Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Introduction

Deep in the Caribbean, the pirate haven of Mêlée Island is home to the deadliest brood of ne'er-do-wells what ever sailed the seven seas: the infamous scurvy seadog Meathook; the buccaneer Sword Master whose name is feared in every corner of the isle; and most horrifically, the spectral ghost pirate LeChuck. Onto these disreputable shores late one night arrives the hapless, clueless, and utterly guileless flooring inspector Guybrush Threepwood, with nothing to his name but the dream of somehow becoming a real pirate himself.

Discover a thrilling world of swordplay, thievery, and, er, treasure huntery in The Secret of Monkey Island. Insult your enemies, fire the cannons, find true love, concoct mysterious voodoo brews, poison guards, evade cannibals, traverse hellish catacombs, raise a pint of grog, and (maybe) discover the Secret for yourself!

The Secret of Monkey Island

Happy December! This month we're playing the legendary 1990 Lucasfilm Games point-and-click adventure from the minds of Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman.

You see, one of my favorite rides in Disneyland is Pirates of the Caribbean. You get on a little boat and it takes you through a pirate adventure… Your boat 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.

• Ron Gilbert, from the Lucasfilm Adventurer, Fall 1990

I was sorting through some boxes today and I came across my copy of Tim Power's On Stranger Tides, which I read in the late 80's and was the inspiration for Monkey Island. Some people believe the inspiration for Monkey Island came from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride — probably because I said it several times during interviews — but that was really just for the ambiance. If you read this book you can really see where Guybrush and LeChuck were plagiarized derived from, plus the heavy influence of voodoo in the game.

• Ron Gilbert, from Grumpy Gamer, 2004

The Secret of Monkey Island is renowned for its zany humor, great (and mostly fair) puzzle design, gorgeous pixel graphics, and memorable soundtrack. Unlike other adventure games of the era, SMI invites you to try anything and everything without worry — you can't die. It's chock full of goofy swashbuckling anachronisms and hilarious good times. Maybe a little frustration too. Hey, you can just look up the answers when you get stuck. We couldn't do that in the '90s. Respect the grind.

The game originally released for DOS, Amiga, Macintosh, Atari ST, FM Towns, and Sega CD. Those versions are no longer available for purchase in the usual places (you might try eBay but save up your pieces o' eight if you go that route). All the original versions are playable in ScummVM if you lack the necessary hardware. If you find yourself needing access to a Dial-A-Pirate wheel, the original has been helpfully digitized here for your convenience.

Different releases of the original game have different audio and graphics. Some people have opinions about which version is best. These are all valid. I prefer the version I grew up with, but no shade on the others. They all have their own charms.

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition is a 2009 remaster that is the official recommended way to play today. It includes fully recreated high-resolution graphics, music, and voiced dialogue, with a modernized UI. It includes a quick toggle between classic and remastered modes, which is a nice touch. The Windows version is currently on sale for 50% off from GOG (DRM-free), and also available from Steam. It is reportedly playable on Steam Deck.

From what I can tell the Special Editions of SMI and its first sequel were also sold as a bundle for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and iOS. I can't speak to the current availability of any of those but they're probably all terrible ways to experience it anyway.

Limited Run Games has also issued a few re-releases of the original game in recent years. I don't know much about these, and good luck finding them for sale anywhere.

Genres: Adventure, Point-and-Click

Links: MobyGames, Wikipedia

Game Setup

The main purpose of this topic is to get people up and running with the game. As such, it's recommended that you:

• Share which version of the game you're playing
• Share what hardware you're playing it on
• Share if there are any tools/mods that you recommend
• Share anything you think is important for people to know before they start the game
• Ask questions if you need help

Another purpose of this topic is to revisit the game and its time period:

• Do you have any memories or associations with this game itself?
• What about its system or era?
• What aspects of retro gaming were common at the time?
• What other games from the same time period are you familiar with?
• What are you expecting from this game in particular?

Finally, this topic is the beginning discussion for people starting to play it:

• Post updates sharing your thoughts as you play.
• Ask for help if you get stuck.
• Offer help to others.

It is recommended that you reply to your own posts if you are making consecutive updates so that they are in the same thread.

IMPORTANT: Any links to the game should be legal distributions of the game only. Please do NOT link to any unauthorized copies.

IMPORTANT: Put any spoilers in a dropdown block. Copy/paste the block below if needed.

<details>
<summary>Spoilers</summary>

Spoiler text goes here.
</details>

FAQ

Closing Thoughts

How appropriate, you fight like a cow.

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
Yas Marina Circuit
December 5-7, 2025

Next race:

Pre-Season Testing 2026 - Sakhir
Bahrain International Circuit
February 11-13 & 18-20, 2026

Australian Grand Prix
Albert Park Circuit
March 5-7, 2026

See you all next year -- Enjoy the break!

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Hey! You wanna know why we're here? Go read this. It's because Sony UK's marketing department misappropriated £100k for random campaigns they couldn't possibly get in front of higher execs in time, which they used to make cardboard flyers saying the PS1 was "more powerful than god" and had perforations in the perfect size to roll up as roaches for people to toke up in the Playstation room at your local club. Yeah, baby.

They also mention the same T-Rex that Rodney Greenblat saw! That had to have been one rad fucking dinosaur. Anyway.

We've had more than our fill of rapping, bunnies, crises, electric shocks, and Pepsi this month. Outside the novelty, why do these crazy-ass games matter? WELL:

• It's great upheaval! CDs weren't just a major shift in storage, but production and cost. CDs took something like a week to order instead of two or three months. Imagine you have an extra eight weeks or so to develop an idea and put it in front of an exec, and they're not spending buckets on the cartridges. Why not accept those ideas? Why not take the risks? We're not quite at the indie boom and the internet, but it was certainly quite a step in development and risk-taking for the end product.

• Fuckin' money! Much like Nintendo's infamous war chest, Sony firmly planted themselves at the top of the pole for a long while. All this speed meant that - per GamePro's approximation in 1997 - there were 400 PlayStation games were in development by the end of 1996, whereas the Saturn had ~200 and the N64 had ~60. That variety lead to something like a 4-game attach rate to people buying a PS1 console, and the games themselves cost less because the CDs were cheaper. I was an N64 kid, but those cartridges were expensive. (Plus all the rando peripherals - the transfer pak? Expansion pak? The VMU for Hey You Pikachu!? Jesus, my parents were good to me.) The PS1 probably gave people leeway to take a buying risk on a zany idea. Even from more conservative spenders, it had to have been way more appealing to anyone on the fence.

• Music games! We had two here, and the Playstation was the home of Bemani for quite a while. Not much question why for the developer of the Walkman...

• That T-Rex! Golly!

• Age! Mascots and color grabbed kids, but kids aren't necessarily attracted to cool vector line art and an outlet for enormous CD collections. (They also, hopefully, weren't rolling too many joints at the club?) There was plenty of room to attract kids with Spyro or Crash - why not push the median age up at the same time? One study estimated that the "average gamer" was something like a 30 y/o woman in the 00s; nudging that number up and broadening the appeal had a lot to do with Sony's aggressive marketing. Another neat idea I saw mentioned was that the number of extreme sports games being produced gave video games another angle as a sort of lifestyle machine; Tony Hawk's Pro Skater itself was just as skate-punk as its people and bands. It sounds like a lofty thought, but THPS2 got me to pick up a skateboard, sooo...

• Finally, Japan! Obviously the 80's and early 90's brought so many mascots and characters out of Japan with enduring appeal, like Mario and Sonic, but their impact was very often with localization or marketing crews adapting that. Here we have stuff that's very distinctly Japanese making its way over here, rather than getting edited in trepidation over the original idea attaching. Why not? Throw a couple CDs our way, see what sticks.

And as a reminder, we're only scratching the surface! This console is a trove. I wanted to wait until the Remove thread to discuss more games, so the biggest one I'd leave everyone with is LSD: Dream Emulator, which is as much an art installation as it is a "game". You wander around randomized environments and "wake up" after 10 minutes or by being killed by things like lions, cars, or giant dudes coated in kanji characters. It's pretty fucking weird, and it was a fairly obvious point of growth from other projects like Yume Nikki, itself a springboard for dozens of ideas in games like Doki Doki Literature Club and Undertale. More recent popular projects like hypnagogia 催眠術 and Ena: Dream BBQ have obvious lineage - the former was from an LSD-themed game jam!

There are SO many others. Gaball Screen, a shoe-flying simulator (??) released by a music label where you collect music videos produced by Tetsuya Komuro. There's Heart of Darkness, a puzzle-platformer and influence for contemporary "gore game" horror titles. Its greatest puzzle is perhaps its absolutely baffling E rating! And No One Can Stop Mr. Domino... Really? No one?? Who possibly can???

We're left a neat legacy of ideas, experiments, and a time capsule for the advent of the CD-ROM, to those brave enough to dig through the library. Nintendo may leave a creative mark of their on their games, but the marks all over these games are maybe left by the machinery itself. A console that was willing to foster weirdos and prop up their chance to shine? The Playstation was radical.

_{Yo, and that T-Rex tho?}

That concludes this month of our COLOSSAL GAME ADVENTURE! I imagine this was a less-accessible month, so for those tenacious enough to get the games running I salute you!

This topic is to share your thoughts on our selection, and weird shit on the Playstation in general:

The good
The bad
The fun
The interesting
What ideas aged well
What ideas were total crap
The things it reminded you of
Other games that belong here
And absolutely anything else!

We've got an extra ten days. so feel free to keep playing or to throw other PS1 curios at the group.

Next month, December 2025, will be The Secret of Monkey Island, hosted by the esteemed u/balooga! Thankfully that should be a MUCH easier game to get running than Vib-Ribbon, so be ready to walk the plank! (For less than twenty bucks!)

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Qatar Grand Prix
Lusail International Circuit
November 28-30, 2025

Next race:

Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
Yas Marina Circuit
December 5-7, 2025

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

This is the twentieth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing We are Legion (We are Bob) by Dennis Taylor. This is the final book discussion for the year. We will start again in January with Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bissen.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.

And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Las Vegas Grand Prix
Las Vegas Strip Circuit
November 20-22, 2025

Next race:

Qatar Grand Prix
Lusail International Circuit
November 28-30, 2025

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.