Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island • Hacker News Board

Re: Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

#141

Post by goberoi » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 10:36 PM UTC

Monkey Island and its sequel are some of the defining games of my childhood. My brother and I played all the Sierra Games, and Lucas Arts games, and while we have many loves (Heroes Quest/Quest for Glory, Indian Jones), Monkey Island was by far our favorite.

We few years ago we were lucky enough to meet Ron at PAX when he was there promoting Thimbleweed Park. Since then, I saw him fairly often at a neighborhood coffee shop here in Seattle.

Earlier this year, at the start of the pandemic, my brother and his partner ended up making an adventure game in the style of Monkey Island. It's almost an homage and has a few shout outs to those in the know. Check it out here:

https://www.landlubbersgame.com.

Thanks Ron and team for the good times!

Re: Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

#142

Post by technofiend » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 11:42 PM UTC

blaz0 wrote: post #139

Working on Monkey Island Special Edition in 2009 while at LucasArts is one of the highlights of my career. I have really fond memories of my time there on the team (Team 3!). I wish I had worked on the original but that was way before my time. The game is actually running the full original code alongside the new Special Edition stuff. We didn’t want to disturb the original codebase, so we ran it basically unchanged o…

For those who didn't experience it the first time or perhaps would like to do so again, I feel obligated to mention your version is on sale for $3.49 at Good Old Games aka gog.com. No affiliation myself other than a customer and someone a bit in awe of what you guys wrought.

https://www.gog.com/game/the_secret_of_monkey_island_special...

Re: Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

#143

Post by derefr » Fri, Sep 04, 2020, 11:56 PM UTC

e12e wrote: post #137

hinkley wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I always screwed up when copying was getting the disks backward and having to start over. Did you do anything special to reduce human error, like special stickers or colored disks? For instance nobody in the office is allowed to use red floppies except for master disks.

Master disks didn't have write protection on?

I think that would be less about overwriting a master, and more about confusing some other disk for the master and sending it to the copier instead.

Re: Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

#144

Post by ppod » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 12:05 AM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #129

lostcolony wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstand what he's calling bullshit. He's not claiming they don't actually believe the reason they give. He's saying the reason is bullshit.

Oh right - was going to say they kept the other games up so they obviously aren't doing it because they hate games or out of spite. Reasonable to believe their stated business reason.

I just noticed recently that in American English "bullshit" often means "unfair" or "trivial" where in British English it usually means "untrue".

Re: Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

#145

Post by glandium » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 1:02 AM UTC

dudul wrote: post #14

germinalphrase wrote: post #3

I was just the right age when ‘Monkey Island’ and ‘Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis’ appeared in my life. That kind of in-world puzzle solving seems absent from a lot of what I see my early-teenage nieces/nephews (choose to) play now.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is the true 4th Indiana Jones movie in my book. And yes, I'll die on that hill.

I so wish they had made a movie out of this game.

Re: Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

#146

Post by smegcicle » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 2:12 AM UTC

myself248 wrote: post #120

gre wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact, the D stood for disks, so you're literally saying "Compact Disks Disks".

The D stood for Disc. Consensus at the time was a disk with a K was writable, a disc with a C was read-only.

Or disc for optical, disk for magnetic

Re: Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

#147

Post by tombert » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 2:31 AM UTC

ppod wrote: post #144

chrisseaton wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh right - was going to say they kept the other games up so they obviously aren't doing it because they hate games or out of spite. Reasonable to believe their stated business reason.

I just noticed recently that in American English "bullshit" often means "unfair" or "trivial" where in British English it usually means "untrue".

It usually means "untrue" here as well, but it's often used as a synonym for "extremely ridiculous".

Re: Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

#148

Post by bch » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 2:39 AM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #119

joezydeco wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could have been worse. I know of one studio that sent a debug version to the duplication factory by accident. It killed the company.

Did the company not have insurance?

Now I’m curious: what kinds of insurance would such a company have?

Re: Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

#149

Post by kjs3 » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 2:53 AM UTC

davidwritesbugs wrote: post #136

jedberg wrote: post #84

In the middle it links to the post he made on the 25th anniversary, which talks about how they would ship the gold masters to Europe. He says they didn't have time in the schedule to mail it, so they would go to the airport, find a flight to London, walk up to the gate and find a passenger and ask them to carry a pack of disks with them, and tell them someone at the other end would meet them at the gate to pick it up…

"Uh hey? Fella? can you do me a solid and take this small bag through customs and onto London for me? It's, er, floppy disks"

Yeah. I'm all for rose coloured glasses looking at our logistics short-cuts, but I don't see this happening for real in the last decade or two.

Re: Thirty years ago today I made the final gold masters for Monkey Island

#150

Post by Cakez0r » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 3:04 AM UTC

thefaux wrote: post #81

When I was 9, in 1993, I hurt my eye and couldn't go to school for a week while it was healing. To make it bearable, my dad somehow got me a pirated copy of the secret of monkey island from a coworker (he worked at a PR company so I still find that mildly surprising today). The game had a copy protection feature where there was a spinning wheel and you had to input some text that was revealed when you combined the to…

I also sent a physical letter to Lucasarts when I got stuck as a kid. They kindly sent me back a full walkthrough! I wonder how many other kids must've done this...