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1. #Monkey island telltale series#
2. #Monkey island telltale tv#

On release, The Secret of Monkey Island received positive reviews, but sold only modestly according to Gilbert. “Being funny was more important than being authentic or piratey… and I think we were all influenced by 1970s popular media at least as much as by any of the reference material.” CARNIVALS & CORPORATIONS

#Monkey island telltale tv#

“But when it came to writing the dialogue, you may notice that many Monkey Island characters speak in an anachronistic and decidedly non-piratey manner… Stan the ship salesman, for instance, was modelled at least partly on Californian used car salesman and TV personality Cal Worthington. “We watched old pirate movies to get in the mood – Captain Blood and so on,” explains Dave Grossman. It incorporates a number of anachronistic elements into its world-building, including everything from meta-references to game development, to allusions to theme parks, to a unique spin on sword-fighting that prioritised the quality of your insults over how well you could wield a sword. Soon after completing the three tests set out by the local pirate leaders, however, he becomes privy to a sinister kidnapping plot and sets out to rescue local governess Elaine Marley from the evil ghost pirate LeChuck – whose hide-away is located within the fiery caverns beneath Monkey Island.Īll this may sound like your typical pirate fare, but The Secret of Monkey Island is anything but. The Secret of Monkey Island begins with the young and excitable Guybrush Threepwood arriving on Mêlèe Island in the hopes of becoming a mighty pirate. Talking about the storyline of the characters and the visuals and storyboarding and plot and jokes and puzzles.” “The whole team would often get together in Gary Winnick’s office in a barn on Skywalker Ranch and just sit around, talking about the game in kind of global fashion. “It was a very small team, and it was very collegiate,” says Ferrari, a background artist on The Secret of Monkey Island.

We’d also worked together on a number of graphic adventures by that time, including Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken, Loom, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.” “We were pretty similar in age and sense of humour. “We developed a close-knit group, and we all had a great deal in common,” states Winnick. Among those on the team at Skywalker Ranch were Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman who were helping with the programming, story, and design, as well as art director Gary Winnick and artists Steve Purcell, Martin ‘Bucky’ Cameron, and Mark Ferrari, to name a few. Putting together a top-notch team of artists, programmers, and designers at Lucasfilm, Gilbert began developing an idea for a pirate adventure game – the fifth project to take advantage of the SCUMM engine. I never liked fantasy, and didn’t want to make a game about dragons.

“It seemed to me that one of the reasons was, fantasy was hot (as it still is). “It all started from being frustrated that Sierra sold way more games than we did,” Gilbert recalls. But though it may be true that Lucasfilm drew from both of these sources to derive elements for the game, Ron Gilbert claims that there was another more pressing concern that led him to the idea. When people talk about the origins of The Secret of Monkey Island, they often point to Tim Powers’ 1987 novel On Stranger Tides and Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride. But first, we have to head back to where it all began…

#Monkey island telltale series#

We contacted a number of ex-Lucasfilm and Telltale staff over a period of months, to talk to them about how the series came to be, the highs and lows, and their hopes for the future. It’s spawned a number of sequels, many of which were developed after Gilbert’s own departure from the company in 1992 to form Humongous Entertainment.Īs this year marks the 30th anniversary of the original game, Wireframe reached out to the developers who helped create the series, and those who carried on its legend long after the original creators had left. The brainchild of Ron Gilbert, an employee at Lucasfilm who’d previously worked on the ground-breaking adventure game Maniac Mansion and the SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) engine, The Secret of Monkey Island is heralded today as one of the most influential point-and-click adventures of all time. “Somewhere deep in the Caribbean” – those were the words that spirited a generation of players away to a land of pirates, grog, and three-headed monkeys.