Monkey Island 2: Lechuck's Revenge Special Edition

I went to 1991, and I liked it there. Might as well set up camp and stick around for Monkey Island 2: Lechuck's Revenge Special Edition. This Special Edition had some nice little upgrades from the Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition. In the last one, the new dialogue audio wouldn't play if you were playing in old school mode. This required me to switch back and forth whenever I talked to someone because I enjoyed the new audio but preferred the old graphics. In Lechuck's Revenge, the dialogue plays no matter what mode I'm playing in. Most excellent.

Another neat addition was that of commentary. While playing the game, certain areas would have "Press A for Commentary" text in the corner. Pressing "A" would start a recording of the creators Ron Gilbert, Dave Grossman and Tim Schafer discussing something to do with that particular area. You get interesting little nuggets of where certain jokes or puzzles came from, interesting things about the production process, or fun arguments about such topics as: Guybrush's pants dropping in the cemetery...funny or not funny.

There are so many reasons why I love this franchise. Anytime a game makes you laugh out loud, it's doing pretty good. Each time you grab an inordinately large item and shove it in your coat, I'd laugh. A dog, a ship figurehead, a monkey...each time..out loud. Fabulous. There was also a point where I was just trying to use all my tools on something. I tried a hammer but thought, "What I really need is a wrench." As I said this, I used the monkey I had been carrying around. It worked, and I laughed. I also really enjoyed this one bit where the room was pitch black. In order to see, I figured I'd strike one of my matches. Before I did so, I thought, "This would be the perfect opportunity for a Looney Tunes gag. I strike the match, and it reveals a room full of explosives. If one could high five a game, I would have.

I must not have beaten this game when I played it years and years ago because the ending caught me by surprise. It was kind of cool because they kept you perplexed until the end of the credits. Only then did they reveal what was really going on. All in all, Lechuck's Revenge is a fine installment of the franchise, and if you enjoyed the original Monkey Island, you'll like this one.