Games The Secret of Monkey Island The series debuted in 1990 with
The Secret of Monkey Island on the
Amiga,
MS-DOS,
Atari ST and
Macintosh platforms; the game was later ported to
FM Towns and
Mega-CD (1993). A remake version with updated graphics and new voiceovers was released for
PlayStation Network,
PC Windows,
Xbox Live Arcade and
OS X. An
iPhone version was also released on July 23, 2009. The game starts off with the main character Guybrush Threepwood stating "I want to be a pirate!" To do so, he must prove himself to three old pirate captains. During the perilous pirate trials, he meets the beautiful governor Elaine Marley, with whom he falls in love, unaware that the ghost pirate LeChuck also has his eyes on her. When Elaine is kidnapped, Guybrush procures crew and ship to track LeChuck down, defeat him and rescue his love.
''Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge'' The second game, ''Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
from 1991, was available for fewer platforms; it was only released for PC MS-DOS, Amiga, Macintosh, and later for FM Towns. A Special Edition version, in a similar style as The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition'', was released in July 2010 for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Mac, PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. As Guybrush, with a
treasure chest in hand, and Elaine hang onto ropes in a void, he tells her the story of the game. He has decided to find the greatest of all
treasures, that of Big Whoop. Unwittingly he helps revive LeChuck, who is now in zombie form. Guybrush is eventually captured by his nemesis, but escapes with help from Wally and finds the treasure only to find himself dangling from a rope, as depicted at the beginning of the game. As Guybrush concludes his story, his rope breaks and he finds himself facing LeChuck, whom he finally defeats using voodoo. The surrealistic ending is open to a number of interpretations. In the manual of
The Curse of Monkey Island, it is stated that Guybrush falls victim to a hex implemented by LeChuck.
The Curse of Monkey Island The Curse of Monkey Island, the third in the series, was released exclusively for
Microsoft Windows on PC in 1997, after a 6-year hiatus.
The Curse of Monkey Island was released at the height of some of the biggest technological advancements in the gaming industry—digital audio, CD-ROM technology, and improved graphics.
Monkey Island I and
II were originally released on floppy disks with text dialogue only. Entire conversations between characters would appear as written text, or as captions above their heads. The visuals of the third installment were also an improvement over the original game, using a more modern
cel animation style.
The Curse of Monkey Island is the only game in the series to feature this style of animation; subsequent games used three-dimensional polygon animation. Threepwood, unwittingly, turns Elaine into a gold statue with a cursed ring, and she is subsequently stolen by pirates. He tracks her down before searching for another ring that can lift the curse. LeChuck appears in a fiery demon form, and is hot on Threepwood’s heels until a stand-off on LeChuck's amusement park ride, Monkey Mountain.
Escape from Monkey Island Escape from Monkey Island, the fourth installment, was released in 2000 for
PC Windows, and in 2001 for
Macintosh and
PlayStation 2. When Guybrush Threepwood and Elaine Marley return from their honeymoon, they find that Elaine has been declared officially dead, her mansion is under a destruction order, and her position as governor is up for election. Guybrush investigates and unearths a conspiracy by LeChuck and evil real estate developer Ozzie Mandrill to use a voodoo talisman, "The Ultimate Insult", to make all pirates docile in order to turn the Caribbean into a center of tourism.
Tales of Monkey Island Tales of Monkey Island is the fifth installment within the series, co-developed by
Telltale Games and LucasArts, with a simultaneous release both on
WiiWare and
PC. Unlike other installments,
Tales is an episodic adventure consisting of five different episodes. The first episode was released on July 7, with the last one released on December 8, 2009. During a heated battle with his nemesis, the evil pirate LeChuck, Guybrush unwittingly unleashes an insidious pox that rapidly spreads across the Caribbean, turning pirates into zombie-like monsters. The Voodoo Lady sends Guybrush in search of a legendary sea sponge to stem the epidemic, but this seemingly straightforward quest has surprises around every corner.
Return to Monkey Island With the purchase of LucasArts by
the Walt Disney Company in 2012, the rights to the franchise are now property of Disney. In the second half of 2010s, Disney Interactive ceased the production on gaming and transitioned to a licensing model. Gilbert wrote on Twitter that he was interested in buying the
Monkey Island and
Maniac Mansion properties. Fans of the series launched an online petition asking Disney to sell the franchise to Gilbert; by December 2021, the petition had gathered about 29,000 signatures.
Return to Monkey Island, the sixth
Monkey Island installment, was released on September 19, 2022, on the Nintendo Switch and Windows, coming to other formats later. A
frame story in the game serves to explain and continue from the ending of ''LeChuck's Revenge'', while the main narrative takes place after the other games in the series.
Other appearances Stan's Used Coffins is referred to in one of the levels of the LucasArts game
Outlaws. In
Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, Guybrush can be accessed as a playable character via a
cheat code; in addition, a
Monkey Island-themed secret room can be found in the game's final level. Guybrush also appears in
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II as a playable skin for Starkiller named "Guybrush Threepkiller". Guybrush is paid homage in the
Naughty Dog video game ''
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End'', where a pirate with major similarities to Guybrush is featured as one of the twelve pirate captains that founded Libertalia. Although he remains unnamed throughout the game, the resemblance is uncanny and his
sigil is represented by a monkey. His portrait can be seen in the Libertalia treasury with the other founders and though his name is partly scratched out, the letters still visible spell out the truncated name "Guy Wood". Several elements from the
Monkey Island series appear in
Sea of Thieves as part of its June 2021 "A Pirate's Life" update. Developed in collaboration with Disney and primarily themed after
Pirates of the Caribbean, multiple references to the characters and locales from the Monkey Island franchise can be found in journals by Kate Capsize scattered around the wreckage of The Headless Monkey during the update's first Tall Tale, accompanied by an original arrangement of the Monkey Island theme. According to the journals, Guybrush and Elaine Threepwood are celebrating their honeymoon somewhere upon the Sea of Thieves, while Kate perished attempting to get revenge on Guybrush for framing her. A full
Monkey Island-themed expansion for the game, "The Legend of Monkey Island", was released on July 20, 2023 and spread across three monthly episodes. In the story, set between
Curse and
Escape, Guybrush and Elaine's honeymoon on the Sea of Thieves is interrupted by LeChuck, who traps them in a dream version of Mêlée Island where everyone worships Guybrush as a legendary pirate. To stop LeChuck from restoring the legendary Burning Blade and conquering the Sea of Thieves, the Pirate Lord recruits the now-revived Kate Capsize and the player pirates to enter the dreamworld and rescue Guybrush and Elaine. In an update to
Hitman 3, a new pirate-themed map was added, which featured an Easter Egg referencing
Monkey Island in the form of a gravestone in the environment reading "G Threepwood, Mighty Pirate", a clear reference to Guybrush. In
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, while completing the 'Fists of Fury' quest in the
Blood and Wine expansion patch, the protagonist
Geralt encounters a man named Mancomb, a reference to a character of the same name in the first game of the series.
Cancelled film Shortly after
Pixar, a spinout from Lucasfilm, found success with the first
Toy Story film in 1995, there had been a push across Hollywood for more digitally animated films. Lucasfilm's
Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), in the midst of transitioning from practical to digital effects, offered its services for producing these films to other studios. One of the first projects they tried to work on was with
Universal Pictures to revive the
Universal Classic Monsters line with a film called
Frankenstein and the Wolfman. While several scripts and preliminary art was produced for this film, shake-ups at Universal due to the financial failure of
Babe: Pig in the City led to changes in leadership for the film and ultimately its cancellation. David Carson, who had been set to direct
Frankenstein and the Wolfman but left after the Universal shake-up, came back to ILM with the idea of an animated film based on the first
Monkey Island game around 2000. With initial support from ILM, Carson worked an initial script with Corey Rosen and Scott Leberecht as to pitch the idea to
Amblin Entertainment, the production company owned by
Steven Spielberg. Spielberg had told Carson that he had previously told
George Lucas that he should have made a
Monkey Island movie years before, and other meetings with Amblin went well to proceed to further screenwriting work. The rest of ILM's story department was brought in to help write, including
Steve Purcell, but this team worked separately from the writers that were developing the actual games, creating a disconnect between story the film was going with and the narrative already established in the video game series. As they continued to work out the screenplay, the direction of the film continued to veer further from the video game series, including at one point where Spielberg had suggested the game be about the monkeys on Monkey Island instead of the pirates. According to Carson, the lack of a creative direction at this point led to the film being shelved at ILM. It had been rumored that
Ted Elliott and
Terry Rossio had been involved in the writing of the
Monkey Island script which they subsequently used as the basis for the first
Pirates of the Caribbean film. Both Elliott and Rossio had been to ILM and were shown parts of the
Monkey Island script, around the same time they were working on their script for
Pirates. When
Pirates was released, many fans of the
Monkey Island series made comparisons of parts of the film to the games, and when news of the cancelled film first arose in 2011, the potential connection of Elliott and Rossio to the
Monkey Island script started. Both Carson and Rossio stated that many of the tropes in both
Monkey Island and
Pirates are based on the classic pirate movies and that there was no direct reuse of the cancelled
Monkey Island film in
Pirates. == The "Secret" of Monkey Island ==