The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition

The Good
The Secret of Monkey Island was first introduced to gamers back in the days of floppy disks, hard drives and DOS. Players instantly fell in love with the plucky, wannabe pirate, the zany Carribean setting and the inventory-based puzzles.

Even today, the gaming world is, arguably, divided up between the people who have played, The Secret of Monkey Island , versus people who want to play the classic adventure game.

The Special Edition includes the original Secret Of Monkey Island game, as well as a new edition. You can easily switch between the different versions at anytime.

The new edition features vastly superior graphics, talented voice actors reading the funny dialogue and a [mostly] smooth control scheme. Guybrush is easy to control, mostly, and the special edition improvements make a classic game even better.

It's especially nice that the main voice actors seem to be the same people involved with the third Monkey Island game (The Curse Of Monkey Island was the first game in the series to introduce voice actors).

My complaints are minor, but worth mentioning.

The Bad
The game play mechanics are, mostly, fine. Originally, the game used a mouse - hence, "point and click" adventure game - and the transition from mouse to the Xbox 360 controller is fine, mostly.

Sometimes it can be a tad difficult to do certain commands quickly. This only becomes a bit of a problem once or twice, but it's worth mentioning. I would say that the game play mechanics in The Secret of Monkey Island 2 (Special Edition) are perfect, so the designers may have taken more in between the two games.

Lastly, I gotta complain about one puzzle in the game. Eventually, you have to crack a randomly generated safe combination. It was a tough puzzle in the original game, and remains so in the remake.

Yes, I realize that it was a part of the original Secret of Monkey Island game, but it still gives me headaches. Part of me wishes that an alternative solution was made available. Maybe, it's just a personal gripe.

The Bottom Line
The Secret of Monkey Island was a great game to begin with, and is made even greater with this Special Edition. This is certainly the best version of the game and well-worth the purchase price. I wish that more Lucasfilms Adventure games were ported over to the Xbox 360.

The Good
Ever since its introduction, I was (and still am) a fan of the Monkey Island series. I had played all four games and wrote reviews here on MobyGames. The fourth Monkey Island game, released in 2000, was to be the last game that LucasArts would make, since the company decided to move away from the adventure genre and focus more on the Star Wars universe. When I recently found out by reading a forum that LucasArts was going to do a game entitled The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, the first thing that I did was go to the web site for the game to take a look at the screenshots and do other things there. Then, I went back and played the original game (refer to as the “classic version” from now on.

After that was done, I downloaded the game via Steam and I was up. The first thing that I saw was the comparison between the title of that of the classic version and the new one. The lights at the base of the mountain are replaced with lit-up houses and a few ships. Your character Guybrush starts off at the docks, like he did in the classic version. The view is breathtaking. There is now a huge moon hovering above the moving ocean, and behind the SCUMM bar are the houses you see in the intro. There bit of outdoor scenes in the game, and that moon is still visible in those scenes.

I enjoyed talking to Spiffy the dog (Now you get a close-up of him.) It is funny how Guybrush uses dog language such as “Woof!” and “Yip. Yip. Yip”. LucasArts previously decided not to do a close-up of Spiffy in the disk version due to lack of disk space. The game was also released on CD-ROM, so there there was no reason why Lucas didn't include the close-up in that version.

I still like sword-fighting pirates and throwing insults to help finish the trials, and hearing how those insults sound like. Actually, one of the other things that I did on LucasArt's web site for the game was play a little mini-game that allowed you to throw insults at pirates, so I got a good idea how they would sound like in the game. I just felt that mini-game would be better, not just pictures of Guybrush fighting while he insults.

You can switch between the classic and special editions of the game. The classic is an exact replica of the CD-ROM version, complete with the lack of speech and CD-quality music. It is there in case you feel a little bit of nostalgia; but in my case, I like to switch to it if I am doing tasks that are impossible to do in the special edition (like swapping acid into different mugs before the mug melts or watching the storekeeper open his safe). When you do switch from special to classic, the graphics morphing into the classic version looks amazing, as does the graphics moving upwards so that the original commands appear. You can switch between modes at any time during the game, except when the credits appear at the start of the game.

The orchestral music sounds terrific, and sounds a lot superior to the music from the classic version. The ambient sound provides atmosphere to the game. The highlight for me is walking around the beaches and jungles of Monkey Island, listening to the actual sounds of the jungle.

An on-line hint system is included in the game, so that users that get far into the game and suddenly don't know what to do next can press a key to get a hint. I did not need to do this, because I already printed out a walk-through of the game.

The Bad
The commands are not displayed at the bottom of the screen, so you are expected to press a key that corresponds to the first letter of the command in the classic edition, so press [P] on the keyboard means that you want to “Pick up” something. There is a problem with this technique. In some parts of the game, you have to push and pull things, so it is necessary to bring up the verb menu by pressing [V] and then selecting “Push” or “Pull. Same with the inventory. If you want to use something in your inventory on another object, you have to press [I] first. Because you have to do this, I had the tenancy to press the wrong key (eg: to bring up the verb menu instead of the inventory).

The Bottom Line
Monkey Island SE is a superb remake of the original game, with orchestral music, full speech throughout the game, and an on-line hint system. It also has the ability to switch between the classic and special editions of the game. If you want a bit of nostalgia or just want to do something that you are not able to do in the special edition, the classic edition is there for you if you need it.

Anyone who has played the original game may want to download the special edition just because it features everything that I have just mentioned, and with full voice support. Now except for Monkey Island 2, most of the Monkey Island games have speech throughout them.

Since LucasArts promised that there will be more to come if Monkey Island SE sells – and I believe it certainly well – and as we were promised a sequel in the end credits, Lucas planning on doing a Monkey Island 2 SE would be nice. I read on forums that they would rather see special editions of games that follow it, mainly Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max Hit the Road. I am not sure if Lucas would want to go that far, though.

The Good
The first Monkey Island in all its glory, who would say no? As anyone, when this game was announced, I was enthusiastic. I mean, what could go wrong with this remake? As long as the art style was good, there was nothing to be afraid of.

So, what's good in it ? First, the music. While true to the original, the passage from MIDI to real instrument is a blessing. Even if I miss the "warmness" of the original ones, here, it is just nostalgia.

Some continuity. I don't like Armato's voice as Guybrush, but at least Lucasarts didn't disappoint those who like him.

The ability to switch between old & new versions is a good idea, and the morphing is really well executed.

The Bad
Wait, I already know what you are thinking : "What, that's all you throw in the good section ?!" Yeah. I'm sorry.

First, the new graphics are just awful, especially the characters (Honestly, did you take a look at Guybrush ?!). Coupled with the fact it is just an override of the original game, animations don't fit with those new graphics.

Voices actors. When hearing them, I just had the feeling that the voice director at Lucasarts has gone out, asked the first people who came if they wanted to voice a game, and so they did. Another thing about the voices : why the hell am I not able to have them when playing the old version ? In order to stay true to the original way of playing ? It could just have been a great way to rediscover the original game...

Special note when your language is not english (so, english natives, skip this) : 1) This one is understandable, but it's disappointing : why don't we have voices in our languages, since MI3 and 4 had those ? Yeah, right, money... 2) Oh, why don't we have the text when playing in "old" mode in our language ? No, money is not an excuse there, the game has been translated for almost 20 years now.

The Bottom Line
I won't give this a rating.

I am in a situation where I want to give 5/5, just 'cause it is Monkey Island, and 1/5 to the remake, which is just not worth it in my opinion...

So, if what you see here and there on the net pleases you, don't hesitate, take it, I think you'll be happy with it, especially if you never played this masterpiece before. Otherwise, grab out your original Monkey Island, nothing which is worth it here.