Game:

The Secret of Monkey Island (1990)

Duration: 19:35

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The Secret of Monkey Island is a point & click graphic adventure game made and published by Lucasfilm Games. It was released in 1990.

Ron Gilbert conceived the idea of a pirate adventure game in 1988, after completing Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders. He first wrote story ideas about pirates while spending the weekend at a friend's house. Gilbert experimented with introductory paragraphs to find a satisfactory idea. His initial story featured unnamed villains that would eventually become LeChuck and Elaine; Guybrush was absent at this point. He pitched it to Lucasfilm Games's staff as a series of short stories. Gilbert's idea was warmly received, but production was postponed because Lucasfilm Games assigned its designers, including Gilbert, to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure. Development of The Last Crusade was finished in 1989, which allowed Gilbert to begin production of The Secret of Monkey Island, then known internally under the working title Mutiny on Monkey Island.

Gilbert soon realised that it would be difficult to design the game by himself; he decided to join forces with Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman, both of whom he hired for Lucasfilm. The game's insult sword fighting mechanics were influenced by swashbuckling movies starring Errol Flynn, which Gilbert, Schafer and Grossman often watched for inspiration. They noticed that pirates in those films often taunted their opponents instead of attacking them, which gave the designers the idea to base the game's duels on insults rather than combat. Writer Orson Scott Card helped them write the insults during a visit to Lucasfilm's headquarters at Skywalker Ranch. Many of Gilbert's original gameplay ideas were abandoned during the production process, although he stated that "most of that stuff was left out for a reason".

The game's plot, as described by Dave Grossman: "It's a story about this young man who comes to an island in search of his life's dream. He's pursuing his career goals and he discovers love in the process and winds up thinking that was actually more important than what he was doing to begin with. You’re laughing, but there's actually something deeper going on as well." When work on the plot began, Gilbert discovered that Schafer's and Grossman's writing styles were too different to form a cohesive whole: Grossman's was "very kind of a dry, sarcastic humor" and Schafer's was "just a little more in your face". In reaction, Gilbert assigned them to different characters and story moments depending on what type of comedy was required. Grossman believed that this benefited the game's writing, as he and Schafer "were all funny in slightly different ways, and it worked well together".[18] Schafer and Grossman wrote most of the dialogue while they were programming the game; as a result, much of it was improvised. Some of the dialogue was based on the designers' personal experiences, such as Guybrush's line "I had a feeling in hell there would be mushrooms", which came from Schafer's own hatred of fungi.

The game's world and characters were designed primarily by Ron Gilbert. After having read Tim Powers' historical fantasy novel On Stranger Tides, he decided to add paranormal themes to the game's plot. He also cited Powers' book as an influence on the characters, particularly those of Guybrush and LeChuck. Inspiration for the game's ambiance came from Gilbert's favorite childhood amusement park ride, Pirates of the Caribbean. Grossman said that Gilbert always wanted "to step off the ride" and "talk to the people who lived in that world". Near the final stages of the design work, Gilbert introduced several characters who were not directly related to the game's story. He considered this to be an important decision, as the player would need those seemingly minor characters in later parts of the game and would receive a chance to "really interact with them"

The game's "pirate reggae" music was composed by Lucasfilm Games' in-house musician Michael Land in MIDI format. It was his first project at the company. The game was originally released for floppy disk in 1990, but a CD-ROM version with a high-quality CD soundtrack followed in 1992. The music has remained popular, and has been remixed by the musicians of OverClocked ReMix and by the game's fans.

The Secret of Monkey Island ultimately cost $200,000 to produce, and was developed over nine months.

Source: Wikipedia

00:00 The scumm bar
04:39 Meanwhile on LeChuck's ship
06:03 Visting the circus
09:41 Looking for a treasure
12:42 Meeting the bridge troll
14:00 Training with Captain Smirk