Nostalgia Trip

LucasArts is now on Steam.

We hereby pause for a brief fanboi moment as we ooh and aah over Loom (trippy!), Indiana Jones adventure games (wanted to try, never got a chance to, wonder if it'll go on a special sometime?!) and the Dig (wtf is this game? never heard of it, looks interesting...)

Next we proceed to wonder, hang on a sec, what about various old Star Wars games, Maniac Mansion, Zak McKraken and of course, the wonder of wonders that is MONKEY ISLAND(TM?)

We note with glee that Telltale Games will be moving the franchise along with new episodes. However, it's probably safer to wait until all the episodes are produced, no fanboys are enraged, and hopefully the entire season goes on offer (like Sam & Max) before purchasing.

And we promptly proceed into paroxysms of perky goth glee on discovering The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (Remastered, and Coming Soon!)TM

The only three questions that remain now are how long before I can resist picking it up, and whether I should play it in classic mode or remastered mode (switchable at a press of the button) and whether there are subtitles in remastered mode along with the voices because I always crave subtitles in adventure games.

...And um, if the Swordmaster has a sexy voice and looks as hot as she did in the classic version.

(So I developed a crush on, of all people, Carla the Swordmaster. Throw Elaine down the pit. Who cares? She's either co-dependent or completely ungrateful. Gimme the scathingly independent Swordmaster anyday!)

The other thing I'm not 100% keen on is the revamped UI that requires you to push a button to bring up a verb list to select your next verb. I can see why they did that for the Xbox users. Fair enuff. Will they let keyboard users use shortcut keys like "O" for open and "U" for use? I hope so.

But wow, are the remastered graphics totally faithful to the original game. It's done with a lot more loving care than the third and fourth Monkey Islands, imo.

And the thought of hearing real instruments playing the Monkey Island theme songs instead of MIDI bloops and bleeps is making me squeee. Bloops and bleeps are fine for nostalgia, but there's nothing like orchestral versions or even just some real instruments in the mix.

Voice actors can be so-so. But the trailers sound fairly good. Nothing that makes me cringe involuntarily.

I do prefer the classic look of clean-shaven Guybrush though. He looks a bit odder these days. The Special Edition rendition ain't so bad, but again, some of the sequels were quite awful with their fixation on 3D tech over proper Guybrush concept art.

Squeee. July 15 can't come sooner.