The Secret of Monkey Island's story is that creator Ron Gilbert wrote a dissertation paper on graphical adventure games, outlining all the issues with the genre and how to avoid them. Things such as making puzzles unbeatable by making it impossible to backtrack to a needed object, or even just the simple issue of dying, punishing the player for exploring their virual world. These were serious issues plaguing a lot of their competitor, Sierra, as well as their own earlier creations such as Maniac Mansion. These were taken to heart by the Monkey Island team and Lucasfilm Games (later renamed LucasArts) as a whole. These rules were applied to The Secret of Monkey Island which is one of the reason it's one of the greatest cult games of all time and starting to get some much needed appreciation almost 30 years later.

The game was relased in 1990 as an EGA only release initially, lataer on with Steve Purcell's artwork being upgraded to 256 color VGA for the later 1990 or early 1991 release. The game fit on 8 720K Floppy Diskettes and the VGA release had INCREDIBLE graphics for the time. However, it did not - at that time - meet up to the hype it has today. Later on it got an iMUSE release with the updated Monkey Island 2 command panel + graphical inventory, as well as releases on FM Towns and the Sega CD.

In the game you played as a underdog, anti-hero, wannabe pirate named Guybrush Threepwood - named after the file used for his sprite in Deluxe Paint (GUY.BRSH?) - who finds himself on MeLee Island looking to fulfill his dream. Along the way he meets many characters and solves many puzzles, eventually falling head over heels for the Governor Elaine Marley, who is at some point kidnapped by the Ghost Pirate LeChuck and his crew of the undead. So you have to secure a bank loan to purchase a prviously owned ship, to go to Monkey Island and save her - but things are not quite what they seem - as the box said. Which makes for a very interesting, almost Monty Python-esuqe atmosphere, where even the game continues to make fun of itself, or it's genre, or it's own characters. This made for an entertaining and immersive experience, hence why I feel this game really caught up when retro-gaming on old pre-Pentium PC's became a huge thing over the course of the 2010's.

Monkey Island ultimatley had four original sequels - one more created by Ron and his team - Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, released in 1991, and then The Curse of Monkey Island in 1995 - the first Windows release featuring Dominic Armato for speech and a totally new, cartonney art style, and lastly, Escape From Monkey Island sometime around 1999 or so, which was the first 3D Monkey Island game. The last two lost some of the charm of Ron Gilbert and his team's original output and thusly the series kind of faded off quickly after a small blurb of a cult following in the 90's. Ron left LucasFilm to create Full Throttle and then create a few other game companies.

See, I have an older half-sister who was in college, her father bought her a 386 for college, and also bought them a HOUSE to live in for those college years. I would come over to be babysat. So almost every Friday I'd ride over there listening to Ray Stephens in the same truck I still have, only to arrive at my sister's house, and play Monkey Island for HOURS! The minute I was shown this game, I was hooked. Here was a game, where you could basically roam around, freely, do whatever you wanted (for the most part), and it had a good, trope-free (except for comedic reasons) story!

But one thing is I never got to enjoy Michael Land's soundtrack until I built Creeping Net 2 (2001) - which was my first computer to have a sound card (I/O MAgic MagicSound 16). I would instead dig through my sister's stereo records and ccassettes and put on 80's music - I guess you could say PC, Guitar, and my sister's record collection was the beginning of me becoming the m an I am today. I remembered that "HIghway to the Danger Zone" song - remember, this was 1992, people HATED the 80's in the early 90's. I came off at school looking like one weird kid. Here's all these guys with bowl cuts, corn rows, wearing Air Jordans, talking about Nirvana, Snoop Doggy Dog, Street Fighter, and Super Mario World, and here I come with a mullet, in a sleeveless, talking about Monkey Island and Kenny Loggins like it's 1986, like some kind of discordia Uncle Pull-Tab meets Skolnik Computer Nerd.....the man blasting Loverboy from a Mustang full of Token Ring and Tandy, cruising around looking for Permed Ladies of the 80's with all the vibe of Leisure Suit Larry. So imagine the ridicule I got from that - it might explain some of my Bill Burr like "screaming anger" like this is F-is-for-Family in the present day. And yeah, in that, my tastes have not changed much, I like what I like, if you don't, sod off. Honestly, SoMI mixed with 80's music is a BIG Part of my aesthetic in prototypical form. Heck, prior to the M.J. solo stuff, I was making up a "fantasy band" - kind of like the guys in Def Leppard did - called The SCUMM Pirates.

These days though, even though there are enhanced talkie releases, there's just something special about that original 1990 VGA release that really stood out and called to me hence why I still play it to this day. People now rag on me more because "but there's a newer version with more realistic (cartooney) graphics with Dominic Amato doing the voice"...see, when I first played Monkey Island, I had my own mental picture of what everyone sounded like, and I had my own mental picture of what the world of the "Tri Island Area" was, and I don't want that augmented from Ron's first two games.