E3 09: Spiffy is back in Secret of Monkey Island: SE

4:03 PM on 06.03.2009   |   Brad Nicholson

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I love it when a good rumor comes true. Earlier today I watched a demonstration for LucasArts Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. It’s a beautiful remake -- completely 3D -- of the LucasArts classic.

If you’re a Monkey Island purist, relax; the game you remember and worship is intact. You can switch to the classic view (with crappy cursor support) at any time with the press of a button. But you probably won’t want to do that; the environments and characters are hand-drawn, which I thought odd considering the game is hitting current hardware.

There are changes, however, they’re the subtle kind. The best example of this is the work on Spiffy the dog inside of the SCUMM bar. In the original version, the close-up of Spiffy was canned because of floppy disk space concerns. In the 3D remake, the close-up has been added again. Light touches and tweaks to flesh out the game's ambience have been done as well. Example: the classic waterfront is now packed with ancient ships and the moon’s reflection on the water is much more robust.

I wish I could have seen more of the game, but unfortunately, the demo was short. I left with a smile. I grew up with the LucasArts classics and from what I observed, it appears as though LucasArts is being as careful as possible to preserve the game.