Monkey Island: Gold Master has turned 35

"How appropriate; you fight like a cow!" – 35 years ago, the creator of Monkey Island, Ron Gilbert, created the floppies with the Gold Master of the cult game. For many, especially the older generation, this is likely to bring back fond memories of their youth.

Gilbert has now announced this on Mastodon. "I guess Sept 2nd is as close to an anniversary we have for Monkey Island", the programmer writes there. "I made the gold master on the 2nd but it probably didn't appear in stores until Oct.," Ron Gilbert continues. "There was no "release date" back them. It annoys we when people say Monkey Island "released" today."

Slow release process

Gilbert links to an article he published ten years ago to mark the 25th anniversary. "Unlike today, you didn’t push a button and unleash your game to billions of people", he discusses there. "It was a slow process of sending “gold master” floppies off to manufacturing, which was often overseas, then waiting for them to be shipped to stores and the first of the teaming masses to buy the game." When that happened, people hardly heard about it. There was no internet for gamers to jump on and talk about the game.

Monkey Island brought a breath of fresh air to the games industry in the 1990s. Catchy melodies, a captivating story, tricky puzzles and a good dose of humor are what make this classic game so special. In addition, the easy-to-use SCUMM system for controlling Guybrush Threepwood was certainly a milestone in game development. It was used for countless other games and was constantly developed further. Many of the LucasArts classics can still be played today with the ScummVM emulator.

In 2020, heise online published a detailed tribute to Monkey Island's 30th birthday, which was still aligned with the (estimated) launch date of October 15.

(dmk)