syntheticgerbil

I agree, that was easily the most frustrating part of the game. It would have been nice if instant deaths weren't so easy when riding the rocket.

Argh, if that still happens when you hotlink to a mobygames screenshot, I've probably made some embarassing mistakes in many places recently. Fixed though.

Why don't you guys just play this version instead?

Not as sorry as you are going to be when you play EMI!

A few years ago I had played through EMI on Windows XP without any problems, so if you are using that, it may work. EDIT: REDITED EVERYTHING!

I really haven't noticed Chris talking too much like that reader has said. Don't we want to hear Chris talk anyway? I have noticed Chris tends to finish a lot of Nick's sentences but to me that just seems to come from them being really good friends more than anything else. The comradery is touching, but not in an ass slapping sort of way.

Elaine is much sexier in 256 colors. Guybrush too, I think, although that may have been less desired. I personally don't feel or see any love and effort at all, though. Whether the team was really hindered by drawing over the original art or not is really just speculation. I'm sure there are just as many talented artists who could do a consistently great job in that framework. The characters were all redesigned though for the most part, so Guybrush's ugliness for instance can't really be excused in that case. Yeah the white cut outs around the top of the house, the big pixels scattered all around beneath the new art, as well as those ugly light blue parts in the trees from someone not cutting out their shit right are all really inexcusable on a final release in my opinion, whether you like the new art or not. This is what really bothers me, not whether the whole team was capable or not. Normally you would think you would have the art director or someone who played through at least once who would report on this and have it fixed before release. It's not like it's hard work to resave your art without your bottom layers showing through or to tweak your overlaid graphics so cut out garbage isn't over the screen. This should have been really obvious because tons of black and dark blue is all over Melee island and white pixel junk sticks out like a sore thumb. I would be inclined to say, although I'm clearly not sure, a lot of this unevenness may come from a team that wasn't equally skilled all around that shared a lot of the same work, causing the art to sort of fluctuate. I posted Dela Longfish's blog earlier and that guy is immensely talented and skilled. I'm not familiar with the artist enough to pick out which parts of the game's art he created or not, but it seems to me like his personal artwork on display would show he is capable of very structured and beautiful work. If someone has the credits from the remake and would like to repost them, I would be very grateful. The Special Edition hasn't made it to mobygames yet.

I come from exactly where you do. To be fair to PCs, I think most PC gamers prefer the convenience of being able to play everything on one system as well as having more options to customize everything from their setup, their controls, and their display. Hell, if I had a lot more money, I could see myself nerding out and constantly upgrading my PC to play the newest games. One thing I don't like though is how consoles are getting closer and closer to being basically PCs which defeats the purpose in my eyes. The amount of updating you do alone in this current generation is kind of silly.

Hmmm... well besides the game, Gagne was part of a Q&A where he spoke about how he got his job at Don Bluth studios in the 80s by making his own short film in Canada at a young age and then making the trip to California by lying to his dad for the funds that he already had an interview set up. Once in the studio, he and begged the secretary to take a copy of his short film and show it to Don Bluth. A month later, Don Bluth calls him, giving him a great first job in the animation industry. He did not show the short film though, but it's the one with the music note. He and his wife were selling various comic books and storybooks in the courtyard at the college it was at inbetween speakers. They were also showing Prelude to Eden on loop behind them his TV screen. While some of this may be wrong, what I remember of Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet was a full first level being played (a recording, since he said he sucked at the game) with the space ship being upgraded with a grabber that allowed it to throw rocks at some of the silhouetted creatures on the walls. There was this really amazing sequence at the end of the level where you fly up to some eyeballs in the walls that seem harmless enough until it turns out to be a giant monster with a big mouth that chases you through corridors and breaks a lot of rocks in the process. He also showed the original trailer (or something similar) that was posted. He then answered some Q&A on the game, but most of what was asked was about the music used, whether people wanted to play it or not, what programs he used, as well as Gagne speaking of showing the game to Microsoft soon to see if they wanted to publish it. This was two months ago though, I'm not sure if that went through. I think he's hoping to get XBLA distribution at some point. He also showed this short abstract animation he did for this dissonant jazz that was shown at I think a music festival in Canada. He won an award for the music video and that's what led him to animate a similar sequence in Ratatouille in the background when Remy is eating different foods and describing how it feels to taste them. Apparently Brad Bird had seen the short animation and thought it would be great for the film. There was also a Q&A with all of the speakers at the end with generic questions, but I don't remember much of what he said during that. Someone did ask how to best get along with other people in the industry and Gagne said that he doesn't try and that's why he works alone in a basement. A lot of what he said was with a smile and a laugh though, so he probably wasn't extremely serious about a lot of his remarks.

I don't have an iPhone or any interest in downloading the PC version, but I can't stop laughing at videos of Envirobear in action on youtube.

Ah... good ol' AdventureGamers. Another Choice Quote: Er... And one more: YEAAHHHH YOU BASTARDS!

In my opinion all of these games should have been constantly in print sitting in the $10 jewelcase-with-PDF-manual budget rack for the last 10 years even before digital downloads of old games started to get big. The LA adventure games have been almost constantly rereleased in Europe in multiple game packs, but I guess they weren't financially viable in the US anymore. To me though, it would make me sense to get the product out for cheap if it's impossible to sell at full price instead of sitting on it for years, but what do I know, I don't work at LucasArts. They probably won't do Curse, as that would be an insane amount of work unless you could get someone to rescan every background and drawn characters and have the digital paint over it scale to an HD resolution. I think that would be a lot of work too though. Bill Tiller said in the recent Secret History interview at mixnmojo.com that it was all colored at 640x480, so that might create a huge problem. Also none of the backgrounds besides the scrolling ones fit widescreen. Oops, I really messed that up, sorry about that. I'm not even sure how I thought you worked on the game in the first place now. I'll fix my post so I don't confuse any more people. It seems Dela Longfish really did though, right? Were the rest really in Singapore like the original press release said? I'm probably not supposed to ask all of that, right?

Be sure to put those yellow bunnies in the fan at the front of the semi!

Well no one is going to answer "no" to your question. Of course they should be available, but do they need a shoddy remade version on top of the original game? Will buyers be put off from buying any early Monkey Island because it lacks HD graphics, full voice, and live music? I have no idea, but classic games in their original format are being sold in online channels all the time, both for consoles and PC. I get the feeling this whole Monkey Island Special Edition was an exercise in futility. The thing about original LucasArts adventures is that for about 90% of them, the craftsmanship was impeccable. This is what pretty much made LucasArts the top dog in the adventure world in the first place. When you add a cheap, rushed remake over the top of an originally high budget and well made game, it sort of defeats the purpose. Monkey Island 2 is the next target on the remake list, considering on Steam they just released the rest of the earlier games before art was scanned and voices a regular thing. If they can't match the great art, distinctiveness, and tone of the original version of Monkey Island 2, I would just rather have them not bother. Monkey Island 2 seems to be the one that really has a cult following and it would upset a lot more people if it were screwed up, I'm sure. Now rereleasing it in it's original form again would be a great idea though. That would not be an exercise in futility.

But what's important is that it was used so well in Monkey Island 2.

It might for the parts that the Gone Jackals songs ramp up based on your actions near the epic events at the end of the game, but that stuff is still prerecorded so it probably doesn't work like Monkey Island 2. I don't know if they still considered that iMuse but it seems like the trademark was attached to the credits of all of their adventure games, if I'm not mistaken.

Even though I've gone into a long drawn out argument elsewhere about this, I just want to make a note here on general animation theory. I'm really not trying to rile you up or be an asshole, Chris... sorry ahead of time if I come off that way. That said, I think the animation could have been done a lot better had they just drawn the characters really well within the frames they already had. A lot of the special animations in Monkey Island has a pretty high frame rate already, and if you get stiff characters acting this stuff out, then you have less chance of being successful. About any animation book will tell you stronger poses always trump the amount of frames you use in terms of movement. I mean outside of Disney or CG movies, most animated movies made for the bigscreen are not going at a full 24 or 30 frames per second. More often than not a classic Warner Brothers cartoon is moving at 12fps, and yet they still look smooth. Tekkon Kinkreet, parts of Paprika, and any Bill Plympton cartoon are probably better modern examples of low frame rates with strong poses showing high movement. High resolution should not come as a hindrance if the artist draws his poses efficiently and selectively. All of that said, I think they should have increased the frame rate of Guybrush's walk since they decided to start scrolling the screen at a full 30fps along with the background water and clouds moving at that speed. This looks weird behind a sliding 6 frame walk. It just creates an unnecessary juxtaposition that the original game did not have. One last thing is I've tried to find out what makes the art in this game so ugly and sloppy and who dropped the ball. From what I can tell, 3D models were used to pose the main characters somewhat similar to their lo-res counterparts and then drawn over by the artists, which I feel causes the ridiculous stick up their ass look. I looked up one of the three artists that worked on the special edition and there is no reason he people should have been drawing over 3D models for reference. He doesn't work in 3D at all and is perfectly capable of drawing strong poses and figuring out anatomy without having to draw over a 3D model. Maybe the other two artists needed to? I don't know why this decision was made, since it seems like more effort than it's worth, as they already had reference in the first place with the original animations. But looking through these this artist's website, his stuff is pretty amazing and makes me very envious, so why is the game so ugly? I don't understand. It doesn't make sense to me. Links: www.longfish.blogspot.com Bad typography aside, there's also all of the cut-outs errors and white edges from people who don't export their graphics right. The pixels from the original game are apparently showing through on the hi-res art, because someone forgot to turn off their bottom layers in Photoshop. There's also a lot of laziness in the forest with the same group of 12 leaves being copied and pasted all over the place. I don't know how this sloppiness makes it in the final game or if anyone played through it and made notes before release, but I would imagine all of this stuff is either the product of bad art direction, low budget, rushed deadlines, or maybe a combination of the three. Also it's possible the team, although talented did not care about Monkey Island and to them it was just another job or project to get through.

I've played them recent enough just for Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman completionist's sake, but I also owned a few from the first batch of games growing up. I'd say they all hold up pretty well, but maybe less so for Putt-Putt. Maybe I just think talking cars are stupid? I don't know. The Putt Putt games are also designed for the youngest audience, the rest being made for older kids. Spy Fox and Freddi Fish are still fun and have great art and animation that still puts a lot of modern cartoon adventures to shame. They are really just more like short adventure games. Pajama Sam was probably the best series, probably because Dave Grossman is credited to writing 3 out of 4 of them. My favorite is probably Moop and Dreadly by Hulabee, Ron Gilbert and Shelley Day's failed company after Humongous. I played that one more recently than most, and I found it pretty hilarious for various reasons. Short though. If anyone here has kids, I can't see any reason why these wouldn't be more enjoyable than any current kid's games on the market.

Very nice! The Sonic Mega Collection Plus had that feature too and it came in very handy. I was actually able to see the end of all of the Game Gear Sonic games as well!

Well... er... He did the Prelude to Eden short all by himself after quitting Don Bluth studios that got heavy airplay on Sci-Fi channel and a few short film circuits for a while around the end of the nineties and the turn of the century. Other than that and some comics that appeared in Flight, I don't think he's done anything that would be cause his name to be instantly recognized by anyone who's not an animator or doesn't keep up with short animated films. It's funny you say that, because he also said he's perfect for creating amazing video games because he hasn't played one since the early 1980s, so apparently that will help him bring a fresh mind to general stagnation of games. I'm just paraphrasing what he said here, it was definitely something along those lines.

I think the Genesis Sonic games are all very fun, especially Sonic 3 and Knuckles combined, but I don't know if that compilation does that. Do you get a save state system on the Sonic Genesis collection? Because having that option to play with Ristar makes the game very fun. I wouldn't ever be able to beat the game otherwise.

Ah that's good... so maybe it just went untested in Vista?

Soiler butts, huh?

Well, good luck to you!

That was all less of an issue once games started coming with the manual or people started publishing solutions in various PC magazines. There was also the Universal Hint System for a while, if anyone remembers that. The internet has completely solved the problem of you ever being stuck in an adventure game preventing you from finishing the rest. In a way, the early bragging rights were part of the fun for people it seems, especially by the score in Sierra games. If I spend more than an hour or so trying to figure out the end of a puzzle, I'm not afraid to look what to do next. There are some who refuse to ever use a walkthrough and some who give bad reviews because they couldn't figure out what the designers wanted them to do, unwarranted or not. There are some show stopping sequences for some on other types of games too, but like you said, it depends on the difficulty. Personally I'd rather be stopped from finishing a game by not figuring out a puzzle by myself than finding out I miss the twitch reflexes to beat a certain level or sequence. Funny enough, a lot of adventure games have a higher replay value for me because I don't have to deal with any hard sequences again since I know what to do on the second playthrough, allowing me to sit back, relax, and enjoy. I wonder why 90s game reviews never took that into account when docking adventure game scores for their lack of replay value?