secret-of-monkey-island posts

It looks like there's a big shake-up that occurred at publisher LucasArts. Citing unnamed sources, Kotaku reports that the company's president Darrell Rodriguez has departed from that position. Joining him are several members of his executive team, according to the report. The story does not make clear if Rodriguez resigned of his own accord or was asked to leave.

Rodriguez became president of LucasArts just over two years ago after previously holding the gig of chief operating officer at Electronic Arts' Los Angeles studio. In his tenure, Rodriguez made a lot of fans of LucasArts' classic adventure games happy by championing a graphical and audio revamp of The Secret of Monkey Island and giving Telltale Games the go-ahead to release the all new episodic Tales of Monkey Island.

Update: Kotaku is now reporting that Rodriguez did in fact resign from LucasArts but the reasons are still unknown. Jerry Bowerman, who has worked at Sierra Online And Electronic Arts and is currently a member of LucasArts' board of directors, is now leading the company while the search goes on for a permanent replacement.

LucasArts surprised a ton of people, in a good way, when they announced plans for their graphical remake of The Secret of Monkey Island back in June. The game sold well and got solid reviews. So why not continue the trend? Kotaku says LucasArts is planning to do just that very soon.

According to their unnamed sources, the publisher is planning to release a graphical revamp of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge with the official announcement of the project planned for next week's Game Developers Conference. Like the remake of Monkey Island 1, this new version will contain all new graphics and sound effects, according to the article. The original game was released back in 1991 and was the last LucasArts adventure game to be made by famed designer Ron Gilbert. He left the publisher after the game was completed to form the now defunct Humongous Entertainment and is now working on DeathSpank for Hothead Games.

LucasArts' decision to revive their Monkey Island adventure game series via a remake of the original Secret of Monkey Island and the all new Tales of Monkey Island (developed by Telltale Games) has certainly sparked a lot of interest in the original property. But what if the original art style of the first game was put into the highest tech game engine?

Thankfully we don't have to speculate. A German modder named Hannes Appell has created a level with Monkey Island's original 2D artwork and projected it into the CryEngine 2 3d game graphics engine. The result, as you can see in the above video, is pretty darn cool (even if the illusion is taken away somewhat by seeing Crysis's Nanosuit running around the level). You can check out another video which show the 2D-to-3D projection tech after the jump. Maybe LucasArts should get together with this guy.

LucasArts has been embracing its adventure game past with titles like the upcoming new Tales of Monkey Island and the graphical remake of the original Secret of Monkey Island. However are we getting close to the reveal of another revival of a classic LucasArts franchise?

Maybe. The LucasArts Twitter site has been teasing about a major new announcement coming on Monday for the past couple of days. What is it? The only clue given is this one: "It is awesome news for our old school fans." Hmmm...a Day of the Tentacle revival, perhaps? Maybe an X-Wing/TIE Fighter revamp? We have our fingers crossed on that particular possibility.

[Via Blue's News]

Fans of LucasArts' adventure game classics thought that that era was over when the publisher decided to cancel planned sequels to Sam and Max and Full Throttle. But during E3 LucasArts made those same fans happy again with word of an upcoming downloadable HD remake of Secret of Monkey Island and a new episodic Tales of Monkey Island series developed by Telltale Games.

So what if these games turn out to sell well? The Australian based web site WAToday quotes LucasArts community manager Brooks Brown as saying. "If this sells, there's no one at this company who doesn't want to do these games. It's a matter of showing that there's interest and this market is alive and get people as excited as possible about Monkey Island Special Edition to show that these things can make it." So if you guys buy this remake and the new series, maybe we can get some Grim Fandango-Full Throttle-Day of the Tentacle action going.