Secret of Monkey Island Original Version
LucasFilm released the original version of The Secret of Monkey Island for IBM PC MS-DOS 3.1 in October of 1990.
The Secret of Monkey Island is a graphics adventure game and prequel to Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge of December 1991.
The original version of The Secret of Monkey Island displays in 16-color EGA 320x200.
The Secret of Monkey Island was designed by Ron Gilbert and programmed and written by Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer and David Grossman. A small army drew the graphics and composed the audio.
The Secret of Monkey Island is notable for its high-quality writing and beautiful graphics and animation. The dialogue is well-written; at times, very funny. And the soundtrack is unforgettable as well. This game has a ton of soul and will never be forgotten.
In The Secret of Monkey Island players assume the role of Guybrush Threepwood, who is wants to be a pirate. Guybrush explores Mêlée Island and Monkey Island in search of the ghost pirate, LeChuck, solving puzzles and talking to characters along the way.
While you don't need to be a rocket scientist to beat The Secret of Monkey Island, some of the puzzles will call upon your ability to think logically; a few puzzle-solutions are also randomized.
One of the most famous segments of The Secret of Monkey Island involves Guybrush's quest to become a pirate. Equipped with a sword, Guybrush moves around on the map-screen dueling with random pirates via witty taunts and comebacks. For example, during a duel the pirate may say, "Soon you'll be wearing my sword like a shish kebab!" To which Guybrush responds, "First you'd better stop waving it like a feather-duster". Guybrush gradually builds up a pool of witty taunts and comebacks during such duels, which he then employs when facing off against the swordmaster.
The Secret of Monkey Island features sprite-scaling and screen-scrolling. However, the scrolling is not smooth.
The average playing time of The Secret of Monkey Island is 30 hours though it only takes 30 minutes to replay the game when you know its solution.
The Secret of Monkey Island requires 640K of conventional RAM.
The Secret of Monkey Island was distributed on 8x 5.25" 360K DD floppy disks or 4x 3.5" 720K MB DS DD diskettes. The Secret of Monkey Island extracts and installs to hard disk drive via Secret of Monkey Island Hard Disk Install Utility. The install size is 2.6 megs (16 files).
The Secret of Monkey Island audio supports AdLib Music Synthesizer, Sound Blaster and Roland MT-32 Sound Module or LAPC-1 sound card (as a stereo sound upgrade). The Secret of Monkey Island supports keyboard, mouse and joystick control.
- The Secret of Monkey Island Manual: 8 pages
- The Secret of Monkey Island Hint Book: 62 pages
The Secret of Monkey Island copy protection: Dial-A-Pirate code wheel: History Quiz.
The Secret of Monkey Island DOSBox Run-time error - integer divide by 0: Set cycles to 3000.
The IBM PC 256-color VGA 320x200 version of The Secret of Monkey Island was released in December of 1990.
The Secret of Monkey Island Amiga 1991
LucasFilm Games released The Secret of Monkey Island on the Amiga in 1991. The Amiga version of The Secret of Monkey Island requires 1 meg of RAM and was distributed on 4x 3.5" 880kB DD diskettes. The Amiga version extracts to hard disk drive with an install size of 3 megs (13 files). [1]
The Amiga version can take advantage of Fast RAM and Motorola CPUs greater than 68000 (e.g., 68020 of the A1200).
Based on the IBM PC MS-DOS VGA version of Dec. 1990, The Secret of Monkey Island was converted to the Amiga by Scott Nelson and Ed Kilham. The Amiga version of The Secret of Monkey Island displays in 32-color 320x200. The screen-scrolling is slightly smoother in the Amiga version than in the IBM PC MS-DOS EGA or VGA versions. The arts assets of the VGA version were converted to the Amiga by Tami Borowick, James Dollar, Bill Eaken, Avril Harrison, Ian McCaig, Jim McLeod, Michael Stemle and Sean Turner.
The Amiga version of The Secret of Monkey Island employs TMFX Pro: The Final Musicsystem eXtended by Chris Hülsbeck (1988-99). The sound effects and music were re-orchestrated by Chris Hülsbeck and Rudolf Stember of Rainbow Arts.
The Secret of Monkey Island Atari ST 1991
LucasFilm Games released The Secret of Monkey Island on the Atari ST in 1991. The Atari ST version of The Secret of Monkey Island requires 1 meg of RAM and was distributed on 4x 3.5" 720kB DD diskettes.
Based on the IBM PC MS-DOS EGA version of Oct. 1990, The Secret of Monkey Island system was converted to the Atari ST by Dan Filner; the scripting was converted by Bret Barrett. The Atari ST version of The Secret of Monkey Island displays in 16-color 320x200. The screen-scrolling is choppy and the framerate drops significantly when there are a more than a few animated sprites on-screen.
The Yamaha YM2149 3-channel rendition of SoMI music consists primarily of "bleeps and blurps". In addition, the sound effects are weak and hollow in comparison to the Amiga Paula rendition.
However, you can clearly see that the ST's 16-color graphics hold up well versus the Amiga's 32-color graphics (the ST graphics are brighter and some scenes actually look better). But this is true of EGA versus VGA as well.
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[1]
cf.
- Chronological List of Graphics Adventure Games IBM PC MS-DOS
- Early 1990s IBM PC Games that made Amiga owners jealous
- 1980s IBM PC Games that made Atari ST and Amiga owners jealous
- History of Computer Games 1976-2024
- History of 1990s Computer Games
- History of Shoot 'em Ups 1976-2000
- Western Computer-game Machines
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