My foray into the world of video games is memorable mostly because of The Secret of Monkey Island. The game shipped in 1990, but to me, it might as well have been the first of its genre. This was more than a clicking-on-stuff PC adventure and the point & click mechanic; it has only the barest of relations to other games in the visually intricate, puzzle-and-dialogue-filled Monkey Island series. The design, storytelling, and ambiance of The Secret of Monkey Island have a pull that I remember. Part pirate romp, part interactive romantic comedy, and so constant an amuser, a game that delights in always rewarding the player that the player’s guide shipped with a hint book that also went to some lengths to conceal the hints.
Our screens were first graced with The Secret of Monkey Island in 1990. Before then, the graphical adventure game experience was largely text-based or featured seriously outdated graphics. Games such as Zork and King’s Quest laid the foundation for the genre in the 1980s, but they also required some serious brain-straining at times, thanks to their reliance on players typing out commands or working their way through a tangled web of tough-to-solve-on-their-own puzzles. Then came Monkey Island, with its inviting, not-too-tough puzzles, clickable interface, lovely hand-drawn visuals, and delightful story. It truly was a monumental game.
The first time I played The Secret of Monkey Island is etched in my memory. The game opened with a bang. Right away, the music grabbed me by the ears, welcoming me to a new world. The visuals were stunning, bursting with color, promising an exciting adventure ahead. As soon as I heard Guybrush, a gangly, likable goof with an air of innocence, pronouncing that he always wanted to develop into a masterful pirate I was ensnared…or perhaps you could say, I was methodically plotted into the land of Monkey Island.
The Secret of Monkey Island puzzles gave you a reason to solve them. They engaged the gray matter in your head. Your brain liked figuring them out because they seemed to fall within the scope of understandable solutions, even if their solutions came as complete surprises. And because they somehow seem fair in retrospect, you never feel as if they were just something to get past.
After the player emerged from the previous game, having solved the puzzles or headed this direction, the story pressed on. In The Secret of Monkey Island and the next game, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, the player character always found new locations to explore. Again, the puzzles offered a mix of the prosaic and the absurd that nonetheless wound up seeming clever. Near the end of the first game, your player character, Guybrush Threepwood, finds a note that says: “Look in the back of this sh34p.” Threepwood still needed to open the door. But when one of the monkeys turned into a monkey wrench, my jaw figuratively dropped.
A standout feature of The Secret of Monkey Island is its system of dialogue. It was like sitting down to a great piece of interactive fiction, except instead of typing in commands to solve puzzles, I was choosing dialogue options to carry on the many zany conversations Guybrush has with the various weirdos who inhabit this world. The writing throughout is terrific, and the dialogue system itself is something of a marvel. It’s the way it’s used, with the almost unbelievable depth and breadth of its content, that makes it not just a showcase for what was possible in terms of player-driven narrative back then but that was largely unmatched until Mass Effect came along.
The Secret of Monkey Island really stood out from other games of its time, mostly because of the one thing that cannot be directly translated into a monetary figure: its humor. This adventure game, released in 1990, was far and away the best-written comedic video game of its era, much of its charm coming from the tiny jokes that were always ready to leap out of your monitor when you least expected it. It was never just “use this with that” onscreen: the world of Monkey Island and its characters always had some extra zaniness or sense of wit to offer above and beyond the usual puzzles.
Some of the most unforgettable characters in the game left a deep impact on me. The fabulous treasure hunter Captain Smirk and the eccentric Tofu Cannibals were just some of the few. Every character in The Curse of Monkey Island had a certain edge, a certain charm, and a certain…well, color that just made them pop. Dealing with them was almost always the high point of your adventure in terms of memorable humor. No character in this game was dull—no character in this game was forgettable. And that is just one of the ingredients in the near-perfect recipe that is this lucid, silly world of unforgettable buffoons whom you constantly encounter on the very uneven path you tread as a wannabe mighty pirate hell-bent on stopping a mighty evil pirate.
The game’s comedy stretched past its character interactions and into its visual humor and environmental stories. Monkey Island was a world with an attention to detail that rivaled any other. Not only did it crack jokes at a nonstop pace, but Monkey Island also gave gags a type of visual delivery system that was hard for series like even King’s Quest to live up to. Furthermore, the first two games in the series used a then groundbreaking technique (anti-aliasing) to soften the art and make it come alive with light and shadow, delivering the player into the vibrant and highly comedic world that was Monkey Island.
The Secret of Monkey Island provided a lot more than just humor. While the laughs were certainly an integral part of what made the game so enjoyable, they’re only really half the story when it comes to why Monkey Island stands as a classic among graphic adventures. The tale of Guybrush Threepwood, the wannabe pirate who, with every puzzle solved, manages to perform circumspect acts of accidental heroism, has become just as legendary among gamers as LeChuck, the demonic figure Threepwood bested in the finale.
The influence of The Secret of Monkey Island can be seen everywhere in the world of adventure games. It’s remembered for its humor and storytelling, but it must also be noted that the game itself was a trailblazer of sorts. Many of the things that we now take for granted in adventure gaming got their start with Monkey Island. And the same goes for the things that The Secret of Monkey Island did wrong: those, too, contributed mightily to the ways in which adventure gaming has evolved.
One of the key impacts of The Secret of Monkey Island is its SCUMM technology. SCUMM is an abbreviation for Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion, the Adventure/RPG that Guybrush Threepwood could easily inhabit. SCUMM was developed by Lucasfilm Games as an engine that is both more sophisticated and easier-to-use than its more primitive forerunners, and the language in which SCUMM games are programmed is far closer to natural human English language. The result is that Threepwood can do more things in the world of The Secret of Monkey Island (c. 1609 on a Caribbean Island) than a player can typically do with an avatar in an adventure game.
The blowout success of The Secret of Monkey Island really helped put Lucasfilm Games (now known as LucasArts) on the map as something of an adventure game tour de force. They boasted a roster of really talented writers and designers, and the kinds of kooky humor and offbeat innovation you would expect from a George Lucas-led company in its storytelling. In fact, sometimes they seemed almost to be trying too hard to make the player laugh or to push the envelope of adventure game design, especially in titles like Sam & Max Hit the Road. But when they were good, they were also really, really good, especially Monkey Island!
The work of The Secret of Monkey Island has inspired many developers over the years, not just its core team members who worked on the original game. Its effects can actually be seen quite clearly in the work of a parallel game-maker. In its heyday, Sierra On-Line was perhaps the closest rival to Lucasfilm Games, in terms of both the output and the overall influence of its games. Both companies were vying for essentially the same adventure-game crown, and the success of Monkey Island turned up the heat on that rivalry in a fun way.
Even after 30 years, The Secret of Monkey Island is a game held dear by people of many ages, and why not? The humor employed in its dialogues and narratives is, like the great comedic films of the era, from Airplane to The Princess Bride, truly timeless. Moreover, the characters in the game are so well-conceived, so well-developed, and so lovable (with the lovable sort of rogues one might want to see again in a Pixar movie) that the cast almost seems to have been wasted on a game that so many will never know.
Over the years, I have returned to The Secret of Monkey Island frequently, and spending time with it always feels like hanging out with an old buddy. The comedy is just as potent as it ever was, and it still gets a hearty laugh from me on multiple occasions. Problem-solving remains one of the high points of my gaming life, and none of the personalities that are the backbone of the events here have faded for me in any meaningful way. Indeed, coming back to this point-and-click adventure only solidifies the ways it has affected me. The writing is on the wall.
The renaissance of the adventure game genre is directly tied to the legacy of The Secret of Monkey Island. As the pantheon of nostalgic video games grows, so does renewed interest in the titles that kindled the first or second love affairs with video games. The games listed above traffic in that sense of nostalgia—entirely. But they also pay deference to the once-tottering point-and-click genre of adventures with their deceptively simple yet maddeningly challenging puzzle-like problems. These allusions connect as Easter eggs a gamer might encounter.
The impact of Monkey Island can also be felt in the turbine engine of the independent game developer movement, which has seen an emphasis on artful, ludic, story-rich games that nearly scorn the idea that they easily could be how many others do in any other medium. “You can pay what amounts to half the cost of a theater ticket to see Undertale; by many accounts, it’s as good as or better than a lot of classic and current musicals,” I wrote in 2015. I’ve cited Undertale as the kind of thing I wish we were discussing in 2013 instead of (essentially) justifying all video game narratives as art.
The legacy of The Secret of Monkey Island is undoubtedly one of influence and innovation. No other game comes to mind that so thoroughly redefined the entire look, feel, and presentation of the adventure-game genre in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Monkey Island did it, and it did it with a plucky and lighthearted artistic style and story that has arguably never been replicated (or perhaps even attempted) in the sprawling canon of video-game history. That alone would make it interesting, but it does so much more.
