Lucasfilms announced on Twitter the long-awaited next installment in Ron Gilbert's acclaimed Monkey Island series with an appropriately cheeky trailer.
In a tweet today from Lucasfilm Games, the company released a trailer for Return to Monkey Island to the surprise and delight of fans. The trailer, which is under a minute long, revealed the game is by Ron Gilbert, who worked on the first two games in the series before leaving what was then LucasArts. Return to Monkey Island is developed by Ron Gilbert's Terrible Toybox in collaboration with Devolver Digital and Lucasfilm Games. The game is set to pick up where Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge left off.
Along with Ron Gilbert and Lucasfilms Games, Dave Grossman, co-writer and programmer on the first two games, is also set to return, as well as composers Michael Land, Peter McConnell and Clint Bajakian. The trailer also revealed the return of Dominic Armato, the voice of series protagonist Guybrush. The trailer announced an expected release of sometime this year. The announcement trailer comes as something of a surprise since Gilbert wrote on April 1 that a sequel to Monkey Island was in the works. Today, Gilbert told fans on his blog, "I felt bad about the April Fools' joke, so over the weekend I whipped up the game so no one was disappointed."
The series debuted in 1990 with The Secret of Monkey Island for Amiga, MS-DOS, Atari ST and Macintosh, but later received a remaster that was released on PlayStation Network, PC, Xbox Live Arcade and OS X. Three more games eventually followed, with Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge released in 1991, The Curse of Monkey Island in 1997, and Escape from Monkey Island in 2000 for PC, and 2001 for Macintosh and PlayStation 2. Many fans of the series have expressed interest in a Monkey Island reboot, as the games possess a devoted following. This is also true for gamers wishing for a return to comedy games, something the Monkey Island series did brilliantly.
The series is best known for its humor, tendency to break the fourth wall, soundtrack and player-friendly qualities, inspiring popular treasure-hunting games like the Uncharted series. Each of the Monkey Island games follows the adventures and misadventures of Guybrush Threepwood as he tries to become the most famous pirate in the Caribbean, defeat the evil, undead pirate LeChuck, and romance the governor of the Tri-Island area, Elaine Marley. Due to Pixar's connection to LucasFilms, there were plans to release an animated film based on the series back in the late 1990s and early 2000s following the success of Toy Story. However, the producers canned the film after the creative direction spiraled far from the original games' story, with Steven Spielberg, who was attached to the project at the time, suggesting they make the film about actual monkies on the island rather than pirates.
Return to Monkey Island is set to release sometime this year, but no specific platforms have been announced.
Sources: YouTube, Grumpy Gamer