Triple Click - What's The Deal With: Monkey Island?

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

What exactly is "Monkey Island" and why is it so popular? This week, the Triple Click gang revisits the old point-and-click adventure series in preparation for the newly announced Return to Monkey Island, which will be out later this year. They talk about the ups and downs of Monkey Island, the incredible music, and how it reinvigorated the genre by showing the world that adventure games do not, in fact, need to kill you.One More Thing: Kirk: Michael ClaytonMaddy: Steam DeckJason: Steve Jackson’s SorceryLinks:Kirk’s arrangement of Michael Land’s Monkey Island theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf7VQiu1MGoTracy Lien - No Girls Allowed https://www.polygon.com/features/2013/12/2/5143856/no-girls-allowedSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy a Triple Click t-shirt: https://topatoco.com/collections/maximum-fun/products/maxf-tc-tclogo-shJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Look behind you, a three-ed-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-tie. Whoa, that is the second biggest podcast I've ever seen. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. Today we are talking about the iconic video game series, Monkey Island. What is the deal with it? Today, we shall discuss. We will tell you exactly what the deal is. I'm Jason Trier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. Hey, hello. It's us again. Hello, my friends. We are back for another episode of Triple Click,

clicking our way into your hearts. Click, click, click. Here we go. And if you out there, enjoy Triple Click, or even if this is your very first episode, you should know that we are an entirely listener-supported podcast, and we can only make this show because of support from all of you find listeners out there.

It's the truth. If you want to help make this show happen, you can become a MaxFund member. Go to MaximumFund. or join, help support the show by even contributing the minimum amount, $5 a month. You will get access to our monthly bonus episodes. We make monthly bonus episodes. Every single month, we make something cool.

Every single one. That's what probably means. All of you find supporters out there. And this month, we are doing a beans cast, a spoiler cast, where we dive into the most recent era of Marvel stuff. So we'll be talking about the new Spider-Man, new Doctor Strange, some of the new shows like Miss Marvel and Moon Night. Moon Night, yeah, that's the other one.

Eternals. There's so many. There's so much stuff. People are begging for our takes on Eternals. They are just constantly asking us, what do we think about it? Who's your favorite Eternals? Yeah, we're all saying that. We're all listing our favorite Eternals constantly.

I should say right now I haven't watched Eternals, and I have no plans of watching Eternals. Definitely, it's all I can talk about. We're probably not going to talk about Eternal's, but I am excited to talk about Dr. Strange. Yeah, for sure. There's a lot to talk about there. So that'll be our July bonus episode. We do one every month.

We'll have more in August, September. In fact, August, we might be doing one of my favorite TV shows of all time that is about to come to an end, hintant. Very excited about that one, but we'll announce that closer to then. And yeah, go to maximum fund.org. I can't believe it's

I said it finally Gilligan's Island we're finally going to see if he makes it off that island if the professor and his wife can all make it off I don't think I've ever seen the last episode of Gilligan's Island

Speaking of Islands I'm not sure I've ever seen an episode of Gilligan's Island They do get rescued at the end I gotta check that out Right after this I'm going to be Googling Do they ever make it off the island That's the main question. I'm looking at it up right now.

Yeah, the last episode. I honestly think I thought of this because spoilers for the episode, we are doing Monkey Island. And so I just have islands on the brain right now. And we're just thinking about island-based shows and content. Did you know that, okay, the last episode ended just like the rest, so the castaway is still stranded. It was not known at the time that it would be the series of finale as a fourth season was expected. But then cancel. I didn't realize Gilligan's Island is apparently not popular.

It only aired for three seasons. How are people not rioting over the fact that Gilligan and company are still stranded on that island? Talk about something that needs a reboot in 2022. Or at least a like Serenity style movie to end the whole thing and wrap up the Luzon. Yeah. I mean, Serenity went so well. It was so successful. So that should definitely happen for Gilligan and Co.

Let's say the Deadwood movie then. Speaking of being stranded on islands, today we are talking about a video game series that is near and dear to my heart all about being stranded on islands because in this series you wind up being stranded on many, many islands. You do get stranded on a lot of islands. It's called Monkey Island. Monkey Island is a brilliant series of video games that we are of course talking about today because a new one was just announced in April. Ron Gilbert, it was the creator of the series and the director of the first two games, announced that he is returning to the franchise that made him popular. He is making a game literally called Return to Monkey Island.

It'll be out later this year. And for people like me, that was extremely, extremely exciting news because Monkey Island is, like I said, a series that I have a lot of, a deep love for. I grew up playing the games. I played them all. I loved them all. Well, not them all. Not all of them, I should say.

Right. But we'll get to that. And, yeah, it's one of the first games that, like, just made me crack up. one of the funniest games ever made, one of the first funny games. It was part of my love for, like, it helped ignite my love for those LucasArts adventure games back in the day. And I just loved everything about it. But before we get into kind of like a brief overall explainer of the Monkey Island series and how it kind of ebbed and flowed over the years, I'm curious to hear from you to. Did you two grow up playing it?

Kirk, why don't you start? Because I think you did, right? You played it as a kid? I definitely did. This is one of the first video games I've ever played. It was a huge influence on me and a huge part of my love of video games. I played the first, The Secret of Monkey Island, which I believe I didn't play it in 1990, the year that it came out. I probably played it a year or two after that. But I mean, I played it not the CD-ROM version that had spoken dialogue. I was playing an original version. And then eventually I did have it on CD-ROM. And I have so many. memories associated with that game. That'll always be the game in this series that I think, that I just associated with the series because I think it's the only one I've played all the way through. I've actually never finished Monkey Island, too, though I know that one is beloved and is kind of the pinnacle or seen as the pinnacle of the series by a lot of people. But for me,

it was Monkey Island one. I played it at a friend's house, and it just knocked me out because it was funny and smart, and I liked things that were funny, and I had that kind of sense of humor. because it was really beautiful to me. I found it very evocative. I still find it very evocative. And for me, more than anything, I love the music. One of the first video game arrangements I did was actually of the theme from Monkey Island. Michael Land, I believe, was the composer of that theme, though there are a few composers that worked on the series. And that music, oh my gosh, like that opening music that we played at the beginning here when you were introducing the series, I love that main theme. And I love it because.

it's so evocative and beautiful, not because it's zany and funny. A lot of the other music is kind of zany, but that opening theme is really dramatic. And that for me has always been the heart of the series is it's night and the moon is over the ocean. And you see Melee Island. It's not even Monkey Island. It's Malay Island with the little bonfire at the very top. And that title card comes up and that music plays. And it's so, I mean, it's so funny because this series is just, it's such a comedy series.

it's so wacky, it's associated with so many things, but for me, it's that moment that I'll never forget. Like, that was the moment as a kid. When I saw that, it just enchanted me. And I've always loved the series. Yeah, the music has always been a big thing. Quick note, the CD-ROM version, actually, it had an enhanced version of the music,

like higher-quality audio instead of like soundblaster stuff, but it didn't have voice acting. The voice acting didn't come in until Curse the Monkey Island in the third game. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's funny that maybe I did have the CD-ROM, because I know eventually I had the CD-ROM because you could put the CD-ROM into your CD-player and listen to the soundtrack, which I did obsessively and memorize all the music. It, like, worked, you know, just the wave files would play on your CD player. Yeah, that sounds about right.

What about you, Maddie? Did you play this as a kid? Absolutely not. I wish I had, though, because I think I would have really loved it. I didn't play these until way later. So there was a 2015 remaster of Grim Fandango, which is also a Tim Schaefer, LucasArts. game that I think is also just much beloved. And I played that and reviewed it for PACE and at the time was like, I should check out

some of these other games. And I know I checked out Monkey Island. I think I only played the first one and I maybe didn't even beat it. And I have very faint memories of that. So before this episode, I looked up a let's play of it and I watched all of the first game. And there are many let's plays. That's awesome. There are many let's plays that combined the original pixel graphics, which are absolutely

beautiful. Really can't recommend them enough. They're stunning pixel graphics. And I say that as somebody who has been known to not be a fan of retro games. So I'm clarifying. They really look awesome. But that's combined with the voice acting that's added in, there's a couple remastered versions of Secret of Monkey Island and Escape from Monkey Island or whatever the second one is called. And I don't know. And it's really good voice acting. And it's so funny. Like I wouldn't have expected the voice acting to be funny because some of the lines are just so funny on their own as text that it's sort of hard to imagine somebody delivering them out loud. But somehow they make it work even when the characters are interrupting each other and it sounds very stilted. It's as though

each actor is just playing into how silly that would sound and kind of doing an almost school play performance. And I mean that in the best possible way. Like it's it's as though they all recognize the silliness of the tone, which we can get into what we can get into what. we mean by how the humor works in this game, but it doesn't feel like a serious performance in that way. It's like everyone is putting on the sort of archetypes of each character that they're each playing. And it just, it's incredible. I was really impressed by the voice acting, which I hadn't previously heard. So I really recommend that experience overall. You know, related to that voice acting thing, that makes me think of the way that dialogue worked in this game before there was voice acting.

And it's actually one thing about this game that I've always thought. is really cool. It's that Scum Engine text, right? So the Scum Engine is the engine they used to make this game. And the text just has a certain font to it. I'm sure you can get this font online, the Monkey Island, or just the Scum Engine font, which was in all of those LucasArts games. And just the way, like the dialogue is written in a funny way. It's funny when you read it, but it's also delivered in a funny way. It's always kind of one-liners. There's never huge amounts of dialogue, unless the joke is that they're saying something super, super, super long. Like occasionally, the joke is that there's way too much text to read, but it's always pretty

short and punchy. And then there's just the way that it's written, the color of the text, which is different for everybody, they do a lot with the text to imply the tone, which then, I'm sure, was part of the directing of the voice actors when they were finally getting actors to act out those lines. And it really does feel like when Guy Brush says some of those famous lines, you can hear it. It's exactly how it sounded in my head.

Like, it really does feel of a piece. Yeah, well, it happens that So, Chris Monke-Anand, like I mentioned, was the first game in the series to have voice acting, and it happens that they got the perfect voice actor for Guy Rosh Saper, this guy named Dominique Armato, who just is exactly what you would imagine Guy Rish Rupert to sound like.

And he's not in that much other stuff. I was looking him up and being like, this guy's so funny. I feel like we need justice for this guy. One of the things they do with the voice acting is they'll reuse the exact same recordings, which also sounds like it wouldn't be funny, but it really works for the tone.

Like every single time Guybrose says, Yikes, it's the same exact audio file of the actor going, Yikes! And you just kind of get used to it, and you're like, yeah, that's how he sounds when he says that. But there are also like repeated lines where it's like, you know,

Guy Brish will be fighting with somebody, and they'll be like, no, you aren't. And he'll be like, yes, I am. And then they reuse the exact same identical sound clip of the other character going, you aren't and he'll be like yes I am and you're like what like no one talks like that but the fact that it sounds so stilted is just hilarious in practice and I've never even heard a game do something like that where it's sort of playing with the idea of recorded dialogue repeating itself yes the one

thing that's unfortunate about the remastered version of secret of monkey island is that there's no way to get just the voice acting with the original graphics right which is why people keep editing it in the let's play that I saw. There is also a fan-made mod that I kind of wish I'd just installed and played instead of watching a let's play where people have taken the voice acting and put it with the original pixel graphics. And that seems like the best possible way to replay the first game. Yeah.

So let's go back in time. Let's do a little history around Secret of Monkey Island because I want to just contextualize this for people who didn't grow up in the 80s and 90s and like don't really know anything about Monkey Island. So back in the 1980s, there was this guy named Ron Gilbert. And Ron Gilbert, his real claim to fame was releasing this game called Maniac Mansion that you might have heard of. Because it was a pretty big hit back in the day. It was a point and click adventure, meaning that you would kind of point and click on the screen.

You had an adventure. Move characters around the screen using what was called a verb like selector, which was in the bottom left section of the screen. which was in the bottom left section of the screen, you would see all these verbs like walk to, talk to, push, pull. And you would click on one of those, and then you'd click on an object on the screen to interact with it. And so this Game Maniac Mansion, it was really innovative in that you could pick three characters out of like seven.

Each of them had their own strengths and weaknesses and you had to explore this house that was kind of like straight out of B movies of the time, whereas it was kind of like a cross between like, I don't know, like the Adams family and like some sort of weird alien horror movie. And it was just kind of a crazy, bizarre adventure game. But and then from there, it turned into this was part of Lucasfilm games, which was George Lucas's company, of course. Some of the same folks went on to actually make a point-and-click adventure game based on

Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade, the third Indiana Jones movie that is like a one-to-win recreation of the movie as an adventure game. which is pretty wild. And then you had Sierra pop up. Sierra was another big game company at the time and make its own sort of adventure games, Kings Quest and Police Quest and all that stuff. But what Ron Gilbert eventually figured out,

where Ron Gilbert eventually figured out, and this was really the moment of brilliance for Monkey Island, was that it was actually really frustrating how often you could die in these games. Because point-and-click adventure games are really a lot about trial and error, about experimenting to see, like, oh, how do I solve this puzzle? Is it going to, do I use this object?

They'll use that object. And in games like Maniac Mansion, and then all of Sierra's games, if you didn't do things fast enough, if you didn't do things in the right order, you could die and, like, have to restart from a previous state. So Monkey Island, secret of Monkey Island, which was inspired by the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, among other things. And in fact, there's some characters in Monkey Island that are like straight out of the ride. I think Otis, one of the characters, is like copied from the ride, from Disney.

But so what ironic that Disney would wind up owning this, by the way, because Disney had nothing to do with this game, but wind up owning. That's really why they made the acquisition. They're like, we're getting Otis. It is. That's right about Lucas. Yeah, we want, we want the Monkey Island series. But with Secret of Monkey Island, the most important thing Ron did, and what would really just set the tone for all of Lucas film games is adventure. games to come over the next decade is they made it so you can't die and you can't get into a no-when situation. There's no way you can lose this game. You are at peace to explore in whatever way you can. You could try, experiment with stuff. Back in the day, man, there was this game called Return to Zork,

which was a graphical adventure version of the Zork series. And like it had the most, this, the stupidest thing ever where if you didn't pick up this bond plant thing right at the beginning of the game. It was called a bonding plan or something. And if you didn't dig it up just right, you would screw yourself over. But you wouldn't know this until like 20 hours into the game. And then it would be like, hey, to get in here, you need a bonding plan. And you as a layer would be like, what? Like a bonding plan. And you'd look for it. And it would be nowhere to be found because it turns out you needed to get this at the beginning of the game. So anyway, so what Ron Gilbert and Monkey Island and the team of Lucasville games did is they said, none of that shit. Like we are making this game. So you can play

it and it is player friendly. It was really like it would, we think of games. People often use the term like player friendly or consumer friendly today. This is the first example of like something like that. And that really was a large part of what I think made it so popular. In addition to the humor and the tone and the music

and the story and the writing and everything else that made it so great. Yeah, I played a lot of these point and click games in the 90s. I played a few of the Kingsquest games. Kings Quest six. That was the one that I really played a whole lot of. and Gabriel Knight as well. The first Gabriel Night game, though I did play the second one,

which is about Weirwolves, and I believe is, yeah, it is full motion video and is not as good. Though the first one has its issues, too, but those games definitely would kill you. And Gabriel Knight, a little less so, but there were totally times, especially toward the end of the game,

where you had to kind of be on your guard, some zombies would attack you. You'd have to click on them with a knife. And it doesn't, like that kind of game, like a death loop in a video game, it doesn't lend itself to a point-and-click adventure game. The game is in no way enhanced by that,

and it's interesting that it took Ron realizing that to be like, you know, this game would be just as fun if it was just the jokes and the puzzles, and we kind of removed that from it. It seems really obvious now, I suppose, but I can see also why it wasn't at the time, especially because so many, you know, they were coming from this era of video games

where death and challenged, that was all there was. Like, there wasn't a story. You couldn't rely on the jokes and on the puzzles and, you know, all of these things that now were in every game, you know, at the time it was kind of groundbreaking. And that was one thing that drew me to those kinds of games. It was, oh, there's like a story, there's characters, there's jokes, there's little puzzles. It's not just sort of jumping on things or shooting at things. Right. Plus, it's the rise of personal computers.

I mean, it's not an arcade game where dying is part of how they're extracting money and time out of you. Like, instead, they want to just extract purely time out of you. and the best way to extract time is to just keep having the story play forever, which is absolutely how Monkey Allen can work if you want. I mean, if you never looked up a walkthrough, God, I'm sure there are people who beat this game without doing that, although there's certainly some obtuse puzzles. You can just keep trying things forever and ever and ever until you figure out the solution,

no matter what it is. And that, to me, just speaks to a different time period and how games were changing in the 90s. So yeah so Secret of Monkey Island it's a really well-structured game and just to talk it through you play as this guy named Geibers Streeprid you get to this island called Mele Island you see that amazing intro screen that Kirk was describing and your goal is just you want to be a pirate it's not really clear why garbage is just like that's the very first line in the entire game my name is Guy Bish Tepred and I want to be a pirate and then the old man is like yikes yes

one of the first encounters you have and this really sets the tone for the entire series is you meet a guy in a bar and you go out to him and you say, my name is Guy Brish Thichprud. And this guy turns you and he says, that's the silliest name I've ever heard. And then you can say, you can respond to him, well, what's your name? And he responds, man brush seapwood. And it's really just, just sets the tone for what Monkey Island would be. But anyway, so you go on this adventure and it's really well structured in that. And this is another kind of like key to successful adventure games.

It gives you three tasks and you kind of know in your head that, you know, have to do these three tasks, but you can do them in any order and you can do some parts of them at one point and then some parts of another point. I won't go through the entire game, but the one thing that people really think of when they think of this game, I think, is the system called insult sword fighting, which was essentially designed because they didn't want combat in the game, but you have to sword fight because you're a pirate, so instead of actually fighting with enemies, you are like learning repertoires and having to learn how to respond to their, insults in kind.

And one of the most iconic quotes in the game is, of course, you fight like a dairy farmer. Oh, how appropriate. You fight like a cow. But there are many other wonderful insults being traded in this game. Nobody's ever drawn blood from me and nobody ever will. You run that fast. All of which have to be met with the perfect rejoinder or else they don't work. And I like the sort of in fiction explanation that there's a.

only one way of mastering swords. And every single person you ever meet in this entire universe has done the exact same type of training no matter their teacher. And that includes learning all of these insults that each of you performs for one another. And you all know, like, each step of each part. It's, it's bizarre, but incredible. You're no match for my brains, you poor fool. I'd be in real trouble if you ever use them.

Where did my sword go? What I love about insult sword fighting, among many things, I like that you are sword fighting. And it is just that in this world, in order to be a great sword fighter, it's not about your moves or your swordsmanship or whatever. It's about your ability to throw insults at the other person, which is something that's like a trope in pirate movies, right? You see the two pirates fighting and he says, you know, and like says something about, you know, makes fun of the guy as he's defeating him. So it's just taking that part of the sword fight and then make him. making that the fight. So as it's happening, your swords are clashing and you're pushing them forward and backward and it's kind of dramatic, but it's entirely whether or not you can, you know,

match the response with the insult they give you. And then as you go through this game, it's kind of a training montage sort of thing, right? Guy rush is becoming this great pirate. And then there's this amazing thing. I'll never forget the first time I played this, realizing how to solve this puzzle. You have to go and learn from the master, the master sword fighter. So you you go to the master, you fight against her, and she gives you totally new insults, but your rejoinders all work with her insults, which is so clever. My sword is famous all over the Caribbean. Too bad no one's ever heard of you at all.

My wisest enemies run away at the first sight of me. Even before they smell your breath? It's so great. And just the fact that it's mirroring something that is like true. to the story of becoming a great sword fighter in that you have to learn all the moves, but then you have to learn to be adaptable and, you know, whatever. Like, you've seen this in a million different movies where someone learns how to be a great fighter.

But in this case, it's just insults and you just have to be adaptable with your responses. And it's also, it's the writers showing off that they're so clever that they can make these jokes work on two different levels and give you funny rejoinders to a whole new set of insults, which is just really clever. And very, it's like the quintessential monkey island thing to me. So throughout Secret of Monkey Island, Guy Brosh meets the governor, Elaine, falls in love with her. They fight off the zombie pirate Lechuk and live happily ever after until the sequel, which is called Monkey Island 2. The Chuck's revenge comes out a year later is its own kind of unique beast.

Has a lot of puzzles that I think have aged pretty well, having gone through recently, and then some that are just incredibly esoteric and silly and have not aged well at all. But Monkey Island, too, in some ways, is a better game. It's certainly more polished and got a lot more. The developers have clearly learned a lot more lessons from the first game. It takes you to more places. There's more variety of backgrounds and objects and puzzles to solve. The quest is a lot bigger. And it's another game that is just, like, completely awesome and hilarious and full of craziness,

including the ending, which is truly ridiculous. At the very end of this game, Lechuk reveals to you that he is your brother, reveals the guy that they are brothers. And then you wind up, I won't get into all the specifics, but you both wind up turning into little boys at a carnival and your parents take you home. And the game kind of wonders, is this a curse that you're trapped in where Lechuk has somehow cursed you to think you are a little boy with him in this haunted carnival? And then it cuts to Elaine who is wondering what happens. So it clearly is a curse. But that ending, which is a fantastic cliffhanger, it turns out, would never actually be resolved because Ron Gilbert left Lucasfilm games after the making of this, I think, a few years later. So then we have the series, which actually continues without Ron Gilbert. And then you kind of have the breakup, the post-creator versions of the series. Although actually, I don't know if either of you have played, or seen Curse a Monkey Island the third game, but that actually might be my favorite in the series because it's actually pretty awesome. It is. Yeah. Curse the Monkey Island is interesting. It took a totally different. It's a cartoon art style. It feels like a big flash game or something. Inspired by

the Day of the Tendicle, most likely. But it looks very different, feels very different. But this is a game that introduces Dominique Arnato as Skybrush and voice acting to the equation. It also is a ton of great puzzles and amazing characters. It brings back in the sword fighting in a really fun way. It has a lot of just like really good

game design stuff where like you'll learn one thing and then you'll have to kind of apply it in a different way later on which is a really good just, I mean, it's exactly like you were describing

with the sword fighting except there's just a lot of a lot of stuff like that in the game. Yeah, have other of you played it or seen Chris someoneke Island? I've played a little bit of it. I think I played it.

it came out maybe. I only have very vague memories of it of sort of going through an island. And if I saw the puzzles that I had solved, I would remember them. Is that the one where you're kind of playing, I want to say like shuffleboard or something on a, on like the beach with somebody?

Yeah, I know what you're thinking of. Yeah, so you have to pick up. Okay, so you have to compete with somebody to throw trees, essentially. and you throw this tree. It looks like a shelf of a board course and you have to throw a tree but Guy Rush obviously can't pick up a tree

he's competing against this burly strong guy so the puzzle, the way to solve the puzzle is you have to replace a real tree with a rubber tree and then Guy Rush can pick it up and lift it and it bounces and like you win. Yeah, a big part of the first part of that game is to recruit a crew. You have to get a crew and a map and you have to go off to search for

you have to the game opens up with Elaine with Guy Brish giving Elaine an engagement ring that turns out to be cursed and so Elaine turns into a statue and you have to you have to figure out how to remove the curse and save her anyway it's a really fantastic game and in fact based on my own revisiting of the series it's actually aged the best of any of them and I think like if someone were to enter the series now probably best to wait for the new game but if you You don't want to wait for the new name. Of course, a monkey island might be a good entry point. And then in 2000 came Escape from Monkey Island, which is probably best not talked about. Okay. The fourth game in the series was really disappointing. Why? Why?

The fourth came. I know you don't want to talk about it, but please. So, okay. So it went, the series went into kind of this 3D model stuff where it's kind of like that early 2000s 3. Oh, I know this. Okay, I know which one this is. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's early 2000s like very chunky, very like big polygons and it doesn't really look great. Um, the controls rather than point and click are a little bit odd. There's like walking and kind of like there's, there's some weird interactions that you have to do in things. But really the plot and the puzzles

are just out of control. There's like a fake Starbucks and like a guy who's like doing landscaping. A lot of it is about gentrification of the different islands and the pirate stuff. And it gets pretty, it gets pretty out there. Like, I think with better, with more deft writing, maybe it would have worked a little bit better, but it doesn't really work. And then at the end, there's this like crazy, like super monkey mortal combat series where it turns into a fighting game. Maybe you would like this, Maddie, but it's not even a good fighting. It's like, it doesn't really work. I mean, I guess it was trying to be a parody of a specific game play, trend at the time. Sure, but it sounds a little rough. Yeah, well, it's called, it's, they call it

monkey combat with a K, so it's like very much like a parody, a spin on monkey, monkey, Mortal Kombat. It doesn't work. It's just not a great game. Granted, I'm saying this, I've not really played it since 2000 since it came out, but I think that's common consensus from fans is that this is the black sheep of the series. And then actually, nine years later, telltale games revisited Monkey Island. And they brought, brought in this giant cast of designers and writers to revisit the series with a five-part, a five-part series called Tales from Monkey Island, as Telltale is wont to do, or was want to do. And those were actually pretty solid and introduced some really interesting characters and plots.

And in fact, the new trailer, we'll get to return to Monkey Island in a second, but that actually has hints at bringing back some characters who were only introduced in Tales from Monkey Island. So clearly, Ron Gilbert and crew are taking those games seriously as well. But yeah, those are actually pretty good. Included some, I believe Jake Rodkin was the director of one or two of those games. He, of course, is a co-founder of Camposanto, which went on to make Firewatch and then got absorbed into Valve and made Half-Life Valix. So a lot of talented people worked on those games as well. I assume neither of you played any of those.

I might have played started one. No, although after watching that Let's Play and enjoying it so dang much this week, I was like, what if I just play all of these? I'm glad to hear that I should skip, escape from Monkey Island, but these other ones, I don't know. Yeah, why not? I mean, if you enjoyed watching one, two is really easy to get into and, like, you might find, definitely lean on a walkthrough if you need to because, like, don't be afraid to. I have not a child anymore with infinite time to try picking up a banana and seeing what it does. I am an adult. I need to walk through for this kind of game.

Yeah, I'd be curious to hear your take on it. You could play them on the seam deck. Curse of Monkey Island really aged well, like I said. And then, yeah, the Tales games are pretty cool. The Tales games definitely feel the most modern. And they don't actually feel like other telltale, because they came out before the Walking Dead game that really set the telltale like archetyte.

So these games feel a little bit more like proper point-and-click adventure games than like tell-tale games, quote-and-and-quote. And now this year we're going to get returned to Monkey Island. So it's really interesting. And for those of us who are like series devotees, it's been really interesting to watch. So Ron Gilbert, series creator, had previously done a blog post. He did this in 2013, being like, if I were to make another monkey island. And essentially, he wrote this giant list of things he would do.

He has since said that he's not sticking to all of them. And like he might go in all sorts of different directions. But one of them was that like he would ignore everything that happened. after he left. And this would just be like his own version of Monkey Island 3. Since then, he's definitely scrapped that idea because the trailers feature characters that were introduced after Monkey Island 2.

And he also got the same voice cast that was in Crystal Monkey Island and beyond. So he's clearly, he and Dave Grossman, who has returned as well, are clearly like honoring some of the games that came afterwards. But with this game, we're finally going to see what he intended to do after that crazy weird carnival cliff anger ending in which guy rush is an eight-year-old boy.

So I'm so, so curious to see what happens in this game. Yeah, me too. So one of the things about Secret of Monkey Island that made me really want to replay all of them and get excited about Return to Monkey Island is that even though this game is from 1990, it's from a time period right before video games really changed how they marketed themselves. and it was also before video game marketing became really gendered. There's this really cool article on Polygon from years ago by Tracy Lean that's called No Girls Aloud, and it's about when video game marketing and writing and everything about them changed to be like really dude focused.

I usually point to like the Game Boy is like the beginning of the end, dumbest title for a console ever, truly. But like they like marketers everywhere were like, we just got to want to get teen boys and we don't care about girls. But like, of course, that's a huge mistake that we're only now correcting. But 1990, there's so many female characters in Secret of Monkey Island. Like, there's the Swordmaster who's a black woman, voiced by a black woman much later on in the voice version. I looked up all the actors because I was obsessed with all of them. And there's like multiple badass women characters. Like Elaine is basically Elizabeth Swan.

I know we haven't even talked about the Pirates of the Caribbean of it all. But she really is like the original action heroine. and that is really cool to see. And it's like, these are the kinds of things where you might hear, like, oh, this is a really old video game. It's probably going to be really racist, really sexist, whatever. But I was pretty surprised by how not that it was. Like, yes, it is playing with archetypes of like, you know, there's the voodoo witch who gives you psychic readings and stuff. And you could certainly argue there's stereotypes there.

But she gets to be just as funny as every other character in the game does. she's just as much of a character. So, like, that's really cool to see. I don't know. I was just really pleasantly surprised by how diverse and hilarious, like, diversely hilarious this game was, like, equitably hilarious this game was, and how many of the jokes were not punching down or, like, punching at anyone. They were, like, puns and plays on words and just goofy, which was cool.

I don't know. So that part of that is why I'm like, I feel like we deserve this in 2022. do. We deserve to go back to a time period before video games got weird and bad for a while. And like now we can leave behind the missteps and return literally to Monkey Island, a simpler, happier time. That's my take. Yeah, it helps that a lot of the humor is just taking the piss. Like it's breaking the fourth wall, you know, ask me about loom, never pay more than 20 bucks for a video game. It's a lot of jokes that's sort of, it's very arch and very, yeah, it breaks the fourth wall.

So it's just sort of making fun of... These dogs are just sleeping. No dogs were harmed in the making of this game. Right. It's making fun of the tropes that they're invoking in the process of using them in a way that they actually do get away with. I mean, it reminds me a little bit of our flag means death. There are sequences in our flag means death. This is the HBO Max comedy pirate series that I know Maddie you and I watch that's really great.

There are definitely sequences there where it's similar and they're playing with and then subverting similar kinds of tropes, romance on the seas, kinds of pirate era tropes. And these games did it, you know, whatever, 30 years ago now. And they did it really well. There's also, there's a style of humor here that I think is just distinct to Ron Gilbert that, I mean, I remember turning up in Death Spank, that game that he, I know, wrote and I think directed. Very underrated game.

Yeah. It was pretty fun, a kind of Diablo-ish game that. was very silly and very loud, but pretty funny. And it was a similar thing where there's a comedy of volume where, and I mean like a mount, which is a, I just don't see in that many games. And every time I play a Ron Gilbert game, I'm reminded of this type of humor. There's a sequence in The Secret of Monkey Island in the first game, though there's similar sequences in all these games. There's a sequence where you're in a dark house.

I know exactly what you're talking about. You have to like. You have to like. You have to like. Well, it's right. There's a sequence where you do, right? And you're kind of doing things in the. And then soon you, I guess you do lose control, but you're in a darkened house and you can't

see what's going on and you're just seeing prompts. And I don't even remember what they are. But they're ludicrous and they grow more and more ludicrous. So it starts with, you know, it's using the verb system basically. Pick up faces, feel, wall, touch light switch. But then soon it's like grab rubber lips, like wrestle rubber lips away from mine. I'm making these up. But they just, and it's implying this whole.

That's essentially what they are. Like you leave and then you go get a file and you're like, I'm going to use this file to break into a safe or whatever, to steal something. And then when you come back, you're like, use file on giant rhinoceros's toenails. And then when you're done with that, use the file to break open this lock. And it's like, why is that an option?

But you can't see what's happening. You just see the prompts and they're all equally silly. And I don't know, that's like a video game joke. Like, it's not even a joke on anything. Right. It's just like, what if this was here? They're kind of jokes you have to play. Well, no, it's a classic, it's a classic slapstick.

joke where there's something zany going on behind the screen, but you can't see it, you the viewer can't see it. It's like very much an 80s like Slapsic's comedy type of humor. Or even like silent movie style where it's like just texts that you see and you have to fill in the rest and it's just wacky.

It's fun. Right. Though there is I think a video gamingness to it because they're using this system you've been using to interact with the world and then surprising you with other interactions that you're doing that aren't really here. They're neither here nor there in terms of what you're doing it's just for a joke. Or similarly, there will be dialogue sequences where you're talking to

someone, and you can just keep clicking the same button and they say something different to a completely absurd degree where there's like 50 responses and you can just keep going because they knew that some tiny percentage of people would just try to exhaust their responses and they just, they're keeping more. So I'm really looking forward to seeing that kind of humor again because as much as it feels innate to video games and this game was so influential and I think for so many people like defines what it means to be a comedy game. There aren't really many other video game writers who do this type of humor certainly not as well as Ron Gilbert does.

So, yeah, I'm excited as hell about the new one. Well, so the one thing I should also mention is a game called Thimbleweed Park that was kickstarted and came out a few years ago. And that was pitched by Ron Gilbert as the spiritual successor to all these games. But it's a brand new one. And it's pretty great. It's a point-and-click adventure. It's like it's very twin peaks inspired.

You play as these detectives trying to get into this weird town and trying to figure out why somebody was murdered and it's just if you are interested in this style of game and Maddie this might be up your alley too Thimbleweed Park is essentially a brand new one that feels like a modern game

hated the ending to that game but that's another story. I never finished it. Also very meta you play one of the characters is a girl who wants to design LucasArts adventure games right? Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of, expect lots of fourth wall breaking in any round Gilbert game.

All right, well, we will have to all visit. We'll see, Maddie, if you play some of these other games, but we'll definitely all have to play Return on Monkey Island when that comes out. Hopefully, hopefully you're still on track for later this year. Very much like a more to that. And yeah, why don't we take a break and then we'll be back with one more thing. I'm Janet Varney, and just like you, I survived high school. And we're not alone.

On my podcast, the JV Club, I invite some of my friends to share the highs and lows of their teen years. Like moments with Aisha Tyler. But when you're a kid, the six are just pretty low. Go to school, try not to get in trouble, get laid. Jamila Jamil. I watched television probably every waking hour during that time and I was shit-faced on medicine.

And Dave Holmes. We talked and talked, and then everybody left. It was just us, too. And I was like, I love you. Learn how you two can be a function. adult after the drama and heartbreak of high school. Every week on the JV Club with Janet Barney, find it on maximum fun. Or wherever you get your podcasts, this is a judgment-free show.

Hi, I'm Biz, host of One Bad Mother. Whether you're a parent or just no kids exist in the world, join us each week as we honestly share what it's like to be a parent. I signed my stepson up for a camp that is actually in another state. I feel really stupid, and I don't think we're going to get the money back. And then he found out that the car manual is a book about cars. So now he's reading our car manual. We are excited.

So join us each week as we judge less and have more and remind you that you are doing a great job. Download one bad mother on maximum fun.org. And yes, there will be swears. And we are back for one more thing. Maddie, kick us off. I know you're excited about this one. I am excited. So you too know, but the listener gets to hear the great news for me and no one else who can get one of these.

I finally got a steam deck. I'm in love. I'm in love with it. It's wonderful. It's life-changing. I can lie on the couch and play video games. It's all I ever wanted to do. I have been playing a lot of games on the Steam deck.

I have been playing Dark Souls on the Steam deck. Steam deck. That's a great way to play Dark Souls. I've also been playing Power Wash simulator on the Steam deck, which is a wonderful game that I had never played before. And now I can just play it on the Steam deck. I got it as a birthday present from the one and only Nico. And it is incredible. Anytime I get kind of frustrated with Dark Souls because I still haven't finished Sense Fortress because it's really hard and there's a lot of lizard guys shooting lightning at me. lizards. I can just go and play power wash simulator and just spray a van until it's clean. And then I relax. And pretend it sends fortress.

Yes. So, but really this is a lifestyle choice. I've sort of tricked myself into being able to talk about multiple games here. But it's a lifestyle choice. It's the fact that I can play games while watching TV with Dina or she's watching something that I'm not super interested in. But I just want to. to hang out with her. Kirk, you talked about doing that too with Emily and that just sounded so appealing to me and it's it's really changed things. I also struggle a lot because I am at my desk all day at my gaming computer where I also work and it can be kind of tough to, you know, clock out for the day and then be like, and now it's time to relax by looking at the exact same screen. I was already looking at all day. So I've tricked myself by looking at a sloth slightly different screen in a different room. And it really is, it really is life-changing. Just sort of broadly, I feel like the Steam Deck and the existence of the Switch have signaled

a change to how people think about games and the idea of a handheld game. I also feel like, just anecdotally, I've heard people talk about mobile games differently too in the intervening time and just the idea of having a mobile game you play while you watch TV as opposed to people constantly associating handholds with commutes because people don't really have commutes anymore. Well, some people still do, but many of the people that I know do not anymore. So they're more thinking about things they can play when they are in a different room or like, you know, lying in their bed or lying on the couch. And that's just a different way of either spending time with the other people who live in your apartment or house or just getting away from the screen where you already spent all day working. And that's pretty red.

I know people are probably sad that they can't get a steam deck. It's still very difficult to get them. And I feel for you. But also, the switch is pretty cool too. So at least there's that, I guess. Those are my team deck box. Also, I mean, you guys don't have to deal with this, but also perfect for parents who like have to be in the same room as their child, but want to do something else that isn't reading to their child or playing with their child's stuffies. You can just kind of look up now and then and make sure they're not. dead yet and get back to AI the Somnium Files Nirvana initiative or whatever the heck it is. Well, I'm playing that on Switch, but yeah. Sure. There's something appealing just about being able to pick the whole video game up and then carry it around and have it be a little thing in your hands rather than the feeling of plugging into the video game, which I feel when it's on a big screen, is like the game exists as this big, heavy, large thing that I'm plugging myself into.

I don't know. Maybe that sounds really obvious, or I'm not explaining it. You know, it's like, it's a little thing. You just carry it around. And then you turn it off, put it down, pick it up. It makes it a lot easier to just play a game for a little bit, play a lot of games. It's like, it changes the way that it feels a little bit in an important way. It does.

And I feel like there are certain games that just seem as though they fit that. Dark Souls is one of them because I feel like playing it a little bit at a time is a great way to play. And Power Rush Simulator and other Soothcore games, as Kirk would say, fit that paradigm really well too. Whereas just playing it for a little while is exactly the right thing to do. as opposed to feeling like you're booting it all the way up on a computer. I don't know why that's psychologically different, but it is. And it's just, I don't know. It's better on a steam deck.

Having the sleep mode, I think that's the biggest difference, the sleep mode, because on a computer, you're generally not going to put your computer in sleep while you have a game running. You're going to close the game and then put your computer in sleep mode or shut it down. But with the seam deck, you just press the button and then press it, put it back on. And that really just makes such a huge psychological difference. It makes it feel like so much less of an effort to put on a new game. When you're looking at your computer, you may be like, oh, now I have to go open up steam and then wait for Dark Souls to load.

It's going to take me. Even if it doesn't actually take that much more time, that psychological barrier is such a big difference. Yeah. Yeah. So now I'm just going to play even more video games and I'm excited about my new life. As you should. That's certainly what I've found. I've played a lot more video games because of this thing.

Maybe I'm going to play Monkey Island 2 on it. I don't know. Seems like a good idea. Yeah, I wonder how a point-in-click adventure will feel because that's so mouse-dependent. But yeah, you'll have to let us know. The trackpad is pretty good. No, it's great. Yeah, trackpad is great.

It's not bad. You know, Power Wash simulator is also extremely mouse-dependent. Not to go on and on, but like you are aiming the power washer at different areas. So there is sort of a shooter component to it. Yeah, I mean, I played Divinity Original Sin 2 is all mouse. I play with mouse and keyboard set up not controlling. Okay, fair enough. It's not too bad.

It's not too bad. Kirk, what's your one more thing? One More Thing is a movie that I watched pretty randomly that I haven't seen since it came out in 2007, a movie called Michael Clayton. Have either of you seen Michael Clayton? No. No. This is a movie written and directed by Tony Gilroy, who is mainly a screenwriter. He wrote, I think, all three.

He wrote several of the Boren movies. He co-wrote Row One and directed a couple of other things. But Michael Clayton, he got nominated for an Oscar for, I think, Best Director and Best Screenplay for this. So it's a George Clooney movie starring George Clooney and Tom Wilkinson. Two great actors who are the main characters. Tilda Swinton is also in it. Bing! Kirk here is at the episode.

I just wanted to mention that actually this movie got even more Oscar nominations than I remembered. And Tilda Switten actually won for Best Supporting Actress, which is pretty cool. Especially given how little screen time she has, pretty remarkable performance. So yeah, I just wanted to mention that. Okay, back to the show. Bing. So it's a really just, I don't know why I watched it. I hadn't seen it since it came out. It's just this very down-the-middle, sophisticated legal drama. It's about a big corporate cover-up. And Michael Clayton is George Clooney's character. He's a kind of corporate fixer who works for a law firm.

And this is the law firm that's representing a sort of big, like kind of agricultural, like, agri-tech like conglomerate who's pesticide. made a bunch of people sick. And it's just a kind of pretty straightforward story of corporate malfeasance being covered up. But it's really just anchored by the performances. It's, I don't know, probably about two hours long. And it was so cool to just watch this movie from 2007, an era that is a fascinating era because no one has iPhones. The internet is treated very differently. There's a lot of people just calling one another on the phone. Communication is still kind of challenging in a way that it just isn't now. And also, so it's interesting because of that time period.

And then also in that time period, it's like 2007 George Clooney. So he's just, he's playing this kind of struggling guy. Like, he's really slick because he's such a handsome guy. You just can't believe that George Clooney wouldn't be this smooth operator. But he's not Danny Ocean. He's kind of a gambling addict. He's got some problems. His character is sort of, his life has fallen apart.

And you kind of learn this in little bits. But it's just, I don't know, it was a movie that I just recommend people watch it because I really enjoyed it. I just watching a very straightforward, well-written, really well-acted movie. Tom Wilkinson is so good in it. Clooney's great. The final shot of the movie is amazing. It's just a cool movie, and I just wanted to recommend it to people.

It's called Michael Clayton. It's on Netflix right now, at least, but it's one of those movies that's always on some streaming service. It's very easy to find. And, yeah, great movie. Really recommend it. Oh, cool. Michael Clayton. Very random, but good choice.

Yeah, I watched it really random. Finally, I wanted to, you know, I could talk about a bunch of new movies I watched, but I was like, I'm going to recommend this one because I think this is more likely that someone listening to this, we'll go watch it because of this. Like going to Blockbuster and just picking out a movie is the vibe of that. I like, you listen to Chip a movie pick. Instead of like, I got to watch the new Marvel thing or whatever. It's like, I just watched this random thing from 2007 and it was really refreshing. No, it's great. I'm very happy for you. I've been playing a video game. My one more thing is a video game and it's called Steve. Steve Jackson Sorcery, and this is a game that is by a company called Inkel, best known for 80 days, and overboard, which was one of my favorite games of last year. Steve Jackson's Sourcery actually came out a few years ago on phones. It was one of Ingle's first games, but it just got released on Switch, which is why I am playing it. And so this is based on a series of interactive choose-your-own-adventure games from the 80s. So this is not a brand-new thing or anything, but it feels like an Inkel game.

So it feels like a piece of interactive fiction game. And if anyone out there has played 80 days, imagine 80 days, but like a fantasy, swords and sorcery version. And that's essentially what this game is. So you play as this unnamed hero and you're sent off to go find a MacGuffin, some crown nonsense. And you're dropped in this like big fantasy world full of lots of proper nouns and magic and orcs and goblins and crazy villagers and magic spells and all sorts of cool stuff. And you have to just pick a path.

read your way through and kind of decide what the best course of action is as you go. And it's really, really cool. It's like, like I said, it's like a fantasy version of 80 days. You're just kind of like choosing your own path and deciding, hey, do I want to like save this beggar or do I want to let him die because I don't have enough rations for both of us? Or do I want to stop and take all this time in this ogre village to rescue the, the chieftain's

daughter from a cave, even knowing that the cave could kill me. me. And you're making just a lot of constant, interesting decisions all the time that have unexpected repercussions because something you do now might come back to, like, bite you a couple hours later, or like, you might get a key now that is super helpful later. I actually got a key that someone told me, like, use this next time. Like, if you ever find yourself trapped in such and such, and I used it because I was trapped somewhere. And it turns out I used it in the wrong place. so it broke in half and now I kind of might have screwed myself over if I ever wind up in the right place to do it. But you can actually, one of the things that's brilliant about this game is you can actually, if you ever die or lose, you can rewind and you can rewind as far back as you want.

So you can go back like 20 turns or 50 turns or just one turn. And so you can go and actually see like if you think, oh, you know what, I've been really screwed since I decided to go stop at that village instead of going around it. you can go all the way back to when you did that and then choose to do the other outcome. Forza games have made me wish that all games had a rewind button, but it never occurred to me that you could have one in interactive fiction, but of course, of course you can. That's a great idea. Yeah, because like, unlike, it's a lot bigger than like, so in 80 days, which is the perfect comparison point because it's so similar to this, 80 days, the kind of the whole puzzle is trying to figure out how to navigate the world in 80 days. So a rewind button wouldn't

it really works the one that because it would kind of make it way too easy to like rechart your course if you screw up or something it's better to like stick to to your mistakes in that one and then it's more fun again and then play it again yeah exactly but the overall path is a lot shorter whereas this is like a giant unfolding fantasy novel that's in four parts I'm only on the second part which entire the entirety of the second part um takes place in this giant city that's called the city of traps and it's just like full of interesting encounters and mysteries and stuff. I'm only on the second part.

I'm ready to play for a few hours. It's really cool. Yeah, it's for checking out. It's called Steve Jackson's Sursary. It's on phones. I think it's on everything now because the switch release just happened a couple of months ago. And so now it's on there. And yeah, I'm really digging it.

It's really fun to play. I usually like to read a little bit before bed, but I've been playing this game before bed instead, which is a really good, interesting substitute. I do have to get back to my reading, though. Yeah, again, it's called Steve Jackson's Sorsary. That is it. That is it for this week's episode. We did it again. Kirk, Maddie. See you both next week.

All right. See you both next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes.

Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximumfun.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpod. Send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org.

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