I didn't participate last month so I forgot that this one was up next! Ended up buying it just now for $2 on Fanatical, and am now installing it to my Steam Deck. I've never played it before, but this should be a fun one!

Actually so excited for this. Been on my list for a long time. Not sure how I would play it. Only have a Mac and iOS devices with me.

Been looking forward to this one.

Back when the 3rd game came out, PC Gamer magazine came with a the full game on a demo disk. Definitely had to use the internet to get through it. I haven't played the first game since then. I have a vague memory of some of the puzzles, but I think I'll definitely will need to figure some things out again.

My wife always references this, as does Yahtzee Crowshaw in his weekly a-hole reviews.

I've always been curious about how this overlaps with Kings Quest/Goblins' Quest and Sid Meier's Pirates which I'm at least sort of familiar with. Looking forward to giving it a whirl on Scumm

I will be going on a vacation this week, and when I get back I will be busy working on makeup for school projects, so it’s sadly not likely I’ll be able to participate. This might be a good thing because I feel like my opinions have been pretty negative towards these so far….

To be honest I wasn’t initially looking forward to this one because this game felt like a nostalgia club kind of deal. Lucasarts was around my childhood but it was never a part of it. But I have grown fond of the idea of playing it to see what I have been missing out on.

You know how you have a particularly deep connection with certain things because you were there when they were released? As opposed to something that you also love, even consider part of your identity, but which either came out before your time or you for whatever reason discovered only long after everyone else. And how your relationship between the two groups of things is often a little different?

Monkey Island is the earliest example that I can remember of a game series where I had played the first game and was excited about its first sequel coming out. I even vividly remember the very moment that I became aware of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. This spread in a Finnish gaming magazine from March 1992, which I just saw for the first time in over 30 years, seems forever burnt into my visual memory.¹ I was ten years old at the time.

The magazine reviewed the game with scores of 91 and 96 out of 100. That's two individual reviewers, one of who was Niko Nirvi, a man whose name every Finnish gamer from the 1980s and 90s is likely familiar with. He's an absolute icon and a big part of my childhood as well.

The list of games reviewed in that issue of the magazine is actually pretty insane. In addition to Monkey Island 2, they have reviews of Civilization, Populous II, Another World, Eye of the Beholder 2, Wing Commander II: Spec Ops 1 and F1 Grand Prix, all of which would deserve a month in the CGA schedule. Now, I think this was the first issue of a new magazine that partly replaced an old Commodore magazine, so I suppose they collected all of the best games from late 1991 to make their first issue as good as possible. But still, that's an insane collection of now classic titles to have come out around the same time.

I now also remember the primary reason why I picked up the issue all those years ago: it included walkthroughs for the first three King's Quest games, and I was quite stuck in King's Quest II. It was fun to read their solve now.

Anyway, that's a pretty long and rambling way to start a post about The Secret of Monkey Island without mentioning the game itself. And the funny thing is, while I vividly remember my reaction to the magazine's review of Monkey 2 being "oh my god, there is a sequel to his game that I really liked", I don't actually remember my first encounter with Monkey 1. Now, based on my reaction to the review, I must not only have played the first Monkey Island before the magazine came out, but I must also have quite liked it. And yet, I remember absolutely nothing of when or where or how I may have first played The Secret of Monkey Island.

I very much remember playing Monkey Island 2, though. First in the summer of 1992 with my friend on his computer, and the next year again on my own new PC. An English-Finnish-English pocket dictionary in one hand and no access to walkthroughs or online help in the other, we somehow managed to get through the game. Monkey 2 was the first in the series that introduced an easy mode, described as a welcome addition by the Finnish reviewers as it allowed access also for "beginners, game reviewers and wussies". But if you want a real challenge, try playing these games without speaking the language.

I also remember playing The Curse of Monkey Island some years later. This was together with my sister when I visited her in the late 90s. We debated the new graphical style. She loved it, I didn't. Guybrush looked like he had swallowed a rake. I was very snobby about series creator Ron Gilbert no longer being involved. Neither were Tim Schafer or Dave Grossman. Many of the jokes felt derivative. We also played through Discworld II on that same visit. I liked it more. She had her computer in a basement. It was a great trip.

By the time I got to Escape from Monkey Island, a year or so after its release, I had switched continents a couple of times and now found myself in a new country, a little lost, like a stranger in a strange land. I remember the chair (well, an ottoman, really) that I sat on in the evenings as I stumbled through the game. The controls were a bit odd, the 3D graphics nauseating. I wasn't much into gaming at that point in my life but a new Monkey Island title was still of interest to me, even if this one wasn't a particularly good one. It was most likely the only game that I played that year. Perhaps it reminded me of my childhood. Although, looking back now, I consider that version of vili still to essentially be, if not quite a child, not all that much older either.

I also distinctly remember struggling with Telltale's purchase system later that decade. Something to do with my credit card. I never really got too excited about their episodic Tales of Monkey Island and found it terribly inferior to their Sam & Max games. And so, my focus was instead on the remakes, the first of which came out around the same time as Tales started. Might have been the same week or something?

That said, I didn't care for the Monkey 1 Special Edition graphics or animations. They felt generic and soulless compared to the original pixel art, while the revamped user interface was frankly just stupid. The Monkey 2 remaster was a bit better in every way, although I still preferred the original releases, which by this point I had played through multiple times. Still, I was excited to play the games on my Xbox 360 in the living room, and I continued through Curse and Escape to replay them all. I remember my wife-to-be teasing me as Guybrush's voice actor kept going "Mmmmm.... nope", over and over again, as I tried out everything. We married a couple of years later. It's still a line that she says every now and then at an opportune moment. I'm glad she didn't say it on the wedding day.

That said, I can't for the life of me remember which Monkey game actually has that voice line. Anyone happen to know?

Those Special Edition releases are now almost as old as the originals were at the time the Special Editions came out. Time is weird. And for a while, it seemed like the story of Monkey Island had ended with the remasters. Then, one April Fool's day, Rob Gilbert, who had for almost 20 years declared his blog free of April Fool's nonsense, announced Return to Monkey Island. Some took it as a joke, but those of us who had followed him through the years were instantly celebrating. It was the best April Fool's day ever.

Since it's been just a couple of years, I naturally remember Return very well. I believe it came out on a Monday. A childhood friend and I, living in different countries, exchanged notes every evening that week as we played the game after work. Despite being stuck with a seagull puzzle for quite a while, I finished Return by Friday after dinner. I loved it. I was perhaps a little disappointed that I wouldn't be spending my weekend with it like I had planned, but the game was everything that I had hoped it could be, and more. I know a lot of people had a less positive reaction, but Ron and Dave's take on the legacy of the original story really resonated with me.

I'm tempted to replay Return this month, as it's the only good Monkey game that I have played only once. Could I somehow find the time to go through the whole Ron Gilbert trilogy? I would love to.

Anyway. All this goes to illustrate that I have plenty of great memories connected to my first playthroughs of Monkey Island games. Those memories feature many people that I love, various places that I have visited and lived in, different decades and varying phases of my life.

And yet, I remember absolutely nothing of my first encounter with the series. Funny, that.

Especially as it's probably my favourite of the Monkey games.

I believe I was there. Or I would at least very much like to insist that it is true. But I just can't remember any of it.²

^{1: This paragraph is almost certainly, while not a lie, at least a carefully worded representation of the past that aims to mislead you for narrative purposes. Yes, I do vividly remember when I first became aware of Monkey Island 2. And yes, that magazine spread is something that I remember all the way back from 1992. However, the two sentences are not directly connected. I am about 90% certain that the first time I learnt about the existence of the game was actually the February 1992 issue of another Finnish computer magazine, and I am equally certain that I remember how that article looked as well. However, as I couldn't find an online copy of that issue, I can't be sure, and for the sake of narrative flow, I decided to word things the way I do above.}

^{2: With footnote 1 and its suggestion of my brain's preferences for slight autofiction in mind, I suppose it is possible that I didn't play Monkey Island 1 until after Monkey Island 2. However, I genuinely think that I did. I just can't remember. I do recall my reaction to the magazine(s) just as I describe them above, which should mean that I was familiar with the first game at the time the second one came out. And I do remember re-playing Monkey 1 before Curse came out, and it specifically not being my first time of playing it. But I also can't always trust my memories. It's been over 30 years of monkeys, after all. They do something to your brain.}