Secret Of Monkey Island

The Secret of Monkey Island is a children's mystery graphical adventure produced in 1990 by LucasArts. It is considered by many to be a prime example of the "adventure game" genre.

This game is actually a good example of CustomerDrivenDesign? (see InvolveTheCustomer), in a primitive sense.

The game is split up into several phases. To progress out of the first phase, the player must complete a set of quests. The game was designed with four quests in this phase.

The developers then assembled a very rough draft of the complete game; minimal art, no sound, etc. The team then played through the game, and realized that four quests were too much, that the game's momentum was lost as the player tried to complete all four. So, they dropped one of the quests, thus greatly improving the game's momentum.

Had the developers not taken them time to test their game for actual gameplay, the actual game would have been less fun.

(It would have been better had the developers brought in actual gamers to play the rough draft, but at least they played it through as though they were customers.)

Features wonderful verbal combat:

You fight like a dairy farmer!

How appropriate -- you fight like a cow.

In fact, verbal repartee is integral to the success of the game; you win swordfighting duels based on how witty your comebacks are while fighting.

This has applications to life, though they're probably silly.

Silly, perhaps, but effective. Recalls that scene from some baseball movie where the batter,waiting for a pitch, asks the catcher "Have any naked pictures of your wife?", and getting the indignant "No!" reply, then asks "Would you like some?"

Sounds like "MajorLeague?", which see. (in video stores if not on wiki.)

[Note: the common form of this joke is the catcher asking the batter; game-playing distraction.]

CategoryGame