In Search of Monkey Island

Day 3

I can’t figure out how to get this damn herring. I know it’s what the troll wants. (Very clever, by the way. Whoever wrote this dialogue clearly has a love of the English language.) So far Monkey Island has been pretty intuitive, or at least accessible, but I guess every game has to have at least one maddening puzzle. I’m tempted to check the walkthrough I brought with me, but I will try to exercise willpower…

Oh, for Pete’s sake. I finally checked the walkthrough. Of course I never bothered to walk all the way to the end of the dock—why would I? It’s not like there was a hotspot down there or something. I should have figured this out, too. I bet if I’d played Monkey Island in 1990, before my brain went to mush, I would have. In any case, I wish I’d looked this up hours ago. All that wandering around doesn’t make me feel noble, just annoyed that I wasted so much time and battery power. I’m not going to do it again, though. No more hints for me. Monkey’s honor.

Day 4

Finally, I have experienced the enigma known as Insult Swordfighting. After all I’d heard about it from LucasArts junkies, I thought there was no way it could live up to the hype. As much as I hate to admit it, it’s kind of fun.

Day 5

What is it with adventure games and pirate ships? I’m having flashbacks of King’s Quest 3 and The Longest Journey. (Or would that be a flash forward?) Granted, I expected a pirate ship in a game about pirates, but just when things were getting good, here I am wandering around a ship looking for a bunch of random ingredients to make some hallucinogenic soup. Figures.

At least the intermediary boat voyage turned out to be short and sweet. Onward, to Monkey Island! I just hope I’m getting close to the end of the game. Our vacation is running short.

Day 6

Just had a little time to play today, while Geoff was steering the boat back to the marina. Our week at sea is over. I did more tanning than gaming and did not get through Monkey Island as I’d hoped. But I still have two days before I have to go back to work, and I’m determined to finish what I started. I just hope I’ll have the same patience at home that I did in the middle of nowhere. The closer we are to getting off this boat, the more I fear that Monkey Island will become one more of those games that I start and never finish. One more lost opportunity. Oh well. At least this little white monkey likes me.

Day 18

To whoever finds this note: I have been wandering around Monkey Island for weeks. Running low on supplies. Send grog and chocolate.

Once we got home from our trip I just couldn’t stay focused, even though I’d been enjoying the game and was so close to the end. Whatever drive I’d had on the boat couldn’t be replicated at home with the TV and email and all those other distractions. I did poke around the island a bit looking for some way to appease the cannibals, but none of my inventory items were good enough for them. Jerks.

I’m on a business trip now, in a hotel with sore feet and only my trusty laptop to keep me company. It’s sort of like being on a houseboat without Internet access. Amazingly enough, away from home, Monkey Island is fun again! For the second time, though, I broke down and consulted the walkthrough. Pull the totem pole’s nose. Right, that’s intuitive.

Day 30

So here I am, another business trip, another hotel, going another round with Monkey Island. When we last saw our hapless hero he was trying to get past a squeaky door on the ghost pirate ship. This time I checked the walkthrough even before loading up the game. I don’t care anymore. Unless I take matters into my own hands, Guybrush will be wandering that pirate ship until next summer’s vacation. The experiment, the external conditions, my good intentions—none of these matter anymore. I am determined to finish this game here and now.

And finish it, I did. The ending was nice enough, but not all that satisfying. It didn’t leave me fluttery in the stomach the way King’s Quest 6‘s ending did, after so many months of angst and questing. I wasn’t even compelled to watch Monkey Island‘s ending a second time; I just shut off the computer and went to bed. Maybe I would have felt more fulfilled if Geoff and I were still in the middle of Lake Shasta, him driving the boat, me curled up on the waterproof seat with the computer on my lap, minutes away from running out of battery power. When I was playing in that controlled environment, this game was every bit as exciting and magical as I remember adventures being in the 90s. I haven’t needed to play a game like that since I was a kid. I just wish that need and excitement had followed me home.

I’ll admit it. My experiment was something of a failure. What I wanted to do was play The Secret of Monkey Island from beginning to end, over the course of six days, on a houseboat with no outside distractions. It worked wonderfully, up until the point I got off the boat and life got in the way again. Even so, I learned something: I haven’t become dumber, just a lot more impatient. And why not? There are all these other things I should be doing instead of wandering through a game with no idea of where to go next—folding the laundry, paying off the credit card bills, getting to work on time. Under the right circumstances, though, I can still lose myself in a game. With a little luck I’ll even start to exercise my rusty old brain the same way I did as a kid. I just have to find a way to turn “now” into “back then”—however possible, however briefly.