If you are familiar with the magic eye technique and you apply it here, you might see something. I can see an alien.
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I see The Secret of Monkey Island.
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I see Elaine Marley naked.
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Who’s to say that isn’t the secret … 
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“if enough people buy the boxed copy…” Did we ever check if the contend of all Chuck.txt files is the same?
Yeah, somebody did.
Hi! I forgot that I got the box as gift from my aunt, now I found it and looked inside.
But I don’t have a floppy drive and I cant afford one. 
Really? You can get new and used ones really cheap (<10 Bucks)… 
you mean: a working one?
I don’t think the $10 drives can read photoshopped disks. Nice one, though 
.
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Well, you can’t say that for sure if you order them online. 
But yes: I’ve found used and new ones <10 Euros.
You may also need some kind of USB converter that costs more than the drive. 
The offers I found were/are also USB drives.
Sorry to revive this old topic, but it felt like the right place to mention that the Limited Run Games collector’s edition release of the Monkey Island Anthology also came with a floppy disk marked “Disk 22”. I’ve imaged it with ddrescue and made it available from The Internet Archive for those interested, but sadly it appears to be empty.
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That’s not sad. It makes quite sense, indeed. Plus, it’s reassuring. I’d hate to have missed something crucial for such a long time.
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Did anyone ever make progress on decrypting the chuck.txt hex? I figured I’d try some things out, it seemed like an interesting puzzle. My first thought is that the output is most likely text, and not an image like some here had supposed. Although whatever it is, it is most likely encrypted, and not with something simple like just doing a Xor with a key. When you look at the distribution of the data, it can tell you lots of things. A simple Xor would leave definite patterns. Even the “unbreakable” Xor encryption that the game itself uses leaves distinct patterns. I tried using all of the various methods of encryption that the game uses (xor/bnut/xxtea/etc), but none of them seemed to output anything useful.
So I figured, why don’t I take a look at the will in the game… maybe there’s a clue there. For starters, the binary definitely was the same thing as the hex, so maybe that meant they really did use some encryption. But again, the distribution of the data showed that it wasn’t a simple encryption. I tried to figure it out based on knowing the actual text that was output, but it didn’t seem to correlate. Then I took a look around at some of the files inside of the ggpack. I found one in particular to be very interesting, “NoteText_en.txt”. Inside of that file was actually all of the binary, hex, and text of the will, but with one important clue: “Online encrypt tool - Online tools Blowfish Mode CBC Hexa Key 42”
So I plugged the hex and stuff into that website and voila, it gave me the will text, but not the text I was expecting. It appeared to be a possibly earlier version of the will, one that they didn’t bother to re-encrypt later:
“I, Charles Edmund, being of sound mind and body but knowing the uncertainty of life, do hereby make, publish and declare this, my Last Will and Testament, revoking any and all wills and codicils previously made by me. I declare that I am making this Last Will and Testament of my own will, being under no threat of coercion or duress. I declare that I am not married. I declare that I have no children, natural or adopted. I hereby appoint Brant Bailiwick, JD, as executor of my will and direct that he serve without bond. It is my will that my entire estate of all property, real or personal, wherever located, pass to”
And there it ends abruptly. Some of the big differences are the lack of mention of not being coerced by any humans, or any references to Franklin, Delores or Lenore.
It’s possible they left this encryption info in this text file so that they could update it later, but they never did. Or perhaps it was a clue to us nerds in decrypting the chuck.txt. I tried using that same site to decrypt the chuck.txt hex, but it didn’t work. It’s possibly a different algorithm, a different key (although I do like 42), or a different implementation altogether (like maybe actually being an image). I tried several different keys, but couldn’t seem to find one that yielded anything. In these types of encryption, you’re practically lost without a key or an initialization vector. So if this was a clue to us, perhaps the key is apparent somewhere in the game or on the floppy disk, I just have no idea what that would be. Maybe we’re not meant to find out. Although I have a hard time believing that it’s just total hogwash, I doubt it’s anything amazing either, yet I still want to know, just like I want to collect all specks of dust! The distribution of the data does seem somewhat similar to various things that I’ve encoded using Blowfish CBC on that website, as opposed to just random data. I feel like I’m close, but that I can’t quite cross the finish line on this.
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