Monkey Island question

[markjmaltz]

If I bought the Tales of Monkey Island Complete Pack, did I miss out on the Secret of Monkey Island and Secret of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge? Wikipedia makes it sounds like Tales is part 5 of the series, and Steam is a little unclear, in my opinion. Thanks!

[Cynispin]

Wow - I can't believe this question went unanswered. You've probably dropped it, but I'll answer the question in case anyone else goes searching.

The Tales of Monkey Island series was a multi-chapter edition that is the fifth installment in the Monkey Island series. The purchase woud only include that installment, and not the previous ones. Here is the order of the games:

1) The Secret of Monkey Island
2) Monkey Island 2: Lechuck's Revenge
3) The Curse of Monkey Island
4) Escape from Monkey Island
5) Tales of Monkey Island

Play them all if you get the chance. Most fans of the series would probably rate the first or second game as their favorite. For myself, I would probably lean towards Lechuck's Revenge, but it is difficult to choose between them. The Tales of installment was phenomenal. Curse was refreshing and funny, but a bit too silly. Escape was disappointing. I still have not completed it.

[Gabelvampir]

Yeah Tales of Monkey Island was the 5th entry in the series, done as an episodic game by Tealltale Games (a company founded by ex-Lucas Arts employees). It can probably be played without knowing the other games, but they are much better if played the other (yeah ok you can skip Escape from Monkey Island, that one sucked, especially the last chapter).
There are remakes with a classic graphics option available on Steam, XBLA, PSN and iOS, which are good enough remakes with a kinda horrible style for the new Guybrush sprite (fixed by plaing in classics mode). (I say good enough because most errors like ditching the iMuse sound system are only apparent to old fans, the remake are totally ok to play them for the first time).
Curse and Escape were not re-released so far, but all should be available cheaply on ebay and such. And Monkey Island 1-3 work very good in ScummVM, I'd recommend playing at least Curse of Monkey Island on that. I think Escape from Monkey Island is a bit hard to get working on modern systems, but as you can skip that game I'd recommend not trying it. Getting it to run on anything newer then Windows XP is more work then it is worth.
I'm not sure which Monkey Island is my favorite, either 2 or 3. I did not like the switch to cartoonier graphics at the time when it came out, probably because of so many other things like King's Quest doing that at the same time. But the graphics are beautifully drawn and well animated, the music is probably the best incarnation in the series and the dialogue is funny and well written.