The Special Edition graphics look awful, but at least you can switch over to the (very charming) original look of the game. No matter how it looks, though, definitely one of my favorite point & click games of all time, and despite being over 30 years old, the humor still hits just as well now as I'm sure it did back then. Also a lot of fun to experience the game for the first time in many years since I did not exactly remember every puzzle solution so there was still a lot of fun discoveries and having to actually think about what I was supposed to do at times, but with the added bonus of at least remembering the broad strokes of most things so I never really got stuck. Not that tSoMI is a particularly cruel game anyway, usually being pretty logical and even when the solution can feel a bit obtuse, the game is really good at giving pretty clear nudges along the way for most of the game. Probably not my favorite in the franchise, but there's something special about it that was just never replicated, and I'm not really sure what. Maybe the high energy enthusiasm it exudes? Not sure, but whatever the case may be, still an absolutely fantastic little adventure that somehow never seems to age, and with a fantastic soundtrack as well!

Controlling the pointer with a controller rather than a mouse certainly isn't ideal by the way, but it works decently enough.

A beautifully made clean up of the original with improved graphics, whilst keeping true to the game and adding voice acting in it too. Definitely worth a buy if you want to play the first monkey island game and you don't have Dosbox or Scummvm to play the original on.

Edit: The game was mostly made for those who had played it in the past, but I do love how they had changed certain things as not only were the graphics replaced with more cartoonish ones, but you can semi-seamlessly swap between the new ones and the only ones if you're feeling especially nostalgic without messing with DOSBox or Scummvm.

The story, for those who don't know, follows Guybrush Thweepwood who wants to become a pirate, however, he's often laughed off as not only is he a bit of a slender character with no real muscle and not intimidating features at all, but the name itself also doesn't exactly strike fear into the heart of those who come across it.

At the same time, the Pirate named LeChuck has returned from the dead! The reason being, the governor's daughter refused his advances and told him to drop dead and so he did to become the zombie pirate we all know and fear! He's returned with the power of voodoo magic to attempt to take her hand in marriage since he did exactly what she said to do, drop dead. He had also transformed his crew into a group of undead minions to assist him in his conquest.

I can see the spark of charm that earned its reputation and the soundtrack is great, but so much of the writing is just bad, and the dated point and click adventure gameplay is the epitome of what nearly killed the genre.

I loved the writing in both Psychonauts games earlier this year and assumed this would be similarly imaginative and funny, but it’s so much worse. There’s no attempt at an emotional connection so it’s all up to the gag writing, and unfortunately it relies on volume instead of quality. Why tell two great jokes when you can tell fifteen kinda okay jokes instead? And if you stumble into a great joke, why not repeat it four or five more times to make sure everyone’s tired of it by the end? I also couldn’t believe they included unoriginal hack jokes like “is that a banana in your pocket or are ya just happy to see me?”

The old school point-and-click stuff is mostly awful; I can’t imagine trudging through this without an internet walkthrough. Aside from the typically bizarre puzzle solutions, everything is just so tedious and clunky and time-wasting, which makes all the exploring and trial-and-error that much more punishing. The handful of solutions that must be done against a real-time stopwatch are particularly galling given how bad the input controls are.

I wanted to play this and its sequel before trying out the recent sequel, but I’m heavily considering skipping straight to Return now.

👾 The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition (🇺🇸 1990/2009)

Biased opinion here since it’s my favourite graphic adventure of all time. The special edition gives a great facelift to the classic and the brilliant writing never gets old. It should be in a museum.

🎮 Played on Steam Deck

Rating: 🐒🐒🐒🐒🐒