We know that George Lucas allowed ILM team in Malaysia to re-create two Special Editions…
My question are: Were these remakes good enough? Have you seen everything you have expected? Could that be better? What would you change or improve?
There also been a discussions about remaking Monkey Island 3. I am not sure about that really, because it has been SVGA and the paintings done by Will Tyler are gorgeous.
If you have the chance right now, would you make a new remake of MI1 and MI2? Why?
I wouldn’t mind a CoMI remake, actually, but similar to the DoTT one. Higher resolution scans of the backgrounds, and a depixellation of the characters. The nearest neighbour scaling of the sprites was ugly in that game (especially for Guybrush), whereas it works well for lower res pixel art IMO.
so you are happy with MI1 and MI2 look, and you would like to see remake of MI3. What about resolutions? If we have 4K, 5K and 8K monitors today.
BTW MI3 look better than DOTT remastered, because it has more detailed shades and lighting.
Monkey Island 1 has been damaged enormously… it looks like they had smaller budget and time compare Monkey Island 2 SE.
This is the quality of art & animation should look like! Monkey Island trailer made by Blur!
Just making a case for the box art designs of ME2 and ME2SE here.
Monkey Island Original 1991
LeChucks face is like a realistic looking skull, really scary. Guybrush looks like he is in great pain. Generally one of the most striking and best Video Game Cover Artworks of all time!
Monkey Island Special Edition
LeChucks face looks like the drawing of a skull, more like on a poison warning label. Guybrush looks like he was meditating or something, I definitly don´t feel his pain. Really more cartoonish in general, just not as impressive.
It seems to me, since Lucas knew he will send the company to Disney…he decided to go with Disney art style 
look at new ducktales :o) 90s version has nice painted artworks, and 2017 version is a vector art :o)
The Special Editions for Monkey Island 1 and 2 were released in 2009 and 2010 respectively. Disney bought Lucasfilm 2012. Disney had nothing to do with the Special Editions.
The redesign of Guybrush in MI1SE is just horrendous. On the other hand, I was really pleased with the backgrounds and art in general.
I really think MI2SE found the sweet spot in terms of character design. Yeah, it drifts from the original realistic feeling, but I’d still say it’s acceptable.
This has been discussed numerous times in this forum, low-res art forces you to fill in the details, and the realistic backgrounds and character design of MI2 was really good at that.
That’s because the first one was painted by Steve Purcell, and Steve Purcell is a freaking master.
Just wondering why they couldnt reach the Blur version quality. They were technologicaly ready…and they used Blur to make a video for them.
This quality full 3d version would be awesome.
With MI2:SE they had learned from MI1:SE and made more or less everything right.
e.g. MI1:SE lacked voices in classic mode, no commentary, no achievements.
Since I prefer classic graphics I didn’t really care about the new one graphics except for curiosity (i.e. I’ve looked at every room in this new mode).
We all play the Ultimate Editions anyway, right?
Regarding MI3:
When creating a Special Edition we would have to add a classic mode, isn’t the current one already HD? 
But I agree with @pygy that scaling the actors like in TWP wouldn’t be that bad.
Another problem with MI3 for a proper remaster is the same they had with Full Throttle and Grim Fandango: Since it doesn’t use the classic verb interface the screen ratio would be off a lot, needing additional art to be created.
If I had to complain about something regarding TWP’s art it would be actor scaling. It feels wrong and breaks the magic. This is most noticeable in rooms like the Mansion outdoors and the Vista.
I’m not sure if the pixel perfect mode will fix that because it was buggy in the first release.
I think the MI1 remake looks bad. The MI2 remake is fine (with the small caveat that the Guybrush Wanted poster doesn’t use the graphics of the MI1 remake), but I prefer the original.
CoMI is different because it was meant as a high resolution game, but still crippled by the low palette used to render the sprites (the outlines disappear when scaled down). So I think that a re-rendering of the original art + vectorization of the sprites, taking advantage of modern hardware wouldn’t be a bad thing. A facelift, not a remake.
Edit: look here for some bad Guybrush jaggies… It clashes with the smooth, lush backgrounds.
… working at Disney these days
This “blur” trailer seems to me a clear example where the lack of animations is noticeable in highres but not in lowres. If you do highres, you also need to make the leaves and trees swing slightly with the wind; and you also need vibrating shadows on the ground. Without this, it all looks fake. Lowres looks ok. (because it feels like a painting, not like it tries to replicate reality)
My point is, these days everything seems to be watered down in order to “not scare the kids”. When there were still imdb forums they were full with concerned mothers´ “is this movie too scary for my children” posts.
The kids who saw the original Monkey Island 2 box art probably also grew up on stuff like The Secret Of Nimh, Watership Down or Return To Oz. Most of us really turned out fine.
Not too much of that sort around these days, and then they complain when their children grow up to be “snowflakes”.
I’ve always wondered if a patch for scummvm could fix that (the jaggered scaling of Guybrush and other characters in CoMI).
I don’t remember there were some remakes before SE versions… I only remember some Czech team that copied the character from original game and they were selling it as its theirs
https://doupe.zive.cz/clanek/9-ceskych-adventur-ktere-si-musite-zahrat-jeste-dnes#part=1
but honestly…Monkey Island 1 SE sucks, there are lots of art glitches, most of the environments looks like rough sketches. I think that was the deal at studio to keep more money for MI2SE. MI2SE looks better in most cases, but there are still lots of rough/concept looking artworks that would need more attention.
Guybrush has been changed completely to a weird stylized character that nobody can take seriously anymore, not talking about other characters design.
So for me… only improvement that has been done correctly is the audio + VO. Rest of it sucks.
Surprisingly and unfortunately, they have brought Guybrush’s weird look to MI3 and that cause complete breakage of what they have been achieving with previous two original games. Sometimes, the innovation is not in place.
just my opinion.
