The Curse of Monkey Island

1997 · Point-and-Click Adventure · PC

About The Curse of Monkey Island

The Curse of Monkey Island (1997) is LucasArts' third Monkey Island game, in which Guybrush Threepwood accidentally turns Elaine into a gold statue, with cartoon art, a full voice cast and the last outing for the SCUMM engine.

The Curse of Monkey Island in Depth

After escaping LeChuck's Carnival of the Damned, Guybrush drifts to Plunder Island, where Elaine Marley is under siege by the zombie pirate. His escape sets off a voodoo cannonball that seemingly destroys LeChuck, but when he proposes to Elaine with a diamond ring from LeChuck's hold, the cursed ring turns her into a gold statue, which pirates promptly steal. The Voodoo Lady tells him to replace it with an uncursed ring of greater value on Blood Island. Along the way he assembles a crew of three pirate barbers, fights ship-to-ship battles, defeats the vain Captain Rottingham at rhyming insult sword fighting, meets the cannibals of Monkey Island, now volcano-worshipping vegetarians, and befriends Murray, a talking skull, before LeChuck returns as a fiery demon.

The verb and inventory menus of earlier games are replaced, as in Full Throttle, by a pop-up action menu shaped like a gold coin, with a hand for physical actions, a skull for looking and a parrot for talking or eating, and an inventory chest where items are dragged together, so scenes fill the whole screen. Players choose between a normal mode and a "Mega-Monkey" mode with more puzzles, and can let the crew handle sea combat or take full control.

Making The Curse of Monkey Island

Announced at ECTS in September 1996, it was led by Full Throttle veterans Jonathan Ackley and Larry Ahern, with Bill Tiller as lead background artist, since creator Ron Gilbert had left after Monkey Island 2. Next Generation noted that the earlier games had been minor hits in the US but blockbusters in Europe. It was the first in the series on CD-ROM, with Michael Land's score, animated cut-scenes and voice acting by Dominic Armato as Guybrush, Alexandra Boyd as Elaine and Earl Boen as LeChuck, who returned in later games. It sold especially well in Germany, earning a Gold award there, and Tiller estimated lifetime sales of 700,000 to 800,000. Computer Gaming World, GameSpot, PC Gamer US and Computer Games Strategy Plus named it the best adventure of 1997, Computer Gaming World saying "simply everything is done right", though several critics found the ending abrupt and Next Generation found the puzzles uninspired. PC Gamer ranked it the 33rd best computer game in 1998. Escape from Monkey Island followed in 2000.

The Curse of Monkey Island Trivia

Murray was meant to appear only in the first chapter but was so popular with testers that he was written into later scenes.
The song "A Pirate I Was Meant To Be" was cut from non-English versions because its puzzle relies on English rhymes, ending only when Guybrush rhymes with "orange".
Gary Coleman voices Kenny Falmouth.
A Monkey Island film was in the works afterwards, revealed when concept artist Tony Stacchi shared his art with a fan site.
Ron Gilbert said in 2008 that the team did "an excellent job of capturing the humor and feel of the game".