Monkey Island

This article describes the series of adventure games. For other uses of the name, see Monkey Island (disambiguation).

Monkey Island is a series of graphical point-and-click adventure games published by LucasArts. The games follows the misadventures of the hapless aspiring pirate Guybrush Threepwood as he struggles to become the most notorious pirate in the Caribbean, while fighting off the evil ghost pirate LeChuck and winning the heart of governor Elaine Marley. The plot usually revolves around the mysterious isle of Monkey Island which is known for hiding a secret...

The series is known for its humour and the inability of the player to become permanently stuck or end the game by making the "wrong" choices, traits shared by other LucasArts adventure games, including Sam and Max Hit the Road and Day of the Tentacle. It contains many reggae references, like the soundtrack itself, as well as Elaine Marley's name, obviously a reference to Bob Marley.

The Secret of Monkey Island

The first installment in the series, The Secret of Monkey Island, was the fifth game to use the SCUMM engine. It first follows Guybrush's attempts to prove himself as a pirate, then his attempt to rescue his new-found love, Elaine Marley, from LeChuck's clutches who imprisoned her on Monkey Island.

The game was originally released on floppy disk in 1990 for Atari ST, Macintosh and IBM PC systems (using EGA graphics); it was also the first adventure game to use character scaling. Several months later, the PC version was re-released with VGA graphics; the Amiga version, released shortly after this, used the PC EGA version's 16-color character graphics along with the PC VGA version's room backgrounds (reduced to 16 unique colors per room). In June 1992, a CD-ROM version of the game was released, featuring vastly improved music as well as graphical verb and inventory icons (as seen in Monkey Island 2). The project leader was Ron Gilbert, and the game was designed by Gilbert along with Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman. Another notable contributor was Orson Scott Card, who wrote the insults for the insult swordfighting section.

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge

The second game, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, was the sixth to use the SCUMM engine. It involves Guybrush's attempt to find the mystical treasure of Big Whoop, and win back Elaine's love, and is often considered to be overall the best of the LucasArts adventure games. Although considered by many to be superior to its predecessor, it was criticised for its ambiguous and surrealistic ending.

The game was released on floppy disks for the PC (with VGA graphics) and Amiga (with standard 32-color graphics) in 1991, and was later included on a CD-ROM compilation of Monkey Island games. The project leader and designer was Ron Gilbert.

The Curse of Monkey Island

The third game in the series, The Curse of Monkey Island, was the twelfth and last to use the SCUMM engine, which was extensively upgraded for its last outing. Guybrush manages to turn Elaine into a gold statue with a cursed diamond ring, and the game follows his attempt to retrieve the statue (which is stolen) and turn her back.

Ron Gilbert parted ways with the series before the third instalment, and some fans consider it to be inferior in storyline and design for his loss. Some fans also considered its upgraded SVGA graphics to be awkward and revealing the limits of the SCUMM engine, while others felt they were a considerable improvement on earlier LucasArts adventures. Similarly, some fans found the voiceover – Curse was the first game in the series to feature voices for the characters – did not match their expectations, while others felt it added to the game's atmosphere.

The game was released on CD-ROM in 1997. It was later included on a CD-ROM compilation of Monkey Island games. The project leaders and designers were Jonathan Ackley and Larry Ahern. Dominic Armato played the voice of Guybrush Threepwood.

It is a little known fact that this game was originally meant to be a movie, and the concept was only brought to light when a concept artist for the project sent his work to Monkey Island fansite The Scumm Bar. Had the movie not been cancelled in early development, it is said it would have been very similiar to the game.

Winner: Adventure Game of the Year from Computer Gaming World Magazine and PC Gamer Magazine Winner: Special Achievement in Art Direction: Computer Gaming World Magazine

Escape from Monkey Island

The fourth game, Escape from Monkey Island, begins with Guybrush and Elaine returning from their honeymoon to find that Elaine has been declared officially dead, and her mansion is scheduled to be demolished.

EMI used a slightly improved version of the GrimE engine introduced by Grim Fandango. There is an in-game joke about the replacement of SCUMM by the Lua scripting language, namely when Guybrush returns from a journey and the famous "Scumm-Bar" is replaced by the "Lua-Bar". The iMUSE music system continued to be used, albeit with MP3 compression.

Some fans refused to play EMI because they stated that the new keyboard controlled 3D GrimE Engine would completely destroy the old Monkey Island atmosphere. Also, many fans have observed some inconsistencies between some of the game dialogues, and the earlier history known from the series, like Herman Toothrot's past.

EMI's introductory music is identical to that of the third game, unlike the earlier sequels which featured newly-composed remixes of the well-known Monkey Island theme.

The game was released on CD-ROM in 2000 and on PlayStation 2 in 2001. Apart from obvious control differences, the PS2 version only varies by a slightly higher polygon count and use of less pre-rendered material. The project leaders and designers were Sean Clark and Michael Stemmle.

Common features

The games in the series share mini-games, puzzles, in-jokes and references. In each game there is a mini-game based on repetition of a sequence in order to become more proficient; insult sword-fighting in the first game, a game in an alleyway in the second, sea battles and rhyming insult sword-fighting in the third, and Monkey Kombat in the fourth. The first and fourth games also both feature a puzzle which involves following another character through several locations, a trick also used in Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.

Lines like "Look behind you, a three-headed monkey!" became a running joke. Also, "I'm Guybrush Threepwood, a mighty <profession>", and "Hi, I'm selling these fine leather jackets" (from Indiana Jones).

Note that none of the games reveal what the actual 'Secret of Monkey Island' is. LeChuck himself, when asked in the second and third games, refuses to answer the question, leading Guybrush to elicit a confession from LeChuck that he doesn't know what the secret is. There are several theories, and at least one case can be made from each game in the series.

A credible theory has been put forth that the bizarre revelation at the end of MI2 is intended to be the true secret of Monkey Island, and the fact that it was debunked in MI3 is merely due to a retcon by the new development team after the departure of Ron Gilbert. But the flashes of little Chuck's eyes, foreshadowed that the full story was not yet told in MI2.

Much of the music in the series was composed by Michael Land.

Interesting Facts

The Monkey Island series is full of spoofs, in-jokes, humorous references, and easter eggs, so many that whole web pages are dedicated to them. Some of the most notable ones are:

• The name Guybrush stems from the fact that the actor's graphics, made using Deluxe Paint, were saved using the filename guy.brush.
• The name Threepwood comes from a P. G. Wodehouse character Clarence Threepwood, 9th Earl of Emsworth.
• The bar at the beginning of the first game is called the SCUMM Bar, and contains a character from LOOM (this time with a pirate hat) that, if asked, tells a lot about Loom. Secret also contains a seagull from that same game. LeChuck's Revenge and Day of the Tentacle contain the same seagull; both are mentioned in the credits. Later, on Curse, Manny Calavera from Grim Fandango appears with an "Ask me about Grim Fandango" pin.
• An easter egg allows Guybrush to die in course of the "Three Trials" chapter of the first game. Guybrush claims to be able to hold his breath for ten minutes. At a certain point in the game, he becomes trapped underwater. If the player waits for ten minutes, Guybrush suffocates, and the game is over. It is one, if not the only, way to die. In LeChuck's Revenge, a similar situation can allow Guybrush to supposedly die, only to result in a logical impossibility due to the fact that he's still alive, hanging from a rope and telling Elaine his story.
• Another faux-death easter egg is that on top of the peak of Monkey Island in Secret of Monkey Island, if you walk all the way to the right edge it collapses, and a Sierra style "Reload, Restart or Quit' dialog is displayed, as if the game is over. Shortly afterwards however Guybrush bounces back up onto the screen, and offers the concise explanation: "Rubber tree." The game then continues as normal.
• Each game in the series features oblique cameo appearances by Steve Purcell's Sam and Max, who were adapted into the game Sam and Max Hit the Road by LucasArts. The pair appear as voodoo idols in the first game, as costumes in a costume shop on Booty Island in the second, and as toys in LeChuck's demonic funfair in the third.
• One notably frustrating joke in Secret, which many players assumed to be a technical error, is the tree stump in the forest on Melee Island. When looking at the stump, the character proclaims that there's a hole in it that leads to a maze of caverns. If Guybrush tries to climb down into the stump, the game prompts the player for the non-existent "disk #23", "disk #47" and "disk #98", respectively. (The game was actually distributed on 4 floppy disks.) The endgame credits also have an entry for 'art and animation for disk #23'. Many people didn't get the joke, and LucasArts tech support received quite a large number of calls for help with the missing disk. The joke was removed from the CD version of the game. The joke was mentioned in LeChuck's Revenge, where Guybrush can call the LucasArts hint line from a phone in the jungle and ask, "Who thought up that dumb stump joke?" In Curse of Monkey Island, Guybrush briefly sticks his head into an opening and out of the very same tree stump in its original Secret of Monkey Island graphics.
• Only Secret of Monkey Island, LeChuck's Revenge, and Escape From Monkey Island were released on Apple Macintosh, whilst all four of the series are available on Microsoft Windows. This leaves a gap in the series that some fans will have to do without (though "The Curse of Monkey Island" plays quite well under ScummVM).

See also

• LucasArts Adventure Games
• SCUMM
• ScummVM
• GrimE
• Ron Gilbert

External links

• The Curse of Monkey Island – Official site at LucasArts
• Escape from Monkey Island – Official site at LucasArts
• ScummVM – A multi-platform open-source SCUMM interpreter allowing the first three MI games to be played on all modern platforms
• The Monkey Island SCUMM Bar – A popular fan-site
• Monkey Island MIDI music collection
• The World of Monkey Island – Another very popular fan-site
• Quick and Easy or how to run LucasArts adventure games in windows XP, 2000 and NT with no problem at all.