May 23rd, 2009

Wes

There are many things I'm excited to see come to a hopeful fruition when E3 kicks off this year. Mass Effect 2. Legitimate games for the Wii. A resurgance of point-and-click adventure games for the DS. However, none of these has me as excited as the news that LucasArts is bringing back Monkey Island. Not only that, but it's coming to the Xbox 360. Yes please:

Pirates and voodoo queens. What else?

That's right. The classic LucasArts adventure game looks to be back. GamerBytes picked up the story on the German USK rating board, which had (and then pulled) a listin for the Secret of Monkey Island - Special Edition. More than that, the AdventureGamers website is reporting that independent sources have confirmed the game to them and additionally disclosed that it would be a Live Arcade title. Altogether awesome.

The Monkey Island series has long been a favorite of mine, combining humor, adventure, and then more humor into a package that was fun to play. The series is notorious for its run-on jokes and in-humor poking fun at LucasArts and the Monkey Island series itself. The protagonist, Guybrush Threepwood, is a derring-do man who wants to be a pirate, never quite understands how to, yet somehow ends up doing so. His nemesis, the Dread Pirate LeChuck, is a flaming zombie ghost pirate from hell who provides the over-the-top foil for Guybrush to operate against. As previously noted, jokes are rampant, rapid-fire, and delivered with a half-serious, half-mocking manner that never takes itslef too seriously.

The series is one of the greats in the history of video games, right up there with Myst, Wolfenstein, and others that set the bar of excellence for other to follow. The minds behind Monkey Island would go on to create other phenomenal games, including the Penny Arcade Adventures, Grim Fandango, and Psychonauts. While I lave long felt that LucasArts did itself a disservice in casting aside its adventure team, I am willing to forgive that error in the hopes that the great accomplishments of that group can be brought forward to a new generation.