The Secret of Monkey Island - Classic Game Review
A brand new tale in the world of Monkey Island is coming out, and I'm hoping for a fun old style adventure game in the vein of the classic genre. I went ahead and prepurchased all five episodes, and can't wait to delve in. But, before starting to play episode one, I decided to refresh my memory on that which came before. I started at the beginning in Secret of Monkey Island.
Installing
The Secret of Monkey Island is an old game, released in 1990. As such the copy I have is on 3.5 inch floppy discs. Going in, I had no idea if I'd even be able to get the game working.
I still have a couple working computers with 3.5 inch. ( Side note: Does anyone have a 5.25 inch drive? I'd love to restore some of the other games in my collection). I have the LucasFilm Classics Collection which includes Loom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - The Adventure Game, Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken, and of course The Secret of Monkey Island. I copied all files onto the hard drive and moved them over to my 'main' PC over the network. Copying them from floppy to hard drive took a lot longer than moving them over the network if you can believe that.
Next up, I had to install the game. The installer believes that you are installing from a floppy drive and can easily switch discs during the install. I mapped each disk directory into a drive letter, and launched the disc 1 installer. It ran, but when it came time to put in the second disc, I was unable to switch drives. Thankfully Windows XP is a lot more open to multi-task than the old style dos windows are. I remapped each disc to the same network drive when it asked.
As a side note, when I installed Monkey Island 2. I discovered that you could put all the data files in the same directory; and mapped to that one directory. It installed without having to remap after each disc. I suspect the same approach will work here.
Running the Game
So, after I got the game installed, I needed to run it. This was easier said than done. Selecting the monkey executable did nothing. Thankfully the solution was in SCUMMVM. SCUMMVM is a tool for running old games, as long as you have a data file. It is named after the SCUMM engine which was used to create the original Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, and most other LucasArts adventure titles.
I downloaded and installed SCUMMVM, pointed it to the Monkey Island install directory and I was off. But, why does the game cut off on my Dell 20 inch external monitor when running the game in full screen? I'm not sure, but after some tweaking I addressed this by setting the graphics render mode to 3x instead of the default. I was thinking of doing a separate blog post on just that because I could not find any help on-line.
Enter the World of Guybrush Threepwood, Elaine Marley, and the Ghost Pirate LeChuck
Guybush Threepwood shows up at Melee Island, a young naive adventurer wanting to become a pirate. He stops by to chat with the three pirate lords and they give him three tasks that he needs to complete to become a pirate. The game is packed with humor and fun while you solve these three tasks, find the treasure, and get the girl.
Although some of the game came back to me quickly, I'm surprised at how much I didn't remember. How do you get ahead as a navigator? I didn't know. How do you navigate the volcano fire maze? Beats me! How do you put the dogs to sleep so you can sneak into the mansion? No idea!
When I played the King's Quest 1 remake a while back, everything came back immediately almost as if it was ingrained into part of my soul. Monkey Island never touched me that way. I believe it was because I was young when I first played KQ1, but only picked up Monkey Island after the fact, about 10 years ago or so.
The joy of this is that I was able to re-discover the game for the first time. I was able to side tracked by every red herring, walk down every false path, and laugh at every wayward joke. It was a fantastic ride and I'm happy to have been able to walk down this path for the second time.
The game was uniquely new to me, while also retaining the familiar path, as if an old friend you haven't seen in many years. The puzzles aren't obvious, but they aren't hard either. I always thought that Monkey Island games were clunky when compared to the more popular Sierra "quest" games; but The Secret of Monkey Island presented none of those problems. It was a smooth game, which flowed well from piece to piece. The plot was straight forward, the puzzles stimulating, and the humor abundant. It is everything you could ask for an adventure game.
And then they cast Orlando Bloom as me
There is a remake recently released to the Secret of Monkey Island. It includes the old version that I just finished, but also updated graphics with a brand new sound track and the addition of voice actors. It is available on STEAM for the PC and will be coming to the XBox. I assume will end up in stores in some manner. Reviews I've seen show that the game is a 1x1 copy, changing nothing except the graphics and sound files while still retaining the original dialog and puzzle structure. One screenshot I saw was near the end of the game where Guybrush as talking to a ghost, and the caption was along the lines of "And then they cast Orlando Bloom as me" most likely referring to the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Lots of stuff in POTC reminds me of Monkey Island. As lots of stuff in MI will remind you of the POTC ride. I assume this is one random update they did for the sake of humor. I bet there are others throughout.
I think it'd be fun to play the updated version. Anyone want to gift it to me?
If you haven't seen it yet, check out ww.gog.com for other cheaply available older (tho not as old as the original Monkey Island) games that are still worth playing.
DOSBox is another good tool for getting the older games running.
I do have a 5.25" drive, though I haven't actually turned on that computer in a while. But I plan to use it for the same purposes you noted here. If it's successful, you can bet that I'll have a blog post shortly thereafter. :)
I'd love to get my hands on 3 Skulls of the Toltec. I played the second one ( Western ); but the first is hard to find. Unfortunately, it isn't on gog.
I'd also like to play the first ANKH game, which seems equally out of print. :-)
I'll probably buy the new Indiana Jones Wii game just because "Fate of Atlantis" is included as an extra. Fate of Atlantis is one of the few "classic" games I never played.