Look Behind You, A Three-Headed Mon... I mean a Let's Play of Secret of Monkey Island

Here's your chance Guybrush! Wow her with your cool intellect and strang grasp of the English language!



Yeah, that'll do it...






Okay! Second chance here Threepwood don't blow it!




Smooth



Real smooth...

Give it up Guy she doesn't speak gibberish.



Chin up big guy, you'll get there. Guybrush turns and leaves the Mansion; he's got a idol to hand over!



"Not you again!"



Guybrush gets right to the point, doesn't he?





"Shinetop, words hurt."



"It's Threepwood. Guybrush ThreepwooooooAAHHHHHHHHHH"





Well, alls well that ends well I always so! What? What do you mean Guybrush is tied to a heavy object at the bottom of the bay? I'm sure he's fine. We'll check in on him next week! You'll see!

TO DO

- Get a map
- find a way past that troll
- Get a helmet
- Find a way to visit Hook Island
- Master the Sword
- Master Thievery I mean he DOES have the idol...
- Master Treasure Huntery
- Explore the town
- Avoid Le Chuck
- Become a Pirate
- Avoid the Sheriff A little late for this I'd say.

Uh.

Not drown, I guess?

Plunderbunny!

I always tell Shinetop that she gave it to me. It comes true!

The whole sequence behind the wall in the Governor's Mansion is one of my favorite parts of the game. It's an incredibly clever use of the game's UI for humor. I do always take the vase before going in, so that Guybrush can automatically put it down and then take it again.

I always wonder if they had something more elaborate planned but then didn't have the resources to do it and so did this instead...

Elaine Marley, one of the best ladies in Gaming.

We last left our hero, Guybrush Threepwood, at the bottom of the bay tied to a heavy, gold idol. I hope he's okay. Let's join him there now



The guy seems to be surrounded by tools that'd make his escape easier; Sadly, all of them seem to be just out of reach:



That's true for the scissors, the cleaver, the hacksaw, rusty knife, and axe... What else is down here with Guybrush? Just the idol:



Let's just pick it up? That might work?




Yup, to get out of the water all Guybrush had to do was pick up the idol he was tied to and climb out. And the game gives you a full ten minutes to figure it out. Remember Guybrush mentioning he could hold his breath for 10 minutes earlier? I don't really recall either but I'm sure he did... Anyway back to the story:

Well, that was anti-climactic... Though I do love the term 'plunder bunny.' What? It's not over? Oh sorry!







That still ended pretty anti-climatically if you ask me... Though it seems Guybrush now has another reason for completing the trials!

Finish them quickly even! Guybrush still has the idol. He better go turn it into the Important Pirates at the SCUMM bar, which is conveniently located just down the dock from here!




Okay, with that out of the way Guybrush needs to just Master the Sword and Master Treasure Hunting. That shouldn't take to long. First we're going to need some money and the only people we've encountered who are offering any are the two brothers at the circus. So back Guybrush goes!







"Hrm which one of these things looks most like a helmet?"

Welp, that went about as well as I expected. Good thing Threepwood was wearing a helmet...







It goes on for that like awhile...

Guybrush is now 478 pieces of eight richer though! And all it took was a concussion and a few broken ribs. Easy money, right? With the coins burning a hole in his pockets he heads back to town:





Okay, Guybrush has a sword now but as we know from the last time the Sword Master doesn't want to see us at all. There's got to be someone on this island who can help Guybrush become a master of the sword...



"Oh yeah, this guy again. What did you want?"




Real clever Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert. Real clever.




Guybrush makes it past the troll to the lights in the cove:



Which turns out to be a used ship lot...

It's not a bad thing Stan isn't here. We don't have a treasure map or a crew to be going anywhere with right now anyway. A ship is a little ways into Guy's future I think.




Cherry Grog is my favorite. What's yours?




Machine must be broken. Guybrush leaves the Used Ship lot and moves further along:



"I want a Big Body!"

I wonder what Guybrush will find in the gym? I wonder what it'll cost him? We'll he ever become a pirate? We'll he ever taste Governor Marley's sweet sweet lips? Will he run into Le Chuck? Who knows! Turn in next week and maybe we'll find out. But, I wouldn't count on it.

TO DO

- Get a map
- find a way past that troll
- Get a helmet
- get a sword
- Find a way to visit Hook Island
- Master the Sword
- Master Treasure Huntery
- Explore the town
- Avoid Le Chuck
- Become a Pirate
- Meet Stan
- Learn how to fight with sword
- get a ship
- get a crew (?)
- Kiss the Governor.

It's the best.

Last time we left our hero Guybrush Threepwood outside of Captain Smirk's Big Boy Pirate Gym. He's been standing there for the past two weeks waiting for us to care again about his adventures:




"I am a big boy! Sword training, cannon firing, and hook grappling, huh? Well, I only have one of those things so..."




Looking back at this I wish I had picked "Um... Could you please put out that cigar?" option before moving the plot along. Now I'll never know what Smirk would have said...



Oh, where have I seen this guy before? When did Duke Nukem lose an eye?





"But you've never even seen me fight!"




Bastions of adult masculinity right here folks...

It's nice when the game makes its flag checks so obvious, it also helps point the player to what they need to proceed. The designers could have just had no one answer the door until the player had both 30 piecess of eight and a sword in their inventory before having Smirk come out. This way though tells the player exactly what it is they need to proceed.



"Lets!"




This is where he tells Guybrush he's a born natural!





He can't be all that bad, can he Smirk?

"That's good right?"



"I don't know if I feel comfortable about this Captain."



Yeah, that's because you're behind that infernal device!"




I'm imagining a montage!



Another montage!





"Do it faster and harder than anyone else?"

We're screwed...





Sick burn







Another sick burn! You are killing it Threepwood!

I'm shocked that Guybrush's response was incorrect!






"But I paid you 30 pieces of eight!"



Indeed... Well, Guybrush at least knows which end of the sword to stick into his opponents. That is about all he knows though. Turns out sword fighting isn't about sword fighting, much to the chagrin of fencers everywhere, but about belittling people.



We take Guybrush back to the map screen and let's take a closer look at it again. There are a number of colored moving dots on the map, those are wandering pirates. We ran into one or two of them before but nothing ever happened but an awkward conversion. That is no longer the case. Now that Guybrush has the proper training...



We can challenge them to duels!



This early in the game Threepwood only have a few insults to use. In order to defeat the sword master and get closer to becoming a real pirate he's going to have to learn a lot more. How? By learning from these guys. We can insult them and they can insult us. We defeat them if we can insult them three times without a clever comeback and vise versa. It's okay if we lose though. That's good, cause it means we learned a new insult which we can use on the next guy and if we're lucky he'll also give us the correct response to it! Needless to say, this could take awhile.



Guybrush doesn't know the rejoinder to this insult, either does this pirate.



He does know that one...



A new insult! Guybrush will use this against his next foe!

Another new one! And with that we've been defeated.



Thankfully, for these pirates scarring the self esteem is enough. Threepwood goes in search of another duel:




No help there. Knowing the insults is only half the task. We need to know the proper rejoinders as well or we'll still lose fights.




As satisfying as it may be to win a duel. This one was a complete bust. We didn't learn any knew insults or rejoinders. Like a said, awhile... On to the next!



Nice! Now we know that one completely.



And a new one to test on another pirate.



And another!



Well, looks like Guybrush is going to be wandering the island waving his sword and tongue at people for a bit. We can catch up with him again next weekend.

TO DO

- Get a map
- Master the Sword
- Master Treasure Huntery
- Explore the town
- Avoid Le Chuck
- Become a Pirate
- Meet Stan
- Learn how to fight with sword
- get a ship
- get a crew (?)
- Kiss the Governor.
- learn all the insults

Haha, I always respond "How appropriate. You fight like a cow," to everything I don't know. I'm glad you did it to the second training insult!

It'd be interesting to know how many fights it takes to get a full set of everything.

I'm sure there's a minimum but it'd require every opponent to answer all your insults correctly and only respond with new ones each time.

I don't recall how many sets there are but once I know we can ask one of the math whizzes on tt to crunch out the number for us ?

Yeah, I was more wondering about how many it takes you in particular. Always seems to be tough to get somebody to give you the last insult; much tougher than the retorts.

Okay, well I'll keep track. I know I've been able to complete the game without ever getting all of them before.

Ha! I love that the training dummies and The Machine all have huge goofy grins.

At one point, I had a link to a web version of the Monkey Island swordfighting. I've since lost it, but if anyone else can find it, it's worth posting here. The swordfighting is the highlight of the game for me.

Wandering around Melee in its eternal nighttime, insulting pirates and searching for the Sword Master; the perfect marriage of pirate-y tone and Lucasarts-style adventure gameplay.

The art in this game still holds up, especially when it's not stretched to 1080p. Love that circus tent interior background and all the close-up portraits. I assume Purcell did all that stuff?

This thing?