Tanukitsune

This isn't funny anymore.. stop monkeying around with Monkey Island!

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Ok.. this is just ridiculous... I've been catching up on my adventure games recently and while most of them are subtle.. they seem to make WAY too many Monkey Island references...

Sometimes it's a Manic Mansion / Day of the Tentacle reference, but there seems to ALWAYS be one, if not many...

A Vampyre's Tale can't shut up just to remind you that it's made by former Lucasarts employees, Ceville had a Monkey Island reference or two, Jack Keane, well.. it's like it's trying to be Monkey Island, but it doesn't actually reference it, Jolly Rover is another Monkey Island wannabe, but this does have Monkey Island references...

And now I'm playing So Blonde... After a few minutes I see a seagull on a dock and they kind of parody the seagull bit in the SCUMM Bar, it might be a coincidence, but I don't think so.. specially since a few minutes later I get captured by pirates and I'm force to... a JOKE duel! Gasp! Surely this has nothing to do with insult dueling? Right?:getmecoat

This is just silly! Imagine if every platform game had a Super Mario Bros. reference? Imagine they always had to say "It's a me!" or have a mushroom or Goomba in every game...

Imagine if every FPS had to have a Cacodemon or a Headcrab? Or a Cacodemon with a Headcrab?

We all love Monkey Island, but do you have to keep reminding us that you do too?

I'm waiting for Ghost Pirates or VooJu Island to drop price, but with a title like that and being from the same people who made A Vampyre's Tale... Let's just say that if I took a shot every time they'll make a Lucasarts reference I'll be dead withing 30 minutes.... :frusty:

I use to find them funny, but now I feel like they're shoving them down my throat...

Anyway, I can't wait to play more of So Bland... I can't wait till she gets the rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle!:hah:

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Imagine if every FPS had to have a Cacodemon or a Headcrab? Or a Cacodemon with a Headcrab?

Every FPS should have Cacodemons in them. I love those things.

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How are those Mega Man sprites coming along?

Is nothing a legitimate complaint to you? To I have to physically wounded or scarred for life to complain or is anything less that complaining about having your limbs torn off by wolves being considered a wussie?

Sheesh! Remember me to never let you complain about anything! Then again, you're complaining about my complaining...

I could complain how games about games are 90% fluff nowadays, or how companies never take risks or how people should support indie devs, but NOOO! I can never complain... EVER!:fart::(:clap::woohoo:;(

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Imagine every FPS had exploding barrels as a hommage to Doom...

...- Wait a sec! They all have! :eek:

Or like every game doing an homage to Sokoban by placing crates everywhere :shifty:

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All done in bonhomie.

Well, it bombed horribly.... You should know it's hard to tell when some is joking or not on internet by now, a voice carries a tone and while you talk your gesticulations also tell more than your words, but on the internet, your words are just words... You can't tell if it's sarcasm or not! :|

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Well, it bombed horribly.... You should know it's hard to tell when some is joking or not on internet by now, a voice carries a tone and while you talk your gesticulations also tell more than your words, but on the internet, your words are just words... You can't tell if it's sarcasm or not! :|

It wasn't sarcasm. I don't really buy into this latest complaint, and I would like to see you finish what you set out to do before. Just in a friendly way.

I've not actually heard of any of the games you mention apart from Monkey Island and A Vampyre's Tale. I'm sure there's plenty of adventure games that don't mention Monkey Island, too. It sounds like you've just had a run of bad luck.

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It wasn't sarcasm. I don't really buy into this latest complaint, and I would like to see you finish what you set out to do before. Just in a friendly way.

Maybe there were one or two people who actually wanted me to make Mega Man sprites, but everybody else... yeah... they pointed and laughed...

If you're serious, I can do a request or two, but I don't think I'll resurrect the sprite thing anytime soon... :|

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Maybe there were one or two people who actually wanted me to make Mega Man sprites, but everybody else... yeah... they pointed and laughed...

If you're serious, I can do a request or two, but I don't think I'll resurrect the sprite thing anytime soon... :|

I think they were pointing and laughing because it was a silly thing to get so gung-ho crazy over, not because they hate Mega Man sprites. U:

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What adventure games are doing is the equivalent of a Fox cartoon show doing this:

Viewer: "Where is joke? Make with the funny?"

Fox show: "Uhhh... Look! Chuck Norris is juggling chainsaws! You guys love Chuck Norris, right? Oh! And now he kicked Pikachu in the balls!"

When a show or movie abuses pop culture jokes, people shun it unless the jokes are actually clever... they usually aren't... :|

I think they were pointing and laughing because it was a silly thing to get so gung-ho crazy over, not because they hate Mega Man sprites. U:

I got over it.... but bringing it back makes me think some haven't...

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I'm afraid it's forever branded on your forehead, never to leave you.

This thread being similarly gung-ho (though more understandable and less silly) probably doesn't help. U;

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This has annoyed me before. All new adventure games want to show how old school they are by referring to Monkey Island in some inane way, when they should be showing that by being good.

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So basically what you're saying is they milk previous classic adventure game for references like a dairy farmer.
How appropriate, you milk previous classic adventure games for references like a cow.

That is where you were going with that, right?

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Well, there is the general issue (oft discussed) that adventure games are a particularly past-focused genre, frequently nostalgic for some halcyon days of adventure glory. All that no innovation stuff that's been done to death on Adventure Gamers for years. Which translates among other ways into these kind of jokes, in a "Hey, remember when adventure games were good?" sort of way.

As opposed to, as brkl suggests, just making good games. Telltale does that, usually.

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A Vampyre's Tale ... Ceville ... Jack Keane ... Jolly Rover ... So Blonde...

I'm waiting for Ghost Pirates or VooJu Island to drop price,

No-one's forcing you to play these games, you know. You can't seriously expect the last two to have no references to MI. Just to let you know, if you do play those two and then come back onto this forum and I see that you have bumped this thread to complain further, I will ruin your shit. Completely. I won't. I'm kidding. :shifty:

I like that you feel comfortable enough here to rant about things that get on your nerves, it makes me feel comfortable enough to troll your rant :crazy:

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This has annoyed me before. All new adventure games want to show how old school they are by referring to Monkey Island in some inane way, when they should be showing that by being good.

I agree with this entirely. I work for a company that was founded on the coattails that the games in this thread ride, so I don't have a lot of room to talk about that I guess, but it does drive me crazy when adventure games try to live or die or somehow think they're showing their quality by feeding off of straight-up references to 20 years ago. The games they're referencing were good because they were amazingly original and had unique elements that stuck with you years after playing. The worst way to pay homage to that originality and the spirit of those great adventure games is by stuffing your game with nothing but allusions to something better than what you're making. When you fill all of your allotted time and space with straight up references to other things, you leave yourself no room to be original or clever.

I guess I've been lucky in that regard -- in the bullet-dodged-technically-but-not-really sense -- since working on games which actually have the Monkey Island or Sam & Max brands attached has let the projects I've been involved in get "away with it" solely by those meta jokes and allusions being literally self referential instead of just referential, but my favorite parts of Telltale's games are the parts where they break away from those franchises' narrative or gameplay traditions and do something unique.

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The games they're referencing were good because they were amazingly original and had unique elements that stuck with you years after playing. The worst way to pay homage to that originality and the spirit of those great adventure games is by stuffing your game with nothing but allusions to something better than what you're making.

This is a good point, it reminds me of when comedy skits reference Monty Python. It's like they don't understand why the source material is so good.

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