The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition

I love the Monkey Island franchise. I've beaten most of them, save the new Telltale Games episodes, but it's been so long, I've forgotten...you know, everything. Thus, a Special Edition of "The Secret of Monkey Island" was the perfect excuse to revisit the series.

If you've been living under a rock and know not of Monkey Island, just know that it's a point-and-click adventure game following around Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate...or wannabe might pirate. It's funny, awesome, inspired loads of adventure games that were to come, and you should go and play it already, you gutter-crawling cur!

Sorry, been insult sword fighting today.

What makes this a Special Edition was that they went back in and remade all the backgrounds and characters to be all fancy and drawn lookin'. They also added voice actors to do all the dialogue. While I really liked the addition of voice actors, the new art lost some of the charm for me. I wanted to experience it now as I did then. Thankfully, they gave me that option. Pressing F10 toggles between original and Special Edition looks.

It was a very bizarre way to play this game, but each time I would enter a new screen, I would switch over to the Special Edition and take note of the updated graphics. They very faithfully recreated the old scenes, but I would immediately then switch back to the old look. It's like a comforting blanket, the old graphics. The new backgrounds looked pretty good, but I really didn't like the look of Guybrush himself. He's too lanky or something, he's got a dopey haircut, and his walk animation looked too...smooth. It was as if he floated over the ground rather than was actually walking on it. And since I'd have to look at that gangly mook the entire time, I took Mr. Pixel instead.

I also didn't bother to figure out the new controls. The Special Edition utilized a hidden inventory and action window rather than take up the bottom half of the screen with the standard controls, but it wasn't immediately intuitive to use. It was probably designed for controller in mind, but I was using a good 'ol mouse and keyboard, and I wanted to play in old school mode anyhow, so I said fuck it.

Like I mentioned previously though, the voice acting was an excellent addition. That alone was worth the price of admission. I would walk around and use items on other items in old school mode, but anytime there was dialogue, I'd flip back to fancy schmancy mode to enjoy the audio. They brought back many of the voice actors from later Monkey Island games, which was most excellent.

If you haven't played The Secret of Monkey Island, there's no time like the present. I've loved this game for years for its existing awesome, and I love the Special Edition for allowing me to re-access that awesome without floppy disks. Kudos.