The second game in The Secret 0f Monkey Island series is Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge. It is the follow up to the defeat of the dreaded LeChuck pirate. LeChuck’s Revenge was considered a critical success and did well commercially. It is the only game in the whole series to take place on Monkey Island.
Game History
Published by LucasArts in 1991, Monkey Island 2 was yet another game to use the SCUMM engine where the actions and dialogues appear in an animation window, along with a sentence line to describe the player actions at the top. Commands are listed at the bottom of the screen. Icons on the lower right-hand corner of the screen are where the inventory items are listed.
It was the first game to use the iMuse sound system which is the Interactive Streaming Music Engine. IMuse was developed and patented by LucasArts to be a sound system where the on-screen events are synchronized with the music.
Ron Gilbert, Dave Grossman, and Tim Schafer, who collaborated previously, developed the game. Its HD version was released in 2010. It was then again released in 2017 with backward compatibility for the Xbox One.
Characters
Guybrush Threepwood was a want-to-be pirate in the first Monkey Island, ultimately defeating LeChuck. In Monkey Island 2, LeChuck is still the sworn enemy, but returns in zombie form. Largo LaGrande, LeChuck’s former first mate manages to cause a fair amount of grief for Guybrush by robbing him.
Elaine Marley is a good helper to Guybrush, not as much of a love interest this time around. VooDoo Lady helps Guybrush along with Wally the cartographer to piece together and decipher the map to find Big Whoop.
Herman Toothrot, usually unhelpful, surfaces again to aid in finding the burial spot of the treasure in exchange for crackers for his parrot.
Storyline
The main character, Guybrush Threepwood, as in the first Monkey Island, is in hot pursuit of the treasure of Big Whoop. At the beginning of the game, Guybrush is robbed of all of his money by one of LeChuck’s guys and is forced to rely on the VooDoo Lady for help. She reveals that there is a map in four parts that can be pieced together to reveal the treasure.
There are many gambling events in the game. Guybrush Threepwood plays both regular guessing games and casino games such as big wheel during the progression of the game.
As Guybrush goes about finding the pieces to the map to ultimately escape LeChuck forever, he is taken on quite an adventure. Elaine Marley is brought back into the game to help Guybrush. Through a series of kidnappings, narrow escapes, chases, failures, and victories facing his arch enemy LeChuck, Guybrush Threepwood finds that his fighting was all in vain.
His brother Chuckie was who he was fighting all along and Big Whoop turned out to be an amusement park. The story and game is full of spitting, voodoo, and zombies all laced with a good amount of humor. The final scenes leave the player wondering about the authenticity of Chuckie’s claims to be Guybrush brother.
System Requirements
The original version released in 1991 was for Amiga, FM Towns, Mac OS, and MS-DOS. The HD version released in 2010 was for iOS, Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.