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Buy Monkey Island to Make Grim Fandango Remake?
akeso
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Saw this in an article and thought I would share it with me fellow Grim Fandango Fans
Today LucasArts' community manager Brooks Brown lets fans of the game know (via WAToday) that if they go out and buy the new revision it might inspire the publisher to give similar treatment to other classic point-and-click adventures.
"If this sells, there's no one at this company who doesn't want to do these games," says Brooks. "It's a matter of showing that there's interest and this market is alive and get people as excited as possible about Monkey Island Special Edition to show that these things can make it."
[Taken From Gamespy]
The thought of this
being reborn like this
Makes me happy inside.
So BUY MONKEY ISLAND SPECIAL EDITION DAMNIT
Today LucasArts' community manager Brooks Brown lets fans of the game know (via WAToday) that if they go out and buy the new revision it might inspire the publisher to give similar treatment to other classic point-and-click adventures.
"If this sells, there's no one at this company who doesn't want to do these games," says Brooks. "It's a matter of showing that there's interest and this market is alive and get people as excited as possible about Monkey Island Special Edition to show that these things can make it."
[Taken From Gamespy]
The thought of this
being reborn like this
Makes me happy inside.
So BUY MONKEY ISLAND SPECIAL EDITION DAMNIT
akeso on
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Posts
You think I'm kidding.
Good because I think my penis would have popped from the boner I already have from Ghostbusters... add Monkey Island onto it and man.... kaboom.
Agreed. Grim Fandango doesn't actually look much different, quality-wise from the second picture. It even runs fine natively in XP. Anyone who wants to track it down and play it can easily do so.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
I'm going to need to see a link or something before I even contemplate this.
Do not engage the Watermelons.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they either make an updated version for PCs (I've never managed to get it to work with a dual-core CPU, and I'm betting Vista and Windows 8 won't play well with it either), or just put it on XBLA/PSN. The game's already set up to work with a controller (I played it on the PC with a 360 controller), so the amount of work it'd take can't be that much.
I'm assuming that as a given. Since it's using the same engine, the difficult code conversion should be taken care of already, so all they need is the new media.
New graphics, new music, new speech, and done. Sure it'll take time, but it's easy to budget for since they've already got the engine to build it on. So long as MI sells enough to justify the planned costs, it'll happen.
My money's on MI2 coming out next spring.
And if MI sells particularly well, Day of the Tentacle will probably show up around the same time. Again, it's the same engine, and they've already got voices for that one, so it might actually be easier to put together.
Full Interview at
http://blogs.watoday.com.au/digital-life/screenplay/2009/06/18/bygeorgeitsm.html
Full text and quote in bold
[Hidden in spoiler due to wall of text]
WAToday Jude 18 2009
By George, it's Monkey magic
]If you want to see LucasArts' peerless catalogue of point-and-click adventure games re-released for today's modern machines, buy The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition in a few months time.
"If this sells, there's no one at this company who doesn't want to do these games," says Brooks. "It's a matter of showing that there's interest and this market is alive and get people as excited as possible about Monkey Island Special Edition to show that these things can make it."
Coming soon to Xbox Live Arcade and PC digital download services, Special Edition has clearly been a labour of love for many developers within LucasArts, and is being developed alongside a new Monkey Island game by Sam & Max developers Telltale.
"LucasArts is really proud to be bringing it back after a 10 year hiatus," says Brooks. "It's been 20 years since the first game, we're really excited to be coming back. As you can imagine, the reimagining is essentially the original game remastered with all new hand-drawn HD graphics, and also it's no longer MIDI tracks, we've remastered those with brand new instruments recorded in our studio.
"And of course full voice work, so finally you'll be able to hear this game as a full talkie, like we all wanted back in the day. We brought all of the actors from the Curse of Monkey Island, who we now all identify with, Dominic Armato as Guybrush, Earl Boen as LeChuck, we have all of those throughout the game playing their characters, plus a few other great voice actors who have really made the characters special."
The graphics look superb, with all backgrounds hand-painted.
"You can see the brush strokes in the work and the attention to detail," gushes Brooks. "One hundred of these backgrounds had to be redone, they were all painted as these gorgeous 1080p high definition levels. We also have about 100 characters and about 4000 animations, every single frame of it had to be redrawn by hand, just for that extra level of detail and that storyboard look that we've been trying to get.
"A lot of people see this and say, 'yeah, I remember this, it was this pretty'. Well, this entire game is actually built upon the original directly, so we have this cool little thing. Just hit 'Back' at any time and you've got the original game. And you can jump back and forth, back and forth, as much as you like. So you can see exactly how true we were to the composition of the original game. Even the title cards. It's been just a blast, as you can tell."
Brooks says it was also important to improve the game's interface to bring it to the "next generation of gamers and game consoles",
"We had to really rethink this," says Brooks, pointing to the original Monkey Island's influential verb bar. "Back then, this was the most innovative thing ever done in an adventure game. Choosing 'look at' as a verb, then going to a poster. Absolutely astounding.
"But it doesn't work so well for an analog stick, especially when you are having to click one, two, three, four, five things, it becomes imprecise and tough. So what we did instead is said 'let's get rid of the lower bar and have some great, gigantic art and integrate it into the cursor itself'. We have this extra level of detail so it made sense to utilize it. So of course you've got your basic movement, walk is the default. If you hover over something though, like this poster, it will highlight and you get your secondary contextual information. So you can say 'look at' and he will look at it.
"And if course you know that there are a million others in the verb panel, we've included those as well, just a quick trigger pull and you get to select from all of them, pop them up. We really tried to improve on everything as much as possible, so also, in a third way, we added these great little icons. Open is symbolized by opening a chest, close is closing a chest, things like that. Once you get used to those icons, all you need is the D-pad. You just select the icon, see it change, and then you don't need to go to the verb menu anymore. The same is true of the inventory."
Brooks says that "back in the day this was an incredibly revolutionary and innovative game".
"This kind of level of detail hadn't been done. People were astounded by it. I remember thinking: 'games will never get prettier than this!'
"But here's the problem. This is as much detail as they were able to get. This is the 300 by 200 resolution. By adding a ton more stuff, it would have ruined the scene, but we know they wanted to. These are the docks of Melee Island, this is where the pirate ships should be. There should be a gigantic moon, not this tiny little thing, we know that this is supposed to be better.
"So what we did was say 'we can create the backstory that they couldn't'. So we added the pirate ships, we added this gorgeous background, these animation effects, so you're now able to experience the story fully and immersively. So not only do the old gamers get the classic game if they want it, as well as this re-imagined version, but new gamers finally get that level of immersion they require from today's video games. And I like to point out that the composition is exactly the same. They painstakingly recreated them, it was really a huge deal."
monkeyisland1.jpg
The obvious question is whether the team at LucasArts was ever tempted to change anything, like a line of cheesy dialogue, or getting rid of an annoying puzzle. "Absolutely not," Brooks immediately answers. But then he smiles and adds, "granted, there were moments when we were tempted…"
"For example, there's the Loom badge - 'Ask me about Loom'. We really wrestled with that. 'Do we really want to mention Loom, this game we haven't put out in years? Can we make it, Ask me about The Force Unleashed? Can we make it something like that?' No, we can't change it, because we are fans too, we get that, if we weren't working at the company we'd be on forums going 'Yay, Monkey Island!'
"But at the same time we knew that fans wanted this perfect recreation so we give them the purest version, the entire game fully rendered, not some joke game. But if you are willing to take a chance, give us a shot and you can see what our imagination envisaged."
But of course, there is also a (potentially huge) secondary audience for the game that LucasArts desperately wants to attract.
"It's not just for hardcore fans," agrees Brooks." This is going to a mainstream audience now, gaming has grown so much since then. It's no longer just hardcore guys in their basement with $3000 computers, it's my mum or wife, it's friends, it's neighbours.
"So we've also realized that the game is difficult, it's really hard. There are puzzles that are absolutely psychotic. So as we started moving forward we said that we need a hints system. We needed a way for people to experience this game so they could understand the story and not get frustrated, throw the controller down, or have to log online and deal with website after website forum. Instead we added a real simple hint system.
"Say I've gone away and I've forgotten what the lookout told me to do. I come back, I need a nudge. Simple nudge, not a spoiler. Hold down X and I am told 'I should go to the Scumm Bar'. Really simple. But if that nudge wasn't quite big enough, let's say I need something a little bit bigger. Hold down X again and it says 'The Scumm Bar is through the door below the sign that says Scumm Bar.' As you can tell, we've kept the same humour.
"Of course, there's also those people who don't really want puzzles at all, or who have spent months and months and just want to get finally done with it - they want a big gigantic yellow arrow to just tell them where to go. No matter where you are in the entire world of Monkey, it will point you in the right direction.
As Brooks walks Guybrush into the bar, he gushes that it is "another iconic moment in the history of Monkey Island" that has been re-imagined.
"We've given life to it in a number of different ways. Not only can you hear the live music, and it really shows through, but you can hear the pirates (myself actually, you can hear me growling) - there's a number of pirates in the background to add to that immersion in the story. The composition of the scene is basically the same. I love to point out the striped shirt guy, he's obviously punched holes in the wall. And if you go back to the old version, it's totally him. We've kept the composition the same, but brought it forward, allowed people to see the story in this immersive storybook style.
"And this comes across in another way as well. In the old game when you talked to pirates you'd get these hyper-realistic close ups with orange backgrounds because apparently, everywhere you go is orange. But it really breaks the spirit of the game because it's a very whimsical, lyrical game and as you move forward you see these real pirates, it kind of breaks the flow. So in the new version, we have that ability to stylize, create that background, create that immersive world that's really important to people who play these games."
But then Brooks has to admit that LucasArts did succumb to making changes to their beloved baby.
"It's all about one guy, Spiffy the Dog," explains Brooks. "This is probably the closest we came to adding something to the game. Technically we really didn't add anything….
"In the original version of the game, when they first made it, this little puppy was supposed to get a close up. I'm not joking, when you talked to him, he would get a close up. The marketing team got a hold of it and said: 'Dogs sell, put it on the back of the box!' So they did.
"And then the production team said 'We need four more K (kilobytes) - Spiffy's out!' And marketing never pulled it off the back of the boys. So for years fans have been asking where's Spiffy? So we thought 'let's give him his due' and Spiffy has finally got his close-up. We're really pleased with the level of detail, and his dialogue is fantastic.
"And of course, at any time you can switch straight back and see that classic game that we fell in love with and you will see that we haven't really done anything to change it. It's been fantastic. We are really excited. It's due in Summer (the Australian Winter) on Xbox Live Arcade and PC digital download."
Just don't forget to buy it, because LucasArts is holding many other priceless treasures like Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle to ransom.
I support remakes of franchises that I enjoy whenever they come up; system allegiance really don't play a role in it. I'm interested in both Monkey Island projects and will probably pick up Tales of MI on Wii and MI Special Edition on 360.
Point-and-clicks do make a ton of sense on the Wii or DS (Broken Sword DS was really good), but emulating a mouse cursor is kind of a moot point when we're talking about Grim Fandango, isn't it?
Starcraft II on the couch with precision control would be great.
Are they going to give me another X-Wing or Jedi Knight game? Nope?
Didn't think so.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Shutupshutupshutuptheymighthearyouandgobacktomakingstarwarsgames
I mean I liked X-Wing and Jedi Knight but I can wait a while if they're going to start making awesome adventure games in the meantime
even if they are remakes mostly
Note the article doesn't say anything about Grim or any specific game. What it says is, if remakes sell, then they'll sell remakes.
Also Lucasarts owns Grim, they don't actually need permission from Schafer for anything. And the remakes aren't made by Telltale, so whatever objection they may have is irrelevant.
And, well, I suspect Grim would be further down the list. IIRC it's one of the least commercially successful Lucasarts adventures. I'd expect them to try Monkey 2, DoTT or Full Throttle first.
I don't know, I love the first 3 Monkey Island games, but Grim Fandango is my favorite adventure game ever. And poor sales notwithstanding, it's already in 3D so it doesn't really need any new art, and it doesn't suffer from pixel hunting puzzles when playing with a gamepad.
But... but... real Star Wars games, not that "lite" shit they've been shoveling out to us over the last few years.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Also, the voices are a bit weird. I was never a fan of Curse anyway, but the problem isn't the cast as much as the timing of them. They still come up with the same timing the text had, but you can tell the timing is meant for written lines, not spoken lines and it did break some gags in the trailers.
And it's not like Grim Fandango needs a remake, either. It's been republished a number of times, so it's not even hard to find, and it still looks and plays good. I don't see what a remake would add there.
But, hey, who am I kidding, of course I'm getting the Special Edition. The Telltale episodic, though... well, let's just say whether it's clsoer to MI4 or to the other Telltale episodics, it's not a good thing in my book.
Noelveiga, I suspect the voice timing is a consequence of building the new game on the original's engine without modifying it.
Yes, but also of the writing itself. So many times in the game Guybrush listens to what somebody says, turns towards the screen and just goes "Yikes!" or something to that effect. That is a laugh out loud moment with the text, but doesn't translate well to voiceovers. I've been playing the Sam&Max demo on XBL this weekend and I immediately noticed how the writing has adapted to the more movie-like cutting back and forth between characters for a natural flow of the dialogue as opposed to the more novel-like use of line breaks and beats for comedic timing of classic text-based adventures.
In other words, the PC is your one-stop shop for all things Monkey Island.
Yeah i actually kinda wish it was Wii only so I'd have something to use it for
but obviously getting these for PC now