| Monkey Island | |
|---|---|
 The original series logo | |
| Developer(s) | LucasArts (1990–2010) Telltale Games (2009) Terrible Toybox (2022) |
| Publisher(s) | LucasArts (1990–2010) Devolver Digital (2022) |
| Creator(s) | Ron Gilbert |
| Writer(s) |
|
| Platform(s) | Atari ST,Amiga,DOS,Windows,Classic Mac OS,macOS,Mega-CD,PlayStation 2,XBLA,WiiWare,PSN,iOS,Nintendo Switch,PlayStation 5,Xbox Series X/S,Android |
| First release | The Secret of Monkey Island 1990 |
| Latest release | Return to Monkey Island 19 September 2022 |
Monkey Island is a series ofadventure games. The first four games were produced and published byLucasArts, earlier known as Lucasfilm Games. The fifth was developed byTelltale Games with LucasArts, while the sixth was developed by Terrible Toybox with Lucasfilm Games andDevolver Digital.
The games follow the adventures of the haplessGuybrush Threepwood as he struggles to become the most notoriouspirate in theCaribbean, defeat the plans of the evil undead pirateLeChuck and win the heart of GovernorElaine Marley. The plots often involve the mysterious Monkey Island and its secrets.
Monkey Island was created byRon Gilbert,Tim Schafer, andDave Grossman. Gilbert worked on the first two games before leaving LucasArts. Grossman and Schafer had success on other games before they both left LucasArts. The rights toMonkey Island remained with LucasArts, and the third and fourth games were created without direct involvement from the original writing staff. Grossman was the project leader of the fifth game in the series and Gilbert was involved with the first design of the game. Gilbert's studio developed the sixth game,Return to Monkey Island (2022), with Grossman assisting.
Ron Gilbert's two main inspirations for the story wereDisneyland'sPirates of the Caribbean ride andTim Powers' bookOn Stranger Tides.[1] The book was the inspiration for the story and characters, while the ride was the inspiration for the ambiance. Gilbert said in an interview that:
"[the POTC Ride] keeps you moving through the adventure but I've always wished I could get off and wander around, learn more about the characters, and find a way onto those pirate ships. So withThe Secret of Monkey Island I wanted to create a game that had the same flavor, but where you could step off the boat and enter that whole storybook world”.[2]
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| 1990 | The Secret of Monkey Island |
|---|---|
| 1991 | Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge |
| 1992–1996 | |
| 1997 | The Curse of Monkey Island |
| 1998–1999 | |
| 2000 | Escape from Monkey Island |
| 2001–2008 | |
| 2009 | Tales of Monkey Island |
| The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition | |
| 2010 | Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge: Special Edition |
| 2011–2021 | |
| 2022 | Return to Monkey Island |
The series debuted in 1990 withThe Secret of Monkey Island on theAmiga,MS-DOS,Atari ST andMacintosh platforms; the game was later ported toFM Towns andMega-CD (1993). A remake version with updated graphics and new voiceovers was released forPlayStation Network,PC Windows,Xbox Live Arcade[3] andOS X. AniPhone version was also released on July 23, 2009.
The game starts off with the main character Guybrush Threepwood stating "I want to be a pirate!" To do so, he must prove himself to three old pirate captains. During the perilous pirate trials, he meets the beautiful governor Elaine Marley, with whom he falls in love, unaware that the ghost pirate LeChuck also has his eyes on her. When Elaine is kidnapped, Guybrush procures crew and ship to track LeChuck down, defeat him and rescue his love.
The second game,Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge from 1991, was available for fewer platforms; it was only released forPC MS-DOS,Amiga,Macintosh, and later forFM Towns. A Special Edition version, in a similar style asThe Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, was released in July 2010 for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Mac, PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.
As Guybrush, with atreasure chest in hand, and Elaine hang onto ropes in a void, he tells her the story of the game. He has decided to find the greatest of alltreasures, that of Big Whoop. Unwittingly he helps revive LeChuck, who is now in zombie form. Guybrush is eventually captured by his nemesis, but escapes with help from Wally and finds the treasure only to find himself dangling from a rope, as depicted at the beginning of the game. As Guybrush concludes his story, his rope breaks and he finds himself facing LeChuck, whom he finally defeats using voodoo. The surrealistic ending is open to a number of interpretations. In the manual ofThe Curse of Monkey Island, it is stated that Guybrush falls victim to a hex implemented by LeChuck.
The Curse of Monkey Island, the third in the series, was released exclusively forMicrosoft Windows on PC in 1997, after a 6-year hiatus.The Curse of Monkey Island was released at the height of some of the biggest technological advancements in the gaming industry—digital audio, CD-ROM technology, and improved graphics.
Monkey Island I andII were originally released on floppy disks with text dialogue only. Entire conversations between characters would appear as written text, or as captions above their heads.The visuals of the third installment were also an improvement over the original game, using a more moderncel animation style.The Curse of Monkey Island is the only game in the series to feature this style of animation; subsequent games used three-dimensional polygon animation.
Threepwood, unwittingly, turns Elaine into a gold statue with a cursed ring, and she is subsequently stolen by pirates. He tracks her down before searching for another ring that can lift the curse. LeChuck appears in a fiery demon form, and is hot on Threepwood’s heels until a stand-off on LeChuck's amusement park ride, Monkey Mountain.
Escape from Monkey Island, the fourth installment, was released in 2000 forPC Windows, and in 2001 forMacintosh andPlayStation 2.
When Guybrush Threepwood and Elaine Marley return from their honeymoon, they find that Elaine has been declared officially dead, her mansion is under a destruction order, and her position as governor is up for election. Guybrush investigates and unearths a conspiracy by LeChuck and evil real estate developer Ozzie Mandrill to use a voodoo talisman, "The Ultimate Insult", to make all pirates docile in order to turn the Caribbean into a center of tourism.
Tales of Monkey Island is the fifth installment within the series, co-developed byTelltale Games and LucasArts, with a simultaneous release both onWiiWare andPC. Unlike other installments,Tales is an episodic adventure consisting of five different episodes. The first episode was released on July 7, with the last one released on December 8, 2009.[4]
During a heated battle with his nemesis, the evil pirate LeChuck, Guybrush unwittingly unleashes an insidious pox that rapidly spreads across the Caribbean, turning pirates into zombie-like monsters. The Voodoo Lady sends Guybrush in search of a legendary sea sponge to stem the epidemic, but this seemingly straightforward quest has surprises around every corner.[5]
With the purchase of LucasArts bythe Walt Disney Company in 2012, the rights to the franchise are now property of Disney.[6] In the second half of 2010s, Disney Interactive ceased the production on gaming and transitioned to a licensing model. Gilbert wrote on Twitter that he was interested in buying theMonkey Island andManiac Mansion properties.[7] Fans of the series launched an online petition asking Disney to sell the franchise to Gilbert; by December 2021, the petition had gathered about 29,000 signatures.[8]
Return to Monkey Island, the sixthMonkey Island installment, was released on September 19, 2022 on the Nintendo Switch and Windows, coming to other formats later.[9] It is a collaboration between Gilbert's Terrible Toybox studio andLucasfilm Games, and published byDevolver Digital.[9] Aframe story in the game serves to explain and continue from the ending ofLeChuck's Revenge, while the main narrative takes place after the other games in the series.[9] Ron Gilbert has expressed his desire to tell a simple and focused pirate story in the game, while also redefining the adventure game user interface and deepening the greater lore. In addition to Gilbert, Grossman returns as co-writer, with music from veteran series composersMichael Land,Peter McConnell, andClint Bajakian, andDominic Armato,Alexandra Boyd, andDenny Delk reprising their roles as Guybrush, Elaine, and Murray.[10][9]Jess Harnell replaces the retiredEarl Boen as the voice of LeChuck.[11][12]
Stan's Used Coffins is referred to in one of the levels of the LucasArts gameOutlaws. InIndiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, Guybrush can be accessed as a playable character via acheat code; in addition, aMonkey Island-themed secret room can be found in the game's final level.[13] Guybrush also appears inStar Wars: The Force Unleashed II as a playable skin for Starkiller named "Guybrush Threepkiller".[14]
Guybrush is paid homage in theNaughty Dog video gameUncharted 4: A Thief's End, where a pirate with major similarities to Guybrush is featured as one of the twelve pirate captains that founded Libertalia. Although he remains unnamed throughout the game, the resemblance is uncanny and hissigil is represented by a monkey. His portrait can be seen in the Libertalia treasury with the other founders and though his name is partly scratched out, the letters still visible spell out the truncated name "Guy Wood".[15]
Several elements from theMonkey Island series appear inSea of Thieves as part of its June 2021 "A Pirate's Life" update. Developed in collaboration with Disney and primarily themed afterPirates of the Caribbean, multiple references to the characters and locales from the Monkey Island franchise can be found in journals by Kate Capsize scattered around the wreckage of The Headless Monkey during the update's first Tall Tale, accompanied by an original arrangement of the Monkey Island theme. According to the journals, Guybrush and Elaine Threepwood are celebrating their honeymoon somewhere upon the Sea of Thieves, while Kate perished attempting to get revenge on Guybrush for framing her.[16]
A fullMonkey Island-themed expansion for the game, "The Legend of Monkey Island", was released on July 20, 2023 and spread across three monthly episodes. In the story, set betweenCurse andEscape, Guybrush and Elaine's honeymoon on the Sea of Thieves is interrupted by LeChuck, who traps them in a dream version of Mêlée Island where everyone worships Guybrush as a legendary pirate. To stop LeChuck from restoring the legendary Burning Blade and conquering the Sea of Thieves, the Pirate Lord recruits the now-revived Kate Capsize and the player pirates to enter the dreamworld and rescue Guybrush and Elaine.[17][18]
In an update toHitman 3, a new pirate-themed map was added, which featured an Easter Egg referencingMonkey Island in the form of a gravestone in the environment reading "G Threepwood, Mighty Pirate", a clear reference to Guybrush.[19]
InThe Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, while completing the ‘Fists of Fury’ quest in theBlood and Wine expansion patch, the protagonistGeralt encounters a man named Mancomb, a reference to a character of the same name in the first game of the series.[20]
Shortly afterPixar, a spinout from Lucasfilm, found success with the firstToy Story film in 1995, there had been a push across Hollywood for more digitally animated films. Lucasfilm'sIndustrial Light & Magic (ILM), in the midst of transitioning from practical to digital effects, offered its services for producing these films to other studios. One of the first projects they tried to work on was withUniversal Pictures to revive theUniversal Classic Monsters line with a film calledFrankenstein and the Wolfman. While several scripts and preliminary art was produced for this film, shake-ups at Universal due to the financial failure ofBabe: Pig in the City led to changes in leadership for the film and ultimately its cancellation.[21]
David Carson, who had been set to directFrankenstein and the Wolfman but left after the Universal shake-up, came back to ILM with the idea of an animated film based on the firstMonkey Island game around 2000. With initial support from ILM, Carson worked an initial script with Corey Rosen and Scott Leberecht as to pitch the idea toAmblin Entertainment, the production company owned bySteven Spielberg. Spielberg had told Carson that he had previously toldGeorge Lucas that he should have made aMonkey Island movie years before, and other meetings with Amblin went well to proceed to further screenwriting work. The rest of ILM's story department was brought in to help write, includingSteve Purcell, but this team worked separately from the writers that were developing the actual games, creating a disconnect between story the film was going with and the narrative already established in the video game series. As they continued to work out the screenplay, the direction of the film continued to veer further from the video game series, including at one point where Spielberg had suggested the game be about the monkeys on Monkey Island instead of the pirates. According to Carson, the lack of a creative direction at this point led to the film being shelved at ILM.[21]
Details about the film were first revealed publicly in 2011 as part of theMonkey Island Special Edition Collection which included some of the film's concept art, storyboards, and scripts.[21][22]
It had been rumored thatTed Elliott andTerry Rossio had been involved in the writing of theMonkey Island script which they subsequently used as the basis for the firstPirates of the Caribbean film. Both Elliott and Rossio had been to ILM and were shown parts of theMonkey Island script, around the same time they were working on their script forPirates. WhenPirates was released, many fans of theMonkey Island series made comparisons of parts of the film to the games, and when news of the cancelled film first arose in 2011, the potential connection of Elliott and Rossio to theMonkey Island script started. Both Carson and Rossio stated that many of the tropes in bothMonkey Island andPirates are based on the classic pirate movies and that there was no direct reuse of the cancelledMonkey Island film inPirates.[21]
None of the first five games explicitly reveal the "Secret of Monkey Island". The team behindEscape from Monkey Island attempted to resolve the issue by showing that the Giant Monkey Head was actually the control room of a Giant Monkey Robot. The cut-scene in which the revelation was made is called "The Real Secret of Monkey Island".[23]
Gilbert stated that he never told anyone what the true secret of Monkey Island is.[24][25] In a 2004 interview, Gilbert stated that when the game was originally conceived, it was considered "too big", so they split it into three parts. He added that he "knows what the third [part] is" and "how the story's supposed to end", indicating that he had a definite concept of the “secret” and a conclusive third game.[26]
The true nature of the secret is the main focus ofReturn to Monkey Island, with several characters competing amongst themselves in a race to discover "the Secret". The game's conclusion reveals the secret to be a novelty T-shirt earned as a prize at a pirate-themed amusement park, which has acted as the setting for all of Guybrush Threepwood’s previous adventures. Threepwood, as the game's narrator, is intentionally ambiguous as to whether this is the actual secret, even suggesting that the secret means different things to different people, and putting forth the notion that the story of the journey (and the joy of speculating about the secret with others) is more valuable than the reward itself.
After the release ofReturn to Monkey Island, Gilbert stated in an interview that the true secret (as conceived during development of the first installment of the series) is that Guybrush was, in fact, inside of a pirate-themed amusement park the entire time.[27]
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