Is MI1 better than MI2 only for nostalgic reasons?

me too! It took a few sessions/hours for me to figure out you could revert things… despite the comment Bobbin makes " it’s twisting enough as it is… If only I knew a way to UNTWIST it"

He prefers the EGA version! From the title screen onwards. And when I asked him “why?”, he listed a few things (his words or paraphrased):

  • in the EGA version’s first screen, it is night/darker, which is more beautiful
  • the elders turning into swans and flying away through a rip in the air is much clearer in EGA (he complained during the cutscene ‘how can one see that on this (VGA) version, for heaven’s sake?’
  • the VGA trees are ugly
  • the voice of Bobbin sounds like Guybrush [which seems to be a bad thing]
  • the closup of mother Hetchel is not in this [VGA] version

So a modern day kid playing a 26 year old game prefers the EGA original because THAT is the version he first saw/played just an hour before. I am sure (knowing my son) it would have been the other way around if I would have shown the VGA version first. (I know by showing MI VGA before the EGA). But it is a bit telling of all the remastering efforts done these days as if it would not connect to kids today. There still is hope left for the next generation of gamers (or at least for my children)

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Please, when you will show your boy Zak McKracken And The Alien Mindbenders™, give him the IBM/PC 32 color version. Not the FM-Towns version… Can I count on you? :sunglasses:

Sure thing! Although it will be more likely the C64 version!!

Thanks Suhsi, these are very interesting insights. Do your kids like old adventure games at all?

I want to throw one thought in: I for myself prefer the EGA version of Loom over the VGA version - and I have played the VGA CD version before the EGA version. So are you sure that your son would prefer the VGA version if he played that first? Maybe overall the EGA version of Loom is better than the VGA version?

I am just very curious who came up with the idea to make a SE first? Somebody had to make a first approach before it was sent to Malaysia. I dont care if they kept it on mind for years…there is still a person that pushed it.
Then there is a another person, (art director and producer) who decided to change the art style completely.

Anyway, i played MI1 when i was 12 years old… and i read about MI2 in german PCgamer a few years later.

They are interested for sure! Monkey island still seems a bit too difficult to understand for the younger ones, but Loom seemed to strike a perfect balance (oddly, it is the last of the SCUMM games I played only a few years ago for the first time)
They also love playing Machinarium (which has the advantage of being silent/mimed, so even my 5-year old loves to sit, watch and toss ideas around while another kid controls the mouse.
Now, they also like playing the most dumbening casual games on mobile devices, but do prefer the “robot game”.

My son: probably, yes. Why else would he prefer MI VGA over MI EGA? But on the other hand, my eldest daughter did not play either version of loom and when I asked her (showing the VGA first), she also preferred the bigger pixels of the EGA version. (She’s got an artist’s eye). Maybe I should let her play the VGA version first as an experiment

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I’m curious: did it ever happen to you to like more a sequel than the first installment of an adventure game series?

Poor guinea pigs! :smiley:

But sacrificing children for science is a justifiable act. :neutral_face:

That shameful advertisement still works after decades.

I agree with that.

That’s interesting. Maybe humans have some kind of bias towards the first example of something they interact with. Something like this actually exists for memory (it’s called “primacy effect”) but I don’t know if a similar phenomenon has been observed also for “personal preferences”.

Anyway, the amateur statistician in me is telling that I shouldn’t hypothesize a general rule after observing one single sample. :stuck_out_tongue:

We need more guinea pigs. :neutral_face:

Are you referring to the complexity of its story?

Oh, wait, just to be sure: you guys played the FULL version of “Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge”, right? Not the “Lite” thing. :neutral_face:

None of you is a game reviewer, right?

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Yes. Definitely Larry and Space Quest. In the Kyrandia series part 3 is my favorite. And if I remember correctly I preferred Simon the Sorcerer 2 and Discworld 2.

But if we talk about LucasArts games: No. (if I’m allowed to consider DOTT not a sequel).

Me? :slight_smile: Of course I played the hard mode. And then the easy mode. And then several times the hard mode. :slight_smile:

Uhm… Nooooo? But I, hm, know a friend. A good friend. That might be a game reviewer. Sometimes. Yes. What was the question?

Ever heard of Oliver Franzke (@p1xelcoder) who is working for Double Fine?
It’s partly his fault and the team he was working with back at LucasArts.

Here is an interesting (technical) talk about a lot of (remastered) adventure games he worked on:

Specifically jump here if you want to here about MI1:SE: https://youtu.be/38kpv_TYRKE?t=1892

Full of course.
Lite is for someo… err… somebody else.

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To be honest, I’ve never even checked to see if easy mode works.

Nice!

I don’t remember being stuck on loom either. It was definitely easier than many games out there.

I remember being stuck for weeks on MI1 playing together with my older brother because we hadn’t opened the cereal box on the ship.

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Funny story: after demonstrating the SE version, where I just loaded a game, we cut off the peg leg and got to steal a hamer. Then I loaded my CD original, started LITE for once (I don’t remember ever having done that), went into the woodshop, tried to pick up the hamer, expecting to be told “don’t touch that, it’s mine”, when instead he just said “go ahead, Just return it when you are done.”
What!!! Poor Woody…
It also made me realise that the light version might prove to be difficult if you play it right after the hard version, because you might be looking for convoluted solutions to something as simple as just picking it up.
Funny? Well, at least a true story.

A combination of its non-lineair puzzle chains and the language barrier (not just English, but ye olde piratey foul-mouthery on top- which makes the whole insult swordfighting a difficult exercise with me instant translating every line).

[edit] Plus somehow the distaff interface, which may seem odd to veterans as ourselves, was actually very natural and self-explanatory to my young children. More so than the classic verb interface.

That has happened to some Thimbleweed Park players as well. They played it on Hard and when they re-played it on Casual, they were expecting to find similar puzzles when actually some puzzles (and even entire places and characters) were no more necessary.

(On an slightly related note, I have also seen several people playing on Casual but trying to follow an “Hard” walkthrough. They were completely confused. :stuck_out_tongue: )

I have almost forgotten all Loom puzzles (which is good, because it means that I can play it again). Were they more linear than the Monkey Island ones?

I had the same experience with TWP, casual mode. I stuck for a while while trying to get the money for the photocopier. Then I tried anyway. Et voila.

The worst you can do really is forgetting to write down spells. Everything else comes down to very very basic logic.

Let’s say that the puzzle dependency chart of Loom doesn’t fan out so much and also has more one-way bottle necks than MI.