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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu May 05, 2016 7:13 pm

I just got a gorgeously preserved boxed Monkey Island 2. While not cheap, it was far, far less than most games from the Lucasfilms studio and I consider myself extremely lucky. Finding U.S. printed versions are usually my first goal (NTSC, etc.) and this hit all the right buttons.
MI2_box1.png
Original boxed game of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge by Lucasfilms Games

11 disks! Man oh man, thank you Lord Zeus for HDD installs.

When I open these I always feel a bit like an archeologist. Sometimes what you find inside is not always what you'd expect.

Take this box as an example - it came with an original receipt folded neatly inside the box! The sale was done in 1992 in what appears to have been a gift (purchased by a dude in Florida to a lady in Georgia).

Anyhoo, that's not all. Inside the box is a yellowed stack of stapled notes for the game, 95% typed (!) with hand-written notes along side some in the margins. Apparently she had created a system - alphabetical, too, by the way, of paths she tried to follow in the game (many of which she wrote "useless" next to). Fascinating, even if I don't fully follow it what she was telling herself.

Some other interesting coincidences: they said that Monkey Island was inspired heavily by the ride at Disneyland "Pirates of the Caribbean".

Well, take a look at the character Davy Jones, who appeared first in the second installment of the movie franchise. Tell me you don't see a similarity between him, and the box I am holding in my hand.
movie.png
Davy Jones

:o

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Shot97
Detroit, MI, USA

Posted Thu May 05, 2016 8:46 pm

Wow, great find. I don't like how they just put the Amiga sticker right over the DOS sticker. That's bad. But I loved the human element with all those notes... FROM A GIRL NERD! Another one best played in NTSC mode, and a late game at that! It goes to show you that graphics was not all about colors on the screen. For example, the Genesis and the SNES had more colors that could be displayed at once compared to an Amiga... But there were a lot of computer games the consoles could not touch, mostly because of space issues. Monkey Island 2 for the Amiga is every bit as good looking on the Amiga as it is in 256 color VGA in DOS. Every single bit as good. A lot of that has to do with the choices for colors, but a lot of it has to do with those 12 disks. The more space/information the better quality of the art. The only thing bad I can say about that game is... Well, there's the normal stuff I can say about the game... I mean a lot of people think it's the best Monkey Island... I think it's the worst... The puzzles are ridiculous. You can't die but it's as close to a Sierra type game that LucasArts ever made. I figured out the first Monkey Island all on my own, I figured out the 3rd and 4th all on my own... The 2nd one... You need to cheat... Even after you've played it a bunch of times and won you have to cheat. I hated the ending and I was glad Ron Gilbert was not in control of the 3rd game (which is my favorite).

But it's an almost perfect port. Other than the music. There's less music in the Amiga version and LucasArts never implemented their famous music engine with the Amiga. In DOS the music kind of fades in/out when you go from area to area. It's very seamless. They never put that on the Amiga. Further, what music is there, is bad. At least compared to the first Monkey Island, which I believe sounds better than the MT-32. MI2 on the Amiga does not sound better than the MT-32, it sounds like they sampled the MT-32 and did a really bad job.

But if you have an Amiga it's worth having just because of that beauty. That pure graphical beauty. Proving once again that VGA was NOT the death of the Amiga.

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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Thu May 05, 2016 9:59 pm

I don't like how they just put the Amiga sticker right over the DOS sticker.
Yeah, it's weird, because the box is printed for Amiga owners. There are prints - right on the box - about the Amiga (e.g. the bottom of the top cover) but for some reason the spot for the system req's on the front, you can definitely see the VGA/IBM crap under there. Not sure how or why that happened, as all the rest is 100% Amiga, and made in the U.S.A.

I've been waiting a long time to find some particular titles to show up as U.S.A. prints - I don't want U.S. Gold unless there is no other alternative (or that's the original source). I guess I'm a purist, but I want the original sourced product from the original studio when possible. This one finally popped literally out of nowhere (or so it felt like) so I grabbed it. I was able to work out a "huge" steal-deal after it with the same owner, which I'll probably reveal next week once it arrives. Good times!

For some titles, though, the pickings are so slim I simply can't wait forever. Which you'll see in my next post...

Edit: I love Ron Gilbert! His humor and story writing makes me laugh. Sometimes the puzzles are obtuse, but he's cracks me up. I love following him on Twitter - and I'm a backer of Thimbleweed, which is really looking sweet. Did you like Maniac Mansion?

Honestly, you and he sound to have some common interests!
The impact of Star Wars and his love for telling stories was so big that Ron Gilbert, at the age of fourteen, and his good friend Tom McFarlane made a couple of films on a Super-8 camera. --Wikipedia

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Shot97
Detroit, MI, USA

Posted Fri May 06, 2016 12:06 am

Don't get me wrong, I know exactly what you're talking about with Ron Gilbert, he's a GREAT guy! I've seen him re-tweet comments about games being designed in 4:3, which is very cool to have the designers say this stuff. He's also very active to this day and he likes talking about his games, which I appreciate. It's way too hard to find a presence for most of these people unless they're trying to make some money. And I love Super8 films! I love Maniac Mansion! It's just with Monkey Island 2, I see a lot of love for that game in particular and while I don't hate it, I just don't see how it could get that much love when compared to the original or the 3rd one. I honestly do feel that it was regression in design policies from Lucas Arts. I really do love Monkey Island, so much so that I'm not proud of just how much crap I've read about those games. He wanted to make 3 games, and he's never revealed exactly what the 3rd game would have been about... And I believe it's because he knows the 3rd one is quite popular. I could see where he was going with the 2nd game, and I just have to say I'm happy he didn't make a 3rd one. He's made comments about Guybrush and Elane... Not wanting them to be together... Of course at the 2nd it was just a part of a ride... I've heard some people suggest Elane may have ended up being his sister in the end... Of course some people look at the face LeChuck made at the end to say "it was a curse" but I'm not sure about that... That's what the people who made the 3rd one had to make up in order to make something of what they left them with. There are signs in the very first game that it was all supposed to be just a ride... That in the end, yes, it was the Pirates of the Caribbean...and the thought of that tears me up inside... Why can't it just be the real deal? It's almost as bad as someone waking up from a dream and none of what you saw has happened... It's some of the worst writing in the history of written word and it happens far too often.

I just feel sometimes the creators can get too close to their own projects. Too close for their own good. I do really like Ron Gilbert, but at the same time, I LOOOVE Monkey Island 3, whatever he would have made... It wouldn't have been that. And it would be hard to top that.





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