after you play the demo. Yeah, I think those demo discs were like, it just helped the games industry so much because it made demos like that way more accessible. Can you imagine if there were like demo floppy disks? You cannot do that. No, no.

stick that in a magazine as a little bonus. You cannot do that. Actually, for the last generation, for a long time, last generation of gaming, meaning like Xbox 360 and PS3, I think there was a rule at least on the 360. Like, if you were releasing a game, you had to have a demo.

And developers were complaining rightfully, like, this takes a lot of development time to just make a vertical slice of a game to distribute to people. So they eventually cut that out. But yeah, so few games have demos anymore. And when they do, there's like a big to do about it. Like, the Final Fantasy 7 remake had a demo,

and that was a big, deal and it got a lot of people talking. That was the last big demo I can think of just a few months ago, as of this recording. And now, like, Nintendo limits how many times you can play a demo, right? That's crazy, yes. It is nuts.

I really hate that because, yeah, I grew up with PC games, and so I grew up with, like, many, many demos. And there were so many games where I just had the demo, and I just replayed that over and over and over. Oh, me too. Yeah. I think it is a Japanese game developer thing, because I know Capcom had done that in the past, too.

There was a lot of, like, 3DS demos. You can only play like five times, it feels like a very Japanese developer thing that they like to do. It's super cheap. Yes. But back to this Curse Monkey Island game. Did you buy this new? And like, what were your thoughts about it upon first playing it as a Monkey Island veteran?

I bought it new. I still have the original box, actually. The box and the disc. And man, this is going to be like my most controversial opinion on my appearances of these so far. We normally agree on every. by the way.

Yeah. This is not my monkey island. Ooh. It's a good game. It's a great adventure game. The art direction is like nothing else we've ever seen

before. It's fine, but as a monkey island game, I was just not satisfied with it. Interesting. Okay. I'm not saying my take

is better than yours or anything like that, but coming into this game, coming into the series with this being my first game and knowing about the other games, I played this first,

and then, And maybe like a year later, I finally tracked down the first two games and played those. And my thoughts upon going to those, like, oh, yeah, this is just the guy brush I know. I can hear his voice in my head. It just, they couldn't render him to be as big or cartoony. So this is what he looks like now. So, like, I was super accepting of one and two after playing three first. Maybe that's a lot harder to do once you play one and two first.

Yeah, like I, when I was replaying this again, I was thinking, you know what? Crystal Monkey Island is almost like the Final Fantasy 7 of the series. Oh, it came out the same. same year. Just a few months later in America, too. That's true. Yeah, you're right. So what I mean by that is those who started with Final Fantasy 7, which a lot of people did, love that one. And while they can still appreciate the older games after, you know, playing them after 7, they still think 7 is the best, 7 onwards. Whereas those who started

with the games before FF7 have a harder time adjusting to the new look and still do. They'll still say, well, FF7 is fine, but I still like. like six or three or one the best before we start the the conversation proper like the in-depth conversation i will say that uh there are things i prefer about one and two but design wise i think three has the best design and i really like the direction they were going before they hit that like clunky 3d wall with grim fandango and escape from monkey island uh people love grim fandango i reviewed the remastered version like three or four years ago whenever that came out I thought it was a fine experience

but I also thought some of the puzzles were very bad far worse than what I would expect from a LucasArts game of that era and Escape from Monkey Island we'll get to it It's not good We have to play it

We have to talk about it You have to be on that episode But I know It's the dark times The early 2000s and 3D graphics for games Those were dark dark dark times Yeah like my opinion on Groom Panago is also controversial

Because I know so many people Love that game so much But I could just never get into it I don't like those controls or the way they do the puzzles. You're right. It is like the same as Escape from Monkey Island in terms of the graphics and the way they handle the puzzles, except it's way better than Escape from Monkey Island, of course. I mean, we'll get into that later. But yeah, like the game design of Curse and Monkey Island is fine.

But I also feel like it's a lot of the good parts are because they just echo puzzles found in the previous two games. there's a lot of puzzles that are that remind me of things they did before and because of that it almost feels like a fan game to me interesting in terms of game design like of course a fan could I don't think a fan could have made a game that looks quite like this back then now it's probably doable but back then like this is like such a huge undertaking and the the visuals like do look great like I mentioned uh like whenever I have to do more of a like my art style tends to lean towards more Japanese comic style but if I want to do something

that's more like Western style I tend to look at this game and look at the backgrounds the backgrounds which were done by by Bill Tiller who also worked on the dig which is surprising actually because the introduction is so different yeah yeah

man like I think the background kind of echo that of Steve Purcell's backgrounds in especially the second game where it starts to get more a little more cartoony and kind of like

Dave the tentacle where there's never a straight line things are like skewed and warped

but it still all comes together and looks like a real setting and especially I love the clouds the clouds

are some my favorite things about this game visually they are Winwaker but

Winwaker came later oh okay when I think of Winwaker I think of like Angular though

aren't they more angular I'm not I'm not I'm a Winwaker Cloud expert

I did a podcast about Winwaker how dare you question me, but they're very similar. But I don't want to dig too deep into the graphics yet. I don't want to talk more in depth about those.

I have some great quotes from interviews about the inspirations for the look of the game. I want to approach this one thing at a time, though. So I want to first dip into the production of the Curse of Monkey Island, the game released on November 11, 1997, and in LucasArts chronology, that is between the dig and Grim Fandango. And in terms of technology, it is a big step-up tech-wise for LucasArts games, because previous to this, the VGA games were all on the standard 320 by 200 resolution, but now we have advanced beyond that to 640 by 480, a world of double the pixels. So this game is very, very high tech compared to past LucasArts adventure games.

Wait, how much time was there between the dig and this one? About two years, because there was no 1996 adventure game, but this was the 97 adventure game. Okay, that makes sense because the dig they tried their best to make it like an animated movie and, well, you can talk about it in your actual dig episode, but this succeeded way better. Yeah, there was no 96 adventure game. Their game in 96 that was on a Star Wars game was afterlife, the heaven, hell, like Sim City game. Oh, I don't know that one actually. Which maybe I'll do that for this. A friend of mine had that when it was new and that it eventually came in one of those LucasArts adventure packs just as like a bonus. it's a very broken game that has a really cool idea that's too clever for its own good

but i did enjoy it uh for what i played of it back in the day so it's not a point and click it is not it's a sim city game where you run the afterlife okay no wonder i've never heard of it i'm only really familiar with their point and click stuff i've not heard of this one was it good uh like i said it was just uh it was sort of broken because uh the concept was a little too clever to actually be a satisfying game but uh it was somebody having fun with the whole SIM concept. Oh, and speaking of adventure games that try to be like an animated cartoon, Kings Quest 7 came out in 1994, and they tried their best with the limitations they had.

I don't imagine you'll do an episode about that anytime soon. I won't do an episode about a Kingsquest game, but I'll probably do like, I kind of want to do like a Quest series, like I'll do a Kings Quest episode and a Police Quest episode and a Quest for Glory episode and the Colonel's bequest episode, all the quests are in there. I like the Larrabo games. Yeah, I think this

game is kind of comparable to Kings Quest 7 in terms of the style and Chris McKeown Island did it way better. But it was also released three years after. That's true. Yeah, Kings Quest 7, I always assumed it looked better than it did until I watched the let's play of it and it's pretty...

Yeah, it's rough. It reminds me... Especially the cutscenes. Yeah, it reminds you of those Zelda the CDI adventure games, or CDI action games, the cutscenes in those. It's still better than those, at least. It's not too far away. It's a bit janky sometimes. Yeah. The ones in this game are closer to, like, good TV animation than bad, like, CD-ROM animation.

Yeah, I just have to wonder, like, how people felt about Kingsquest 7 when it first came out. I guess we'll save that for a Kingsquest series when I have to not play through all the games, but learn about all of them because I've probably watched a Let's Play about all of them. will be in the future after I lose my mind. So we talked about this before. The context, the new players that this game might be missing was this is coming six years after Monkey Island 2. And Monkey Island 1 and 2 were like back to back. Monkey Island 1 is 90. Monkey Island 2 was 91. People really wanted this game, but they assumed they never would get it because Ron Gilbert left LucasArts in 91 to form humongous entertainment. It was very successful there. And yeah, they just assume Monkey Island 3, as they would call this game, would never happen. But this is

There was so much hype around this game, and I still remember when we first heard Guy Brish's voice, because that was a major thing about this game, the fact that everyone's going to be voiced. And, you know, when you have a protagonist as popular as Guy Brish who doesn't have a voice and is suddenly given one, you're going to have people who have opinions about how he should sound. And I don't think anyone's ever had a negative opinion about Dominic Armato, who was ultimately chosen. we'll talk more about his career soon but yeah he uh he has been guy brush for every game in the series retroactively they put him in the remake so he's been guy brush in one and two they kept him for escape and he was also in tales and uh after curse of monkey island they did switch a few voices based on fan feedback uh we'll talk more about that once we talked about the voice actors oh okay it was based on fan feedback yeah i think it was because there i don't see any other reason because they were quickly changed back in some cases because fans wanted things a certain way i can i could see that because i I do like a lot of the voices in this game, but there are some characters I have opinions about. And I think there are some voices that are better in Tales of Monkey Island. So that makes sense.

But yeah, Dominic Arnda motto is great. Like I said, I was deep in the online, Monkey Island fandom. So I was, like, following everyone's opinions and such closely on the forums. And I don't think anyone had anything bad to say about him. As for the visual style, I think it really shocked everyone as soon as they saw the first image of, like, the cover art, the key art. And that's my main complaint about this game, actually, is how the characters look.

And especially Geibers, who goes through an immense growth spurt. That's not how I pictured him. He's kind of, like, he's kind of actually short-ish, like kind of stumpy looking in previous games, I think. That's true. Maybe more average height. I think everybody was just kind of stocky and small because they were just all tiny, like not tiny, but relatively squats, you know, characters on the screen. Yeah, and I wonder if the decision to make him so tall and lanky like this is based on

how he would be able to fit on the screen. Like maybe he had to be a certain height and certain skinniness. We're going to learn that. You probably have a certain skinniness for sure. I will reveal the answer very, very soon once we talk about more of this stuff. Speaking of how Gryberus looks, though, do you think Grybush is like patient zero for all those, all these male leads and animated films that are scrawny, like, lanky, clean-shamed with big noses.

You mean the Bob types? Yes. Of the bird boys out there? I don't want to say anything, but you said it. Look at what you're marrying. It's, uh, you have to answer to yourself, too. I know. I can't believe.

I, I, I hated this version of Guy-Bersh and now I'm marrying a guybrish type. I know. Uh, you have to live with yourself. But, uh, yeah, this is, this is soon, this has quickly become like the default, uh, protagonist in so much media because I think it's based on the scrawny big nose nerd voice who make these games and make those movies. Onward, one of the elves in Onward, which is just you and Henry.

Yes, it's just me and Henry and Onward. But yeah, like things like the main character and like Ratatooey, like there are so many Scroni nerd, big nose nerd boys in animation. They're fun characters to draw, but they have sort of become the default and maybe it was starting here.

I think so, because now when I look at Garbage, I'm like, oh, I'm just so sick of this kind of character design. But back then, I don't think there was as many characters like this. So I wonder, are there any other characters, like, protagonists that look like this before Guy Brish? Hmm. That's a question for our listeners. I do want to talk about the controversy about this game, though.

Oh, okay. Because, you know, Ron Gilbert is gone, right? He's the creator of Monkey Island. Oh, that made people very skeptical about this game, for sure. But also, Tim Schaefer and Dave Grossman are sort of like the unofficial co-creators of because they inform so much of the humor in writing of that game. Those two guys are also not working on this game. they're doing their own projects.

Schaefer is credited with additional design, which probably means he just helped out with a few puzzles. I don't know what that entails. But yeah, Schaefer and Grossman not involved in this at all. So, like, nobody that worked on the original games was part of this.

And the designers, for the most part, had never been leads of a game, like lead designers of a game before. Yeah, and I think because the main guys who worked on the previous games and created the previous, you know, Monkey Island in general, because they're not on this,

It just feels off to me. It's always felt off. And like, every time I play it, it's not something I play as often as the first two games, but I still have played it a bunch. Every time I play, I think maybe I'll like it better this time. And I played it again recently to prepare for this recording. And it still just doesn't feel like the monkey island I know and grew up with.

I don't know what it is. I can't quite put my finger on it. There are a few things. I've noticed, which I'll bring up later. I like how you talk about, it's not the monkey island you grew up with because when this came out, you were a child. I was a child, too, a child of 15, but still. I was like much, much younger than 15, though.

Yes. I was like, 13. How old was I? Like, no, I was younger than 10, I think. No, no, this game came out in 97. No, no, I'm talking about the first two games. I grew up with those games. Yeah, but I was saying technically you grew up with this game too because you were still a child

when it came out. Sorry, I misunderstood. Yeah. That's true. That's a good point. It's like I was a strapping. young woman of 12 when this came out and I looked fondly upon my childhood years

of Ron Gilbert games. Yeah, well I guess I was imprinted by the first two games. It's true, the things that you play when you're very young are, you know, they have a big effect on you which is why we do so much Nintendo stuff. It's just what we played when we were, you know, kids. And PC games are all I can

talk about because that's what I grew up with. I do want to talk about more production stuff because, unfortunately, this game does not have the lavish remake, that full-throttled day of the tentacle and Grand Fandango have. It was just, you know, kind of spat on to steam, which is fine because it was unavailable for a very long time. It runs in the Scum VM, you know, shell. So all of the, you know, all of the production info about it are really just interviews from the time it was coming out. And I have to think, like, the ancient Monkey Island websites, both the Scum Bar and the International House of Mojo, they both have archived like a ton of original interviews from, like, PC Zone magazine and things like that of the creators. I frequented all those sites, like I mentioned, and like any little piece of news would be kind of transcribed in front of those websites. That's why I miss fan sites in general, you know, because now people would just, like, link to an article on their Twitter.

But back then, they would take the article text and put it on their own website. And because of that, so many of these kind of interviews are preserved forever, which is great. Or it'll be a wiki in all the sources are dead links because no websites are up anymore, which is why, like, every wiki that cites me, like, points to a dead link on one-up. Well, at least there's archive.org. That's true. That's true. Unfortunately, it doesn't archive all those one-up blog post guys. damn it so much lost simpsons games information that i wrote but yeah you could find all my all my old michaelian fan or it's on archive dot org though that's true yeah it's is it on the international

house of mojo i i found this out like before we started recording i shared it with you uh this was world of monkey island okay i probably visited that one too but uh more about like behind the scene stuff there's no story as to how this game came into being uh i just know that based on previous research, the company, LucasArts, was always getting people within the company to pitch new Monkey Island games. Like, whenever it was time to pitch new games, they always said come up with one new Monkey Island game and one new Maniac Mansion game. Those are popular brands. We want to do more of those. So it was inevitable. And I was kind of confused because after full throttle, I didn't know that until doing the episode. It was like the biggest success for Lucasar's

as an adventure game and sold over a million copies, had a lot of crossover appeal. And I was wondering why they didn't do another cinematic adventure game, because it felt like that's the direction they were going. They were like, well, this is the way to get mass appeal for this crusty old genre. Wow, I had no idea that was so successful. And I think eventually this game sold between 600,000 and 700,000, so it really hit a sweet spot for, you know, adventure game interest, but was not as big of a hit as full throttle. And one of the lead designers has a quote on this, and I'll read it here. Jonathan Ackley says, quote, with full throttle, for example, the real punch and push was the cool use of video cuts.

One goal for this game was to have all the punch of full throttle, you know that gee whiz factor, but also the gameplay and depth of, say, Monkey Island 2 or Indiana Jones in the fate of Atlantis. So, yeah, both full throttle and the dig were the 95 adventure games, and they were both, like, very different interpretations of the adventure game,

where the dig, from what I recall, was a very, like, missed-like experience about solving these, like, puzzles and vacuums. And full throttle was, basically let's try to get rid of the inventory as much as possible and make this game cinematic but not necessarily very interactive. Oh, that's true. Another big point about Currisomewake Island is they completely did away with the verb stuff

and they used that the same system that started with full throttle? Yes, except there's no boot icon, but really verbs were gone after Day of the Tenicle. They just got rid of verbs entirely. How do you feel about that? I am fine with it because there's less guesswork involved Although with a Ron Gilbert game The what verb you needed was never like a trick But I feel like after playing Monkey Island

Or Curse of Monkey Island I'm like oh yeah You only need three verbs Yeah that's true Like I don't think I have any problems with this new New system The only thing I don't like is how when you pull up the inventory It just covers up the entire screen That is a problem with this game

And Sam and Max and also full throttle too but you rarely use the inventory and full throttle. Especially since when you open up your inventory in this game and Simon Max, it's not very interesting to look at. Especially in Chris McA Allen, it's just this big brown box. It's not visually pleasing. Yeah, I think like these days, they would find a more interesting way to represent that on the screen, but it was very like practical in this time period.

Just like, yeah, here are the items. Look at them. They're fine. You can see them all. They're clearly labeled. you can have access to them very quickly. I think it was more like a utilitarian approach than a stylish approach.

Yeah, whenever I think of this game, I just think of that inventory box coming up and with the gum and the balloons. Yes. Because you have those items forever in the game, and you always see them. That is true, yeah. Some of them will linger with you

to the end of the game. Let's talk about the talent behind this game. A few people we haven't talked about in great detail, of course. So this game, the co-leads of this game in terms of design are Larry Ahern and Jonathan Aitley. So Larry Ahern is someone I've talked to personally

for my Day of the Tenicle oral history on U.S. Gamer. But he started at the company with Monkey Island 2, and with Day of the Tenicle, he stepped up and basically insisted that our games need art direction. And I will be the art director for our game, just to have a cohesive style for the art on one game. Because previously, like, artists were going off doing their own thing on games like Monkey Island 1 and 2

and Fate of Atlantis. So you get very different-looking characters, and backgrounds there was no like cohesive style so like day of the tentacle is the first time that was fully figured out for a lucas arts game just have one clear style one through line visually throughout the entire game despite not having an art director assigned those other games seem fine to me though i guess like he personally thought that there needed to be more cohesion uh with the arts like when i i guess when i think of monkey island too there are some characters who look way cartoonier than others so yeah this is larry's only design role at lucas

so previously he was an artist there and I really think the look of this game feels like a logical extension of the art direction of day the tentacle and Larry was in charge of the art design and character designs there too like this is just another approach to the cartoony adventure game but using a different style I don't know like I think one thing

I didn't like about this game at the time like now I'm more forgiving about it but I wanted to look more like Data Tenicle or Full Throttle where it was pixel art because I love the pixel art in the first two my can only game so much

and I wish they kind of enhanced those instead of shifting to this, this like anti-aliist drawn style, which again, like I said, it looks fine. Yeah,

I think we were so short-sighted in 1997 where we thought pixels were stupid, like, oh, look at these crusty old things. It wouldn't be until like the early 2000s, I think that there was like pixel nostalgia and people making their own pixel art in a broader, like more mainstream sense online.

I think at this time it was like, well, yes, 2D graphics are advancing. Can you believe everything was made out of squares? Boy, that was lame. Look at our drawings, we can move around now. Now we love pixels. Like, new games come out and they're just all pixel-based. They look gorgeous. Like, Thimbleweed Park is all pixel-based, and it's a beautiful game.

And the best part about pixel art is you can, like, no wonder how high the resolution gets on our screens. It still looks fine. Whereas this game, it still holds up pretty well, I think. But you can definitely tell there's some artifacting. Yeah. I don't think this needs a. remake. I think it looks fine still. But if they made a remake, it would be nice to see the cutscenes in more high definition. Yes, it'd be nice to see all of the art. I mean, it feels

like a remake for this one be much more difficult to do because of just how you would need all of the original art. You can't just sort of have a computer or AI guess where the lines need to be or smooth everything out. They would have to withdraw everything. Yeah. Well, unless they have the original assets, which they might have. I mean, they had a lot of Grim Fandango stuff, but it seems like to have all of those physical assets might be a tall order for the LucasArchivers. Yeah, I feel like if they made a remake

of this, or an HD version re-release, they would get some computer to smooth out the lines. It would just look bad. Yeah, I mean, they did a very good job with full throttle and Day of the Tenicle in remaking the 2D art, but I think you would need a lot more work

because the artwork in this one is much more high fidelity to start with. And, I mean, you can easily smooth out like a blocky, chunky character, not so much here. I do want to move on to talk about the other designer of this game. Jonathan Ackley, so he started at LucasArts as a programmer on Day of the Tenticle, and outside of being credited as a contributing designer on full throttle, this is his only major design role.

Now, I do want to point out, it's important to note that at this time in game development especially, this would be changing in like 10 years, but you could kind of do anything on a game if you knew how. Like, you could write the music or write dialogue or you could, you know, program. You could do a number of things on a game. The roles were not as specialized, but now it's like, I'm going to school to become a UI programmer.

That's all I do in every game. I'm not writing dialogue. I'm not voicing characters. I'm not writing the story. Like, things are so specialized now. But back then, and especially at LucasArts, it was very fuzzy, like, what your role could be. And especially it helped that a lot of the programming

was taken care of already because the Scum Engine existed. So the people that were programming were really just, like, setting up rooms using the Scum Engine. They weren't, like, sitting down and typing out code in, like, C++ or whatever. Like, they were game designers at the same time as being, like, programmers. So a lot of these people were having design experience. They're going through the Scum University program. So it wasn't so weird that these people who had never designed games before were being given lead design roles on this very important game.

Yeah. And I'm sorry if you've covered this before, but do you know why they decided to shit away from the verbs? I just feel like they were trying to, I mean, I don't think there's anything on record. Maybe there's something in interviews. but I think they were trying to get away from the artifice of adventure games like having the literal words on the screen to sort of simplify

the previous text adventure interpretation of adventure games and honestly like graphics are getting better they're like you want an entire screen full of graphics don't you? You want this entire screen to be just full of graphics and colors not a giant bar that cuts off like 40% of the screen.

Yeah yeah I guess I can see that and the better the graphics got I guess they would want to flex out a bit more And for something like Currisome Monkey Island They would need all that space anyway Like the more space they have to work with The better for all the animations Yeah, like if you go back to the Curse of Monkey Island

Or sorry, if go back to Day the Tenicle Games with that Verbar Now feel kind of claustrophobic Because so much of that space is taken up by the verbar And the little area for items It does look nice and white screen though That is very true They are white screen proof to those games

Yeah, yeah But yeah Jonathan Ackley and Larry Ahern to the two designers of this game. Music is by Michael Land. So previously on Monkey Island 2, Peter McConnell and Clint Bojackian would assist him with the music. This is all his stuff.

So he's leaving the land of MIDI music behind and the iMuse system, which we talked about before, go back to our Monkey Island 2 podcast. It's not quite as useful here because these is all like pre-recorded music. But because of that, the quality of the samples and instruments and things like that

has risen dramatically. So I love the soundtrack for this game. What do you think of it? I think it's just beautiful and glorious and I just love how it sounds. The music sounds great, I agree, but I also feel it has the same problem as like movies and games nowadays, like AAA games and like big budget movies compared to stuff, medium medias of the past, wherein everything sounds too ambient and not distinct enough. It's just not memorable. Like, when I think of this game and I think of the music, I think of the main theme,

which is just the different variation on the Mike Allen theme you heard in the previous games, of course. And then I think of a pirate I was meant to be, of course. And aside from that, like, I can't really, like, think of music or tracks that stand out to me. I have serious disagreements there because I, a lot of these songs are very memorable to me. And they're not as, like, the melodies aren't as clear.

because he has a lot more nuance to work with, but I do, I do think this is a very good soundtrack. Like, what are some tracks that stand out to you? I do like the, just the Plunder Island Outdoors music is very memorable to me. Let me think, what else? The sword fighting music is really good. The insult sword fighting music is very excellent. I do like the Blood Island exterior music too and the hotel music, especially.

Yeah, I think the soundtrack is very pretty, and Michael Land did a good job with it. But I don't know, I just can't like hum along to the music as much as I could with the other games. I will tell everybody out there that because this is a CD-ROM release, the music had to be compressed so it doesn't sound as good as it should. But at some point in time, there was a flat quality soundtrack that was released. I don't know how people had access to these files,

but it was just released into the wild. So you can go out and download a high-quality version of all of these songs. And this is one of the soundtracks I like to put on when I'm, I'm writing or doing creative stuff where I don't necessarily need to use my ears for anything else. It's a very good soundtrack to just chill out to. Because it's so ambient. And it's very pretty, though. I just love how pretty it is. Yeah, I will say that it's a very pleasant. Maybe that's why I'm not as keen about it. It's just too, too pleasant. Like, that's not the kind of music you think of when you think of, like, dirty pirates. I think it's

because... Or the dark nature of curses and voodoo and all that. I think it's because, like, the two islands you visit are almost resort islands. And I think in the case of the first one, Plunder Island is a resort island for retired pirates. The second one, Blood Island is like has a resort there that's being unused. Yeah, you know what? That's actually one of my complaints about this game. You start off in, well, after the short tutorial part, you show off in Perotopoyo. It just feels too clean and high class, you know? And it's like daytime and I love Blood Island. And that's like the nighttime island. I feel like every Monkey Island game should start up with a nighttime island. I agree. I love... Just to put you in a pirity mood. I love the nighttime islands. We'll talk more

about the locations and the puzzles and stuff later, but I do like the Blood Island section a lot more than the first part. And we're still going behind the scenes though, so I want to talk about a few more people. So Bill Tiller, you mentioned him earlier. He gets a special shout up because he is the lead background designer of this game. I think he did every background about four or five of them. And they were made basically by, you know, drawing them first, and then, uh, you know, digitally coloring them in Photoshop. And these, these backgrounds are so great. They are real, the real character of this game. And it might not surprise you. I mean, this game is very much, uh, looks like a 1990s, like twisted cartoon, like something

you'd see on Nickelodeon or whatever. The two major inspirations for the backgrounds of this game are, uh, Duck Man and the Nightmare Before Christmas. So the, the, the very askew, never a straight, line like just crazy shapes of things the very like bizarre and ugly but very well-designed characters they were inspired by the tv series duckman which is one of my favorites and also the nightmare before christmas another movie movie that i really like yeah you you love those two things that explains why i like how these characters look okay no like i also like those two things although i i only watched nightmare before christmas for the first time uh like months ago because you showed me but uh you know that makes sense. I kind of wish

this game had a darker tone to it now though. That is one of my main complaint because it just feels too maybe with all of these new graphical capabilities are like look how pretty things are let's make them prettier and then they lost a little bit of the darkness of the original two games. Yeah like I will say the

very beginning part like with the opening where McGrubish at sea and then where he's stuck in the boat with Wally that looks like great. The colors are amazing and then when it's which is to the daytime Puerto Pollo stuff. I'm just like, I would have made different decisions if I were the art director.

Yeah, it might be a little too serene and sleepy, but it is a night. Like, this is a chill-out game for me. I like the chill-out nature of this game. I wonder if they kind of had that in mind a little bit. Like, maybe they thought, maybe they expected a lot of people to start with this game as their first adventure game or even first market island because there was so much time in between the second and third game. so maybe this was meant to be like babies first monkey island and they wanted to like hold your hand

and ease you into the world of monkey island and not scare you and so many people were getting computers for the first time so there was a new market to take advantage of and yeah I won't say this is an easy game we'll talk more about the design later so more about Bill Tiller like apparently he had a pitch for Monkey Island 4 but management was not a big fan of him for various reasons so you never actually pitched the game

but in 2016 he released something called Duke Grabowski mighty swashbuckler which Larry Ahern wrote for wrote for Larry Ahern wrote for and yeah that came out apparently that's like a spiritual sequel to Monkey Island I've not heard of that but that name is hilarious yeah Duke Krabowski and he is he's very much like an anti guy brush I've looked at the the character art for that character oh okay so intentionally the anti guy brush uh maybe I have not played the game do you know why they didn't want to like work with him again uh I think he was uh kind of a pushy jerk by his own admission like he didn't compromise and he wanted to do things his own way. And from what I've heard in all of these interviews, like after a certain point,

the executives at LucasArts really sucked and were hard to work with and didn't really want to pay people that much money. So I think they were just bad executives in general. Okay, well, considering the backgrounds are one of the few things I love about this game, maybe he was in the right. So we talked a bit about the graphics. I do want to mention them a bit more because this was a glorious looking game for the time. Of course, we've advanced far past the age of 640 by 480. I was playing this on a 4K TV. I believe there are now like 8K TVs, if you could believe that.

I don't know what game or movie could support those right now, but this game looked a lot better on a dusty old CRT monitor that could kind of smooth out the aliasing on these characters. But for as good as this game looks, the issue is the same issue you get with pre-rendered graphics of this time

where you start with an asset of much higher quality that has to be reduced in quality to get it to fit into a different format. And the issue with Monkey Island or Curse of Monkey Island's characters is that The linework is so thin And it just gets kind of muddy and lost

And how they have to compress these assets To make them fit into this 640 by 40 format Like that was an odd choice to me To make the line work so thin When a lot of it is just getting lost And getting blurred out And getting like stair steppie In how they have to squish these characters down

Yeah, I'm also curious as to why they decided On this very thin line art That is one main complaint I have about this style. I wish they went with the thicker, chunkier lines they had in data tentacle and full throttle. I think that would have worked better. I think they had a

like they're working with this new resolution for the first time and they're thinking like, we don't have to make these thick lines anymore. We have 640 by 480. The lines can be skinnier now not realizing like you know maybe we need a thicker line here and there. Yeah, I mean

I don't think it looks bad per se but like you said it probably would have aged better with the thicker lines. Although, thin lines are very much in style right now in cartoons. In which cartoons? Like, um... I know, like, uh, I mean, this is not even a new cartoon, but like, adventure time is something I think of within lines.

Gravity Falls. Oh, yeah, yeah. Uh, what's that cartoon with like the weird colored cats? Uh, the weird colored cats? I'm not talking about sparks, by the way. Heathcliff. Is it like an amazing world of gunball? Oh, yeah.

They have thin lines in that cartoon? Oh, yeah. Okay. Definitely. It's very thin. I guess so. And a new Tukan Sam. Oh, you're right. You're right.

Yeah. DuCan Sam redesign. Things are much different today. We're in a world of 4K. The lines can be as thin as possible. We could still see them. Because around the time this game, Michael Allen came out, that's when thicker lines were in style, I think.

Yeah. People were really adopting the, like, UPA-inspired things like the later Red and Stimpy's, Dexter's Lab, Powerpuff Girls. Like, they were like the thicker throwback era cartoons. Which is probably why data tentacle and full throttle look like that. So maybe they were trying to go against that look. Maybe that's why they decided to go with this. Yeah, I think so.

I think it was a mix of, you know, new technology and, you know, making a bold new look. And I was going to ask you, Nina, especially because, I mean, you're not the colorist on Sparks, but you have done coloring of comics before. What do you see in the coloring of this, like, 20, let me think, 24, 23-year-old game that has advanced in technology. like what kind of things could you do now like when you look at these like these digitally colored drawings what are the like ancient flaws you see that are have been erased from history now with your current tool set uh i don't see any flaws really do you have anything in mind no because

they still look they still look like very good to me these are digitally these are digitally colored with like ancient photoshop 23 years ago and i'm like i wonder what you could do with them now Like, they don't look bad like a lot of digital stuff from this era does look. No, I think this holds up super well. But if this game were made today, it would definitely be shaded. Like, whether it be like the sharp, clean lines of cell shading or, like, more of the soft shading style, I think they could do that. Probably because they'd make them, you know, 3D characters, the 3D models. And not in the Escape from Monkey Island way, but, I mean, more like the, the, the,

the new Kings Quest game. Yeah. And I think it would look good, but no, I don't think I would change anything about the way the characters were rendered, except for the lines, of course. Right, right. But the colors, though, I mean, if you talk about art design and color choices, whenever I think of this game, I just think of yellows and browns. I think there's too much of that.

I was going to ask you about that because, I mean, usually I notice this, too, as somebody who doesn't do art, like, especially in the early digital era, things are just, they choose the brightest colors, they choose the most obnoxious colors. all the time. And I don't see that in the backgrounds. I do see that more in the characters, though. Even though this isn't, the yellows and browns art to my taste, I think they did a good job having a nice cohesive look to the game by keeping to those color palettes. It's not like they always have those either, like when they move to the darker parts of the game. But by that, I mean like nighttime parts. It does shift to more of the cooler colors and it looks fine. Yeah. You're right though. Like back then,

They did tend to skew towards brighter, more obnoxious colors, like in King's Quest 7. Like I mentioned before, the colors in that are pretty garish. Anything like that was digitally colored between 97, 2004, even in TV animation, it's so hard to watch now. Yeah, so in that sense, they did a good job with the colors, I think. I'm sure, like having an art director, like one art director looking at everything helped with that. So I have a quote from Tiller about the design of Guy Brush in case you want to hear this. So this is your big question. All right.

Why does Guy Brubes look this way? So Bill Tiller, background designer for this game, says, quote, the only thing we were worried about was the character design of Guy Brush. We wanted to give the series a fresh new look that took advantage of high-res. In low-res, you can't really do cool character designs because you have so few pixels to work with. So we wanted to give Guy Brush a new, unique look that fit his personality. Some people didn't like the initial designs, so we went over it and over it ad nauseum until we had a compromise design that I think fulfilled the goal of looking unique, it's still being appealing and you know what I totally get people that don't like this design because uh you know

based on their inspirations which were like kind of like the claskey chupo school of character design i think it's cool in some cases and uh you know interesting but it's not like visually pretty but i do find it appealing in other ways what do mean not visually pretty though it's not like in a like a pretty character like a aesthetically appealing i guess where it's just like something like duck man like i love how all the look but they're ugly. Right, yeah. Even like things like, even like manga like One Piece, like I love how One Piece looks, but it's kind of ugly. It's completely, it's very well drawn. It's like he's one of the best manga artists on Earth, but it's also all the characters are very ugly in an appealing way. I like, I feel like that's what Curse of Monkey Island is, is ugly in an

appealing way in terms of character design. I think that just comes with the pirity nature of the story. Like with One Piece, that's also about pirates. It's true. I think with pirate pirity stuff, you have to have ugly characters and ugly settings. My main completely plan about this guy brush design though is how different it is from the second game especially considering he's supposed to have come directly from the second game to to uh this new setting here uh that is true they do mention what happened to his outfit like what happened to his beard he was so proud of his beard he lost his coat in his beard uh the voodoo lady remarks that he lost his beard in the between games yeah i think that uh the version of guy brush you see an escape was an overcorrection

and the version you see entails is like the perfect reduction of his his weird look. Yes, no, I love his design in Tales of Monkey Island. I think it satisfies every fan. I'm sure there are people in the comments who would be like, I don't like it, but I think it's a good compromise, is what I'm saying.

Yeah, and I think he was redesigned by Steve Purcell for Tales. It could be wrong about that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, like he had a big hand in that game, I think. If it went from like Fancy Pants Guy Briss in the first game to this guy, Prish, it would

makes sense, that evolution makes sense. But to go from fancy pants guy bruce to his second look where he has this cool coat that almost looks too big for him and the beard he's so proud of to this cleaner look, it just doesn't make sense

to me. Like, what happened? What happened is what I asked when I first saw pictures of him? He was lost at sea. Think of all the weight he lost and he lost his jacket and his beard fell out. But also, like, the clothes he's wearing is so clean for someone who's been out

at sea for such a long time. Why is wearing all this white? I'm sure, I know having a this is the, uh, white makes you stand out for the background. You're asking, you're asking the magic xylophone question now. Yeah. Maybe I'm being too nitpicky about it. But, but you can't blame me

because he's so, so different looking. Yeah. I mean, like, I rolled into this thing, like, that's what guy brush looks like. And then I played the first two games and I was like, oh, that's what he looks like in these games. Okay. That's fine. But I can understand totally getting this new guy brush. And he got an earring.

He does have an earring, yeah. Maybe he got that at sea. That's a major upgrade, I guess. Did a chicken pierce his ear at sea? Where did that come from? Maybe he had an earring in the previous game. You just couldn't see it? Yeah, check that cover art.

Not the first game for sure, because he see close-ups of him, and he's not wearing an earring. Second game, though. Actually, does he have an earring in the box art? Is he wearing an earring in the cover art of Monkey Island, too? He is not. So there we have it. The key art for the special edition of McKayline, too.

He suddenly has an earring. This is Earing Gate. We're in the middle of it. Retcon. But we do have to move on to the other characters in the game. Like in general, I don't want to go over every character, but in general, the characters are very big. Guy brush is huge.

I think the exchange is because they are working with very big characters and also because all the characters are beginning on the, you know, page. They are art that is then scanned in to make these characters. I think in general, they exchange the higher fidelity for less frames of animation. And I think that's one disadvantage to this new art style. It's the fact that the characters

take up so much of the screen and because it is harder, it's probably harder to make new characters because you've got to draw them up by hand and scan them and color them all that. Because of that, there are as many characters as in the previous games. And so a lot of the settings just feel so,

empty to me. Maybe some of the characters are so big to make up for the fact that the settings are so empty. I just see a bunch of big, big empty spaces. I think part of the emptiness is because the characters exist on top of like a pre, you know, rendered picture, for lack of a better term, when in previous games, everything was built out of the same pixels. So conceivably like anything on the screen could move. In this game, you're sort of skating around on like a drawing, which it never really feels like that, but that could lead to some of the emptiness. They do their best to add like little flourishes, like things that are moving, but I can see why that could make this game feel a little emptier than past games.

Yeah, and I'm sure more characters on screen, the more it makes a computer chug. Actually, I had a bad first experience with this game because my computer could not handle the graphics. Oh, no. And I think a lot of people had the same issue when they first tried to play this game is where it would just crash. When you walk into the Barbary Coast, there's like four characters in there. Actually, the part that always crashed my game or froze my game

was at the very beginning when after Guybridge fires a cannon and he floats up in that little blue floater ring, floating, what do you call it? Inner tube. Yeah, it would always stop there. So that part is burned into my memory. Well, yeah. You are trying to run some pre-rendered video. Let's talk about that.

This is, like, the first game with full, well, limited animated cutscenes, but they are like pre-rendered, 2D animated cutscenes. They brought in animators for these things, and they're more limited than you would think, but they are still pretty impressive. And for the most part, they are mainly used to depict Lechuk and what he's up to. I find it interesting, and I think it was a choice that until the end of the game, you only see Lechuk in these cutscenes. So you don't see him as, like, a little asset on the screen until the end of the game. you finally meet up with him. Yeah, that's exactly like the previous two games. Yeah, that's true.

Except in this case, like, he exists in the form of, like, a 2D animated cartoon. That's true. And not the same graphics. He was still a sprite. Yeah, not the same graphics that they would use when you would see him later. Right. But, yeah. You could tell, like, they don't have a lot of resources, and there are some really good bits

of animation here. But I think because, like, Lechuk gets all the attention, he is, like, the one character they need to figure out how to move around. that is why he is the star of like every cutscene. Yeah, and that flaming beard effect they have on him is pretty impressive. I think it's so cool. It's cool. Yeah, so in the previous games, he was a ghost pirate and then he was a zombie pirate.

And this one, he's a demon pirate. And I think they gave him that constantly moving flaming beard to show off the graphic capabilities. And you're right, it does look cool, although I'm not the biggest fan of his design in this one. we could talk more about that later but yeah this game has uh animated cutscenes very cool a very limited and this will break your heart nina that steve purcell uh was asked to do the cover art for this game but he liked their take on the character so much that he didn't want to do it he's like you guys should do it you redefine these characters so uh larry ahern and bill teller did the cover art like so larry ahern like he is lead designer of the game he's also drawing the cover art for

the game he is designing characters he does like everything it's amazing that like this one role could be so broad. I think Steve Purcell could have stuck to this style and still put his own spin to it. I would have liked to have seen that. He was busy and being nice. Yeah, that's very possible. Because when you look at the cover art he did for Tales on Monkey Island, he kind of sticks to this new look that Michael Island has, but still gives it his own flair. And I would love to have seen like this exact same cover art, but done by him. I still do like this cover, though. It's not, you know, the Steve Purcell hand-painted, you know, glorious look that you prefer, but it does fit this game.

I think it's a good little scene that does not exist in an actual game, I think, right? Oh, yeah, like in all the other games. They always have Bogart that depicts a scene that does not exist. This never happens in Curriced, I like the Island. The color choices and the cover art, all the purples and pinks and the yellows, I think it was pretty much the style of the time. but when I think of Maki Island I think of teals and blues

and this just doesn't feel Maki Island enough for me especially for something called the curse of Maki Island that feels so dark and yet you've got these you've got like a nice like sunset cloudy background for some reason I will tell you it does jump off the shelf

and that is important I was looking at a bunch of I was looking at a Bill Tiller interview and there were like mockups of like six different versions of the box like six different like color schemes and there were more subdued ones they could have used, but I think the bright colors, the bright beard,

the sort of like sunset look made this pop off the shelf. Okay, yeah, I can see that. I'll forgive it. So we already talked a bit about the UI. It is this little, basically you bring it up by, you know, pushing in the left mouse button when you're over an object you can interact with. There are

three icons. There's the eyes. There's the mouth. There's the hand. Look at, touch, taste, talk to, pick up, use, push, punch, whatever. Like, the verbs are broad enough so what verb you need to use is never a question and in this game

if you I think I believe if you right click on something or one of the commands is like if you right click on something you can interact with it will do the most obvious verb with that thing so if it's a person you'll talk to them if it's an object you'll try to pick it up or use it and yeah there's a lot of really user friendly touches one thing

I really like about this game this is in full throttle too is that it is so easy to quick travel in this game because if there's like another you know, scene you need to go to and you don't have to walk all the way to the edge of the screen and then go to it. You can just double click the edge of the screen and you'll just pop right into that scene immediately.

Yes, that is a nice touch. Like I mentioned, when I first played this game, my computer would just chugged. But now when I play it with a much better computer, of course, the game moves so fast for me. And I think it's great. Like, actually, when I first, when I replayed this game to prepare for this podcast,

I turned off the text for the first time, ever and that sped things up even more because I'm used to having pauses in between dialogue lines because it would wait for the text to linger on the screen but I played it without the text and it moved even faster for me and it was kind of glorious actually I'm like I should have played this like this to begin with I don't know if most people play it with the text on but I did because because I was a old school monkey island fan right used to reading the dialogue first like how did you play it when you first got this I played it with the not the text on the screen. Okay, I wonder if that's how most people play it then. I'm just so used to be able to read the text. Yeah, this time I play with the text on the screen just so I could be clear like what everyone is saying because I was playing it while I was working on stuff and also taking notes and I wanted to be like extra sure like I was getting every word correct. Right. Okay, yeah, like because I'm so used so used to have the text on there. So I'm like, oh, I'll just turn out this time. And that's how I would recommend playing the game now. And it moves so much quicker. Yeah, me too. Let's talk about voice acting real quick. So yes, you talked about it before. Dominic Armato is Guy Bras.

So let's talk a bit about him. He had been doing voiceover since he was about six or seven, mostly for industrial and non-broadcast stuff in the Chicago area where he grew up. And apparently one of his first big breaks was Captain Crunch commercials. And one of his first commercials for Captain Crunch was the one where they phased out his enemy, the soggies in the late 80s, early 90s. So apparently at one point in time, Dominic Armato, was one or several children, animated children on Captain Crunch commercials. So he was experienced at doing pirity things.

Yes, he started with like one of the original. Cartoon Pirates. So he moved to L.A. for voice work at 18, and one of his first roles was a small part on A Real Monsters, classic YouTube book connection. And he was actually a big Monkey Island fan, and Guy Brush was his dream role and assumed that there would never be another game like everyone did. But one day his agent, you know, said, I have this audition for you. And it was for Guy Brush.

And he said, I have to get this. This is what I, the part I was born to play. I can't imagine being given the opportunity to voice a video game character back then when voiced video game characters were not really as much of a thing. Yeah, it was only just, you know, three years ago for computers that they were starting to become a, you know, de facto thing you need to have in your game, because it was never really possible until you had a CD-ROM drive. I wonder if he was prepared for the sheer number of lines he would have to record. He said, I think it was like a total of like 100 hours of recording per game. Dang, yeah.

But split up into like 40 recording sessions, so. I will say, like the fact that everything is voiced, you would think that there would be like, less dialogue in this game, but they have a lot of lines, like comparable to the previous games. They do. And I think they went into this knowing, like, here's our budget and we have money for a lot of voice actors now. Like, there's not going to be an alternate version of this game without voice acting. So in this game, I think the budget was higher than full throttle, even. What was the budget? Do you know? I just heard over $1 million. Okay, so more than Kings West 5 at least. Yes. That's good. That they published the budget on the box of that game or something?

Something like that. Yeah, they were very proud of it. God, that's kind of tax. you could tell a million dollars went into that thing too into Kings Quest or this one King's Quest I mean a million dollars will pay for like catering on a game now that's what like Nottie Dog spends on like a month of catering Yeah that's a coffee budget Yeah but yeah Dominic we talked about him before on previous episodes He would voice Guy Brush in all future and also past versions of the game

Because he's a time traveler and yeah he's been Guy Brush in every game He got it he left like L.A. in 2001 and moved back to Chicago and I think he's like a food blogger now, at least since I last check then. He's a food critic now. And actually, when I was doing one of these Monkey Island podcasts, I got the inspiration to make a Guy Brish Fieri screenshot where I just took the screenshot of Guy Bricz talking to the three important-looking pirates and I turned him into Guy Frieri.

And he just says, hi, I'm Guy Briciorei or whatever. And I posted on Twitter and I got a lot of attention. And then one of my friends is actually a food critic for these Hamersers a Chronicle, and I guess she knows of Dominic Armato, like he's a friend or something, or a colleague at least. So she actually alerted him to my tweet and he liked it. Yeah, apparently, according to Wikipedia, just on the fly research here, he has been employed by the Arizona Republic as a food critic since 2015. So he's somewhere in Arizona, find him and let him know we like him. Yeah, it seems like he hasn't really done any, like, super major

roles since starting to do Guy Brish. No, I think he just redefined himself as a food critic. sounds like an awesome job going from voice actor to food critic and you know what like he was such a new voice actor when he took this role he was 20 the same age as guy brushes in this game and working with a ton of seasoned professionals and voice actors so yeah he's only 43 now because this game is 23 years old so he's still a fairly young man and just like a baby doing guy brush's voice yeah so let's see when the when the re-release of the the previous two games came out that was like what 10 years ago yeah 2010 2009 2010 sounded exactly the same yeah yeah he did a great job and in tales he doesn't sound like he's i don't know 30 or however old he would be then

34 35 right yeah like i can't i can't pick up guy britch as anyone else now when i think of his voice yeah i don't think anyone could have done it better he stayed on it's clear that people liked him and i'm sure if you go on like to old news groups it could be like i can't believe this is guy his voice. It sucks. I hate it. But I mean, it's just de facto. Like, if there's going to be guy brush in a thing, it's going to be him. He owns that voice, which is great. I want to know how many people they went through before they found Dominic. If there's anyone notable who was who auditioned for the role. I bet there were like your normal like voice acting, you know, young guys like, well, he was probably in his 30s then, but like Rob Paulson was probably like

a potential guy brush. Like more more like professional voice actors who had like a lot of experience because we do have people like that. Yeah. In this game like Alan Young is in this game, Uncle Scrooge is in this game. Like, and guess what is? Yeah, unmistakably. He's playing a Scotsman. Would you believe it? No, like this game has an amazing cast.

So many voice veterans, which is why surprised they went with an unknown person for the main role. And I'm wondering if they wanted to find a new talent for Guy Brish, just so it wouldn't be distracting. Yeah, no baggage. Yeah, if you heard a famous voice as Guy Brish, maybe it would have been too distract us. They're like, oh, let's find some new blood.

That's the voice of Yaco. I don't want this anymore. But yeah, Earl Bowen also is the first Lechuk and the only Lechuk. He's a great character actor. I think he's great as Lechuk. I think he's a fantastic Lechuk. Yeah, like he's fine. Ooh, fine.

No, I think I talked about this before, but I just think, I don't think it's his fault or anything. It's the direction they went with the demon Lechuk. But he just sounds too lively to me. I think he should sound deader. It's that demonic energy that really, you know, gave him some zing. No, but even before he becomes a demon, Lechuk, during this game, when he's still a zombie Lechukh, he's got so much life to him, which is not something I pictured when I played Lechukuk's revenge.

Yeah, maybe they should have played him more, more like, you know, drooling and spitting and, you know, less energy as a zombie, and then he gets his energy back as demon. That would have been great, actually, if he sounded like someone who's dead and falling apart. And then once he's infused with the demonic energy, then he becomes this livelier version. I would have liked that. So other voice actors, weirdly so bizarre.

And I was like, is that really him? I checked the credits yet. It's him. Gary Coleman as Kenny, the lemonade selling boy, I'm like, okay, sure, Gary Coleman needed money famously in the late 90s, RIP. This is around the time he was on the Simpsons as a security guard. Yeah. Oh, okay.

He wasn't doing too well. They gave him a job. It's fine. He did a good job. They pitched his voice up. just like it's so weird. Yeah, Gary Coleman is in this game. And then we have, oh, good. Has he done, like, any other voices? I mean, famously, he's in Postal, too, in a very humiliating role. Look that up. I don't know if we'll do an episode about those games. But yeah, he was like sort of a living joke until he died, unfortunately. But that's he made a joke. He made a career being like, yes, I'm ridiculous. Make fun of me. Put me in things. But the joke is not really about him. It's just like, yeah, you can play a kid. You've got a high pitch voice. Go for it. I do want to mention Alexander Boyd in this game. plays Elaine. Elaine goes back to being, not goes back, but Elaine goes to being an American

accented voice actor in Escape, but in Tales of, she has the British accent, and I believe in the remakes, they give her the British accents. Is that correct? Yes, I believe so. And I do prefer that. I think Elaine would be the, like, the colonizer, the English woman. And Guy Brush is the like ugly American visiting these these tourist traps I feel like that makes a lot more sense than her being an American yeah I'm kind of actually neutral about her having a British accent I guess it makes her sound more noble and that's what they're going for because she does come from a rich family so it makes sense I'm okay with her performance as Elaine in this and we can talk about Stan here because Stan doesn't come out that well in this game I do like that they

retain his crazy coat where the pattern stays, no matter where he walks around on the screen. I do like that. It's so weird. We talked about this before, but Stan in this game was established to have sort of a game show host kind of voice, like the cheesy 70s, 60s game show host kind of voice when we agree that, like, he should sound more like Lionel Hutz. In Escape for Milky Island. Yeah, Phil Hartmanee.

In Escape from Monkey Island, he does. And he sounds better in Tales as well. But then for the remix, they go back and cast the same guy. as Stan with the same, I'm Stan, I'll sell you things, kind of voice. And it doesn't really work out for how, you know, sweaty and sort of like confident but desperate, you know, the Lionel Hutz character we love.

Yeah, I've complained about the Stan in this game in the previous podcast that we recorded. But yeah, like, I just didn't picture him like that at all. And I'm guessing they changed them up in the other games because people didn't like it. The fans didn't like it. Like you said, they responded pretty well to the feedback and changed it accordingly.

Yeah, I think that was part of it. This guy was clearly available because he came back to do it, but I guess they were like, well, it didn't turn out that well, and maybe this isn't the stand that we want to have in future games. So, yeah, in Escape from Monkey Island, I looked up a clip. I was like, oh, yeah, he sounds like how I want him to sound in my head. Yeah, exactly. Like, because he's so frantically waving his arms everywhere when he talks, he should sound faster and fast enough where he doesn't give you enough time to think about your decisions. Yes, he should be like just pushing you into things desperate. not like, yeah, he talks too slow because of the voice, but thankfully they did correct it.

Yeah, I'm okay with him beyond this game. Video Deathloop is a podcast where we watch a short video clip on Loop until we just can't take it anymore. Along the way, we'll try our best to make each other laugh and to hold out longer than the other guy. You can jump in on any episode, no need to worry about continuity. Check out Video Deathloop on the Greenlit Podcast Network with new. episodes every Friday. Hey folks, it's Asif Khan, CEO at editor-in-chief over at shacknews.com. Give a listen to our 9-5 Elon podcast about Tesla and electric vehicles and all sorts of

cool stuff over there on the Greenlit Podcast Network. Hey, Benito. I've been reading the Bible lately, and nobody ever told me how many talking dogs in wizard battles were in this thing. Well, Chris, you know what I always say. If you can understand Star Wars, you can understand the Bible. Apocry Pals. Part of the Greenlit Podcast Network. So let's talk about the actual game, The Curse of Monkey Island. I thought this would be an hour-long podcast, but apparently we have a lot of things to say. So you guys are getting your podcasting dollars' worth of this episode, even though it's a free episode.

But let's go over the plot really quick. So the plot follows from Monkey Island, too. And Guy Brush somehow escapes from this, you know, Lechuk's evil carnival that we see at the end of that game. He ends up floating in the bumper car into a battle between Lechuk and Elaine. and Elaine is at this fortress on Plunder Island. He is captured, and in the process of escaping, he turns zombie pirate Lechuk into the demon pirate Lechuk and finds an engagement ring on board his ship. And with that ring, he accidentally curses Elaine into a gold statue, which is then stolen,

and Guy Brush needs to get Elaine back. And that is essentially the plot of this game. I think the plot is good, although it does reduce Elaine to a damsel in distress. I have two thoughts about that. I don't like the damseling of Elaine, but I do like that. it is Guy Brush's fault. Okay. And it's because she makes the bad decision to love him

that she has turned into a statue. Yeah, I actually wanted to talk about this before, but I do like that Guy Brish and Elaine are a constant couple in the games, except for kind of the second game, I guess. We see an evolution in their relationship. And this one, it's cool that they get engaged in all, but there's such a weird hole the writers had to patch up in between where the second game,

left off and this game. I think they tried their best to explain it. I think even Ron Gilbert didn't know exactly what happened in the end of the second game. He's not telling it. So it's weird how they suddenly reconcile Elaine and Guy Brish. That is true. They're like instantly in love again. So I guess maybe just just the thought that he might have been dead is what rekindled those fires? I guess. I don't know. That's one complaint I had about this, the plot. Aside from that, I think it's a, it's a good promise. Yeah, and we'll talk about it later. That's, take a shot every time I say that on this podcast, by the way, and call the, call the hospital after

you're done. But we'll talk about that later. But yeah, they offload all of the explains at the end of the game, which I think is very smart because a lot of new people are going to be playing this game and you don't want to alienate them right off the bat. Oh, you think it's good that they explain everything at the end? Yes, I honestly think, like, this is going to be played by a lot of people, a lot of new people, or it was in 97, it's just like, yes.

we know who Guy Brush is, we know who Elaine is, we know who LaChuk is. That's all that matters for now. Once you get to the end of the game, the payoff is for veteran gamers of this series, you will find out what the connective tissue was between sequels. But for now, it doesn't matter. All right, we'll get to the last part when we get to it. Yeah. So after Elaine is stolen by pirates, there are basically two missions. So like the first game, you need a map, a ship, and a crew, and that will take you to Blood Island where Elaine is being held as a statue. And then you need to find a diamond of equal or greater value. a band to put it in to break the curse on Elaine. And those are the two major quests in the game, which also involve a lot of puzzles, obviously. Before all that, though, I do like how the first part is just this short, very confined area, and it keeps you confined there until you pretty much learn how to play the game, which I think is good design. Right, right.

I mean, that is a very cool little tutorial because what I like about it more now, and now that I'm thinking more about design of games when I play them, is that you solve like every type of puzzle in that tutorial. It's like you have to do a dialogue puzzle. You have to pick up items. You have to use items. You have to use items on each other. You have to go to a different screen to do things.

And you also have to play a little mini game. So everything you're going to be doing throughout the scope of the game is in that little opening chunk. Except the mini game feels at a place because you don't enter or you don't encounter a minigame like that ever again. There's a ship combat, sure, but that's different, I think. That is true. I also think they wanted to mislead you as a newcomer to this series thinking like, oh, there'll be action in this

and just to keep you swinging along because you know, adventure games were not they were losing popularity to other things like Doom and Quake and other FPSs. So I think it was a bit of a bait and switch with that intro canon segment. Yeah, although I hate the canon segment because that's another thing that slow my computer way down. You got to get over

it. Your computer is fine now. It's much better now, but I still have trauma of my computer not able to handle this game. So the original idea for this plot. This is from a quote from Jonathan Ackley. He said, quote, first he wrote an incredibly convoluted story about Elaine being turned into a ship's masthead. You had to change her back before the fiery demon Lechuk burned her down. A lot of great special effects a la Gond with the wind burning of Atlanta scene. We also had a number of puzzles involving Guy Bruch, attempting to return

the wedding gifts to give in to Lechuk for the monster's undead wedding to Elaine. It would have been spectacular, but when we looked at it again, we decided the story was somewhat hollow. Hollow? Yeah, they wanted a more meaningful story. and where they started in building this game was that they were like okay what pirity things were not in the original Monkey Island games let's do those and that's where they started I guess originally they didn't have this engagement thing

La Chuck was going to marry Elaine and Guy Brash had to stop the wedding I think Again yeah so again Retroading things and then returning the wedding gifts Lechuk like you had to basically ruin the wedding It was like a big moment But again they had done that before so maybe that was part of the reason why Okay maybe they wanted them more in more

element to it by advancing their relationship but we talked about this before and let's talk about the difficulty of this game it's very elegant so there are two different modes of this game there's regular mode and also mega monkey mode i think regular mode is a perfectly fairly challenging adventure game that's not unfair and i also think the mega monkey mode is not unfair uh what i like that it does is mega monkey mode all it really does is add more steps to the puzzle chains and that is essentially it like instead of just picking up an item on the screen, you might have to do something to get that item first. You might have to do something to open an item first.

Like there are all these little tiny changes to the game that are very, very elegant. And I think like either way you play the game, it feels like nothing is missing. Yeah, I've only played the easy mode like once. And I thought it was fine, but the harder mode does, yeah, like you said, it adds more steps to the puzzles.

But that could also kind of work against some puzzles. I think some of the puzzles are a little bit too convoluted and complicated. To be fair, I've never played the ultra-hard mode. I only looked at what the extra steps would be. I mean, I wanted to get through this game quickly for podcast research. It still took me eight hours with easy mode, or not easy mode, but normal mode. But then I would go online and see, like, what were the extra steps? And I would say, oh, like, I could see how this could be more challenging, but not unfair.

Yeah, I mean, do you know about the gold-tooth puzzle, right? That's one that is super convoluted. I think that is the one standouts. I think a lot of people got stuck in that part. Another thing about this game is that this is the direction that all adventure games were heading, especially for LucasArts, but it is also not an open-ended game like in Monkey Island 2. Oh, as in you don't get to travel to a bunch of islands.

Yeah, like you are on Porto Pollo, you're on Plender Island, and then once you're done with Plender Island, you don't go back there. That's true. I think we both agreed that the open-endness of Monkey Islander 2 kind of works against it because you have too much freedom. Whereas in this game, they confine you, they limit you to certain areas, especially like when you're out doing the ship combat, like they close off the rest of Peripoyo entirely. Yeah, in a way, that's a good idea.

In a way, and like a lot of adventure games still this way, in a way it feels like it's like five separate little adventure games. Right. That don't really bleed over into each other, especially like the ship combat stuff. But yeah, I mean, that's just the way things were headed. And like, really after Day of the Tenticle, they'd stop doing open-ended adventure games. No, actually, after Sam and Max, that was the last real open-ended adventure game they did. And not quite as elegant as Day of the Tenicle, so I feel like they wanted a more focused adventure game.

Yeah, I know you're not the biggest fan of leaving things to open-ended, right? I mean, I love Day of the Tenicle, and it's like maybe the most open-ended adventure game they made. But it has to be done well. It has to be done by. Yeah, I guess it's harder to manage. I kind of like the open-edness of some of the past games they made. I like being able to visit, like, lots of different settings. And I think, actually, having limited settings in this game was not something I liked back then.

Now when I think about it, it is good, like, better game design. But I miss the open-endness of Monkey Island, too. And then to go from that to this, it just felt so limiting to me. I think we just have less time now. We don't have kid time anymore. So we just want to, like, yeah, I'm on Blood Island. I don't want to leave. I just want to do more things here.

So we talked about part one in the game. We're going to go through all the parts of this game. game fairly, fairly quickly and briefly, because we're running a bit long, but, so part one is the tutorial. Part two is you're on Plunder Island, and this is what resembles the first Monkey Island the most, although these things articulate in very different ways. So you need to get a map, a ship and a crew to basically in this game, just like a Monkey Island one, you're doing these trials to get your crew members, and they're all very different. Like, there's a banjo duel, there's a cabre toss, you find gold. They all find very different ways for you to get the, the

barber pirates on board as your crew. And I like the Barbara Pirates a lot. They're good characters and great voices, too. I just love hearing Alan Young's voice because we lost him recently at like the age of 98, but it's always good to hear him. I love Greg Berger. Yeah, yeah. Another Duckman connection that played corn fed. You can leave him choking for a while, which is always fun.

That is true. Yeah, the Barbary Pirates are very fun. But yeah, like, I don't really mind at all that this follows that formula because like the three, the, the three. sets of puzzles, like the three puzzle thing is Ron Gilbert's thing. And a lot of it, LucasArts games copy that. And I think they're better for it because it's just a smart design. No, like, and doing three tasks is just a very classic story thing in general. Yeah. And it's like map ship and crew, that's three things. But the crew puzzles also three things. So it's like three things, but also three other things. And this, they skip the getting the ship part though. Oh, no, you get the ship.

I know, but you don't have to find it. Like, they already have a ship. That's true. Ready for you. You have to find a way to get the occupants of the ship off the ship, though. Oh, that's true. Yeah, yeah. I forgot about that part.

But yeah, the section, I mean, I understand why it's not your favorite. I just, I kind of like how sleepy and calming it is and the music is great. I prefer the nighttime setting of Lut Island, but this island is, it's what it sets out, it's what it sets out to be the resort island for pirates, retired pirates. And what I love about this island, and it's still function. with the current version of the game is that there is a clock tower in the town center that will reflect the actual clock on your

computer and it does chime on the half hour and hour. Oh yeah, I thought that was really cool. That blew my mind. And I was happy to see that it still worked. And a few other things I like about the section of the game is like there are a few isolated puzzles where you're just on one screen. And two of these are back to back. Like I love the puzzle when Guy Brush is eaten by the snake and I love the Quicksand puzzle. Yes, the Four section. You took it there. Why'd you take it there?

You know what? That Vore section, which is what I'm going to keep calling it for now on. It reminded me of when Guy Bisch is behind the wall in Secret of Monkey Island, because he's like, he's in the darkness, kind of, and you don't get to see what he's seeing, and he picks up all this stuff, which he then, like, loses later immediately. Yeah. And then it's like when he's drowning in Secret of Monkey Island as well, because there's all these, like, items nearby that could help him immediately, and he can't reach them.

It's great, yeah. I mean, it is copying that a bit, but I do like the very, very. bottle isolated nature of those puzzles where you can't really use the items in your inventory. You have to use the things that you find. And this taught me what I piccac was. So it I learned a lot. I didn't

know what a purgative is. So I didn't really understand that part. Yeah, I guess I just stumbled across that solution by trying everything. But I guess you have to you have to know what Ipecac is. I think a very famous scene and family guy taught us all what that was about 10 years ago. So now all the kids are making their Ipecic gifts.

Well, all this game tells you. you is that it can be used as a purgative. I didn't know what that word meant. I didn't know what that meant. But yeah, and then the quicksand puzzle to follow right after is really neat too. It's like, I don't like to put the solution though. How is it for you? Okay, so maybe it's different in the easier mode, but you can't, so you get, you make yourself

a pea shooter and you can't shoot the vine with a pea shooter, but you can tie a rock to a balloon filled with helium and then blow the balloon right above the vine and then pop the balloon with a P-shooter to make the rock fall on the vine, which somehow cuts it? Hey, he said he had bad aim under stress. It's just so many steps. Is it different when you played it? No, no, I found it delightfully convoluted. Like, oh, this is cute.

Like, of course, it's not going to be the, like, just directly throw the rock at the thing you need. It's like, no, you have to float the rock over and then pop pee. Yeah, it's just... And I like how they screw you over on that puzzle because the balloon goes off the screen and he's like, oh, no. You think you did it wrong. So they kind of are shining a spotlight on how convoluted it is. Actually, about that puzzle, do you know about the word Papa Pishu? Yes.

If you prick your finger on the Papa Pishu bush, instead of saying, ouch, for most of the game, Guy Rish will say Papa Pishu. Him and other characters. That's true. Except in the final Lechuk fight, he does say yowch. So they missed that use of yowch. So when I replayed this, I skipped cutting myself on the plant. So for the first time, I did not hear him and other characters say Papa Pishu. I've always done the Papa Pishu play-through of this game.

You just have to do that? Yeah, I just because I interact with everything on every screen to get like every bit of dialogue. So it's just going to happen. Well, I was speeding through it. I understand. I understand. Come on, men. We've got to recover that map. That pirate will be done for when he falls into our trap. We're a club of Toon for Rovers.

We can sing in every clasp. We can even hit the high notes. It's just too bad we're tuned there. A pie. I was meant to be. Trim the sails and roam the sea. Part three is the insult sword fighting part. Of course, it starts off with the famous song,

which Larry Ahern or Jonathan Ackley were saying in an interview, like, they didn't know if anyone had done like an interactive song in an adventure game before, but they wanted to do it. And it's fun. It's fun. And you choose, like, Guy Bruch wants him to stop singing. and depending on which verse you choose they will respond to it. It's very fun

and then Guy Brush starts singing himself. It's great. I do like the song that this starts off with. It is fun but I have to admit every time I replay this game I am just as frustrated as garbage. I just want them to stop singing and you still have to go through like a few lines of dialogue

and a few verses before you can put an end to it. It does slow the game down but in 1997 nobody was doing this and it was like a very cool novelty. Yeah and the voice actors do a great great job with it i think so so yeah this is the ship combat section it's very isolated like you can't really go back to anywhere except for uh porto pollo to buy new weapons but it's uh it layers something else on top of the ron gilbert insult sword fighting from past game so you have the sword

fighting it works the same way you learn new insults from people except in this case uh they have to rhyme and i do like that twist because there are only so many different kind of rhyming endings so some things could work with other things and then of course when you get to the last uh boss of the sword fighting, all of his insults are different. And you have to find the correct one based on the rhyme and how well it would match up. You can't use existing knowledge. And I think the Roddingham fight in this game, I found it genuinely interesting and very creative. And I was like, oh, that line could work, but that one could too. Like, they worked very hard to make these rhyming lines conceivably work for very different responses. Yeah. So the fact that he

uses different, completely different insults is, you know, it's just to echo the sword master in the first game. Right, right. She has her original insults, but I don't know. I don't like the rhyming part. I still think it makes it too easy because you can just match up the rhymes. And there are lines with the same rhymes, but it still gives you a hint as to what the actual answer is.

And there's always one false answer, but it's always obviously false. It's like a comedy option. Yeah. It went by pretty fast for me this time, though. So I just appreciate they found a new way to do it, and they wanted to do it again because they loved it so much. Yeah. I don't like the ship combat, though. I always go with the easier option. There's two difficulty settings. I always go with the easier one because I'm like, I just want to get this over with.

Yeah, it's not necessary, but again, there was anxiety about like, we need an action element in this game. We're going to be too boring for, you know, people that are used to different kinds of games. So, yeah, there is ship combat before you can board a ship. You have to defeat them in this very, very rudimentary. reaction scene. You can make it harder if you want. I played on the harder mode and it was still pretty easy because all you do is like have your side of the ship point towards their front or back of the ship. That's all there is to it. And once you learn how to do it effectively, you just do it over and over again. It's nice in that once you defeat a ship once you don't need to do it again. Yeah, it's true. You could just double click that ship and just jump on it again if you lose the sword fight. The only thing I don't like about this is like you have to keep going back to the town to buy new weapons. When they should just put them on your ship automatically. You don't really get anything out. of buying them individually.

True, but they got Gary Coleman. Yeah, they got to get him in for a few more lines. Superstar Gary Coleman. Put him on the box. One thing I do like about the insult sword fighting is the anime where you give him the map. Oh man, one great thing about this game is the fact that there's so many unique animations for Guy Brish, which is not something they had in the previous games. So he's interacting with certain items, like they have a unique animation for it. Like if he's closing an umbrella and in this case, he's handing off what is like,

a really, really gross map. Yeah, made of scan. He puts it on his sword. Yeah, he's like, that's your map. Ew. Yeah, the peeling the map off the back, that part is so disgusting. And I wonder why they, like, how they thought of that. It's a good, maybe they saw Waterworld when that was a big plot element in that game, in that movie.

Oh, was it? Some one of the characters has like a map tattooed on them to something. I didn't watch Waterworld. Oh, I bet that was inspiration. But there was pee drinking in that game, not skin peeling in that movie, rather. So we're going to move on to Blood Island, and I think it's my favorite part of the game. It's got the melancholy atmosphere I love about Monkey Island. So essentially, for this part of the game, you need to get the ring, and you need to get a diamond of equal or greater value to put on the statue Elaine's finger.

And then you end up wrapped up in the tragedy of the Good Soup family. And, yeah, I love this part of the game. You fake your own death twice. Stan is here. I just love the again melancholy nature in the like summer night atmosphere and it just is so perfect

I agree this is definitely the best part of the game and I wish the game started off with an island like this this has the grave which reminds me of the grave in the second game I shouldn't say grave, it's a cemetery there are several graves

yeah it's true it just feels darker there's like there's ghosts in it and I like the characters it. The cannibals are great. Lemonhead is one of my favorite characters. I love his voice. His voice is one of my favorites in this game. He's just so smooth and nice sounding. He's voiced by Escott Bullock, who's done other things. And, oh yeah, good soup is also a great character. Although he is the stupidest, one of the stupidest characters in the game, I think. But that I mean, he's one of the least intelligent characters. That guy is so dumb. He's very credulous, but I think he's destroyed his brain with drinking. Is that what? It's supposed to be, you think? I mean, that's my, that's my fan theory, because when you meet him, he's hungover. One of the, one of the earliest depictions of a hungover character in a game I can think of. True.

And I'm not sure I quite understood what a hangover was when I first played this game. I didn't know what a hangover was, but I didn't know what the phrase hair of the dog meant. And that is a key to solving a puzzle, although you can take it literally. But, you know, of course, if you don't know. I took it literally, and you're meant to take it literally in this game. Hair of the dog that bit you is, like, the hangover remedy, like, drink alcohol to feel better after a hangover because you're drinking the hair of the dog that bit you. Just stay drunk and you'll feel fine. Yes, just never become sober and you'll never feel bad.

But, yeah, that is like an old school remedy. I don't know if it works, but you kind of have to, I mean, the entire... It kind of works. Like, alcohol withdrawal is painful, so it makes sense. Interesting. But, yeah, this part of the game is real cool. The cannibals I like as well. because they are from Monkey Island One

and there is a fun like mid-90s touch in that they're vegetarians now and I don't think this is like a lot of things of this era would be mean-spirited about vegetarianism because we're in that time period of people like making the jokes and it's sort of a new thing

for a lot of people that they're dealing with but I like that it is not treated as a mega joke like oh look at these idiots but also I feel like even in 97 they're being a little more sensitive like okay we can't have like the unga bunga cannibals throwing spears at you anymore And it's pointed out, like, they don't eat people anymore.

They mainly do all of, like, the masks and the tiki decor for the tourist. It's like, it's a more, like, sensitive portrayal of native people than you would have, like, five years ago, which is kind of cool. Yeah, I like this new take on the health conscious cannibals, because they've always been health conscious in the first game when you meet them. They're talking about, you know, calories and saturated fats and all that. And they're watching their nutrition. Speaking of, like, sensitive portrayals of a native tribe like this, I just watched Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chats for the first time. And that starts off with a very incredibly way too long section

where Jack Sparrow and others are escaping a tribe of cannibals, and that is not a very sensitive portrayal. I didn't think so. No, actually, yeah, the Pirates of the Caribbean movies definitely always remind me of Monkey Island And watching this, watching that movie right before we talk about this, it just brings to mind all the similarity between the two. And I don't know, I think this game does a better job of coming up with, like, goofy pirates, like putting a comedic, a fun comedic spin on them.

Yeah, then the sort of uglier pirates in the first two games. Yeah, exactly. Although I do like how ugly they get in, dirty and ugly they get in the movies, as opposed to, like I said, in this game, it just feels too clean. Everyone feels really rich in this game, you know? That's because all the pirates you meet are, like, retired in doing other things. Yeah, and like a good soup especially comes from lots and lots of money, like he says. We have to move on, though.

Two things I wanted to mention because you're a big fan of these. So there are two big payoffs in this Blood Island section. Well, one is more of an in-joke, but there is a reference to the dig in the crypts of, of Blood Island. Did you get to that part in your play-through? Oh, where his arm is stuck. Yeah. So Guy brush reenacts a scene from The Dig, the famous game, the dig, when the German guy gets his hand stuck in the rock and you have to cut it off. Yeah, I don't know how common knowledge that is. Because he's got that crystal addiction, right? Yeah. He loves those eggs, those life eggs. He loves those life eggs. But also, you get the payoff to the Monkey Island one stump joke

in The Curse of Monkey Island. Oh, right. Yeah. I always skip that part because I speed through my play-throughs. I forgot about that. And there's also the part where you see Guy Brish from the first game as a bloated corpse underwater. Oh, you're right. Yeah. I think that's an Easter egg that most people don't come across. I didn't hit that one. Yeah, you have to like make Guy Brish walk into the water or or tell him to like several times. I don't know how many times it takes. It's kind of weird because nothing he says indicates that if you keep clicking on that, he'll actually walk in there. But after a while, he will walk into the ocean, and then he'll see him, like, himself, even as like the sprite. It's not redrawn or anything. It's just

gyrish from the first game as a bloated corpse. I forgot about that Easter. Yeah, the stump joke in case you're wondering what that was, is at a certain point, Monkey Island 1, it'll tell you to insert a disc that doesn't exist to see what's beyond that stump. And apparently that stump goes into the world of Curse of Monkey Island because you pop out, you pop your head out into the world monkey island one. And that disc you need comes with the box version of Thimblebeet Park. Ooh, I like that. I totally forgot about that. I've always forgot about that too. It's cool how they put in a monkey island in joke in Thibblebeet Park. Another cool part about part four is Skull Island. I love Skull Island, which looks like a duck or bunny, depending on how you look

at it. Skull Island is fun. It's a very small location. The guy that takes you there is a flying Welshman. He's awesome and he makes a jab at mist, which I thought was funny. Yeah, there's a big Miss slam. It's like, oh, it's pretty, but it's so boring. Yeah, so did this this must have come after, well after Mist Man, right? About four years. Four years, okay. So I wonder if the people who worked in this game, like, did actually

have major issues with that game, with the art direction of it. They probably just hated the gameplay and probably were sick of people asking, like, why do you make games like Missed? Yeah, maybe when they were trying to make this, there was a big pushback against the 2D animation style they were going for.

Maybe people were like, oh, why don't you make it, why don't you use 3D graphics, like look at Miss, look how great this looks, and they really wanted to go against that. They wanted something with a little more character, yeah. Another cool part of Scala Island is Guy Rich just straight up kills a guy. That's true for fewer transgressions or lesser transgressions than other people have done upon him in the past. Yeah, although in my play-through, he doesn't do that.

So what happens is there's a wimpy little guy who's supposed to slowly lower you down from a cliff with a, what do you call it, is that a dumbwaiter? It's like a pulley. Yeah, it's on a pulley. And he will, like, drop you accidentally several times. And if you can't figure out the puzzle solution to that, then you end up falling under the cliff several times. And it looks painful, by the way.

Like, Garberich should be dead by that point. He just lands on, like, a rock face, and that's it. Yeah, I love that. And so I guess they expect most people to fall many, many times. So when you finish what you need to do on that island, before you leave forever, he's like, wait, there's one thing I've got to do. And Garbos just pushes him off the island.

But that didn't happen when I played it because I discovered, you know, I knew the solution already, so I didn't fall many times. I only fell once, but he still did the thing. I guess you have to fall at least once then. Okay. I didn't know that. Yeah. That's cool.

That's a nice touch, the fact that Garbus would just kill him. I agree. I think they just kind of, they figured the players would be sick of that guy at that point. Yeah, if they can't figure out to open the umbrella, you know, during the fall. Yep. So Part 5 is up next. That's when So Guy Brassh, you know, saves the lane puts the ring on her finger she's not a uh you statue anymore but that's when lechuk kidnaps them brings them to uh the carnival and monkey island uh they save all of this payoff for the end

of the game and if you want to know what happened between the games is a big uh you know big explanation a big plot dump and even the game is like yeah it's a little talky we're going on a little too long too much talking and some of these some of these things aren't necessary to tell you but the game is like winking at you like saying yeah we know we know but people want to know this stuff so here's the thing big whoop are the gates of hell you find out that you know lechuk killed all of uh mar uh lane's father and the crewmates because they saw him walk through the gates of hell and become the ghost pirate lechuk there's so much i can't go into all of it here but it does give you a lot of interesting background information i'm sure people wanted to know in 1997 it's not quite as uh you know

interesting now but this was important for the context of when it was released yeah it's definitely a giant plot dump. I know Lechuk explained a lot of things in Lechuk's revenge when they were hanging over the acid pit but not nearly as much as he does here but to their credit it's easy to skip most of it if you already know if you're playing it. I think you can

just say just kill me already. Exactly yeah. So that's fine I'm glad you don't have to go through all the explanation again. I do every time because I'm like how did they find their way out of this? And I guess it's fine I mean like there's one where they're like yeah this doesn't make any sense. It's like hey I thought you said this carnivals on Monkey Island. I went

to Dinky Island to go to the carnivals. Like, oh, yes, they're actually connected via underground tunnels. And Guyvers is like, that doesn't make any sense. He's like, shut up, shut up. I know they try their best to bridge that gap for the fans. And I remember when I was playing that for their first time, listening to the explanation, I'm like, yeah, I guess that works. That's fine.

Like, I know the previous guys that worked in this game are not involved in this one. I know Ron Gilbert was a consultant, at least, for this one. I don't know if that's true. I got special thanks. I don't think he was. Oh, okay. Yeah. Then they just had to come up with their own thing.

And it was a tough task. So even if I'm not totally satisfied with the answers, I'm like, this is the best they could do. So I understand that. It's fine. It still doesn't feel like my monkey island, though. And then after that section, you are basically on another one-screen puzzle where you are the haunting visage of child guy brush. I can't stand him. You essentially have to find a way to unchildify yourself on this one-screen puzzle.

in order to get on the ride to confront Lechuk. You'll have to ask Larry Ahern, who approved of that design. His head is so enormous that his expression doesn't change. I don't get it. He's got this glassy, dead stare. I'm not a big fan of how Guy Bruch looks in that final scene. And moves. The way he moves.

Like very jaunty. Yeah. And slow, too. I can't stand how slowly he walks. And you can make him walk towards the screen and get, like, gigantic. God. But, yes, you basically in that section, you have to remake. you have to remake the hair of the dog potion to cure yourself.

And I think the way it executes is very creative. You just have to find different versions of all, like the pepper, the egg, and the hair of the dog that bit you. And the way you find those is pretty cool. Like, I like how it relies on a past puzzle knowledge for you to solve that puzzle. Yeah. And that's just like the other two games in Secret of Monkey Island. You have to follow a recipe to get yourself to Monkey Island, but you have to make

substitutions. So they took that element And then the second game took that element as well Because you make a voodoo doll But then you have to make another voodol Near the end of the game And you have to make substitutions there too So they took that and put it in this game as well

That's true, yeah I do think it's a good puzzle design Because it's like okay You solve the puzzle this way before But now try solving it with access to items You don't have right now Like try to improvise I hate dingy dog though

That's because you solve the puzzle That's because you hate Goofy. I hate Goofy. I do. Yeah. He's a parody of Goofy. I famously hate Goofy. Yeah, that's true. You just mentioned he's a parody of Goofy. This whole thing, I guess, is meant to be a parody of Disneyland. Oh, for sure. Like, the Stinger scene is a Disneyland joke joke joke. Oh, okay. I guess we'll get to that. But yeah. So I can go to the last section here. We're almost done here. So part five is the Lechuk Showdown, just like in all the other games. You are just like in an enclosed area and with different screens. And if you're you linger in one. part for too long Lechuk will show up and kind of chase you you away. And this is also just like the other two

games at the end where you're just being chased around by Lechuk. Yeah, yeah. And in this case you are basically on a Disneyland-style

dark ride with like four different little vignettes. And basically you have to jump between all of those to build a rum bomb in order to crush Lechuk from above

with ice. The only thing I don't like about this puzzle is I think this is the one part I was stuck on as a kid because like in previous games there was a special way you had to kill Lechuk

because he is like supernatural creature. In this game, they never tell you that. So it's like, well, what am I supposed to do? And it's not clear that like, oh, yeah, ice falling on him will kill him, I guess. This whole ending is so rushed. And I think even people who love this game will agree that the ending is the weakest part. Yeah, I mean, the ending scene would have been better if more things were established, like, what will kill Lechuk? And also, like, my big thing was like, how am I supposed to know that, like, Pepper will make Lechuk sneeze? That was like, he's an undead creature without a nose, really, and

like, why would this affect him? Like, it was not established. It's like, it's sort of like real world knowledge like, yeah, Pepper makes you steeze. But I think that needs to be set up in the game for like a supernatural creature because that's a big part of this puzzle. Didn't they straight up run out of money

by the end of this, the production of this game? I mean, I don't think it has anything to do with the design of the puzzle. I think it has more to do with the lack of a real fulfilling cutscene after this. Yeah, true. I do like that they make it like

the previous two games. Like I mentioned, the same kind of mechanic. being chased around, having a time limit on how long you can think about each section you end up in. It's not, I don't know, like the impact is lost to me. The second game, the ending part, the truck is just so meditating and scary. Like, it's, it still scares me when he shows up, you know, in that last section. Yeah, yeah, because he could just like sneak in on the side of the screen. And this one, it's clear like, oh, he's coming. He's going to be here.

And then I'll just have to wait and be very bored until I just jump into the car again. I do like how the vignettes are based on things from the previous games, too. Except the Yeti, which is just from the Matterhorn. Yeah, right, right. Yeah, why is that part not pirity at all? I don't know. I think of that is just the joke. It's like, yeah, we're stealing from Disney.

Here's just the Matterhorn. Right. And you see Wally again this part, but you don't do anything with him. Yeah, he's... You can't even talk to him. He's just tied up in the little vignette of when he was tied up of Monkey Island, too. Yeah. Oh, man.

We didn't even talk about Murray in this entire thing. Oh, yeah. Murray, I mean, this is the longest podcast ever. I'm going to submit this to Guinness But, yes, Murray, the Talking Scull, he was in the first scene of the game And, like, Tester's loved him so much That they found new ways

To drop him into the game. And then he would just be in the rest of the series. Controversial opinion. I don't think he's that great of a character. I like him, but he is very much of the 90s character Where there were so many, like, dominion to have characters who wanted to, like, rule the world or take over the world.

And that was, like, that was a very novel idea back then, like, Pinky in the Brain and Stewie and other characters like that. Like, how are you going to do this? You're just a skull. It's like the joke. I know he's a big fan favorite. And I think the game tried to make him a thing. But then he's not, he didn't stand out enough to be, to be as heavily featured in the other games, I think.

Like, beyond this one. Yeah, I think he made his, if I remember correctly. He made his biggest splash here. And then he would just be like a more of a cameo. But he was retained through the rest of the series. You can tell that he wasn't meant to play a bigger role in this game. that he was just wanting to bend to be the beginning because when you see him

past the tutorial part there you just got to talk to him if you want but you can not talk to him at all if you choose to like whenever I replay I just don't talk to him and the only time you use him is in the grave section yeah he's eventually used for a puzzle but I like Murray it's fun

it's fun to see him pop up I'm a Murray fan but before I run out of voice here I do want to talk about the ending of the game which is a non-ending in that you crush Lechuk with ice from above And then the next scene is Guybrush and Elaine on a ship getting married and they're floating away. And you see the same canned waving animation of characters you met along the way until they sell out of sight and the game is over. And yes, the designers know like, yeah, like this ending is not very good.

It's not fulfilling. But we could either spend money on cutscenes or more game and we decided to make more game. So there you have it. They wrote a song called Plank of Love, which was meant to be a duet between Garbage and Elaine. Yeah, like a parody of a whole new world or something. Yeah, they didn't have the time. or budget or whatever to record it, which I think is like, I'm glad they didn't do that song. I think at this point in time, definitely based on my research, like any other company would

have had like an animation department or a cutscene department. They were just hiring animators and also people like Bill Tiller doing backgrounds were also doing storyboards for cutscenes and animated cutscenes. I think because they didn't have an animation department and they weren't outsourcing these cutscenes, they were having to split their time between game design and also making cutscenes. So I feel like that is why one of the designers said, yes, we either could have bigger game or more cutscenes. We opted for a bigger game. And that's why the ending is not very good. Yeah, the ending is just a disappointment every single time I play this.

I can see it coming too. I know it's coming. Oh, with how brief it'll be? No, I mean, I know the entire time. I'm like, okay, the ending is going to be nothing. The ending is going to be nothing. And then when I see it again, I'm still disappointed. Yeah, you're prepared for it. And yet you're still like, oh, this could have been something so much more, especially when the previous two games ended on at least dialogue. Like, I don't understand why they couldn't end on some kind of dialogue between, like, say, Guy Rich and Elaine. Instead, they're, like, they're just like, all right, they're married there.

That's the end. That is, that is true, yeah. I mean, it is kind of a fart of an ending, but they do acknowledge that in interviews. They know, they know, and they wish they had more money in time to make a better ending, but you really couldn't have had a, you know, ending with existing game assets at the time. It's like, we need a cutscene ending. This is a big showstopper game, so that's all they could come up with, really. Yeah, and even the ending shot with the characters waving, like, there's no background.

You just see them from behind. The characters flip the entire screen. I think you could tell they just ran out of time or something by that point. Yeah, and I know they wanted to make a better ending, and there was plans for it. There's also plans to show you, like, a cutscene for how actually Guy Brush got on the ride and how Elaine freed herself and, like, you know, made it to the right loop instead of sending you into the lava, which Lechuk hints at during that last part like, oh, Elaine must have messed with the tracks

or whatever. Right, yeah. A lot of stuff is just explained away with dialogue. Things happen off screen, which to be fair, they did that in the first game too. Elaine does a lot off screen, which is just talked about you never see. Yeah, so Elaine might have had more screen time in this game if they had more money, unfortunately. But yeah, you get a bunch

of credits and then there's a stinger scene with two unseen people talking about the ride, and they say, you know, legend has it. The creator of that ride is buried underneath it, which is just a Walt Disney joke we forgot about because the urban legend was Walt Disney is buried underneath Pirates of the Caribbean. So there you have it. I usually don't stick around long enough to see that. You're just leaving. You're running out of your house. Yeah, it's just like when it starts

off with Murray talking over the credits a bit and I'm like, eh, that's fine. He doesn't talk over the credits enough. I thought it'd just be like a full Murray commentary, but not really. Yeah, you know what? I'm surprised by how little he talks. In my memory, he talked way more. they could have recorded more dialogue with him because they didn't have to animate him at that point. I don't know why they didn't. You can ask Jonathan Ackley yourself. I don't have these answers.

That's okay. I hope he doesn't listen to this podcast. Or Larry Ahern. I have his email address. I'll say, Dear Larry, Nina Matsumoto has got some problems with Curse of Monkey Island. Don't snitch tag on Twitter, please. I'll email snitch tag. But yeah, that was our Curse of Monkey Island podcast.

I thought this would be a one-hour recording. We're heading into hour three, so I think I should wrap it up because it's been quite a long time, and I'm on very little sleep but I did play through this entire game for the sake of this podcast and it was a lot of fun

fun eight hour game I recommended heartily if you are new to the series I think it's a fun one to jump into just because it is a more modern adventure game iteration and even though it is 23 years old I still think it is not too crusty

and there's not a lot to get over to get into this retro game Nina any final thoughts on this I don't think you should start with this game I think you should start from the first game in the second and then the third. But that's me. I started with the first one. So of course, I'm going to have this opinion. I'm very biased. Play the remake with the weird guy brush. Play the remake, but don't use the new graphics. But you know what? Although I have not played this game nearly as much as I played the other two games, I've still played it a lot. Like, if I played Monke Island 1 and 2, let's just say I played it 300 times each, I probably played Montgomery Island 3 100 times. So when I replayed this, to prepare for this recording, I always would.

surprised by how much I still remembered about this game. For me, it was a four-hour playthrough. I just knew how to do absolutely everything, committed to memory. I wasn't sure if I would get stuck on some things, but it just goes to show even me, someone who was not satisfied with this as a Monkey Island game, I've still played it a bunch because it is a good game in the end, no matter how you feel about if this is as acceptable as part of the Monkey Island franchise or not. I think it's still a polarizing game. There are a lot of Monkey Island fans like me who I think share my opinion, but for the most part, the reception was positive. It was, and it helps. So you've had 23 years to heal, so that helps. But it also helps

that Scaref Monkey Island is a wretched game that nobody likes, and we're going to play it for this podcast. So I think that makes Chris of Monkey Island look even better, even if you don't like it. Sorry, I thought you were talking about the first two games. Oh, no, no, no. No. Yeah, I've never I've never finished Escape from Monkey Island and I will for the first time ever to prepare for this which will be four hours long and maybe for patrons only who knows but yes Nina Matsumoto thank you for being on the podcast I haven't seen you in 10 weeks because of things but please talk about what you're working on what's going on with the fan gamer and sparks and let people know where they can find you online yeah I'm still busy as ever my work has not sold out at all I am currently

working on Sparks 3, which is the third in a series of graphic novels. I draw about two cats that pilot a robotic dog suit to save people. And I still am working on lots and lots of T-shirts and other merch like

key chains, hats, doing box art for FanGamer. If you go to Fangamer.com, go to collections, sort by artists, and click on Space Coyote by Nina Matsumoto. You'll see all stuff I design and you can keep up with my work if you go to my Twitter at Space Coyote,

that's Space Coyote with an L at the end instead of an E. So thanks again to Nina for being our guest on this show and for talking about Monkey Island. Once again, she will be back. And I think we're going to do a mailbag episode about all of our Monkey Island episodes to date. So please write in some comments on those little blog posts and Patreon post. And this one too, we want to hear what you think. And we'll talk about your thoughts about Monkey Island games. But as for me, I've been your host for this one, Bob Mackey.

You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. And also, Retronaut is a completely fan-funded operation. That means you, buddy. And if you want to support the show and get things ahead of time and ad-free, please go to patreon.com slash Retronauts. And if you sign up for three bucks a month, you'll get the ad-free in one week in advance episodes. But if you sign up for five bucks a month, you will get two exclusive episodes every month that will not be made available to patrons.

If you want to know what those are, they have a free preview of them the Friday after they go live on the free feed. So you can get a taste of what those are on the free feed where you're listening to this maybe. But if you want to actually access the entire full-length exclusive episodes, you'll have to sign up for five bucks at patreon.com slash retronauts. Also, as my full-time job, I do the Talking Simpsons Network podcast. That includes things like Talking Simpsons and what a cartoon and many other things on top of that. You can find those wherever you find podcasts, but also if you go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, you can sign up there and get access to so many paywall podcasts, so many mini-series and interviews and talk.

Talking Simpsons things. We got over 100 exclusive bonus podcasts on the Patreon. And our most recent limited mini series is Talking Mission Hill. Just for patrons are going through the entire Mission Hill series in the Talking Simpsons treatment. So again, that is patreon.com slash talking Simpsons for my non-video game-related podcasts. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you again soon for another podcast. Thank you.

Thank you.