The Secret of Monkey Island II:Le Chuck's Revenge  


			   Review by Tony Saunders



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   Biopic:

   I am a 28 year old TV Technician who has been using an Amiga 500 since
  1987.  Currently my system is a 1.3 Amiga upgraded to 2.04 with 1 meg Chip
  ram, 8 meg fast and 52 meg GVP harddrive.  I use my system for programming
  in assembly (mostly demos so far), graphics (Vistapro and Imagine), music,
  a bit of wordprocessing, occasional modeming and of course games.




   After the tremendous success of The Secret of Monkey Island, it was almost
  certain that Lucasfilm would produce a sequel to it, and it has eventually
  arrived on the Amiga after storming to great success on the IBM.  Fans of
  Monkey Island 1 hoped Lucasfilm would do just as good a job at converting
  the sequel to the Amiga, and it shows that they have spent considerable
  effort in producing a top-class follow-up.  There are many areas where they
  have improved on the original program. For example:

   The graphics have been superbly converted from 256 colour VGA to 32 colour
  Low Res, with hardly any of the unpleasant dithering noticeable on many
  other programs that do this.

   The IMUSE audio system that Lucasfilm is now using works very well to
  create additional atmosphere while playing.

   The witty humour of Monkey Island I is back in large amounts which makes
  the game enormously fun to play.  It also supports 2 levels of play,
  Standard and "Monkey Island Lite." The "Lite" version is simply a
  beginner's version which is considerably easier and has a lot of the harder
  puzzles (and some of the most hilarious) missing, making it a case of
  playing the Standard version once you have become accustomed to the game.

   Because of the large size of the adventure which comes on an incredible 11
  floppy disks, it is best played off Hard Drive (requiring around 8 Megs of
  space) but it doesn't work too badly off 2 disk drives because disk
  swapping is kept to a minimum.


The storyline of Monkey Island II

   The story opens in true movie style with the hero from Monkey Island 1,
  Guybrush Threepwood in a rather tricky predicament.  The adventure then
  starts as Guybrush explains how he got into this situation, and after the
  introduction you are left to wander around Scabb Island.

   Your goal is to find Big Whoop (a supposedly fabulous treasure) but your
  most immediate problem is getting off Scabb Island as the local dictator
  Largo Legrande has stopped all ships sailing.

   Your clues on how to get rid of Largo can be found by talking to the
  various inhabitants of Scabb Island.

   Wacky characters such as Mad Marty, who runs the laundry store, is deaf
  and blind. There is also Wally, the cartographer, who talks about nothing
  but maps. Listen to him complain when you steal his monocle. (Very
  funny!)  Most of the main characters from the first adventure are in Monkey
  Island 2. The Voodoo lady, Stan (now running Stan's Used Coffins!), The Men
  of Low Moral Fibre, and of course Guybrush's girlfriend Elaine Marley.

   Once you have completed the first part and have departed Scabb Island, the
  adventure expands out to include Phatt Island and Booty Island.  It is here
  that you tackle some of the more inventive puzzles like the very funny
  spitting contest and the reunion with Elaine.  Eventually in part 3, you
  get captured by LeChuck and end up in his dungeon with Wally, hanging by
  your wrists, in chains and it is here that my favourite puzzle happens. It
  involves spitting and you can't help laughing as your ill-directed spit
  hits Wally and causes him to complain bitterly.

   This is one adventure which will keep you up very late at night trying to
  get farther ahead. It is superb in every aspect and is definitely the best
  adventure to appear on the Amiga (No, I don't work for Lucasfilm!).  If I
  could find anything bad at all about it, I suppose the NTSC sized screen
  you get to play the game in squashes everything up, but if you have a copy
  of Degrader (Ed: find it on MD25) you can use Force NTSC and reboot, then
  play it in full screen mode. (Force NTSC only works on 1 Meg Agnus not new
  2 Meg Agnus.)  You will not be disappointed with this adventure as it has
  everything to keep you amused for a long time. I'm now waiting anxiously
  for their next release, Indiana Jones-Fate of Atlantis, which promises to
  be very good.



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