There was something magical about the first big adventure games. They may have rough pixels and wheezing, synthetic music, but they still managed to create an experience that made you, the child at the keyboard, become engrossed in the puzzles and mysteries of a complete and richly detailed world. The most magical of all were “The Secret of Monkey Island” from 1990 and the sequel “Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge” from the following year. These games featured pirate adventures from the Caribbean and let you explore palm-fringed islands and grim pirate towns. I didn’t play them myself until a few years later. Luckily. The fact that it took some time before the games were on CD-ROM, and found their way to my childhood home in Hokksund, meant that this became an experience I could share with my little brother. This week comes “The Return to Monkey Island”. For the first time in 30 years, it is the main architect behind the first two games who is also behind the new chapter. It is a long-awaited and special addition to the game series, and I can feel the child inside me already standing and jumping up and down. When the “Monkey Island” games absorbed both my brother and me, despite a six-year age difference, it had to do with a concept that was both disciplined and limitless. The discipline has to do with the story and the route that has been laid out. The player enters the story of Guybrush Threepwood, a mischievous and wide-eyed wannabe pirate, who is as ignorant as the player himself of the world of pirates. There are multiple challenges to deal with at the same time, and Guybrush can go back and forth, return to a crime scene to see if he understands any more of it this time, try to pick up some new items. RANDOM PIRATE: The protagonist of the “Monkey Island” games is the unsuspecting Guybrush Threepwood, who plunges into his new profession with great zeal. Photo: LucasArts He has to ask all the questions that the player is wondering – and like Guybrush, the player becomes more knowledgeable and competent, mastering more and more of the game’s world, almost without him or her noticing it’s happening. The limitless was in the “Monkey Island” series’ very distinctive form of humor. It was surprising and almost Monty Pythonesque, full of pop culture references and playful absurdity. On the monkey island itself, Guybrush comes across a huge stone monkey head. It’s obviously some sort of portal, and the only way to open it is to shove a stick into the giant ape’s ear, like a giant q-tip. KNUSKTORT: The humor and dialogue of the game series is suitable for eliciting light chuckles with obvious puns and slapstick. to elicit light chuckles with obvious puns and slapstick. In one of the sequel games, the player can have Guybrush sit on a bench on Lucre Island. If Guybrush stays put long enough, he says, “Life is like pillaging a trading vessel bound for Jamestown. Ya never know what you’re gonna get”, a reference to Tom Hanks’ starring role in “Forrest Gump”. And who can forget the challenge where Guybrush has to face the fencing master Carla for a duel, a duel won by both hurling insults at each other while fencing. At first, Guybrush, and the player, can only respond with desperate and stupid insults, to the considerable frustration of both – but then it’s possible to learn more and more elegant insults over time, and overcome the infamous Carla. The prize? A T-shirt with the inscription “I beat the fencing champion”. It’s really strange that this works. The one trick in the “Monkey Island” games – the pirate ships, the voodoo ladies, the French-sounding names, the mysterious treasure maps – brings to mind children’s books and adventure films. They make you immerse yourself in the story, that you disappear into the game’s universe. The second move – the humor – is disrespectful and obviously anachronistic. It pushes you away, reminds you that this is something contrived, that both you and the game creators are looking back at the world of pirates over a distance of several hundred years. In this sense, the “Monkey Island” series is postmodern and self-aware, with a meta perspective that is constantly present. And so it happens that these levels flow together seamlessly, helping to make the player feel understood. It also means that you who play never, really never, know what is hiding behind the next grinning house corner or the next palm tree. Two further sequels, “The Curse of Monkey Island” and “The Escape from Monkey Island”, came in 1997 and 2000 respectively. The first had gone through an extreme renovation purely visually, the second took the step into 3D land. BETTER GRAPHICS: As the 90s drew to a close, more powerful computers came on the market. The graphics in the “Monkey Island” games were also updated, somewhat to the chagrin of the die-hard fans. Here is a screenshot from “The Escape from Monkey Island” from 2000. Photo: LucasArts Many of the game’s connoisseurs will say that the first of these two is the best. But for me, both fall short. In a strange way, it’s as if the sharpening of the visuals destroys the characteristic “Monkey Island” tone. The rougher images from the early games also necessarily become more expressionless, more deadpan. The humor is enhanced because the protagonists, due to technological shortcomings, are simply unable to show with facial expressions and tone of voice that what they are telling is a joke. This distinctive quality of the games from LucasArts is perhaps better preserved in “Grim Fandango”, a film noir-like adventure game from 1998 that also shows an impressive flair for finding universes that fit together. The skeletons in the main cast, led by mortician Manny Calavera, have precisely the same near-expressionlessness that makes their lines so delightful. Again, it is the restrained and the explosively creative that go hand in hand. THE TRAVEL AGENCY OF DEATH: The absurd humor and strange surroundings also appear in LucasArts’ first 3D game, “Grim Fandango” from 1998. Illustration: Lucasarts It was amazing that they were allowed, really. That the bright, quick minds behind the “Monkey Island” series and “Grim Fandango” could put so many whims and absurdities on the table, and that they were allowed to stay in the game. It is particularly remarkable considering the media landscape today, where big movies and big games cost so much money to make that they quickly become nervously streamlined. They must and must appeal to large target groups all over the world, and the unpredictable, the agreed-upon, the absurd and the independent have bad conditions. For that, there is too strong a requirement that the threshold into the universe be low. But it is precisely this, the confusing and strange thing about the “Monkey Island” series, which makes the players feel like three members of a large and diverse family. It is not like anything else and cannot be copied. And now it’s definitely a family gathering again.
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Once I was a pirate – Speech
