Issue #71: The Cover-up
Many people have many opinions, some more correct than others.
May came and went with a whimper, but as we step into June… Well, we’ll see. Maybe someone will start banging the pots.
Over at Mojo we’re celebrating Pride Month – seriously, screw the anti-DEI fascists – plus taking some time out to read Dave Grossman’s thoughts on Day of the Tentacle. And, for whatever reason, the forums seem to have some steam these days – party like it’s 2001! Hey, it’s not a lot, but at least it’s something. 🤷
Until next time,
Remi
From the Forums
Our forums truly are a weird and wonderful place, sometimes both at the same time. Look no further than the “Return to Monkey Island: Toward a ‘Theory of Everything’,“ which is a good deep dive into the minutiae of the Gilbert/Grossman trilogy.
We’re experiencing a memory of an imagination. We’re no longer inside the fantasy—we’re inside the layered, reinterpreted memory of it. This is the mental stage of recollection.
One key detail proves it: during the prologue and every time the story returns to the bench frame, we control Boybrush. The dialogue choices are his. But in the ending, this shifts—the dialogue becomes Guybrush’s. He’s speaking to himself.
Even Dominic Armato acknowledged this theory shortly after the game’s release in this forum!
Make of that what you will, of course, but those are some interesting speculations in there. Keep going down the rabbit hole, though, and we start getting into more of a Pepe Silvia territory.
But from this forbidden love, a child is born: Guybrush, raised by Elaine and his stepfather Stan. Later, when the children are old enough to attend the wedding (that wedding pen in Monkey Island 2, which shows up again in Return...), Stan and Elaine finally marry. But they keep a secret buried within their family: Guybrush’s true origin.
Well… All said and done, maybe there is something to it?
But probably not. Jump into the discussion to make your opinion heard, though!
Elsewhere on the forums, you’ll find a love letter to an underappreciated part of Return: The 4:3 aspect ratio. Or, as it is, the game’s dynamic scaling adjustments. The screenshots in the thread are broken – don’t link to Facebook images unless you want them to expire 🤷 – but to give you an idea, the 4:3 ratio does, indeed, show you more details than your typical 16:9 setup.
A few ways to play the game in 4:3: Run it in window mode and resize accordingly; get an iPad; or get a 4:3-screen laptop. (The Surface runs at 3:2, so that should have you covered if you are a Windows head.)
Finally, there was some quick Monkey Island 2 soundtrack banter, which led us to post an article called “Monkey Island 2: The Way It SHOULD Be Heard.” In a nutshell, it shows you how to quickly use custom ROMs in DREAMM to drastically improve the game’s sound. Here’s a demo of what you can expect.
El Poll Diablo
We dipped our toes into the Discord waters, asking if we should make our hidden server public. 40% of you said yes, 47% (correctly) said no, and 13% (even more correctly) said “What’s Discord?” So, really, that’s that.
Meanwhile, over at Mojo, jp-30 made his annual appearance with the news of some X-Wing Virtual Machine thing. I don’t know, but it looks impressive.
And that brings us to today’s question:
Full News Roundup
01 Jun: Mojo declares every month Pride Month: Rainbow capitalism can shove it.
01 Jun: X-Wing Virtual Machine is out now: The XWVM team has released its new engine for the LucasArts 1993 classic "X-Wing"
29 May: We Show You How To Make Monkey Island 2 Sound Better: MT-32. Just MT-32-ier.
Last Week’s Mojole Results
It’s the game that sweeps the nation! Can you beat Mojole, our fiendishly difficult daily puzzler? Only hardcore LucasArts aficionados need apply.
26 May: “##do###” – … do…
27 May: “#yada##” – … yada…
28 May: “##yada#” – … yada.
29 May: “like###” – Like:
30 May: “##colon” – (The last glyph was a colon.)
31 May: “wash###” – Wash your car.
01 Jun: “#dinner” – Or cook dinner.
And for the competitive amongst you, the Mojole forum thread has gone strong for more than two years. The two juggernauts to beat: Sushi and Huz.
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