The Secret of Monkey Island 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 original series. I went ahead and pre-purchased all five episodes. 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 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 map 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 other LucasArts titles. Enter the World of Guybrush Threepwood, Elaine Marley, and the Ghost Pirate LeChuck Guybush Threepwood shows up at Melee Island, a young naïve 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 first part of the game consists of solving these tasks to find the treasure, beat the sword master, and steal a statue from the house of Governor Elaine Marley. 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 be sidetracked 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. And then they cast Orlando Bloom as me One screenshot I saw was near the end of the game where Guybrush is 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 update done for the sake of humor. I bet there are others scattered throughout. I think it’d be fun to play the updated version. Anyone want to gift it to me? System Requirements (PC):
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