User parabolee, over at LucasForums, has created a pretty picture to spice up your desktop. Check it out here, and if you like it (hey, what’s not to like?), go download!

The official Xbox magazine’s latest podcast features an interview with Dominic Armato, but the first 21 minutes is about a lot of other stuff, so if want to only hear the Dominic Armato stuff jump to 21:21. Fun interview and you get to hear about how Dominic got the role of Guybrush Threepwood.

Source: Mixnmojo

Over at the Telltale forums Paco has posted a short story about his visit to Lopburi, one of the oldest cities in Thailand. Apparently, there is a temple with lots of monkeys, but on some days in the year the monkeys disappear completely and are nowhere to be found. In a surprise twist no one in the city has ever thought of putting a watchman there or even a webcam to see what’s happening, but I personally can’t shake the feeling that Paco has something to do with it. Check out the thread for the story and a picture he took of a paiting in a restaurant. Look familiar?

Are you one of those people who excuses themselves to go to the toilet when the conversation turns to Monkey Island? Do you feel embarassed because you don’t know who Guybrush Threepwood is? Have you ever faked a broken leg when you come back from the toilet and realize people are still talking about Monkey Island? Then the Monkey Island wiki is here to help you!

Learn about all the games, the characters, different voice actors (like  Dominic Armato) , Ron Gilbert, or the Monkey Island movie that was once in production. The Monkey Island wiki has information on all things Monkey Island and if something is missing, the awesome MIwiki staff is probably working on adding it or you can help out and add it yourself

We have changed it so it is now required to have an account on this blog and be logged in to post a comment. We have done this to reduce the amount of spam we have to filter out.  Sign up for an account here if you don’t already have one.

A cool thing is that this here blog uses Gravatar. “What the bloody ‘ell is that?” I hear you ask. Well, Gravatar is a service you can sign up for and it allows you to easily have the same avatar on various sites and blogs (like this one) around the internet. You don’t need one, it’s only if you want another image next to your comments other than that gray dull one

There was a brief Q&A session with Craig Derrick on Facebook about The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. Not many things were revealed, but he did shred some lights on something I have been wondering about:

Will we be able to play the HD version with subtitles on if we choose? And alternately, will we be able to play the original version with voice on if we choose?

Yes to the first and no to the second.

No playing the original game with voices. I’m a sad monkey. Let’s hope someone ‘fixes’ this after release. Unless LucasArts changes their minds of course and allows us the option of enjoying the original graphics while listening to Dominic Armato.

You can read a transcript of the entire chat by ThunderPeel2001 on the Mixnmojo forums.

Jake Rodkin from Telltale Games posted a ‘Tales of Monkey Island’ wallpaper on the official forums. This is the wallpaper they used on their demo machines at E3 and Jake provided a bit of additional info about it:

Also, for what its worth, that’s lit in-engine by the renderer we use for the game itself… so if anyone thinks the lighting there looks nicer than their least favorite screenshot, remember that the lighting in those shots isn’t yet final, and hopefully that will brighten your day

For those of you without a widescreen monitor LuigiHann has resized it to a 4×3 format here.

yugge has slapped it on his mousepad

If LucasArts had decided to remake The Secret of Monkey Island a decade ago, it might have looked very, very different. Bill Tiller got the idea to do SMI with CMI-style graphics back in 1998. Here’s an image that shows how it would have looked. Sadly, LucasArts management wasn’t interested at the time.

If you’re a big adventure game fan, you’ll already know of Laserschwert’s awe-inspiring poster project. It just so happens that he received some original artwork from Bill Tiller, that was used for the cover of The Curse of Monkey Island. Check it out, and then download one or more posters!

The excellent Adventure Gamers have now also posted a preview of The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, to give you something more to read while you’re waiting for the game to arrive (which is pretty soon, actually). Here’s an interesting titbit from the preview:

[...] if this first new revival proves to be financially and critically successful, [LucasArts would] be happy to bring back even more.