The Secret of Monkey Island

aka: El secreto de Monkey Island, Le Secret de L'Ile aux Singes, MI1, Monkey Island 1, Mutiny on Monkey Island, TSOMI
Moby ID: 616

DOS version

The one that started it all!!!

The Good
Where should I start? Soundtrack? Graphics? Puzzles? Everything was great!!! Imagine that this adventure game was released in 1990 and competes with adventure games of the 2000 era!!! The music is great. The reggae-type tunes are difficult to forget. I was whistling that theme song (outstanding) for weeks!!! The world-known SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) game engine works perfect. The graphics are fast and screen scrolling is smooth.(and that was 13 years ago!!!) The familiar Lucasarts interface is easy to adopt and well designed. One of the greatest things in the game is you can complete The Three Trials in any order you want. If you get stuck on one of them, you can always try another. The puzzles are brilliant. They are so well written that when you finally find the solution to them, you have to hit your head against the wall thinking "How come didn't I figure that out in the first place?" Guybrush talks a lot and always has something to comment on about everything. (It looks like the game makers had fun writing the dialogues) One of the greatest moments in adventure game history is the sword fighting sequences, where you have to verbally insult your opponents in order to beat them. The highlight in the game is definitely humor. The Secret of Monkey Island has basically invented the concept of humor in computer games. There is a previously used boats salesman, vegetarian cannibals, hermites, etc.... What a great adventure game!!!

The Bad
Personally, nothing!!!

The Bottom Line
A must have for all adventure game lovers and LUCASARTS lovers!!!

by ggfournar (5) on November 11, 2003

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