Journey To Monkey Island

Oct 15, 2024

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The Secret of Monkey Island, one of the best loved video games of the point-and-click era, was released on the 15th October, 1990, without, it must be said, a great deal of fanfare.

Inspired by the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland and the novel On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers, the game was a swashbuckling piratical adventure which – unusually for gaming of the time – put laughs above thrills. Despite its initially mixed reaction, it went on to become a sleeper hit that a generation of gamers took to their hearts.

In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly investigate why George Lucas wasn't putting his new video games division to work publishing loads of Star Wars games; explain why it was important to Monkey Island's creators that their main character couldn't die; and find out whether the jokes Olly found hilarious as a ten-year-old are still as side-splittingly funny today…