Guybrush shot first: A special edition that’s worthwhile
Joe
Saturday
12:15 pm
Ever since the Star Wars debacle, “Special Edition” has had a “Mission Accomplished” sort of stigma to it. Let’s hope those days are over.
The piranha poodles are a vicious breed.
I finally got around to checking out Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, and it’s a treat. Especially at 10 bucks off Steam. The game itself is a virtual facsimile of the original, but every single frame has been hand-drawn and the cast from the later Monkey games have added voiceover of the lines that were originally just text. But the coolest thing they did is added a feature where at the press of F10 the game switches over to the old version. Even mid-sentence. It adds a whole secondary layer of entertainment just to see how the new artists changed the old classic SCUMM design. (The most consistent update is how much more slender all the “new” characters look.)
So considering how much of a kick going through this old game is and how few new resources it actually took LucasArts to make the update, the question now is: Why not do it for lots of old games? Even if you only stuck to the Lucas library you could still release a pretty extensive catalog. And since you don’t need a whole new creative team to do these things, you don’t run the risk of some writer’s “hip new vision” mucking up what was already a great game.
The old on-screen menu is now a call-up
Sometimes it's handy just to revert to the old version to make it easier to pixel-hunt
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Reader Comments
I picked this up too from steam during the holiday sale. I haven’t quite got to it yet… but it’s in the queue. Maybe it’s something I can play while hanging out with my wife watching CSI or something.