A few years ago a friend of mine introduced me to The Curse of Monkey Island, the third game in the Monkey Island series of adventure games by LucasArts. It looked really fun, so I got a hold of the game and have since played through it several times. A bit later I played the first game, The Secret of Monkey Island. It was very dated, as it was one of the first games LucasArts developed using their SCUMM engine; lots of chunky pixels and minimal sound. It was still quite fun, if maybe a little more difficult than number three.
Now, 19 years after the release of the cornerstone of this popular series, the classic has been given a new face. It’s still very much the same game, although the size in bytes has increased by a few factors of 10; new crisp artwork and sound overlays the original animation code to keep the feel of the game while making it seem much more current. The voices are the same as those in The Curse, which I’m pretty happy about.
The only difference in gameplay is the omission of the actions and inventory screens from normal play. In the original, they were always present, making interacting with the puzzles pretty easy, barring somewhat confusing pixels. Now you have to hit keys to bring up the two panes, although the actions can be accessed individually using keystrokes. Still, there is at least one point in the game that switching to the old interface (an awesome thing to be able to do) is pretty much necessary in order to solve a puzzle, since the new inventory screen always closes whenever you use an action on an item, no matter what. It’s a little annoying, but it makes room for the beautiful new art.
Even after playing it before, I still had to consult a walkthrough once in a while to get through it. Some of the solutions are just too clever for my feeble mind to conjure. Anyway, massive props to LucasArts for refreshing this classic. Go pick it up on the Steam platform for a mere 10 smackers.
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