I've missed the monkey

The third Monkey Island game, Curse of Monkey Island is one of my all-time favorite games. There is just something about the pirate-themed world Lucasart created for that game, that made me want to move to their imaginary version of the Caribbean and like Guybrush Threepwood become a mighty pirate. So when I discovered that a special edition of the first Monkey Island had come out for iOS, I had to give it a try. Especially now when I have this new phone with its large screen. 

Old computer games can often be a bit hard to get in to, more so then old console games. When it comes to old point and click adventure games, this barrier to entry consists of cheap deaths and bizarre and illogical puzzles. Monkey Island has no cheap deaths, actually you can't die at all in this game. It even makes fun of how easy it can be to get killed in other adventure games. There is this cliff which Guybrush can fall to his death from, but before the player has time to click the 'reload from last save' button that shows up, Guybrush bounces back up, saying something about a rubber tree. 

The other issue preventing modern gamers from picking up old adventure games, the seemingly illogical puzzles are not as bad in Monkey Island as in many other adventure games. The puzzles in the latest Monkey Island game from Telltale, Tales of Monkey Island are more adjusted to the patience of modern gamers. Still the puzzles here in the original mostly make sense, especially in the first half of the game. There are a few puzzles that likely would have driven me mad if it wasn't for the built in hint system and as a last resort: gamefaq. It does wound my pride a bit have to resort to such things but I have to realize that my time is in limited supply these days, unlike when I played the Curse of Monkey Island as a kid. Also there really is no fun in desperately trying every item on everything, just hoping to get lucky.