WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL - The Secret of Monkey Island

Developer - Lucasfilm Games Publisher - JVC Released - December 1992

I’ve been picking away at this series of articles for so long now (almost 12 years!) that I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever shared this before, but I’m going to say it again anyway: One of the reasons I was excited for the launch of the Sega CD was the promise of PC adventure games coming to the console. I’d dabbled with Sierra adventure games early on when a friend of mine had a PC, but it seemed like a computer was not in the cards for my family, so I really didn’t experience the genre beyond stuff like the early King’s Quest, Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry games. And while the Sega CD got a handful of adventure game ports (not as many as were originally promised), I’m really glad that The Secret of Monkey Island is one of them.

After work completed on Maniac Mansion, Lucasfilm Games’ Ron Gilbert put together a list of everything he thought was wrong with the adventure game genre. This quickly became a list of rules for what would become The Secret of Monkey Island - The end objective needs to be clear, the player must know what they want to accomplish and why, live and learn, essential items cannot be made unobtainable, puzzles should advance the story and make sense, and the player shouldn’t be able to die.

For anyone who’s ever suffered through surprise deaths (early Sierra games were the worst for this) or stared hopelessly at their monitor for what felt like days because of some poorly-designed puzzle know that those final two are easily the most important rules ever. And one of the main reasons that Monkey Island is one of the greatest adventure games ever made.

But that’s not the only reason, of course. The writing in Monkey Island is top notch. The jokes are genuinely funny and they mostly hold up even today. The fact that hero Guybrush Threepwood is a total fish out of water makes you immediately identify with him. He’s just as clueless about what’s going on as the first time player would be. That’s by design, too.

Early on during development things were quite different. Mutiny on Monkey Island was about two pirate villains in a world largely based on Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribean ride, a favourite of Gilbert’s when he was a boy. What would become Melee Island was run by a character named Governor Fat, the player would take on the role of a seasoned pirate.

But all that changed due to Gilbert reading the 1987 book On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers. The book follows the adventures of John Chandagnac, a French puppeteer who is pressed into service as a pirate after wounding a buccaneer captain and being taken prisoner. It’s a true fish out of water story that made Gilbert realize that was what his game needed. Players would identify with someone who wanted to be a pirate far more than being unceremoniously dumped into the shoes of a seasoned privateer. Guybrush Threepwood was born.

All of this makes for one of the most playable adventure games in history. Yes, it’s still possible to get stuck here and there, but when the spectre of sudden and inexplicable death isn’t hanging over your head at all times you get to relax and try different solutions to your heart’s content.

Based on the close up shots of the various characters in the game, I’m assuming that the Sega CD version of Monkey Island is a port of the VGA PC game, along with the redbook soundtrack found on the PC CD-ROM version of the game. And while the game doesn’t look quite as pretty as its VGA counterpart, I was pretty happy with the results when I played this back in the day.

Aside from the colours, though, the port isn’t perfect. It chugs along at various points, especially in rooms that scroll. I’ll chalk this up to a team that might not have been all that familiar with the hardware? (The port seems to have been handled by Lucasfilm games itself). It has relatively lengthy load times - though nothing nearly as bad as Willy Beamish - and, as usual, it doesn’t feel great controller a mouse pointer with a d-pad.

Still, this is a respectable port of The Secret of Monkey Island. Especially for those of us who had no other way to experience it back in 1992.