Epic 8-Bit Art: Super Monkey Island Bros.

Telltale Games still hasn't announced the winners of the Halloween contest but there are still so great entries showing up on the blog and in the forums from the contest.

This gem I found in the forums from a user named Yoshiwam. It's the Monkey Island gang dressed up as members of the Super Mario Bros. crew. LeChuck as Mario, Guybrush as Luigi, Elaine as Peach, Stan as Toad, Murray as Yoshi and even a rubber chicken with a pully is seen in the background as a power-up. Classic!

I'm More Piratey Than You - Monkey Island Tribute Song

Created by Monkey Island super fans, Andrei "SilverWolfPet" Constantinescu, Marius Fietzek, Thorsten Fietzek and Mihai Constantinescu, I'm More Piratey Than You is a tribute song to the fabulous Monkey Island series as well as a celebration of International Talk like a Pirate Day.

This video was too cute not to post, especially when you hear their accents.

Monkey Island 2 in 3D: Only in my Dreams.

Hannes Appell over at LoneClone VFX decided to take some of the scenes from Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge and convert them into 3D using the Cryengine and Maya programs.

What he created is the stuff dreams are made of. Monkey Island fans really need to watch this entire video to look for all the hidden gems. I still think Telltale Game did a fab game on their 3D models but this game model is golden.

Hello, Sexy Goodness! Guybrush vs. LeChuck Statue

Right now I wish I had a spare $90 plus shipping laying around because the Star Wars Shop has just opened up pre-orders for a wicked looking statue of Guybrush Threepwood fighting LeChuck the Ghost Pirate from the re-vamped version of The Secret of Monkey Island.

It's pretty damn sexy looking, though I would have preferred zombie pirate LeChuck to ghost pirate LeChuck. Zombies are just all the rage nowadays, you know.

The statue will set you back $89.99 if you pre-order now and it will ship September 10th. Don't wait either cause there's only 1000 of these puppies to go around. Grab the statue at StarWarsShop.com now or suffer the curse of LeChuck, ya scurvy dogs!

Review: Tales of Monkey Island: Ep.1 - Launch of the Screaming Narwhal

Tales of Monkey Island: Episode 1 – Launch of the Screaming Narwhal
Telltales Games
Available via PC download at the Official Telltale Games Website

Good news, all my plunder bunnies! The newest adventure in the life of Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate has finally arrived from the wonderful people at Telltale Games, the developers who brought us the new episodic adventures of Sam & Max, freelance police. Tales of Monkey Island, another episodic game series launched its first of 5 episodes on July 7th to the joyful tears of millions of old school LucasArts adventure game fans and this reviewer got the chance to check out an early press copy 5 days before actual release date. To think it wasn’t even my birthday.

In the first episode, Launch of the Screaming Narwhal, we are introduced to our favourite hero again, Guybrush Threepwood as she attempts to save his beloved wife, Elaine from LeChuck, the Zombie Pirate for 5th time I think. At this point, I’ve lose count how many times that woman has been kidnapped by LeChuck. Anyway, Guybrush uses a magical recipe on a sword to kill LeChuck but something goes wrong, and LeChuck is turned human, the boat blows up and Guybrush wakes up on an island only to find his hand has a mind of its mind. A nasty mind at that.
From here out, you must help Guybrush find a way off the island and back to his sweet Elaine. Much like previous adventure games, you must help Guybrush through his journey by talking to people, collecting items and solving his problems. Talking to people is done though dialog trees which give you a series of responses or questions to ask each person you talk to. Most responses are quite humorous which is what these games are famous for, that and three-headed monkeys.

Problem solving is usually complete with the aid of your item inventory, but you must remember not to use your item logically because that’s not how the game works. For example, in the beginning Guybrush drops his bottle of root beer, so you must replace the ingredient. Instead of finding for root bear, you instead find a plant with large roots and a barrel of grog which when combined together becomes root beer. See you have to think outside the box. Fans will love to hear that the plant is Chuck the Plant.

Fans of the previous MI series will be happy to know that former LucasArts employees worked on this game like Dave Grossman and Michael Stemmle and even MI series creator, Ron Gilbert helped brainstorm the initial project. Honestly you can tell these guys had a hand in the process because the game feels like series picked up right after Curse of Monkey Island and everyone forgot that horrible 3D version on the PS2 never even existed.

Graphically, Telltale Games decided to stay away from the original 2D graphics found in the first 3 Monkey Island games, despite cries from the fans and went with their successful 3D engine used on games like Sam & Max. The 3D cartoon graphics look spectacular and make each character really pop on screen. The control scheme is pretty decent with the use of either keyboard or mouse to move Guybrush around.

The music in the game is classic Monkey Island calypso with a hint of a jaunty pirate tune. The voice of Guybrush is provided by veteran voice actor, Dominic Armato, who provided his voice in Curse of Monkey Island and we also see the return of Alexandra Boyd, who voiced Elaine. Kudos to the developers for an excellent job on the voice sync, though I found it odd that text dialog picks didn’t come out the same vocally. The idea was the same but not the wording. They were still funny either way.

Now I did find a couple of glitches in the game but I had an early press copy that hadn’t been completely debugged yet. I found that the maps I found in the game when examined would be blank sometimes and I would have to re-examine them to fix the glitch. Also I had one spot where my inventory refused to open and I had to restart the game, but only happened once. Again though, I was playing an early build of the game and they always have a bug or two. The main game I’m sure with not have these issues, so honestly I can’t factor these in on final opinion of this game.

Now that I’m done reviewing the first episode of Tale of Monkey Island, the only thing I regret is that I have to wait another month to play the next episode. Obviously the purchase of this game should be a no-brainer for fans of the Monkey Island series, especially since there are so many long lost friends showing up to help Guybrush along the way and so many tributes to the franchise hidden in the game, but for the newbies uncertain about this game, I can only say this: Play this game and not only will you finally understand all the strange inside jokes your older PC gaming friends are making finally but you will open your mind to one of the greatest franchises that LucasArts has ever made. Well, besides Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

Note: This game will be available in the future on Nintendo Wii via Wii Ware download.

Rating: 10 out of 10
Buy it!

LucasArts Launches Old School Games Via Steam

So LucasArts finally told us their big secret and I was part right. They did give us the release date for Secret of Monkey Island: SE which hit Xbox Live Arcade on July 15 for 800 MS Points and PC via Steam for $9.99. Yay!

But they also made the announcement that they are making available a bunch of other LucasArts games from the libray via Steam on July 8th, 2009.

* Armed and Dangerous
* Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
* Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure
* LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventure
* LOOM
* Star Wars Battlefront II
* Star Wars Republic Commando
* Star Wars Starfighter
* The Dig
* Thrillville: Off the Rails

Apparently this only part one of the list of the games they plan to release and will be giving us more titles in the future. I am happy to hear more games will be release because honestly I never played any of these games and don't really care to now. I still want my Sam & Max: Hit the Road, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle and Maniac Mansion. Maybe even the sequels to Monkey Island would be nice too.

LucasArts Teases Big News Tomorrow

The LucasArts Twitter account is teasing a big announcement for tomorrow. They're saying it will please the old school fans but it doesn't have anything to do with a new IP.

At first I was thinking made they were dusting off another sweet old adventure title from the golden days of LucasArts. Perhaps Day of the Tentacle, Maniac Mansion or Sax & Max: Hit the Road, but after reading something on the forums over at LucasArts official website, I now realize the buggers are probably just giving us the release date for Secret of Monkey Island: SE on Xbox Live Arcade.

If this is the case, I will be happy as I am dying to play this game already but honestly I think all old school fans were hoping for something bigger than this.

[Picture by FDisk via Telltales Game Forum]

Monkey Island Custom Guitar Playing Monkey Island Music

Created by the same artist, Maya Plisetskaya, who created the Monkey Island shoes, this amazing guitar features Guybrush Threepwood from the Monkey Island series.

The video above features the new owner of the guitar playing the theme song from Curse of Monkey Island, which just so happens to be the one and only MI game that I have played and finished in the series. Now you know why I want to play the remake on Xbox Live so badly, cause I have unfinished business with that game. Yes, sir.

Also, I found an awesome version of the full Monkey Island theme.

Leon Kroft? - Random Sprites from Pixel Joint

Now there's an image to keep you wake at night.

Pixel Joint, a community for pixel artists is one of my favorite haunts to find new and cool pictures for my beading projects. Every so often I find amazing remakes of videogame characters that scream to be made into a bead piece. The sprite, Leon Kroft by Rabidbaboy, you see above is not one of those.

However, the ones below are.

Guybrush remade by JinnDEvil

Final Fantasy X-2 Girls by Doctor Octoroc

Resident Evil fighting game by Chanfan

BioShock - 8 bit by Badassbill

I highly suggest checking out all the artwork on Pixel Joint because there are tons of cool animated and non-animated sprites to find on there. I wish I was so talented with the pixel to create such amazing artwork.

[Via Pixel Joint]

Monkey Island Coming to Xbox Live Arcade

GAH!!!! NARF!!! SQUEE!!! *collaspes on floor from pure fangirl overload*

I'm sorry but it's been one of those months. First this and now I just found out that Monkey Island has been spotted on a Germany USK rating board as a "Special Edition Xbox 360 Re-Release" which means that Monkey Island is probably coming to Xbox Live Arcade or it could be coming out as an actual revamped game disc.

What the Special Edition means no knows is sure of, but speculation is that the game could be redone with better graphics or just come with a pretty poster in the box ... who knows, right?

This is great news, aspecially on the tail of the rumor that Lucas Arts is bringing back a old franchise like Monkey Island or Day of the Tentacle. Who knows maybe this is the franchise they're bringing back and they're starting with a revamp of the original Monkey Island?

Monkey Island Shoes

I have always wanted a sweet pair of gaming shoes and these would be the pair, if only they were available for purchase.

Maya Plisetskaya created these sweet Monkey Island Converse shoes from hand and what looks like paint. Unfortunately Maya's site is in Spanish, so I don't know the details behind the shoes, but they are still pretty to look at.

Epic 8-Bit Art: Lucas Arts Golden Oldies

I've been wanted to make some Lucas Arts sprite pieces for a while now and I've finally finished 4 big pieces from 2 of the best games in the Lucas Arts franchises.

The two pieces up above are Le Chuck and Guybrush Threepwood from Monkey Island 2.

These two are Sam and Max from Sam & Max: Hit the Road. I've already posted Sam on my site but I just finished Max a week or two ago and wanted to post them together.

Next I want to do the main characters and the tentacles from Day of the Tentacles but I can't find any more sprites than just Bernard to work with. If any one has any or can pull sprites from the game for me, that would be great.

DeathSpank: Monkey Island Designer Makes New Game

New game from Monkey Island Designer, Ron Gilbert?

New game from Monkey Island Designer, Ron Gilbert and HotHead Games?

SWEET!






Thong of Justice? I think I have one of those in my closet somewhere. I really gives me a wedgy.

Gamer Rant - Lucas Arts Adventure Games

Remember the golden age of point and click adventure games, when Lucas Arts reined supreme and it wasn’t because of all their millions of Star Wars titles. An era when adventure games didn’t suck and the plots actually made you want to play the game. Ah, the good ol’ days. But if these were the golden days of point and click, then when exactly is Lucas Arts going to get off their butts and start making these kinds of game again?

I grew up in the days of the Nintendo Entertainment System and PC gaming, when every gamer was playing titles like King’s Quest and The Secret of Monkey Island. Out of all of these games, the gems that stood out the most for me were the Lucas Arts titles which were able to stand out from the crowd due to their extremely fun plots and wicked humor. Cartoon graphics, slap-stick comedy and goofy characters with quick wits made these games instant classics.

Even now I find myself wishing that Lucas Arts would re-release some of the old titles so that we could play them on updated systems, but I would probably be better off to download cracked versions of the games, and play them on the computer with the help of SCUMM software, because I don’t see the company re-releasing any of these games any time before Hell freezes over. Worst of all, Lucas won’t release the copyright on these games, so you can’t even find them on Abandon ware sites for download. Fine, hold the copyrights all you want, but do something with the games!

As for new titles, Lucas Arts has been claiming for years now that they were going to make a new Sam and Max title, but still nothing has even been started. They did release a new Monkey Island title back in 2001, but it was 3D and really wasn’t that great. I’m still yet to finish the bugger. I mean does the company not realize that there is still a market for their adventure games, and not just in the old titles, but in new games with the old characters. I would kill to play Day of the Tentacle again or even the first Monkey Island.

George Lucas, if you’re reading this (there’s a slim chance, but what the hell…), then listen up: it’s time to release the old Lucas Arts adventure games for a new generation and for the old fans of the games. I expect to see Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max, Grim Fandango, the Indiana Jones Series, the Monkey Island series, and any other Lucas Arts adventure titles you wanna throw in for the hell of it on selves within the next two years. I also want to see some new titles in these series within the next 5 years. We, your undying fans, demand new titles to play, and none of this 3D crap; only side scrolling point and click games will do. If Sid Meiser’s Pirates make a comeback as a remake, then certainly these games can do it too. Don’t let such great games continue to rot in your archives, when there are probably thousands upon thousands of gamers wanting to play these classics.

For a trip down memory lane, visit The LucasArts Museum site.

If anyone else agrees with me, please feel free to comment on this post. I wanna know that I’m not alone in my love for these classic games.