Escape from Monkey Island – While I can’t speak to other ports of this game, the version that comes with Steam doesn’t have mouse support at all, so I used the keyboard for everything. Guybrush moves with what I’ve seen called tank controls, where he can turn around and walk forwards and backwards. I didn’t notice any occasion when walking backwards would have been advantageous, but whatever. The graphics have that stiff polygonal style that I associate with Nintendo 64 and PlayStation 1, which I guess fits with its having come out in 2000. The story has Guybrush and Elaine returning from their honeymoon to Melee Island, where they find out that she’s been declared legally dead, and there’s a new candidate for Governor, one Charles L. Charles. As you might have guessed from the name, he’s really LeChuck, having been saved from his icy prison by the Australian real estate developer Ozzie Mandrill.

Although he’s from a different country, the fact that Ozzie decorates his mansion with dead animals reminds me of Conroy Bumpus from Sam & Max on the Road.

Ozzie has bought up a lot of the land in the Caribbean due to his skill at insults, and wants to get rid of all the pirates and build family-friendly pirate-themed tourist traps. Since what we get in this series kind of already is a theme park version of piracy, it’s somewhat meta-referential. There’s even a restaurant based on Planet Hollywood but themed around Guybrush himself, but nobody there recognizes him.

The SCUMM Bar is turned into the LUA Bar, with tropical trappings but serving sushi, because I suppose it can’t just stick to one tacky theme. (LUA is the engine used for this game, while SCUMM was the one for earlier games in the series.)

LeChuck and Ozzie are searching for a voodoo talisman called the Ultimate Insult, which can severely weaken anyone it’s used against. I suspect there was some inspiration from Monty Python’s Funniest Joke in the World. This is the first game since the original that lets you explore Melee and Monkey Islands.

The latter has technically appeared in every game so far, since it’s where LeChuck’s amusement park was, but you don’t see most of it. You also once again meet up with Meathook, Otis, and Carla the Sword Master, who are traumatized after being stranded on Monkey Island, which was weird for me since that didn’t happen when I played Secret. Apparently there’s a way to wreck the ship and maroon the three of them, and this game incorporates that into the story. It’s like how Day of the Tentacle references microwaving the hamster in Maniac Mansion, because LucasArts developers seem to like player-caused psychosis. Along the same lines, the talking monkey Jojo Jr. mentions that his father died holding the opening to the giant monkey head open, because Guybrush never told him to stop. The dialogue references the title pretty often, and the lawyers on Lucre Island observe how Guybrush includes the trademark symbol. This game also reveals Herman Toothrot’s true identity, after you hit him with various objects. Once you get to Monkey Island, there are some annoying puzzles, like a lava log flume that you have to navigate more than once, and some falling rocks that you have to set off at specific intervals. And there are the weirdly complicated Monkey Kombat matches, which are sort of based on insult swordfighting, but nowhere near as straightforward.

You have to use combinations of four different monkey insults in order to shift to different stances, and the combinations and which stance beats which are random each time you play the game.

It’s not necessarily even hard so much as it is time-consuming, as you pretty much have to make a chart and consult it repeatedly. It also took me a little while to realize that you and your opponent both change to random positions after each round.

Another bizarre puzzle consists of navigating around a swamp to find Pegnose’s house. The directions are already weird, but what makes it even stranger is that some time travel involved, with Guybrush having to imitate what his future self did before.

It’s interesting that Sorcerer has a very similar situation, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the same basic thing in other games as well.

Overall, I didn’t like this as much as Curse, but it was pretty entertaining, especially the bits with LeChuck and Ozzie.

ZorkQuest I: Assault on Egreth Castle – This is one of what were called Infocomics, presented as games but with very little interaction. The main gimmick is that you can switch between different parts of the stories at certain moments. It’s an interesting idea, but if the player/reader has no impact on anything, I’d rather just read the whole thing straight through to make sure I don’t miss anything. The setting is the castle that was once the home of King Duncanthrax, but was abandoned once a later ruler, Lord Dimwit Flathead, moved the seat of power to Aragain. You visit the ruins in Sorcerer. This tale is about a caravan of travelers who find themselves camping near the castle, which is inhabited by a necromancer named Radnor. He wants to find the Amulet of Egreth that had formerly belonged to his old master, Thorman the Red-beard. Some of the caravan members have ties to these characters, the wizard Frobwit the Fair being turned down by Thorman, and his apprentice Dirin turning out to be a descendant of Duncanthrax. Lim, a boy Frobwit finds in the nearby woods, is later revealed to actually be a girl named Lia, and Thorman’s granddaughter. Less directly related to the plot are the merchant Gurthark the Stout, the scout Ryker, and Acia, who’s on the journey so she can convince her dying grandmother to leave all her money to her, and steals the Amulet from Lia. The story ties in with the history of this world in a few ways, but doesn’t really have the humor typical of the franchise, coming off as more of a generic fantasy story with Zorkian names.

ZorkQuest II: The Crystal of Doom – The sequel picks up where the original left off, and works the same way, but is less of a complete story. The villain this time is a woman named Moog who has a correspondence degree in magic, assisted by Slye, her old friend whom she bosses around. She tricks Frobwit into restoring Radnor so she can create the Triax, a form of destructive magic she learned about from a Zizbit spellbook. We find out in this installment that Acia’s wealthy grandmother Althea went to school with Frobwit and Radnor, and dated the latter for a while. It also introduces Ryker’s uncle, the ferryman Ozark. It ends with the Triax scorching the land and turning the rivers and seas to blood, with no indication as to what happens after that. The intention was obviously to address this in another Infocomic, but that never happened. I assume this story would have to take place in between Sorcerer and Spellbreaker, since magic still works but Egreth Castle has been restored. And I guess that means the Guildmaster addressing the Convention of Enchanters is likely to be the protagonist of that trilogy.

Maybe it’s his dissolution of magic that undoes the effects of the Triax, but that’s just a guess.