Things start to get more interesting now. I spent a fair amount of the 80s playing arcade shoot-em-up games on my faithful CPC with the odd puzzler and platform game thrown in for variety. In about 1991/1992, I upgraded to an Amiga 500+¹ and discovered the joy of games that strong characters and involving narrative, mostly provided by graphic adventure games. The market leader of this genre was, without doubt, Lucasarts - the gaming arm of George Lucas’ mighty empire.

One of Lucasarts’ early highpoints was “Monkey Island 2 - LeChuck’s Revenge”, the sequel to the fantastic 1990 game “The Secret of Monkey Island” and created by the great Ron Gilbert. Both games centre on a wannabe pirate named Guybrush Threepwood, the beautiful, intelligent and impossibly charming governor of Mêlée Island, Elaine Marley and Guybrush’s erstwhile nemesis, the ghostly pirate LeChuck. If these characters sound vaguely familiar to anyone who’s seen any of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, you wouldn’t be far wrong. There is an enormous similarity between the two and it’s not a huge stretch of even a severely dehabilitated and limited imagination to consider that the first film is actually an adaptation of a Monkey Island game.

So why do I rate this game? Well hell, it’s not just me - loads of people rate it! It’s a great game. The best thing about it though is the humour - it is a very, very funny game, extremely well written and astoundingly witty. It’s Pirates of the Caribbean by way of Monty Python. For example, the sword combat (come on, you didn’t think it was non-violent did you? It’s a pirate game!) involved learning insults and clever retorts to use against your opponent. Your character is also likely to find himself in unusual and highly improbable situations - early on in the game, you have to take part in a spitting contest before being able to charter a ship and that’s after having an hilarious conversation with the hyperkinetic Stan, proprietor of a Used Coffin Store.

Monkey Island 2 was (and still is) a very involving game. I used to play this with a girlfriend and several of my housemates all the time. You see, the point of a graphic adventure is that it’s essentially an interactive story with lots of puzzles. So we all used to sit around the computer and suggest solutions to a problem and after we solved it, we’d get rewarded with more story and could then advance to the next puzzle. It became a very social activity with the added advantage of being a) good for our problem solving skills, b) something we could do without having to leave the house and c) it was reasonably cheap.

So why choose Monkey Island 2 over the rest of the series (there have been four episodes to date). To be honest, I’ve only played the first two and never finished the third (although now I’m thinking about it, I might have to revisit it). Secret was great and I nearly chose that but LeChuck’s Revenge benefits from improved and more colourful graphics, funnier sequences and a fantastic (if highly controversial - as in a lot of people hated it) ending. It’s a toss-up really - either one is brilliant. The first benefits from being more original and in some ways more memorable but the sequel just has the edge in terms of characterisation and humour plus it has nearly double the number of pop-culture references and in-jokes which appeal to a total geek like me. Where’s my grog?