The Secret of Monkey Island
Platform: MS-DOS
Developer: Lucasfilm Games
Published: Lucasfilm Games
Released: 1990
About The Secret of Monkey Island
The Secret of Monkey Island is a point-and-click graphic adventure game, which takes place in a fantastic version of the Caribbean during the age of piracy. The player assumes the role of Guybrush Threepwood, a young man who dreams of becoming a pirate and explores fictional islands while solving puzzles.
The game was first released with primitive EGA graphics (320×200 pixel resolution rendered in 16 colors). According to artist Steve Purcell, that became a major limitation for the art team. Due to a low number of “ghastly” colors, they often chose bizarre tones for backgrounds. However, by the end of 1990, it was released with improved VGA graphics (256 colors). It allowed for more advanced background and character art. Source
Plot
Deep in the Caribbean lies Melee Island, ruled by the governor Elaine Marley. The cruel pirate LeChuck is deeply in love with her – so deeply that he refuses to accept his own death. As a ghost, he dwells with his undead crew somewhere near the mysterious Monkey Island. Source
Meanwhile, Guybrush Threepwood arrives on the fictional Mêlée Island, with the desire to become a pirate. He seeks out the island’s pirate leaders, who set him three trials. First, he needs to win a sword duel against Carla, the island’s resident swordmaster. Secondly, he must find a buried treasure. And last, he needs to steal a valuable idol from the governor’s mansion.
These quests take Guybrush throughout the island, where he hears of stories of the Ghost Pirate LeChuck, who apparently died in an expedition to the mysterious Monkey Island. Source
Objective in the game
Become a pirate, defeat LeChuck and get Elaine! To do so, you need to guide Guybrush through the fictional game’s world by interacting with the environment. You can us command such as “talk to” for communicating with characters or “pick up” for collecting items.
Fun facts
The Secret of Monkey Island features a design philosophy that makes the player character’s death nearly impossible. However, Guybrush does drown if he stays underwater for more than ten minutes. Source
The origin of the name “Guybrush” comes in part from Deluxe Paint, the tool used by the artists to create the character sprite. Since the character had no name at this point, the file was simply called ‘Guy’. When the file was saved, Steve Purcell, the artist responsible for the sprite, added ‘brush’ to the filename, indicating that it was the Deluxe Paint “brush file” for the “Guy” sprite. Source
There is a troll in the game. When you manage to remove his mask, you will find out it was actually a man in the troll suits. In fact, this man is a pixelated version of George Lucas.
The only person, who knows what is the real Secret of the Monkey Island, is the series creator Ron Gilbert. However, he was never able to complete the series and reveal the secret as he had planned. He managed to complere only the first two games in the series before the series was handed over to another team. He promised to never reveal it.
Opinion
This game is an absolute classic!
Critics have praised The Secret of Monkey Island for its humor and gameplay. Thanks to it’s particular sense of humor, Guybrush could be one of the most symphatetic heroes ever.
Easy to play and hard to die. Puzzles are not extremely difficult, or not too easy either.
Plot is easy to follow, but interesting and catchy at the same time.
My Score for The Secret of Monkey Island
Soundtrack: 5
Graphics: 4
Gameplay: 5
Story: 5
Overall: 4.75
Composed by: Retroconsole xyz
