Woo, the Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition gets released today!! It still surprises me slightly that there's not more noise about this here on the forums - maybe I'm the only one? Anyway, it prompted me to do a little blog post about what makes Monkey Island so enduring - I, for one, think it has some great stuff to teach us budding games developers about how to make something that actually sticks in the mind. Edit: Updated the second link to actually point to my blog post! D'oh! [Edited by - AndyGeers on July 15, 2009 5:23:14 AM]

Quote: System Requirements
OS: Windows XP® or Windows Vista®
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 3GHz or AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Memory: 256 MB RAM, 512 MB for Vista
Graphics: 128 MB with Shader Model 2.0 capability
DirectX®: 9.0c (March 2009)
Hard Drive: 2.5GB free hard drive space
Sound: DirectX® 9.0c compliant sound card

O_o That's one bad ass point and click remake!

I was looking for the release date for this earlier, and here it is all of a sudden! Sweet!

Monkey Island always has, and will be, my favorite game. But in my opinion, the series stopped with the first 3. They dropped the ball with the fourth. I saw the demo for the remake a few weeks back, and it looked pretty good. Hopefully it will get a new generation of people to see how great Monkey Island was...

Quote: Original post by choffstein
Monkey Island always has, and will be, my favorite game. But in my opinion, the series stopped with the first 3. They dropped the ball with the fourth. I saw the demo for the remake a few weeks back, and it looked pretty good. Hopefully it will get a new generation of people to see how great Monkey Island was...

Yeah, although I think I might even go further and say the first two. I *love* the third one, but I think I can relate to people who describe it as a brilliant "Monkey Island-inspired" game rather than the true MI3. It just has a bit of a different feel to it.

And I just realised I screwed up my original post and didn't actually link to my blog: What makes Monkey Island so enduring?

I think that the look of the characters in that remake is weird, I don't really like the graphical style, especially their faces. But what the heck, of course I'm going to buy it ! It's Monkey Island, after all.

Quote: Original post by Yann L
I think that the look of the characters in that remake is weird, I don't really like the graphical style, especially their faces. But what the heck, of course I'm going to buy it ! It's Monkey Island, after all.

Yeah, it's a shame that the first reaction of nearly every existing fan is "Cool! But a shame about the graphics". Is that just because they're different, do you think? I know how much we all hate change :)

Quote: Original post by AndyGeers
Yeah, it's a shame that the first reaction of nearly every existing fan is "Cool! But a shame about the graphics". Is that just because they're different, do you think? I know how much we all hate change :)

Maybe, I don't know. I think the background art is alright. It's mainly about the characters. I'm not a big fan of this over-the-top cartoonish look, which was probably adopted to cater to the younger audience. Despite of all the technical limitations of the original MI series (resolution, colour depth, etc), it often looked more realistic than the remake (compare this with this). But well, one can't argue about taste ;)

Loom and Zak McKracken were naturalistic, and Maniac Mansion and DOTT was cartoon style, but I loved them equally. But I guess you have to move with the times.

The original Marley made me fall in love like Guybrush; the new one I just want to bitchslap! Taste must be an individual thing.

But kudos to them for making the effort to get at the younger audience who has never experienced what real computer games used to be like.

Yeah, I really hope it does pull in a new audience rather than just catering to the existing fanbase. I don't know what can be done to help promote it, but I can't help but think that anything that brings in more fans can only be a good thing for the future of the franchise.

Quote: Original post by AndyGeers

Quote: Original post by Yann L
I think that the look of the characters in that remake is weird, I don't really like the graphical style, especially their faces. But what the heck, of course I'm going to buy it ! It's Monkey Island, after all.

Yeah, it's a shame that the first reaction of nearly every existing fan is "Cool! But a shame about the graphics". Is that just because they're different, do you think? I know how much we all hate change :)

Yes, it's what I said too. I think it's because it's a remake you expect the guybrush you know and loved in HD and not an entirely new face and haircut. That and I'm not a fan of the particular comic style. Excellent idea to include the option to switch to the old style and tunes for comparison though!

I actually just finished the original series on scummVM when the remake was anounced. I'm playing through the new Sam&Max episodes atm, about an episode per evening, good fun, excellent humor.

Also Wallace&Gromit fans should defenatly try the W&G demo, very true to the series.