The Curse of Monkey Island

The Curse of Monkey Island is the third instalment of the pirate saga and the high point of how far a classic two-dimensional adventure could go in terms of art design. Guybrush Threepwood meets his Elaine again, slips a ring stolen from a treasure hoard onto her finger, and discovers he has just turned her into a golden statue. The rest of the game is a quest to lift the curse, taking him across Caribbean islands, through ship battles, a carnival-style attraction and the innards of a giant volcano, and of course through repeated run-ins with the zombie pirate LeChuck, whose intentions this time are rather more romantic than conquering.

The game runs on the final version of the SCUMM engine and is controlled through a circular menu with three basic actions, which streamlines and speeds up the whole process. The puzzles are typically LucasArts-style — based on absurd but retrospectively understandable logic — and the game cannot be lost or become permanently unwinnable. The insult-swordfighting returns, this time in a version for naval battles, and the game offers two difficulty settings, the easier of which drops some of the more elaborately chained tasks. Technically it was a title for Windows and DOS with high-resolution hand-drawn backgrounds, full voice acting across two discs, and animation approaching the quality of television cartoons.

It's precisely the art direction that explains why the game has aged so remarkably well: the artwork has a distinctive cartoonish style, the colours are vivid, and every location has its own handwriting. The music works with Caribbean motifs, and in one scene it even turns into a song the characters sing. Voice acting was used across the series in full for the first time here, and the hero's voice became part of the brand for the next decade. Reviews were highly favourable, and the game still ranks among the most beloved entries in the series, even though it was made without the original creators of the first two parts. Anyone who wants to see what a classic adventure game looked like at its artistic peak should start right here.