I hope so too.
On September 2 1990 Ron Gilbert sent the floppy disks that stored The Secret Of Monkey Island to be manufactured. The game would be available in stores October of the same year.
He’s written about that process, and about the lasting legacy of Monkey Island, and its actually a really touching, interesting read. This might be my favourite part.
Monkey Island was never a big hit. It sold well, but not nearly as well and anything Sierra released. I started working on Monkey Island II about a month after Monkey Island I went to manufacturing with no idea if the first game was going to do well or completely bomb. I think that was part of my strategy: start working on it before anyone could say “it’s not worth it, let’s go make Star Wars games”.
There are two things in my career that I’m most proud of. Monkey Island is one of them and Humongous Entertainment is the other. They have both touched and influenced a lot of people. People will tell me that they learned english or how to read from playing Monkey Island. One person told me that he and his father fought and never got along, except for when they played Monkey Island together.
It makes me extremely proud and is very humbling.
Monkey Island games not made by Ron Gilbert were a mixed bag. Monkey Island 3 — I thought — was decent, but it wasn’t the same. Ron Gilbert always saw the series as a trilogy and has expressed interest in making his own Monkey Island 3 — which he called Monkey Island 3a.
I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I sure as hell would love to play another Ron Gilbert-made Monkey Island. Turns out he would also like to make it.
I don’t know if I will ever get to make another Monkey Island. I always envisioned the game as a trilogy and I really hope I do, but I don’t know if it’s likely. Monkey Island is now owned by Disney and they haven’t shown any desire to sell me the IP. I don’t know if I could make Monkey Island 3a without complete control over what I was making and the only way to do that is to own it. Disney: Call me.
Disney — please call him.
You can read Ron Gilbert’s blog about the 25th anniversary of Monkey Island here
Comments
17 responses to “Ron Gilbert Doesn’t Know If He’ll Make Another Monkey Island, But He Hopes So”
Ron Gilbert likes to tease. Every year or so he’ll pop up and say ‘if I made another Monkey Island’, or ‘only I know the real secret of Monkey Island, and it wasn’t a bloody great mecha-monkey you frigging hacks’.
I don’t know if I really want just him making another one, though. I don’t know how much of the magic came from him and how much came from the collaboration between him, Tim Shafer, and Dave Grossman.
Pretty much this. Until Gilbert says he has a solid idea for another game and comes out and asks for money for it (which he’d get, even if the gaming industry is feeling the effects of Kickstarter fatigue right now), I’d kind of prefer he stop teasing us with “could be”s.
Humongous Entertainment didn’t just make educational games. They also had a sub-division for a few years called Cavedog Entertainment.
You fight like a dairy farmer.
You fight like a cow!
I once knew a monkey that was smarter then you!
He must have taught you everything you know!
I got this scar on my face during a mighty struggle!
I am rubber, you are glue! Oh…dang it…I was never good at this sort of thing…
Look! A three headed monkey!
No mentioned of Telltale?
Interesting Disney ended up with the rights…
Why? Disney bought Lucas(everything), which includes LucasArts.
I personally loved the Telltale series they did. I reckon it worked really well and was well executed.
I wonder if part of getting him to do it would involve Disney finally sending him the royalty cheques they owe him for using Monkey Island II as the basis of the second Pirates of the Caribbean film.
I loved Monkey Island 1 and 2. Curse of Monkey Island I liked as well (despite not being a Ron Gilbert title). Monkey Island 4, well we don’t talk about that one. Telltale series I also liked.
Can we talk about that one? ‘Cause it wasn’t that bad. The HT Marley stuff was interesting, even if it didn’t really stack up well. It brought back the original crew, which was fun. It had Marco De Pollo. He was funny.
It had an Aussie bad guy who was actually played by an Aussie but somehow ended up sounding like the worst of America’s ideas of what an Aussie accent is…
Basically, it pales in comparison to the other MI games (and the rest of the Lucas catalogue), but on the grand scale of adventure games as a genre it’s probably near the top.
Okay, okay… I’ll admit the game as a whole was pretty good. But that Monkey Kombat mechanic was just……..argh.
Wow. 25 years?
Happy birthday, Guybrush. I’ll raise a glass of grog to ya.