Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck’s Revenge review

Lucasarts has also rerecorded the soundtrack using a band, rather than the computer-generated music of the original. However, this introduces one big problem: iMuse. In the original game, iMuse was the technology used to seamlessly blend one scene’s music into another scene’s music, such as when you moved from outside into a room. While this could be solved with programming in the original, with a real band, it’s harder to do. With a variety of musical tricks, Lucasart’s has managed to replicate the original perfectly. The seamless shifting of music adds atmosphere and depth that helps pull you into the game.

During certain scenes you can press ‘A’ to get an audio commentary from the original design team. They appear in silhouette at the bottom of the screen, just like in Mystery Science Theater 3000, and talk you through design choices, problems and other decisions. It’s perhaps a feature for die-hard fans only, but it’s great to have the option to go behind the scenes in this way.

A final change is the control system. While the original had a toolbar at the bottom that gave you every action Guybrush could perform (Pick Up, Talk, etc), the special edition dispenses with this and gives you a full screen view. Instead, right-clicking on an object or person gives us a choice of actions to perform. It’s actually a big improvement over the original’s interface.

Fortunately, the plot and game remain completely unchanged (bar the strange decision to remove the title sequence with the dancing monkeys). It’s here that the game’s a massive triumph. Set over a series of islands, it’s your job to recover the four map pieces and find the treasure of Big Whoop.

At each stage there’s enough clues about what you’re supposed to do to keep the game moving, while leaving a big enough gap that you have to use your brain in order to work out what to do to progress. In these terms the game has not aged at all, and in many ways it’s still leaps and bounds ahead of more modern titles.

Monkey Island 2 remains the best adventure game ever to be made and the special edition brings it bang up-to-date. Whether you’re a massive fan of the original or new to the series, this is well worth the £6.99. Buy it now.