CGA-2025-12 🏴‍☠️🏝️🍌 REMOVE CARTRIDGE ⏏️ The Secret of Monkey Island

CGA Announcement: We have officially ejected the cartridges for The Secret of Monkey Island. No worries if you're not done -- there is still plenty of time left in the month to play!

This topic is for people to share their parting thoughts and experiences. Spoilers are NOT required to be hidden for this topic, so if you're reading this before you've finished, be careful about reading any comments here.

If you would like to be added or removed from the Notification List, please PM u/kfwyre.

I had a pretty fun time with this one! I'd never played the original but it's still legendary, so it was fun to see what all the fuss was about.

I played the Special Edition on my Steam Deck. I switched between the remake graphics and original a couple times, mainly sticking to the remake. Partially due to audio, partially because I actually did like the remake art style. I'd basically swap to see what some scenes or characters looked like.

One of the more interesting reasons I'd switch: some parts were easier in the original due to the verb menu being constantly on screen. In the remake you have to open the inventory, then bring up the action wheel... Or use the action and then open the inventory... And then if you accidentally choose an action before opening it, changing it back to the default action requires opening the menu...

Yeah, it could get tedious. Pretty sure I had that one open on the bit where we need to take the acid grog to the jail cell.

Another interesting insight, which I'd mentioned in the "insert cartridge" thread: some things just weren't as obvious between the different versions. Most notably: I didn't even notice the hatch on the ship until I consulted the guide! It's more obvious with the original graphics, but in the new art for the Special Edition, Meathook's head and shoulder partially blocks the stairs. Actually, I only noticed the stairs when looking up the images while discussing it in that thread. While playing I think I just clicked around until I found the right area to take me to it. The mast can also be climbed and is nearby, adding another reason for me to gloss over the hatch's existence.

Yeah... I would've been stuck on Act 2 for way too long if I hadn't had that guide open.

On that note, I did have a guide open while playing. Most of the puzzles weren't TOO frustrating, but I did need to consult it at some point in each act to figure out where I could go (I didn't realize we could reach the circus until I saw it mentioned in the guide, and only then did I realize that Guybrush was one of the small moving dots on the map), or which items should/could be used. Like others, I also doubt I would have figured out the seagull bit. That board doesn't look any different from the rest of the boards in either version.

The other two noteworthy "easy to miss clickable spots": the beak on the totem pole, and the sleeping pirate's feet. I'd clicked on other areas of those two items, so I didn't think to click on super-specific areas of each one. Totem pole in particular... yeah, I don't think I would have made the connection "feed the monkey bananas and take it there to hang off the totem pole so you can enter" without the guide. Or at least not for a VERY long time.

There's also a lot of inventory bloat (the guide I used even suggested to dump stuff in the pot in Act 2, which I read too late), so I honestly kept overlooking items. I'd look at them once, and then forget their descriptions. The key examples: I forgot the compass was magnetic, and I forgot one of those leaflets was titled "Getting Ahead in Navigation". I know wordplay is a thing in this franchise, but... yeah, no clue how long I'd take to start checking my inventory. I was about to search the whole island all over again!

And, I assume like everyone else, I am massively disappointed that we had no use for the staple remover. Would have been hilarious to use it to open one of the chests or something similar.

But that aside: it really was fun! I can absolutely see how it became such a classic. A lot of the jokes managed to stand the test of time pretty well, while other parts made me a bit nostalgic for that era in general. Granted, it was right before my time, but... well, I still grew up with a bunch of that humor and saw plenty of echoes of it still lingering online. And really... the puzzles aren't as impossible or ridiculous as the ones on TV Tropes under "Moon Logic". Or, well, any of the ones that got their own Wikipedia pages. There's a fun rabbit hole of ridiculous adventure game puzzles, and thankfully Monkey Island's puzzles do seem to all be the type you can eventually figure out yourself after trying everything. Eventually. Assuming you figure out the hatch exists in Act 2.

I didn't get to see any of the secrets you mentioned besides the three-headed monkey, though I have a question: how DO Guybrush and the others leave Monkey Island without the ship??

I first played this when it was released originally on the Amiga and enjoyed the heck out of it as a kid. It was fun trying to brainstorm ideas for solving the puzzles with my friends and the game took me months to get through as a result. Back in the day, to find a walkthrough you had to hope a gaming magazine published one at some point or phone up a (very expensive!) hotline, or hope a friend had found a solution. Or just never finish the game and make peace with it.

I remember playing the new remaster years ago (updated graphics/music/talk track) but it never really 'stuck' with me and I don't recall seeing it through to the end - so this time around I played the Ultimate Talkie edition - https://gratissaugen.de/ultimatetalkies/, combined with some CRT filters courtesy of SCUMMVM.

First the good. Graphics still really hold up today. It's clear a lot of passion went into making the most of the colors, limited number of available pixels and other things. The animation, backgrounds, setting and experience of being in the world are really great. It's a fun, silly place to be and every location is funny in its own way. The characters you meet are all unique and well written and full of personality. Navigating the world too just feels right - I never got snagged on scenery or stuck - Guybrush would always do his best to get somewhere with the minimum of fuss. The story too is engaging and moves at a good pace - I never felt I got stuck in one location too long or never had anything to aim for or lacked purpose. Even if I didn't know the exact solution the game did a good job of strongly hinting where I needed to go. LeChuck is a great bad guy overall and I always felt motivated to want to beat him and save Elaine. The sword fighting on the first island felt 'right' and, even though it was a little repetitive, it was really great fun hearing all the cursing spoken out loud for the first time. I also really liked the concept of not being able to die - it meant that I felt very free to just explore and try everything and see what happened - at worse nothing happens but at best I would get an amusing interaction or a fun joke. The cut-aways to LeChuck periodically also felt appropriate, fun, rewarding yet not over done. Perfectly balanced to move the story along but not so intrusive that I ever wanted to just skip through them and get back to adventuring.

Now the bad. I'll be honest I did have to use a guide more than once to get myself unstuck. I took way longer to find the rubber chicken in the voodoo house than I should have done (even though I remembered what I was supposed to use to get to that top part of the island). I also had no idea how to actually buy the boat from Stan; he never really gave good clues on how the haggling was going. I had to look up both what the monkey on Monkey Island did, as well as how to get him to open the door to the Monkey Head. The game had several very non-obvious puzzles and modern day adventure games do a much better job of leading you to solutions and highlighting important and interactable objects. Having a bunch of items in your inventory that, in the end, served no purpose felt a little unfair; I really wanted a use for the staple remover! I also feel it could have done with more music - the music that's there is amazing, even iconic, but when there is no music I really felt the silence, especially when stuck or trying different combinations of things to solve puzzles. Near the end my other half did start mocking Guybrush repeatedly saying 'I can't pick that up'. Lastly, something newer Lucasarts games added was the idea of 'double clicking' an exit to fast-travel there rather than watching your avatar walk slowly to the exit then load the next scene. Near the end I was low-key wishing they had added that QoL feature but it never ended up being a deal breaker for me as, thankfully, most places were just small enough that the exit was only a few seconds away.

Overall it's a great adventure game and started my own love affair with the genre. Following my completion I've gone on to start Monkey Island 2 and Curse of Monkey Island playthroughs - I can't wait to finish those and start my playthroughs of the Tales of Monkey Island, as well as the latest game from last year. Good work CGA - this was really good fun!

I, uh, didn't even bother with it, I'm sorry to say. I did install the Talkie version and began playing, but quickly grew exasperated with it, not for any flaws of its own, but just for the fact that I'm not feeling like playing a Talkie Adventure Game at the moment.

So, I really dropped the ball on this and ended-up just going back to what I had been playing in the first place, because it was hitting right for me in my limited game time. I still would like to play this in the future, although I'm beginning to come around to the idea that I may just not like Adventure games anymore. Granted, I was never an enormous fan of them, but I've played a few that I really loved, but they were many years ago when I was a different place in my life.

Anyway, I did in theory like the Talkie Edition; I thought the Special Edition graphics were absolutely hideous, so it was nice to be able to use the VGA graphics with the voice lines. My first exposure to Monkey Island was the third game which came on a PC Gamer demo disk many, many years ago and that immediately solidified the voice of Guybrush in my mind, so it was nice to hear it again, rather than just read the text of what little I did actually play.

I'm no adventure gamer, but I was curious to know what all the hubbub was about with this one. I've seen so many references to Monkey Island over the years that it really felt like a cultural touchstone that I wasn't part of. I'm glad to have finally played through this game to see it for myself.

I bought the Special Edition on Steam. I know it's the less "authentic" experience, but I figured it would be more accessible than using ScummVM, and that it might be cool to swap between graphics modes. I quickly found that I preferred the pixel art of the original, but then missed the voiced dialogue of the remaster. I mostly stuck to the remaster, but never quite got used to Guybrush's dumb haircut.

On the whole, I enjoyed the game, but didn't love it. I found myself getting frustrated at points. I got properly stuck probably five times in my playthrough, and spent a large amount of time retracing my steps, combining random items, or testing different verbs out.

Sometimes I just missed a visual cue. It took me ages to spot the Fort on the overview map of Monkey Island, as there weren't glowing lights to mark points of interest like on Mêlée Island. I also missed the climbable wall at the river fork for an embarrassingly long time.

Some puzzles did feel a little unclear as well. Early on when a seagull was guarding a fish, it was only by complete accident that I clicked on a loose plank to scare it off. I saw no visual indicator there. Later, when Guybrush comments, "Those luscious, juicy bananas look ready to fall off!", I expected to be able to shake the tree, not to need to build a catapult.

The biggest miss for me was near the end, during the cave sequence underneath the Monkey Idol. I spent roughly an hour trying to figure out how the room logic worked. I came up with various theories about how to decipher the symbols that appeared in each room, trying things like assigning numeric values to them and considering how they interact. Apparently the answer was "Just leave and talk to the cannibals again", which I found very unsatisfying.

I generally enjoy puzzle games, but I think I feel more frustration with adventure games because I never know if I have all of the pieces I need. Should I keep hunting around the island to pick up random detritus, or continue sitting here, twiddling my thumbs, trying different combinations of things?

That said, I did think some of the puzzles were very clever. I really liked making the soup in Act 2. It was fun to determine the substitutions for items, like gunpowder for brimstone, or a Jolly Roger's flag for a human skull. I had a good laugh when I finally worked out that my final ingredient, a "live chicken", was actually of the rubber variety.

I think Act 2 was my favourite, but Act 1 had some great moments as well. The sword fighting in particular was a lot of fun, and a super original idea. There was a bit of frustrating RNG in finding the right insults/retorts, but thematically it just fit the game so well. I do wish we'd seen more sword-insulting later in the game, though.

Act 3 was the weakest for me, for a few reasons. There was a lot more travel time, and I began to tire of watching Guybrush trek across the jungle or paddle around. I also had so much junk accumulated by this point that it made some of the puzzles feel unfocused and random. "Can I use this staple remover on a posted notice? Nope... it's never the dang staple remover."

I do appreciate that the game didn't have any true fail states. At worst, it may have included hints in dialogue that were non-repeatable. I did make plentiful notes as I played, though, and some of them even proved relevant later on.

Even if the gameplay didn't work for me, I still really enjoyed the theme and creativity. The writing was genuinely hilarious, and the constant quips, wisecracks, and throwbacks were what really made the game memorable for me. I think my favourite gag was the pirates having a long conversation about tossing a knife that was "used in a felony" into the water, only to abruptly decide otherwise and walk away. Hysterical, and worth having the voiced dialogue on for.

Even many of the fourth wall breaks felt well-done, like the "No animals were harmed" disclaimer after poisoning the poodles. There was a lot of self-aware humour, and many cute references to other LucasArts games too. By the way, have you played Loom™? It's an extraordinary adventure with an interface of magic, stunning, high-resolution, 3D landscapes, sophisticated score and musical effects. Beat the rush! Go out and buy Loom™ today!

Ahem.

So to summarize, I didn't click with the adventure gameplay, which is disappointing but not unexpected. However, I still greatly enjoyed the character, writing, and general charm this game offered. Best of all, I learned how to run my mouth off while sword fighting like a true pirate.

Pleased to say I actually finished on time for a change! I did resort to the guide on several occasions though, generally more frequently towards the end of the game.

I played the SCUMM VM talkie version with original CD audio, and after some initial struggles with my captions being off by default I was able to get pretty comfortable with the setup. This was my first time playing this game, but I played a lot of DOS games as a kid so the adventure genre wasn't an entirely new experience. The writing was great, and the CD music sounded really good. Some of the game's jokes had me laughing way too hard for how stupid they were as well, which is a nice change of pace from what I normally play.

Like other people have mentioned, I feel like I would have struggled to finish without using the guide. Some solutions are so abstract or require such specific mouse placement that I'm honestly surprised anyone made it through the game without some sort of assistance. Once I had the row boat on Monkey Island, I was more or less unwilling to try to solve things manually as travelling between the different locations was taking so long. Trying to guess what to click or what item to use become a lot less fun for me when you are given too many possible places to try things.

Overall I'm definitely glad I stuck it out, even if I had to use the guide. My favourite part of the game was definitely the art style, it has pretty great pixel art if you ask me. I watched some videos of the remastered version (and Return to Monkey Island), and I don't think I can see myself connecting with the new style.

I don't think I'd recommend this game to just anyone at this point in time - I can see it being too frustrating for most modern gamers. I am sure there are some very persistent people out there who would enjoy it though!

I am also a tiny bit disappointed I didn't help the natives upgrade their security.

Side note: I went on a bit of a Wikipedia deep dive about LucasArts, and was amazed to learn that Nancy Cartwright (Bart Simpson) voiced Putt-Putt for a few games... this blew my childhood mind!