Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman are ready to Return to Monkey Island
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Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman are returning to Monkey Island with (the appropriately named) Return to Monkey Island.
The two worked together to make the original, 1990’s The Secret of Monkey Island, one of the funniest games of all time. They then topped that effort with 1992’s Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge. Now they’re looking to tap back into that grog-flavored secret sauce with RMI’s release later this year.
Ahead of that, I had a chance to talk with the two about this intimidating undertaking. I asked them about what it’s like making a modern Monkey Island experience, and I also took the opportunity to learn a bit about their adventure game design philosophies.
GamesBeat: Is it relatively easy to jump back into the franchise? Did you replay the older games before working on RMI?
Gilbert: I played Monkey Island 1 and Monkey Island 2 as we started to look at the new design. Looking at the old game can be frustrating because there are so many little things that I wish I could change. Adventure game design was a lot more forgiving back then. Beating your head against obscure puzzles was acceptable. It’s not anymore.
Grossman: It’s easier to return to something of your own than it is to start work on something originally created by someone else, but I definitely still needed to do the research to get my brain in the right place. By coincidence I was already playing through the early Monkey Island games with my son, who was 5 at the time and had finished all the Humongous titles, so we just kept on doing that with a little more focus from dad. And then during production I continued to revisit them, often because I was
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