Time hasn't deterred any of the game's quirky humor, either: This is the same Monkey Island that came out 19 years ago, with the same word-for-word dialogue and the same goofy in-jokes. Guybrush's oddball pirate world wears its theme-park inspiration on its sleeve - insults trump footwork in swordfighting contests, castaways stubbornly refuse to vacate remote islands on their own ships because "you have to be rescued - it's in the rules," and buried treasure comes with a "leave some for the other pirates" caveat. Quite the contrary: This first chapter in wannabe-pirate Guybrush Threepwood's plundering career is a hilarious and sharply written story, with jokes and puzzles that are as clever in 2009 as they were in 1990. Now, I'm not trying to scare anyone away here. If you cut your teeth on, say, Telltale's various Sam & Max or Strong Bad series, you're about to find out exactly what a hardcore adventure game plays like. No, these games forced you to think until your brain practically bled - and they went on for hours.
It was not a time of simplified mouse cursors, two-step solutions, or episodic delivery. Ask any battle-hardened adventure gamer who remembers the Sierra-LucasArts turf war of the '80s and '90s and they're sure to mention all the complex, mind-wracking puzzles that defined that era's masterpieces. and by some miracle, it's been made available for modern audiences to discover.Īnd it's going to be one interesting discovery process. Monkey Island, more than just about any title this side of King's Quest, is the most ubiquitous, fondly remembered, and oft-referenced adventure game in existence. The original Secret of Monkey Island, originally released on ye olde floppy disks in 1990 and newly available in a gussied-up HD remake for Xbox Live Arcade and PC, is unquestionably one of those games. 3 or Street Fighter II remake in, they're still awesome, no matter what year it is, and no matter how many hardware generations have passed since their prime. When you pop the latest Super Mario Bros.
The games we commonly refer to as "classics" tend to be the ones with an uncanny knack for resisting the ravages of time.