Secret of Monkey Island coming to the XBox

[Greg Squire]

It appears that LucasArts and Activision are reviving the Secret of Monkey Island with some "special edition" to be released on the XBox.  (Probably XBox Live).  I'm curious as to how they converted a mouse "point-n-click" to use a gamepad.  Not sure that using an analog thumb joystick works as well as a mouse, but I could be wrong.  Here's the story.

http://www.gamerbytes.com/2009/05/the_secret_of_monkey_island_co.php

[Gilbert]

Monkey Island^TM was also released for the Mega/Sega CD and I think you can use the gamepad if you don't have a mouse as well. I'm not sure how well it worked back then though.

Loom^TM was released for the PCE/TG16 Super CD² (I have it) and its gamepad movement of the cursor was not that bad (the game predates the release of the PCE mouse so it only supported gamepad control). This game has relatively less interaction which utilises frequent use of the mouse control though.

Also, Maniac Mansion and King Quest V were released for the Famicom/NES, so the conversion of point and click adventure games to mouseless consoles, though rare, is not that uncommon.

I think there won't be much problem for modern consoles like Xbox (360) as well (though a Wii might be preferred by more people).

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

The original Maniac Mansion on the c-64 was joystick driven since mice weren't common pc devices at the time, so it's not shocking to have controller navigation.  It's just a bit unwieldy and imprecise.

[jetxl]

You can move the cursor with the arrow keys in all lucas arts games, and if people can play a first person shooter like halo on a game pad it is certainly possible to play a slow paced adventure game on it too.

The thing that bugs me though is that this is just a lazy and uninspired way to cash in a few bucks. Why not remake the backgrounds (like sierra did with their early games back in the day) and add voice acting. I'm sure not all people here would dig that, but it would appeal to a much bigger audience.

[Layabout]

If you read the press on it Jetxl, you will notice that NOTHING has been officially announced. We do not know if it is a simple cash-in, or if they have remade the damn thing. Whilst it doesn't need a remake, it would be oh so pretty in HD. Just hope they don't spoil the style by going for an EoMI psuedo-3D game.

According to Adventure Gamers, official details are expected at E3 in two weeks. I will ignore idle speculation until then.

[Anian]

I don't know if there's an official mouse for the consoles, but there definetly should be, Playing shooters on concsoles suck, yes you can get good at it if you grind at it for days but still mouse is unbeatable when it comes to AGs, RTSs, and most RPGs.

Yeah, why not make better graphics, maybe even add voices.

[NsMn]

Oh,oh,oh, did you really believe that?

http://www.inside-360.pytalhost.com/?p=13078

According to that, it was just a joke.

[Stupot]

What is all this 'gamepad' nonsense...
since when did we stop saying 'joypad'?
Mind you I barely play normal videogames anymore, so I'm out of touch :-(

[m0ds]

Hehe "Secret of Monkey Island coming to the XBox" is the most absurd sentance I've read in a long time. And people are buying into this? People are getting excited about this? Fair enough

[Hudders]

I don't know if there's an official mouse for the consoles, but there definetly should be

Original Playstation had a mouse. It was very cumbersome.

[Greg Squire]

It looks like the rumor isn't true.  Oh Well.  It certainly would be technically feasible to do so. ScummVM has been ported to tons of platforms.  Including PS2, Wii, iPhone, Nintendo DS, and PSP, though you might have to hack/unlock some of those to run ScummVM (see
http://www.scummvm.org/downloads.php for a list of platforms).  I didn't see XBox in the list, but its probably only a matter of time before someone does an XNA port, which could then run on an XBox.

[BOYD1981]

i can tell you for a fact that ScummVM is available for Xbox, but most Xbox homebrew apps aren't readily available if they've been ported with XNA as they use an illegal "leaked" version of the SDK.
it does take a bit of getting used to, playing the the joypad, but it's not difficult.
it is however pointless.

[xenogia]

I wouldn't mind a talkie version of the original though, it would truly be amazing if it did exist.

[AGA]

I wouldn't mind a talkie version of the original though, it would truly be amazing if it did exist.

Like this, you mean? That's just for MI2 though.

[xenogia]

I wouldn't mind a talkie version of the original though, it would truly be amazing if it did exist.

Like this, you mean? That's just for MI2 though.

Haha awesome, I am definetly keeping an eye on this one.

[Anian]

Original Playstation had a mouse. It was very cumbersome.

What do you mean by "cumbersome", like because the mouse itself was bad or that the software (games) were badly supported or it's difficult to control thing when they're on a bigger screen?

PS2 has a USB slot and supports a regular mouse btw, so as I see it the software and games should support it more. As I understood while starting to learn XNA, for XBox it should be no problem, I mean they should just put a driver or something and it should work, but PS3 has a different infrastructure from XNA (that means Windows and XBox), that's also supposed to be the reason for so few games for PS3 (they have to rewrite a lot of things while Win <-> XBox is relatively a simple conversion, programwise anyway (as I said, I'm just starting to learn so I might have gotten this all wrong)).

Different note - I always thought it was a "gamepad" and "joystick", never heard of a "joypad" before, is that because it has a mini joysticks on it?

Another different note - while I would love for "professional" actors (maybe from MI3) to do voice overs for 1 and 2, this is still cool, AGA.

[Clarvalon]

PS2 has a USB slot and supports a regular mouse btw, so as I see it the software and games should support it more. As I understood while starting to learn XNA, for XBox it should be no problem, I mean they should just put a driver or something and it should work.

Not going to happen.  MS are against polarising players by officially supporting mouse/keyboard control on the 360 (providing particular advantage in FPS games).  The best you can do is use a third party peripheral such as this.

On the note of controlling a cursor on a console, I've found the normal 360 controller to be surprisingly good (providing you've hardcoded some reasonably deadzones).  It's obviously not as fast as using a mouse, but neither is it as laborious as you might expect.  The SCUMM UI works just fine.

[blueskirt]

Adventure games are slow paced enough, the success or failure of gamepad control in an adventure game would depend on the game itself IMO. Gamepad would only be troublesome when it come to pixel hunting, timed puzzles and multiple verb GUIs without shortcuts to quickly select or cycle between verbs. A game without these problems would probably play just fine. Slower than with a mouse but still fine.

[Layabout]

Oh,oh,oh, did you really believe that?

http://www.inside-360.pytalhost.com/?p=13078

According to that, it was just a joke.

Perhaps the fact that the Germans inadvertantly released news on an unannounced game sent lucas into a frenzy. Nda's exist for a reason. Probably why the mention on the German ratings board page has disappeared. You don't just make a rating page for 'Secret of Monkey Island - Special Edition - XBOX LA' because you think it's a fun idea when you work for a government organisation. Especially in Germany.

[Stupot]

Different note - I always thought it was a "gamepad" and "joystick", never heard of a "joypad" before, is that because it has a mini joysticks on it?

Nah, when I was a kid, way back in the days of NES and Master System with their sharp rectangular controllers, it was always 'joypad'... Around N64/Dreamcast era I probably tended to say 'controller' or 'control pad' more often, perhaps because the became less of a pad and more of a gadget...

But yeh, this is irrelevant... Just found it interesting that so many people used 'gamepad' and I'm pretty sure I've never said that word in my entire life.

[Edit]
Ahh Interesting... After a bit of linguistic research with the AGS forum corpus I found that the majority of people use 'gamepad'... however, there does seem to be a rather specific group of British (or Irish) males, over 25 years of age, who still say 'joypad'...