The Secret of Monkey Island
              Lucasfilm Games / US Gold - RRP œ29.99
    (Graphic adventure for ST, Amiga and PC - requires 1 Meg)

               ST version reviewed by Neil Shipman

So, Guybrush Threepwood, you want to be a pirate, do you? Well, 
Melee Island, deep in the Caribbean, looks like being just the 
place to embark on a swashbuckling career. Following the lookout's 
instructions you head into town and enter the SCUMM bar, favourite 
haunt of the local skull and crossbones brigade. The assembled 
pirates listen to you with some amusement and tell you that in 
order to become one of them you must prove your ability by 
completing three trials. Then you'll be worthy to swill grog and 
say, "Har! Har! Har!" with the best of them.

The Three Trials consist of treasure hunting, the art of thievery 
and mastering the sword, and they begin the first part of this 
adventure on Melee Island. But your activities come to the 


attention of the ghost pirate, Captain LeChuck, in his hidey-hole 
on neighbouring Monkey Island, and he is none too pleased. Up to 
now he's been able to scare away the mortal competition and have 
everything his own way - and he's still got designs on Governor 
Elaine Marley - so the last thing he wants is a young upstart like 
you treading on his toes.

Before you can go treasure hunting you'll need to find a way of 
getting enough money to buy the usual implements. Stealing an idol 
from the Governor's mansion necessitates getting past the guard 
dogs and engaging in a crazy behind the scenes fight with the 
local sheriff. Mastering the sword involves plenty of practice 
before you are sufficiently well-equipped to take on the Sword 
Master herself.

You know the old adage about the pen being mightier than the 
sword? Well, in this case it's your rapier-like wit that's needed 
to back up your physical prowess. Sword fighting involves your 
trading insults with your opponent and, of course, coming up with 

the right retort at the right time. Don't expect to get very far 
if, in response to, "I've spoken with apes more polite than you!" 
you reply, "First you'd better stop waving it like a feather-
duster!" If you've practised enough against other pirates you'll 
have a large verbal armoury to choose from and prove you can out-
insult the best on the island.

In the course of stealing the Governor's idol you take quite a 
shine to Elaine (and she to you), only to find that LeChuck 
quickly intervenes and kidnaps her, spiriting her away to Monkey 
Island. It's up to you then to get yourself a ship, recruit a few 
crewmembers and set off to rescue her.

The journey to Monkey Island is the second part of the adventure 
and takes place on board your chosen vessel. How you are to get 
there is none too clear, but a strange voodoo recipe seems to hold 
some clues. Even when you're anchored off the island, though,
there's the little problem of how to make it safely from ship to 
shore.

Part three is set on and under Monkey Island where you'll meet a 
weird old castaway, Herman Toothrot, and the funniest cannibals 
you're ever likely to come across. Ever conscious of their health 
they are extremely concerned about cholesterol levels and vitamin 
deficiency and have almost forsworn eating red meat! Eventually 
you'll find a way into the hellish catacombs below the giant 
monkey head and onto LeChuck's ghost ship itself.

The final part sees you... Well that would be giving away the 
ending wouldn't it? Suffice it to say that there are still some 
surprises in store before the adventure reaches its conclusion - 
and Lucasfilm are already working on a sequel!

Building on the firm foundations of their earlier successes, The 
Secret of Monkey Island includes the humour of Zak MacKracken and 
Maniac Mansion, the ability to converse with characters with a 
range of responses to choose from as seen in Indiana Jones, and 
the wonderful graphic qualities of Loom. The animation is most 
impressive, perspective is handled very well and the point 'n' 

click interface is delightful in its simplicity. There are some 
natty little tunes and sound effects too.

Some thought has obviously been given to the memory management 
system to reduce swapping between the four disks to a minimum and 
this is helped by the fact that the game requires at least 1 Meg 
of memory to run at all. On the ST, though, I did feel that mention
should have been made on the reference card of the need to use a
utility to format a disk to 800K to back up the first game disk.

The traditional interface whereby you click on verb and noun(s) to 
make up a command has been further improved. There is now an 
automatic feature which highlights an appropriate verb when the 
cursor touches an interesting object on the screen. You can then 
simply click on the right mouse button to select this or else make 
a different choice in the usual way by clicking on the left 
button. There's also now no need to double click on anything as 
your command is implemented immediately you choose your noun.


Moving from one side of the island to another is made easy as, 
upon leaving, say, the town on Melee or the beach on Monkey Island 
you are presented with a plan view. The names of other interesting 
locations will flash up as you pass the cursor over them. Just 
click on where you want to go and Guybrush will move rapidly to 
the chosen spot.

The adventure is peopled with a variety of characters, nearly all 
of them funny in their own way. A couple of my favourites were 
Meathook, who has had both his hands bitten off by "the beast" - 
dare you open the final door and see just what it is he's afraid 
of?! - and LeChuck's spectral sidekick with his loosely attached 
head, dancing away on the ghost ship.

To appreciate fully the plethora of in jokes you really need to 
have played Lucasfilm's other adventures - and some Sierra ones 
too (check out the corpses by the giant monkey head and try going 
east on top of the towering rock!). But even if this is your first 
Lucasfilm game you'll find it extremely funny and the American 
humour transfers well to this side of the Atlantic. There's some 
shameless in-game advertising (just look at and talk to Cobb, one 
of the pirates in the bar). And talk about protecting your work - 
absolutely everywhere Monkey Island is mentioned it carries a 
trademark! Definitely a laugh a minute - or, at the very least, 
every ten minutes.

It's not a difficult adventure, the company's philosophy being 
that they want you to enjoy the whole thing rather than get 
frustrated and end up consigning it to the back of the cupboard. 
So you don't have to worry about getting killed in all sorts of 
situations - I only managed to die once by deliberately doing 
something it was quite obvious I shouldn't have done just to see 
what would happen! They reckon there's about 30 hours' playing 
time in the game although I should think that many adventurers 
would finish in rather less.

The Secret of Monkey Island is a really first class product from 
Lucasfilm. It picked up Best Gameplay award at the Computer Game 
Developers' Conference in the USA in March, was voted Best 

Animated Adventure by Questbusters, the American Adventurers' 
Journal, and was chosen as the Best Adventure/Role Playing Game at 
the European Computer Leisure Awards in April. In my view it 
thoroughly deserves these accolades and I can assure you this is 
one adventure you'll be pleased you spent your money on.