In Search of Monkey Island

We're a whiny bunch, adventure gamers, always reminiscing about the "good old days" and bemoaning the new games that can never quite capture the magic of the classics. I'll let you in on a little secret: We're getting dumber, too. Okay, maybe it's not fair to pin this on the adventure gaming community at large, but I, for one, am getting dumber. There was a time, back in the 90s, when I could play through a game on my own and make it all the way to the end. I spent hour upon hour mapping out screens and puzzling over riddles. I dedicated myself to months of perseverance and hard work. The fact is, back when hint books cost ten dollars I didn't have and the Internet wasn't around yet, I was a whole lot smarter. And finishing a game, after all that effort, was a hell of a lot more satisfying.

Twelve years and a college degree later, I can't seem to make it through any game on my own. A mere twenty minutes of wandering and I start stomping my feet under the desk. Next thing I know I'm online clicking through hints. Worst-case scenario, I give up on the game and move on to another. I'm not sure how this happened to me. It's not as if games are getting harder. Pointing and clicking took a lot more effort before hotspots and smart cursors came along. Negotiating with text parsers was even more of a challenge. So why is it that I had the patience to finish games like Myst and King's Quest 6 as a kid in the 90s, but now, although I'm fully capable of holding down a job and doing my own laundry and paying my credit card bills on time, I can't manage to play through Syberia or a Law & Order game without outside help? Am I really getting dumber? Or is there something about the way my brain works now that makes my gaming experiences intrinsically different from how they were back then?

When my boyfriend suggested spending our vacation on a houseboat, I saw the ideal opportunity to test myself. We'd be on Lake Shasta for six days with no television or cell phone coverage, no Internet, no contact with the outside world. I could load up an adventure on my laptop and bring it into a controlled environment. This vacation would be an adventure gaming experiment, the perfect chance to play a game like I did in the old days—start to finish, with no Internet a click away when I got stuck.

To up the ante, I decided to choose a LucasArts title. I'm a self-proclaimed Sierra junkie, but I've had much less exposure to LucasArts games. Considering I'd be spending the week "at sea" (or "at lake," as it were), why not The Secret of Monkey Island? All I knew about the game was that it had something or other to do with pirates. Seemed perfect.

The log that follows contains my observations during the course of this experiment. I didn't know, when I started, what playing an old game on a laptop in the middle of a lake would reveal. I really hoped it would reveal something, though—I would be wasting a lot of time that I could spend tanning if it didn't.

Day 1

Lake Shasta is about a four-hour drive from our house in San Francisco. It was almost sundown by the time we were settled on the boat so we didn't go very far before docking. As I write this, Geoff is making rum punch from a recipe he found on the Internet before we left. We're just like a couple of pirates!

I have a confession to make: I did save a walkthrough onto the laptop before we left home. I just couldn't stand the thought of getting stuck early in the game and wasting the whole week. Maybe I'm a little insecure, too, about my ability to progress without a safety net. I'm not going to refer to it, though. Not once. Pirate's honor.

The boat's AC power only works when the generator is turned on, and the generator uses up gas. I will have to use the laptop battery until it runs out, then recharge it when the boat's motor isn't in use. Geoff is still in mild disbelief that I brought a computer along on our vacation. The thing is, he likes boats. I like adventure games. This way we can both be happy.

I felt bad starting my game on our first night of vacation, so we played a few rounds of Scrabble instead. At one point Geoff leaned over to blow a mosquito off the board and ended up blowing all the tiles onto the floor. He swore he didn't do it on purpose even though I happened to be winning. I went on to win the next two games anyway. Maybe I'm not getting dumber after all.

Day 2

Fired up Monkey Island after breakfast. The interface is different from what I'm used to, but the premise is all too familiar: Some guy shows up in some place with dreams of becoming something he's not. The game might as well be called Pirate's Quest.

I finished the first of the three tests and dug up the "buried treasure." Names I've heard so many times—Guybrush, Elaine, LeChuck—are finally falling into context. So far I'm impressed with how much I've been able to accomplish without a single hint. That monkey dance map would have had me stumped for weeks if I'd played this game when it first came out. Maybe after so many years of adventuring, decoding cryptic maps has become second nature.

I'm grounded for now—the battery on the laptop died just as I was pitching tainted meat to the pack of poodles outside the governor's mansion. I can't charge it up again until later when we run the generator. Oh well. Guess I'll have to go lie in the sun.

Day 3

I can't figure out how to get this damn herring. I know it's what the troll wants. (Very clever, by the way. Whoever wrote this dialogue clearly has a love of the English language.) So far Monkey Island has been pretty intuitive, or at least accessible, but I guess every game has to have at least one maddening puzzle. I'm tempted to check the walkthrough I brought with me, but I will try to exercise willpower...

Oh, for Pete's sake. I finally checked the walkthrough. Of course I never bothered to walk all the way to the end of the dock—why would I? It's not like there was a hotspot down there or something. I should have figured this out, too. I bet if I'd played Monkey Island in 1990, before my brain went to mush, I would have. In any case, I wish I'd looked this up hours ago. All that wandering around doesn't make me feel noble, just annoyed that I wasted so much time and battery power. I'm not going to do it again, though. No more hints for me. Monkey's honor.

Day 4

Finally, I have experienced the enigma known as Insult Swordfighting. After all I'd heard about it from LucasArts junkies, I thought there was no way it could live up to the hype. As much as I hate to admit it, it's kind of fun.

Day 5

What is it with adventure games and pirate ships? I'm having flashbacks of King's Quest 3 and The Longest Journey. (Or would that be a flash forward?) Granted, I expected a pirate ship in a game about pirates, but just when things were getting good, here I am wandering around a ship looking for a bunch of random ingredients to make some hallucinogenic soup. Figures.

At least the intermediary boat voyage turned out to be short and sweet. Onward, to Monkey Island! I just hope I'm getting close to the end of the game. Our vacation is running short.

Day 6

Just had a little time to play today, while Geoff was steering the boat back to the marina. Our week at sea is over. I did more tanning than gaming and did not get through Monkey Island as I'd hoped. But I still have two days before I have to go back to work, and I'm determined to finish what I started. I just hope I'll have the same patience at home that I did in the middle of nowhere. The closer we are to getting off this boat, the more I fear that Monkey Island will become one more of those games that I start and never finish. One more lost opportunity. Oh well. At least this little white monkey likes me.

Day 18

To whoever finds this note: I have been wandering around Monkey Island for weeks. Running low on supplies. Send grog and chocolate.

Once we got home from our trip I just couldn't stay focused, even though I'd been enjoying the game and was so close to the end. Whatever drive I'd had on the boat couldn't be replicated at home with the TV and email and all those other distractions. I did poke around the island a bit looking for some way to appease the cannibals, but none of my inventory items were good enough for them. Jerks.

I'm on a business trip now, in a hotel with sore feet and only my trusty laptop to keep me company. It's sort of like being on a houseboat without Internet access. Amazingly enough, away from home, Monkey Island is fun again! For the second time, though, I broke down and consulted the walkthrough. Pull the totem pole's nose. Right, that's intuitive.

Day 30

So here I am, another business trip, another hotel, going another round with Monkey Island. When we last saw our hapless hero he was trying to get past a squeaky door on the ghost pirate ship. This time I checked the walkthrough even before loading up the game. I don't care anymore. Unless I take matters into my own hands, Guybrush will be wandering that pirate ship until next summer's vacation. The experiment, the external conditions, my good intentions—none of these matter anymore. I am determined to finish this game here and now.

And finish it, I did. The ending was nice enough, but not all that satisfying. It didn't leave me fluttery in the stomach the way King's Quest 6's ending did, after so many months of angst and questing. I wasn't even compelled to watch Monkey Island's ending a second time; I just shut off the computer and went to bed. Maybe I would have felt more fulfilled if Geoff and I were still in the middle of Lake Shasta, him driving the boat, me curled up on the waterproof seat with the computer on my lap, minutes away from running out of battery power. When I was playing in that controlled environment, this game was every bit as exciting and magical as I remember adventures being in the 90s. I haven't needed to play a game like that since I was a kid. I just wish that need and excitement had followed me home.

I'll admit it. My experiment was something of a failure. What I wanted to do was play The Secret of Monkey Island from beginning to end, over the course of six days, on a houseboat with no outside distractions. It worked wonderfully, up until the point I got off the boat and life got in the way again. Even so, I learned something: I haven't become dumber, just a lot more impatient. And why not? There are all these other things I should be doing instead of wandering through a game with no idea of where to go next—folding the laundry, paying off the credit card bills, getting to work on time. Under the right circumstances, though, I can still lose myself in a game. With a little luck I'll even start to exercise my rusty old brain the same way I did as a kid. I just have to find a way to turn "now" into "back then"—however possible, however briefly.