I’ve played several Monkey Island games, including those produced by Telltale, and even if I’m not crazy about the most modern productions, I don’t regret having played them.
Still, when it comes to Monkey Island, I divide the games of the series between two categories:
★ ★ ★ Made by Ron (The Real Original Story) ★ ★ ★
everything else
Practically, I consider everything after Monkey Island 2 “non canon”. It can be good and fun and whatever, but in my opinion it’s not related to the original ideas that Ron had in mind.
Of course, this strict take on the production of the Monkey Island games is the result of the fact that when I was a teenager I perceived the end of MI2 as a giant and puzzling cliffhanger and since then I’m still waiting for the third chapter of the series.
My question to you is: even if you like the MI games made by other people, do you consider them just secondary stuff that you used to fill your time in the hope that someday the “real” MI3 will be made?
I played them all, MI3, MI4 and the 5 chapters of Tales of Monkey Island.
Well, nowadays I agree with you: I distinguish between Original (MI1, MI2) and others.
I wrote nowadays , because back then I was playing, I was ignorant: I didn’t know the whole story behind the scenes.
I believed that TellTale Games was a new company funded by the same people once employed in Lucasfilm. I was wrong.
At the end, I enjoyed each game. They are all funny, after all. Even MI4, especially in the italian version dubbed in italian. The characters are very hilarious!
the Monkey Island story from Ron Gilbert, which is still unfinished.
the Monkey Island universe, which tell other tales of Guybrush Threepwood. I enjoyed Curse and Tales, as I treaded them as stories from this universe (MI3 shouldn’t have had a connection to the ending of MI2, though).
I think Ron should own MI, as it is his creation. And I’d really love to see the story’s ending.
CoMI felt like a professionally produced fan game to me. There were few new ideas and so much was recycled from the first two games… It turned what had been an ongoing story into a series with a formula. Also, I like my pixels large and non-square, thank you very much!
I didn’t play the fourth game. I somewhat enjoyed the Tell Tales episodes, but the universe wasn’t as deep as the ones found in the first two games. Too few characters, there was not enough life.
I’m still waiting for MI3 (CoMI wasn’t officially named MI3, hehe )
I find it hard to take Curse seriously given how trite so much of the game is. Even playing it many years ago without realising it had no real involvement from Ron Gilbert the game felt strange and off and already kind of non-canon, which has since been confirmed in my mind.
That’s another monkey wrench for me… I played it in French, in which the literal translation doesn’t have a second meaning (and I just googled the phrase whose figurative meaning in English I didn’t know about).
Retrospectively, a nice one indeed.
CoMI was a fun game (Especially part 4, now that you mention it), but it felt out of place.
I played in italian, and it was literally translated, too.
It was not necessary to know the second meaning (that I have discovered many years later, thanks to The Hangover movie), because you had to literally be bitten by the dog, and only after that, you could pickup its fur.
Another funny thing of MI4 was the navigation through time on a raft.
Personally I don’t like them and therefore I consider them secondary stuff.
Monkey 3 was painful. The atmosphere did not work. It felt fake, still. The gameplay was embarassing.
Monkey 4 I could not play for more than 10 minutes.
the telltale games… hmm, I remember they were a bit boring. (I liked Sam & max though: the one in space was possibly the funniest game I ever played, when you talked to the computer I cracked up)
I think remembering Ron saying he was involved at the beginning during design phase, brainstorming story ideas etc.
But there was no later/further involvement.
I personally think that only MI 1 & 2 are canonical. But, if Terrible Toybox decide to create a game without pixel-art, the art works ought to be drawn similar to the visual style of CoMI.
The visual style of The Whispered World seems to be inspired by CoMI, too, by the way.
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