Aye matey, beloved pirate games set sail again

Winda Benedetti Citizen Gamer • E-mail

“My name’s Guybrush Threepwood, and I want to be a pirate!"

“Guybrush Threepwood? Ha ha ha! That’s the stupidest name I’ve ever heard!”

“Well, what’s your name?”

“My name is Mancomb Seepgood.”

Ah yes, ask any seasoned gamer to name the funniest video games they’ve ever played, and you’ll almost always find “The Secret of Monkey Island” somewhere at the top of their list.

This beloved point-and-click adventure from LucasArts launched in 1990 and in doing so introduced the world to the misadventures of Guybrush Threepwood, a bumbling but endearing would-be pirate, along with Guybrush’s nemesis — the ghost pirate LeChuck — and his true love — Elaine.

The game also introduced the world to “insult sword fighting” — a kind of duel in which you must outwit your opponent with clever insults. (Jab: "You fight like a dairy farmer!" Parry: "How appropriate. You fight like a cow.") With its witty repartee, quirky story and clever puzzles, “The Secret of Monkey Island” spawned not only three sequels, but went down in history as one of the great adventure games of all time.

Alas, here we are almost two decades later and the once flourishing point-and-click adventure genre has long been pushed into near obscurity.

And yet, it’s starting to feel like 1990 all over again. That is, after almost 10 years without a “Monkey Island” game, players were greeted last week with “Tales of Monkey Island,” a brand new entry in the beloved series, available for both the PC and the Wii. And this week, LucasArts released a totally revamped version of the original “Secret of Monkey Island” game for the PC and Xbox 360.

Silly swashbuckling ahoy!
“It’s been a little strange,” says Dave Grossman, who’s not only one of the three masterminds behind the original “Secret of Monkey Island” game but the man spearheading the long-awaited new “Monkey Island” title.

“The last time I worked on a ‘Monkey Island’ game it was 1991," he says. "It’s been kind of like running into a stranger at the supermarket and then suddenly realizing that it’s an old friend of yours that you’ve kind of lost touch with. Things come flooding back like, ‘Oh yeah, I remember what I loved about these characters and why I liked writing in this style.’”

LucasArts When it launched in 1990, "The Secret of Monkey Island" earned droves of fans with its wicked sense of humor and easy-going play style.

Grossman, along with designer Tim Schafer, helped renowned game designer Ron Gilbert create “The Secret of Monkey Island” back when all three were working at LucasArts in the 80s and early ‘90s. Gilbert told his cohorts he was inspired, in part, by the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride at Disneyland.

“He said he had always wondered what it would be like to step off the ride and talk to the people who lived in that world,” Grossman says.

And so the three of them set about creating their pirate tale. But while their competition at the time was making adventure games that could be frustratingly difficult, they decided to design a friendlier game experience — one that made it rare for players to get themselves into a game-ending predicament.

And they packed “The Secret of Monkey Island” to the gills with hilarity, sprinkling zingy dialog and zany puzzles throughout.

“There was a unique kind of synergy of humor between the three of us,” Grossman says. “We were all funny in slightly different ways, and it worked well together.”

But he believes it wasn’t just the humor that made the game into a beloved classic, but the mix of both the funny and the serious.

“The moment-by-moment lines of dialog and scenes are quite funny, but the overarching story is to be taken fairly seriously,” Grossman says. “It’s a story about this young man who comes to an island in search of his life’s dream. He’s pursuing his career goals and he discovers love in the process and winds up thinking that was actually more important than what he was doing to begin with. You’re laughing, but there’s actually something deeper going on as well.”

Sadly, the laughter began to fade when “Doom” hit the market in 1993. The adrenaline rush of this first-person, demon-shooting thrill ride spawned countless immitators and wooed players and publishers away from other games, helping to usher the "Monkey Island" series and other point-and-click adventure games out the door.

Telltale Games Lovable pirate Guybrush Threepwood finds himself on another madcap adventure in "Tales of Monkey Island" — the first new "Monkey Island" game in almost 10 years.

Grossman eventually went to work at Telltale Games, a company founded by former LucasArts employees in 2004. Telltale has been helping to revive and modernize the adventure game genre by developing excellent titles like “Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People” and the new “Sam & Max” and “Wallace & Gromit” games — all of which they’ve released in downloadable and episodic format.

Grossman says it wasn’t until all of the Telltale and LucasArts business stars finally aligned last year that they could start work on a new “Monkey Island” game. But he says it’s not exactly easy revisiting a game with such an avid following.

“There’s tons of pressure actually,” Grossman says. “The fans are very vocal, and they’re vocal about all kinds of different details.”

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