The Secret of Monkey Island
It’s very difficult to write a blog that focuses on the best retro games without reminding everyone about the gaming joy that was The Secret of Monkey Island, released by LucasArts Entertainment in 1990, to rave reviews from both game critics and the gaming community as a whole.
The Secret of Monkey Island cover art.
Monkey Island was an adventure game wherein the player assumed the role of young Guybrush Threepwood, a wannabe pirate looking for the way to become one of the pirate fraternity. The Pirate Leaders give him three tasks: Defeat the island’s Swordmaster, Carla, in insult sword fighting; steal a statue from the Governor’s mansion; and find buried treasure. Along the way he will meet a cast of wacky characters, while finding both true love with the beautiful and intrepid Elaine Marley, and a bitter, lifelong enemy with the ghost pirate LeChuck.
The Secret of Monkey Island insult sword fighting.
The quest process is one of the great strengths of Monkey Island: non-linear story telling. It does not matter what order Guybrush completes his tasks in, so a player never feels unduly railroaded through the plot, and can explore the game world at will. Another key strength that makes this work is that Guybrush does not die as a result of a wrong course of action. Even jumping off a cliff cannot do our hapless hero in, which frees the player to try unusual actions in any circumstance, just to see whether the game programmers anticipated it. (Actually, there is one way for Guybrush to expire – and only one – in the game, which involves hanging around for longer than 10 minutes underwater.)
Guybrush Threepwood is running out of time…
The guiding force behind The Secret of Monkey Island was Ron Gilbert, who based the game’s ambience and feel upon his experience at the Disneyland attraction Pirates of the Caribbean, as well as on the novel On Stranger Tides, by Tim Powers, which was the inspiration for many of the game’s characters. He went to the point of writing a series of short stories based on his ideas for Monkey Island, which he used to help convey the spirit of game to his creative partners, Tim Schaffer and Ron Grossman. All three used the stories as a blueprint for creating the game, and as a place marker for keeping the project vision focused.
Another tight spot for Guybrush.
The Secret of Monkey Island used LucasArts’ SCUMM engine, and the fifth such game to do so. Players interacted with the game environment by choosing a verb and an object to interact with, and the game would provide a response. Examples of the kinds of commands are LOOK AT, GIVE, PICK UP, OPEN, CLOSE, TALK TO, PUSH, PULL, and USE. Part of the fun of Monkey Island is to see how many responses are programmed into the game depending on what actions you choose!
It’s the Pirate Life for me!
The Secret of Monkey Island migrated to several platforms: MS-DOS, Macintosh, Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, FM Towns, and Sega CD. It was a smash hit for LucasArts, thus guaranteeing a sequel – Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge – which was also a huge seller. In fact, the Monkey Island franchise has had many sequels: The Curse of Monkey Island, Escape From Monkey Island, and the various Tales of Monkey Island Chapters. Its popularity continues today with the downloadable Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition release. Gamers just keep coming back the Monkey Island universe, a sure sign of a classic gaming franchise!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_CTE5Xx_1o[/youtube]
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