Although many of the characters’ new looks are well crafted, the one that suffers the most is also the most significant. The result is like watching a weird marionette show as these fluid looking images move blockily about the screen. Where the visuals do become a bit more awkward is in the actual character animations, which are stylized but must still move like the original game’s characters do. I’m not even totally sure how one is meant to judge such a thing, it’s like asking whether a pencil drawing is made better when ink is applied. They are scene for scene the same except more glossy and shinier. Unlike the standard cited above, where Sierra created entirely new layouts and graphics for each place, the visuals here have to match those of the original games. The second issue is whether or not the new visuals add much to the game. If anything, the Special Edition is an interesting example of what would happen if you put a totally alien interface on a game that wasn’t designed for it. That concept is no longer present in the Special Edition. Since many of the solutions are words puns (red herring, magnetic compass, etc.) part of the clues for the game come from staring at your inventory while you look at the various puzzles. I’ve played Monkey Island too many times to even begin to guess what the experience would be like for someone unfamiliar with the game, but I’m not sure you could even figure out half the puzzles by just playing in the Special Edition mode. But in the Special Edition it’s a tedious affair to juggle menus and try to sync everything up. The classic version (which, again, you just press F10 to bring up) works as elegantly as ever, making all the verbs easy to access and mix with inventory. The problem is that the interface in the enhanced version does not really work for the game. So, it’s literally the exact same game, but you can swap to prettier graphics with the push of a button. To switch verbs you have to pull down a separate menu or press a hotkey. The original’s verb menu remains, but when you switch to the Special Edition, the player faces a one-click style of interaction. The two games also use two different interfaces. By pressing F10 anytime during the game, you can alternate between the original game’s graphics or switch to an exact recreation of them in lush, graphical detail. I raise this issue because LucasArts has opted for their own approach to remaking the adventure game and the results are a bit more mixed. You could in essence go to the same place and experience it all over again. The benefit of all of the tweaking and the new art required for these remakes was that many of these games were fun to play even if you had experienced the original.
For example, a puzzle where you typed “Look in Chest” now needed visual clues to get you to look inside. This revision was also important because introducing a new interface to the game meant a lot of the puzzles had to be reorganized. Due to how primitive the original graphics in these games were in comparison to their 256 color brethren, the visual overhaul of these games was usually massive. When Sierra created a new engine for their adventure games that used icons instead of text parsing, they released new versions of all of their classic titles.
It’s just that that standard was established back in the 1990s. Remaking a video game so that the interface and graphics suit modern sensibilities actually has an established standard. Featuring a new interface and graphics that recreate the original game scene for scene and puzzle for puzzle, the Special Edition serves as a reminder that perhaps some things are better left in their original form. In preparation for this moment, LucasArts created a remake of one of their most popular franchises, Monkey Island. Old fans are able to revisit their favorite places while new players can see what all the fuss was about for the first time. Everything from the King’s Quest and Space Quest games to the classic catalog from LucasArts. The month of July 2009 has seen a resurgence of adventure game classics from the 1980s and 1990s hitting STEAM.
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