Blast From the Past

Swinging the spotlight over on the recently released special editions of Secret of Monkey Island and Return to Monkey Island!

I just finished re-playing through Secret of Monkey Island, and I must say – what a fun time! The new graphics are fantastic, and the game has a nifty hotkey (It was F10 for me on PC) that takes you back and forth from new graphics to old 1990’s gameplay. There are lots of major upgrades, like a re-done soundtrack and voice acting added to the new game.

As far as graphics go, I’m really happy with the way it was done. The game looked like a painting most of the time, and it kept with the same feel that I remember when I played this more than 10 years ago on MSDOS. A lot of things were also added, such as random skulls in the sky forming clouds and what not, but it didn’t take away from the overall feel of it, because it’s got the same art style we saw in Monkey Island 3: Curse of Monkey Island.

I know I’ve said it before, I find these Monkey Island games to be absolutely hilarious, and I’m very happy to see that LucasArts is bringing back the first 2 in the best way. It felt like I was playing the game for the first time again. The best part was, if I needed to remember something the old way, there was the hotkey. Another point, Monkey Island games have been cross-platform for a while, but I’ll mention it here anyway: The Special Editions are cross-platform! Now you can play them via PSN, PC..even your iPhone.

I strongly recommend anyone reading this that enjoys a fun puzzle game every now and then to at least download the demo’s available for these new games!