Happy Birthday, Monkey Island!

This month marks the fifteenth anniversary of the Secret of Monkey Island. This game, of course, means a lot to me, as it was solely responsible for starting my lifelong obsession with LucasArts adventure games… actually, no, that was Full Throttle. But what the heck, it STILL means a lot to me.

I didn’t play Monkey Island until 1997, seven years after its release. I got it as part of a LucasArts Archives boxed set. The Secret of Monkey Island and its sequel, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge were bundled together on one CD, along with a demo of the all-new Curse of Monkey Island (which I, of course, ended up buying later). I remember falling completely and utterly in love with these games, especially with the first one. I remember spending ages trying to figure out how to get the storekeeper to take you to the Swordmaster of Melée Island, and then realising that “oh, I’m actually supposed to FOLLOW him”. Ah, good times, good times.

I also remember going to Disneyland a couple of years later and riding Pirates of the Caribbean, the ride that inspired the Monkey Island series. I remember thinking that someday I wanted to make a movie based on Monkey Island, because that was around the time I wanted to be a filmmaker. Mind you, this was WAY before the actual Pirates of the Caribbean movie was even made…