Adventure Gamer's Clubhouse #1 - The Secret of Monkey Island (Part 1)

Welcome to the first episode of the Adventure Gamer's Club House, the new $1 tier where I'll be revisiting classic adventure games of personal significance and diving into treasures (or trash) that I may have missed!

And to kick it all off, we're starting out with a free for all two parter LP of one of the most pivotal games in baby Dia's life -- The Secret of Monkey Island!

Plenty of games have done before and since and left their own impacts, but together with Brian Moriarty's LOOM (go on. ask me), few things have had such a seismic impact on my entire outlook on games as a player, a fan, and future critic. Much comes before The Secret of Monkey Island, both on PC, console, and in the arcades -- but this is where I really started to fall in love with and begin breaking apart games (well, as best as a 7 year old could).

We're doing it with the original EGA version that came on those big 5.25" floppies. If you want to play the game for yourself, I'd likely recommend using the special edition and playing in VGA (which, I agree is the more universally canonical version), and including the modern voice acting (which I think should be the definitively canonical version now).

But for me, and my interest is always going to be more invested in the personal canon, the EGA, without voices, and the "stump" joke intact is how Secret of Monkey Island was most fully and originally received -- so that's what we're doing.

Yes, the portraits can be nightmarish and crude. And certainly aren't the handpainted luxuries of the VGA version. But I hope by the end you'll come to appreciate the constrained beauty and lush use of black in this earlier edition.

Okay, without further ado, here's Part One of our journey back to 1990 and deep into the Caribbean...

Coming tomorrow, June 1st -- Part Two!