If I Made Another Monkey Island
NOTE: Now that Return To Monkey Island has been announced it's important to note that a lot of my views (but not all) in this post have changed. Don't take anything in here as more than a historical moment. Quoting anything in here as canon will just led to tears.
Yeah, I know, that sounds like the title of the O.J. Simpson book. I realized that after I typed it, but I'm not going to change it.
So, before I get into this fanciful post, I want to make one thing perfectly clear... actually, I'm just going to make it my first point. It's probably the most important one. Actually, I'll make it the first two points.
One - I am not making another Monkey Island. I have no plans to make another Monkey Island. I am not formulating plans to make another Monkey Island.
Two - Let me say that again. There is no new Monkey Island in works and I have no plans to make one. I'm just thinking and dreaming and inviting you come along with me. Please your keep your hands inside the boat at all times. No standing or you might get wet.
But, If I made another Monkey Island...
Three - It would be a retro game that harkened back to Monkey Island 1 and 2. I'd do it as "enhanced low-res". Nice crisp retro art, but augmented by the hardware we have today: parallaxing, depth of field, warm glows, etc. All the stuff we wanted to do back in 1990 but couldn't. Monkey Island deserves that. It's authentic. It doesn't need 3D. Yes, I've seen the video, it's very cool, but Monkey Island wants to be what it is. I would want the game to be how we all remember Monkey Island.
Four - It would be a hardcore adventure game driven by what made that era so great. No tutorials or hint systems or pansy-assed puzzles or catering to the mass-market or modernizing. It would be an adventure game for the hardcore. You're going to get stuck. You're going to be frustrated. Some puzzles will be hard, but all the puzzles will be fair. It's one aspect of Monkey Island I am very proud of. Read this.
Five - I would lose the verbs. I love the verbs, I really do, and they would be hard to lose, but they are cruft. It's not as scary as it sounds. I haven't fully worked it out (not that I am working it out, but if I was working it out, which I'm not, I wouldn't have it fully worked out). I might change my mind, but probably not. Mmmmm... verbs.
Six - Full-on inventory. Nice big juicy icons full of pixels. The first version of Monkey Island 1 had text for inventory, a later release and Monkey Island 2 had huge inventory icons and it was nirvana. They will be so nice you'll want to lick them. That's a bullet-point for the box.
Seven - There would be a box. I imagine most copies would be sold digitally, but sometimes you just want to roll around in all your adventure game boxes. I know I do. Besides, where would you store the code wheel?
Eight - There would be dialog puzzles. They weren't really puzzles, but that's what we called them. Being able to tell four jokes at once and meander and getting lost in the humor of a conversation is the staple of Monkey Island. No one has done it better since. Just my opinion.
Nine - I would rebuild SCUMM. Not SCUMM as in the exact same language, but what SCUMM brought to those games. It was a language built around making adventure games and rapid iteration. It did things Lua could never dream of. When Lua was in High School, SCUMM beat it up for lunch money. True story. SCUMM lived and breathed adventure games. I'd build an engine and a language where funny ideas can be laughed about at lunch and be in the game that afternoon. SCUMM did that. It's something that is getting lost today.
Ten - It would be made with a very small team. Not 30 or 20, but 10 or less. It means the game would take longer, but it would be more personal and crafted with love. Monkey love. Wait... that's not what I meant...
Eleven - The only way I would or could make another Monkey Island is if I owned the IP. I've spent too much of my life creating and making things other people own. Not only would I allow you to make Monkey Island fan games, but I would encourage it. Label them as such, respect the world and the characters and don't claim they are canon. Of course, once the lawyers get ahold of that last sentence it will be seven pages long.
Twelve - It would be called Monkey Island 3a. All the games after Monkey Island 2 don't exist in my Monkey Island universe. My apologies to the all talented people who worked on them and the people who loved them, but I'd want to pick up where I left off. Free of baggage. In a carnival. That doesn't mean I won't steal some good ideas or characters from other games. I'm not above that.
Thirteen - It won't be the Monkey Island 3 I was going to make in 1992. I'm not the same person I was back then. I could never make that game now. It is lost to time. Hopefully this one would be better.
Fourteen - The press won't get advanced copies. I know all the reasons they want to get a game in advance, and they are all valid, but I feel they should play it at the same time you do. I hope they won't be mad at me. My Metacritic score hopes they won't be mad it me.
Fifteen - It would have full voice. It's something we dreamed of back then and we can do it now.
Sixteen - If I used Kickstarter, there would be no fancy videos of me trying to look charming (as if I could). No concept art or lofty promises or crazy stretch goals or ridiculous reward tiers. It would be raw and honest. It would be free of hype and distractions that keep me from making the best game I could. True, I wouldn't raise huge sums of money or break any records, but that's not what I want to do. I want to make a game.
Seventeen - The game would be the game I wanted to make. I don't want the pressure of trying to make the game you want me to make. I would vanish for long periods of time. I would not constantly keep you up-to-date or be feeding the hype-machine. I'd show stuff that excited me or amused me. If you let me do those things, you will love the game. That, I promise.
I hope you've had as much fun reading this as I had writing it.

This isn't about money... it's about Disney not wanting to sell. The problem is, the more someone at Disney likes the game, the less they are willing to sell. The best thing that can happen is for everyone to just forget about MI, then maybe Disney will think it's worthless and sell it. The more people buy the old gages and start petitions, the worse it gets.
I *can not* die before i played MI3a. It is not possible. How about a Kickstarter for getting Ron out of Jail when he releases MI3a without Disney's approval xD ... With luck, i have 25-30 years left. Ron, you have to create this game. Really. The world is lost without MI3a - without RONs MI3a, not Disneys.
This means it is never going to happen.
:'(
Regarding verbs, I would still use them, but reduced. Remove push/pull and use Interact or something more generic
No seriously.
I am absolutely thrilled with your text. The points correspond to 100% of my wishes. In my imagination, the box is already on my shelf.
I hope that it will come to that.
P.S. What was this about? I think I forgot what game we're talking about here. (Did you read that, dear Disney staff?)
I really wish yo finally can get the Monkey Island IP to make this true!!
Petition to Disney to get the rights back in the hands of the creator. I doubt they'll listen, they don't give a shit about integrity, look at the new Star Wars'. Worth a shot though!
But the game I would want you to make is the game that you'd love to make. A game with humor, a game that would get me stuck for hours, and ask my friends "Do you know how to pass the waterfall? A MONKEY? we're from Spain, what is a Monkey Wrench?" and finally, get the joke.
The only ONLY thing I would you suggest, is to improve the sprite framerate: There are some pixel artists that are doing something like this, and looks impresive. It's the best from the past, and the best of our future.
https://twitter.com/LicholasNittle/status/1096146198430396416
What do you think about this?
Considering this post is almost 7 years old and Thimbleweed Park was created in the middle, would you add/modify/delete any of these points?
But if not also another game with the same kind of humor in a fresh positive setting like MI was would be sooo nice! We need your bright stories and art we can fall in love with in these hard times Ron!
He was silent about it, new interface will have no verbs, he already has a small team probably, he said clearly long ago he is not making another adventure due to revenue's reasons but he could change his mind if he would have a great idea... Well ... Is Monkey island 3a coming?
I've played games for over 30 years, and your adventures played the pivotal part of defining some aspects of my life. I am 40 now. I know due to the Disney stuff, there will be no coming back to the IP for Monkey Island in the near future (I sure hope it isn't so!) but this document is awesome. Keep up the good work, I am waiting for your next game :)
But maybe it's for the better. A good game like Thimbleweed Park is better than a bad Monkey Island... although I don't think you could do a bad MI.
Thanks for everything you added to the gaming world. You changed many lives, that's for sure.
Again, if you were ever able to actually move forward with this, I would be first in line to apply. I know the art style to MI2 like the back of my hand and would love the opportunity to create something authentic in its style.
On this list though: Points 3 and 11 seem to not have held up, I wonder about the rest.
Looking forward to what you come up with!
Murray Dixit
Thank You Ron
Even more so if you also bring it out as a Mac OSX release - or even a iPADos touch version. Playing a high quality adventure game on the go would have been a dream back in 1992!
So, SO, excited.
I hope this part will come true:
"I'd do it as "enhanced low-res". Nice crisp retro art, but augmented by the hardware we have today: parallaxing, depth of field, warm glows, etc. All the stuff we wanted to do back in 1990 but couldn't."
But given the trailer, probably not...
In any case, O.M.G.!!
And, I can't fail to say it expressly: Thank you for assuring that Dominic Armato voices Guybrush. He IS inseparable from Guybrush in my head, and seeing that he will be so in a new original Ron Gilbert Monkey Island game (a sentence I am typing in 2022!) just enshrines this perfectly.
Welcome back king.
And sobbing a bit too. Swab the decks!
HUZZAH!
"Seventeen - The game would be the game I wanted to make. I don't want the pressure of trying to make the game you want me to make. I would vanish for long periods of time. I would not constantly keep you up-to-date or be feeding the hype-machine. I'd show stuff that excited me or amused me. If you let me do those things, you will love the game. That, I promise."
I can't believe it's happening :)
Welcome back, master.
Edit: It's unfortunate that the captcha does not accept the word forms for answers.
Sadly it seems point number Three ("It would be a retro game that harkened back to Monkey Island 1 and 2") won't materialise. This seems to have modern graphics (which sadly I'm not digging at all), à la MI3 and Tales of Monkey Island, which were certainly not bad, but had nothing to do, graphics-wise, with MI1 and MI2.
Also Ron said MI3 is canon, so it seems point Twelve (picking up from the carnival) too isn't happening, and that's a major bummer, because we know that what happens in MI3 is not what Ron had in mind. I wanted to see MI3a, i.e. his version of the story, as he says, "free of baggage".
It would have been wonderful to be able to pick up exactly where MI2 ended, with a game that looked like the first two, but it seems like it won't be so.
Let's hope I'm wrong, but I'm afraid I won't be.
A real sequel to LeChuck's Revenge?
This year?
Please, don't go all Star Wars on us Ron. Make this real.
Make Guybrush Great Again!
So with that in mind, PLEASE release a box for Return to Monkey Island!!!
Also in reply to others, this can very much still be a sequel to the second game, he said he would borrow and steal from the others so Murray could come in that way.
This does also, mean one thing.
ScummVM is going to get one Frehekinominal update.
And Ill still be able to play this on my NextGen ppc Amiga under workbench 4.1.x if Ron strays to far from his roots :) with my own copy ofcourse
I have faith in Ron, whatever the graphics might look like. I'm sure that his stubbornness and grumpiness hasn't just vanished into nothing. If he decided to make the game it's because it's going to live up to his impossible standards.
Also, we already got the pixellated retro graphics in thimbleweed park, I appreciate if this is going to be an evolution from that and going to include the new mechanics introduced in Delores. Ok bye
The episodic Tales series I think was actually quite good. Looking forward to see what will become of this, I have faith in you, Ron!
Now I'm off to finally play through Thimbleweed Park ;)
God damn you're a star at hiding secrets! I'm going through your blog now, and I can't imagine how insane it must feel to be able to work on your game again after almost 30 years.
I could not be happier.
11 sounds so cool but I think LucasFilm still owns it so it's not possible
:(
MI for ever!
Respect the retro and pixelated art of MI and MI2 (and even of Thimbleweed Park). Thank you.
Just a real fan.
Return's going to be a good Ron Gilbert game but its only going to be that, nothing more.
Thx for waving a carrot in front of my face then snatching it away and kicking me/us in the balls.
I was just a small kid when I played Monkey Island 1 on my old Amiga 500. Too young to get the jokes, but I sure did get the atmosphere, the adventure... man, in that long gone summer I "lived" on Melee island for months. I was 6 years old, still learning English (this game helped a lot) and was stuck for weeks trying to get Otis out of prison! The feeling when I finally figured to transport grog from mug to mug was unforgettable! :D When I first saw the close up image of Elaine Marley I was in love. When I got endlessly lost in mazes beneath Monkey Island I was genuinely scared. Was wondering for days (real days!) mapping the maze in my notebook before realizing I need the navigator's head ;P
Dear Mr. Gilbert, whatever the amount of magic you manage to bring back, it will be worth. I think I can say for many of us, it was never "just a game", but a part of our identity that we carried in life for 3 decades now. Being older and wiser we realize the business aspect of it, all the nastiness, exploitation of creativity for profit. Even as we know that the nostalgic years of working at the Skywalker's ranch are to always remain in the past, we believed in you. What joy to be a part of this amazing experience, either as a creator, developer or a gamer!
Let's all have amazing days ahead of us!
Special call out to Michael Land for the Adlib music that I recorded to cassette tape straight from the speakers and listened on my Walkman when I was away from home and couldn't play. I still get misty eyed every time I hear it, Adlib or MT-32 (which I can finally afford).
I for one absolutely love what I have seen and read about Return to Monkey Island so far. It really looks and sounds like it will be able to stand on its own two feet instead of leaning too far into what has been. Big fan of the art myself, and I really can't wait to see Guybrush in this style.
That's legacy right there.
That for all the memories and defining love affair.
[frigate sinking in background...]
*Thanks
That is just so great.