Monkey Island: all 13 versions side by side

I see a few people saying they couldn’t get used to CGA, that it was absurd, or worse than no graphics at all.

I can relate to that. But as I’ve aged I’ve appreciated just how much was done with less back. I mean that literally: we couldn’t afford a computer so my dad would haul home his work computer each weekend. We’d call BBS’ on it, print stuff. Play shareware games. It pissed my mom off because it took up half the dinner table. But my brother learned to code this way too.

So later on when my friends got EGA and VGA, CGA meant “poor.”

Fast forward many years and I have kids and were in better financial circumstances than my dad and mom back then. My kids have MacBooks. One of their friends was over one night and was visibly embarrassed that all she had was the school assigned Chromebook. She and my daughter were doing homework and her friend said that she wished her family could afford better laptops.

I didn’t want to embarrass her but then next morning after I made pancakes and I was sitting at the table I was like hey let’s take a look at these Chromebooks (we had an old one sitting around) and the three of us sat there and in about an hour and a half they’d put together a very simple farm game in the spirit of Stardew Valley on PICO-8.

Point being, we live in a world where especially with AI, it’s easy to think we can do everything. And it can feel like that, which means that when you can’t, you feel worse that you can’t because it would appear everyone else is doing amazing things with no limits.

But maybe we need more limits on things. Maybe that 4 color palette forced devs and artists to be creative back then in ways that make things better for everyone.

Everytime I see CGA graphics in cyan, magenta, black and white it reminds me of my youth and how 'cold' it felt at the time to see those graphics, I could never really get used to it. When EGA/VGA graphics came it felt so warm and in my experience games really started to become to life.

Respect for the graphics artists in general for that time to be able to make something out of almost nothing, four colors or less and/or black and white low resolution.

Who ever played games on hercules card? I never met or heard of them

IMHO, VGA looks by far the best, but EGA is a second one! It has a lot of charm.

I replayed the series recently and I think the gameplay didn't age that well especially after you played some japanese puzzle games like Professor Layton or Ace Attorney. It's not the difficulty of the puzzles but rather there is almost nothing intuitive about them and a lot of times they are detached from the story. The story, the writing, the humor, and the characters holds up of course but not the gameplay.

Sometimes I really wish i could back to this time of my life. Those adventure games had a certain magic that hasn't been reproduced so far. There are some good throw back games on steam, but somehow its different. Is it because I am older now? Would be interesting to be able to experience them from scratch with the mind of my present being.

Anyway, just on to of my mind: - Indiana Jones , especially the one with the Paris underground and the Nazi fortress. Forgot the name.

- Monkey Islands

- Phantasmagoria 2

- Baphomets Curse 1 and 2 , especially 1.

- Kings Quest 7 (god, the drawings. Like a Disney movie)

- Simon the Sorcerer

All bangers!!!!!

So many crazy memories. They all had really good stories, a nice humour, tough puzzles and really good drawing. Idk, I really can succumb to nostalgia here :-)

I see retro, I upvote. Good times back then with Monkey Island, great art, great adventure game.

It’s an incredible that graphics artists provide 13+ variations on the same artwork, especially without the help of modern tools.

Beautiful. I love the CGA interface.

When I see monkey island I always think of the Amiga copy protection on monkey island 2. The game was on something like 13 floppies that you had to keep switching but there was only super hard copy protection on disk 7 or something so you'd get part way through the game before getting scuppered. (I was only about 10 years old).

Nice. I want to hear each rendition of the opening title theme.

I am very impressed how the 32-color Amiga version is close to the 256-color VGA version (and how much the Atari ST is lagging behind, more similar to the EGA version :)

GROGtastic.

I remember this as a whole immersive world, is funny to look back and realise that it was all only in 16 colours.

I got the monkey island tune ringing in my ears, thanks for replacing the 7/365 jingle bells for at least a moment!

I immediately revived an old feud and compared the Amiga and Atari ST versions... Amiga, definitely. Ha!

ux 10/10 I couldn't have imagined a better one

Don't miss all the options in the menu bar at the top of the screen

That’s pretty cool.

Technically not all. The anniversary re-release is missing.

Beatiful, when comparing PC and Mac versions, I got the feeling that the Mac screenshot has the old Mac gamma 1.8 VS PC gamma 2.2 that Apple started to use not that long time ago...

As expected, Amiga version looked the best.

OT:

Didnt know that there are by today 13 versions and that they extended the productline ad infinitum :-D

This is beautiful, thanks for making it. My fav game of all time

I remember being impressed by all these editions even as a teen in the nineties. It's pretty uncommon, especially as a game with graphics on this level. What a nice site that goes in depth with the differences!

Ron Gilbert was such a hero for me, and I'm always amazed at what an incredible story-rich gaming experience you could squeeze onto 256 colours and four floppy disks.

TurboVision is the best bit about this :)

Beautiful, well done :)

The difference in the pirate close-ups is amusing.

This was posted 3 times and for whatever reason.

This post did well.

Guess the right people were awake to upvote it

CGA... oh man, it's like I'm a kid again :)

There's a SEGA CD version! Never knew that.

Oh cool there's a Gobliiins Switch ROM that runs on the average potato ... Nobody bother me for the rest of the weekend, please!

AND all the discworlds have PS1 ROMs. I'm going to have to report in sick. Everybody else is doing it for GTA6 anyway.

You know, we really need a PC game ROM standard ...

I think I played it on PC back then, but I am not 100% certain anymore; could have been on Amiga too. Interestingly the Macintosh version looks the best to me therein, but I am also not absolutely sure about that since it seems to be differently scaled than the PC version. I wish I would have noted down back then what I used and played. And when.

The EGA one is the true version for me

Had the OG Amiga version and always wondered why it looked different on my friends PC. Back then I was a kid and thought it was the different CRT monitor and not 16 v 256 colors lol

neat :thumbsup:

lfg so clean

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