Learn the secrets of Monkey Island with Ron Gilbert in this stream
You fight like a dairy farmer!
In celebration of The Secret Of Monkey Island's 30th birthday last month (30!), the Video Game History Foundation held a stream discussing the classic adventure game with boss man Ron Gilbert. That cost $10 to help support their preservation work, but after a few weeks they've made it free for everyone to watch. Seeing as the Foundation are well into the development of games, not just finished products, they also delve into cut content and even give a live demonstration of SCUMM coding. If you fight like a dairy farmer, this is for you.
It's hosted by Video Game History Foundation founder Frank Cifaldi there, who you might know from his work on preservations/celebrations like the Mega Man Legacy Collection. Yes, the sound does start quiet but it picks up. The stream goes hard on cut content, early concepts, and a few parts they've managed to actually restore. Helpfully, they show and explain a whole lot in a blog post, if you'd rather not go through two hours of video. I do like the vulture with the bib, even if it likely wasn't ever part of the game. They even got into Gilbert's own notebooks. They sneak in a few bits of Monkey Island 2 too.
The Video Game History Foundation are a non-profit trying to collect, preserve, and share everything from source code and development docs to magazines and marketing, with a soft spot for the cancelled and forgotten. They've done projects like emulating a cancelled Sega VR headset and reconstructed a lost NES game from source code on dying floppy disks, and have a podcast too.
Disclosure: I vaguely know Cifaldi. Once went to a Sam & Max gallery exhibition with him and a pal at GDC one year. I got a big colour print of the board game from Sam & Max Hit The Road, which got bent right up going through the airport's scanner. Oh no.