Most adventure games of 1990 could kill you. In The Secret of Monkey Island the hero can get past a troll by giving it what it wants, buy a ship from a salesman who will not stop talking, and fight duels with insults instead of blades, and he almost never dies. Ron Gilbert made it at Lucasfilm Games with two young writers, Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman, The idea, Gilbert said later, “started from being frustrated that Sierra sold way more games than we did”: fantasy was selling, but he “didn’t want to make a game about dragons”, and pirates “seemed like a nice compromise”. The result is the best-remembered of the company’s SCUMM adventures, and the start of a series that has outlived the company that made it.
Fast facts
- Developer: Lucasfilm Games, later LucasArts. US Gold published it in Britain.
- Design: Ron Gilbert, with Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman.
- Released: 1990 for the PC, in 16-colour EGA and 256-colour VGA versions; Amiga and Atari ST versions were reviewed in 1991, and a version for Sega’s CD add-on followed by 1993.
- Engine: SCUMM, the scripting system Gilbert first built for Maniac Mansion.
- Copy protection: the Dial-A-Pirate code wheel.
How to become a pirate
Guybrush Threepwood arrives on Mêlée Island wanting to be a pirate. In the SCUMM Bar (a joke on the name of the engine, as Computer Gaming World’s Scorpia pointed out) the pirate leaders set him three trials: steal the Idol of Many Hands from the Governor, find the Legendary Lost Treasure of Mêlée Island, and defeat the Sword Master in single combat. The island is in a bad way, because the pirate LeChuck died and came back as a ghost, with a ghost ship and a ghost crew. When LeChuck kidnaps the Governor, Elaine Marley, and takes her to his hideout on Monkey Island, Guybrush has to buy a ship from Stan’s Previously-Owned Vessels, find a crew and sail after him.
The humour was mostly in the dialogue, and much of it was deliberately out of period. “Being funny was more important than being authentic or piratey,” Grossman told Wireframe in 2020; Stan was modelled partly on the Californian used-car salesman and TV personality Cal Worthington. The name Guybrush came, according to the team’s own legend, from a joke by the artist Steve Purcell. The team was still planning a male and a female hero, and because Deluxe Paint called an animated sprite a brush, Purcell suggested Guybrush and Girlbrush. The heroine was dropped; the name stayed. Threepwood was said to come from a Dungeons & Dragons character played by Grossman’s brother.
Insult sword fighting
The best-known puzzle turns a sword fight into a conversation. Amiga Format explained it in 1991: “Fights are won with words, not with wounds. The combatants fire insults and retorts at each other until one of them is stuck for a witty reply.” The player learns insults and comebacks by losing fights to the pirates who wander Mêlée Island, then uses them against the Sword Master, who turns out to be a woman. The idea has two origin stories. Wireframe reported that it came from watching old Errol Flynn films at Skywalker Ranch; the designer Noah Falstein told Retro Gamer that he “contributed the core idea for Insult Swordfighting”.
Fair to the player
At Lucasfilm Games the approach of not punishing players developed over several games. Gilbert admitted that Maniac Mansion had “a lot more places where you die and the game can end in a no-win state” than Monkey Island: “Those were lessons learned.” Retro Gamer later described one of his main design goals for Monkey Island as stopping players “getting stuck through lazy game design”. In 1991 he argued the case at the Computer Game Developers’ Conference against Lori Cole of Sierra, under the title “Death is Bad Drama”; Cole replied that without the risk of death “the game becomes mere amusement”. Guybrush can die in one place: underwater, if the player leaves him there for more than ten minutes. (See adventure game deaths.)
The interface worked the same way. Scorpia liked that there was “no silliness about ‘you’re not close enough’ to pick up an item”: the player clicks on it and Guy walks over. She found the game “fairly easy”, about “a step and a half up from Loom”, and praised the music, “real tunes, not just sound effects”. The game also detected the player’s graphics and sound cards by itself.
Making it
The team worked in Gary Winnick’s office in a barn at Skywalker Ranch. Winnick was art director; the artists included Steve Purcell, Martin “Bucky” Cameron and Mark Ferrari, who painted the town of Mêlée in EGA “during twilight and at night, because the strongest part of the EGA palette is its blues”. The buildings narrow at the bottom, Ferrari explained, to fake a camera perspective without needing new animations as the screen scrolled. Michael Land wrote the music. Schafer later recalled that the whole game “took nine months to make”.
Reception
In Britain Amiga Format gave the Amiga version 92% in June 1991, calling it “Lucasfilm’s best animated adventure to date, by miles”, though it complained about disk swapping for owners without a hard drive and jerky scrolling. AtariUser enjoyed the joke copy protection: the player had to find a pirate on the Dial-A-Pirate wheel and enter the year he was hanged, “to be done with your tongue firmly planted in your cheek”. According to Gilbert it sold only modestly, but well enough for Lucasfilm to approve a sequel.
The series
After a two-week break the team started on the sequel. Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge (1991) introduced iMUSE, the music system by Michael Land and Peter McConnell that changes the music as the player moves between scenes, and ended with a scene set in a modern amusement park that fans still argue about. Gilbert meant to explain it in a third game, but, he said, “I decided to leave towards the end of Monkey Island 2, so it never got made.”
Other teams carried the series on without him. Jonathan Ackley and Larry Ahern designed The Curse of Monkey Island (1997), the first with voices and the last LucasArts game on SCUMM. Mike Stemmle and Sean Clark made Escape from Monkey Island (2000), the first in 3D. The series then moved to Telltale, a company founded by former LucasArts staff: Tales of Monkey Island came out in five episodes from July to December 2009, directed by Grossman.
In the same month LucasArts released The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, with new hand-drawn art, a remastered score and voices, and the original version a keypress away. Edge noted that “the original assets are included for stubborn acolytes”, and Retro Gamer that Gilbert’s old SCUMM scripts were still powering the special editions “from Xbox 360 to iPhone”. After Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012, Gilbert and Grossman returned: their Return to Monkey Island, developed by Terrible Toybox and published by Devolver Digital, came out in September 2022. It begins on Mêlée Island, because, Gilbert said, “the story is kind of about Guybrush going back to unfinished business”.
Sources
- Computer Gaming World issue 77, December 1990, pp. 39, 43 and 116: Scorpia, “Scorpion’s Tale”, on The Secret of Monkey Island (the SCUMM Bar, the three trials, LeChuck, Stan’s Previously-Owned Vessels, the interface, difficulty and music).
- Computer Gaming World issue 81, April 1991: Lucasfilm Games advertisement, EGA and VGA versions for the PC.
- Computer Gaming World issue 83, June 1991, pp. 44–45: the Computer Game Developers’ Conference debate between Ron Gilbert and Lori Cole.
- Amiga Format issue 23, June 1991, pp. 74–75: Trenton Webb’s review of the Amiga version (Lucasfilm/US Gold, £24.99), 92%.
- John King Tarpinian, The Secret of Monkey Island review, AtariUser issue 4, August 1991: the Dial-A-Pirate code wheel.
- ACE issue 39, December 1990: review listing (US Gold/Lucasfilm).
- The One issue 40, January 1992: iMUSE announced with Monkey Island 2.
- Sega Visions, October 1993: The Secret of Monkey Island in its Sega CD tips.
- Edge issue 151, July 2005, “The making of… Maniac Mansion”: Gilbert on deaths and “lessons learned”.
- Retro Gamer issue 28, 2006, pp. 21–22: Gilbert on the planned third game and his departure.
- Edge issue 208, December 2009: LucasArts “republishing Monkey Island”; Edge issue 215, June 2010: the Special Edition’s original assets.
- Edge issue 221, December 2010: Tim Schafer on the game’s nine-month development.
- Retro Gamer issue 110, 2013: SCUMM powering the special editions.
- Retro Gamer issue 116, 2013, pp. 25–26, “LucasArts — a celebration”: Gilbert’s design goal; Noah Falstein on insult sword fighting.
- Wireframe issue 43, September 2020, pp. 27–32, Jack Yarwood, “The making of Monkey Island”: Gilbert on Sierra and fantasy, the team, the two-week break before the sequel, Guybrush’s name, Grossman on Stan, sales, iMUSE, the endings, Curse, Escape and Tales.
- Wireframe issue 69, December 2022, pp. 25–30, Konstantinos Dimopoulos, “Exploring the towns of Monkey Island”: Mark Ferrari on Mêlée Town; Tales and Return to Monkey Island.
- Wikipedia, “The Secret of Monkey Island” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): Michael Land as composer; the ten-minute drowning; the Special Edition’s release in July 2009. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_Monkey_Island
- Wikipedia, “Tales of Monkey Island” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): five episodes, 7 July to 8 December 2009. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Monkey_Island
- Wikipedia, “Return to Monkey Island” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): Terrible Toybox, Devolver Digital, release on 19 September 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Monkey_Island