“The Monkey Lounge” is an original tune inspired (scroll to bottom to listen) by the new Monkey Island installment, titled Return to Monkey Island and set to release in 2022.
Monkey Island
For those of you who don’t know what Monkey Island is, it’s one of the most famous point-and-click adventure game series. The first two installments were published in 1990 and 1991 by LucasArts (the game division of Lucasfilm, previously called Lucasfilm Games) with the creator Ron Gilbert on board. The following three in 1997, 2000, and 2009 without him directing.
April Fools’ Day 2022
Last April, during the so-called April Fools’ day (when I was publishing this video. Still sorry!), the original Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert posted a strange message on his blog:
Apr 01, 2022
For 18 years the Grumpy Gamer blog has been April Fools’ day free because it’s a stupid tradition.
So to mix things up a little I’m taking this opportunity to announce I’ve decided to make another Monkey Island.
Ron Gilbert on grumpygamer.com
Something clicked with me, and I started sharing it with friends because I felt something was coming down the pike, even if it was unlikely to happen given the whole backstory with Gilbert, copyrights, Disney, etc.
The aftermath
Three days later, while scrolling my Facebook timeline, a friend of mine posted the infamous trailer and I couldn’t believe my eyes: a new Monkey Island was in the making! The same day I realized that this friend (ciao, Carlo!) was tasked to translate the game into Italian, that David Fox, who I had the pleasure to spend some time with years ago when he visited my hometown, was on the team as well and the original composers too. The joy was so incredible and I wanted to funnel it somewhere. So I turned on my keyboard and put a marimba sound on it. After some strumming, I found the right ostinato to build the whatever-it-might-be on.
The tune
Given that this was not a task, nor an actual videogame tune, I knew I had several options available like “go everywhere you want”, “don’t worry about looping” and most of all “have fun”. So, the tune just became something inspired by the Monkey Island announcement but freely written featuring several sections with different flavors, a solo, and an unbalanced looping choice “A-B-A”. I mean, this was not conceived for repetitions. Don’t put this on loop or you’re going to listen to the A section too many times.
The result is something I’d like to listen to while chilling with a drink on a beach at sunset. Probably Guybrush would like to do that too, and I’m sure a lot of fans (is this word fitting?) already criticizing the game after just a bunch of screenshots should do that too. Hey guys, relax! It’s Monkey Island 3a happening and it’s not gonna delete the previous chapters. Play it if you like or ignore it if you don’t but please, don’t judge a book by its cover.
Ok, enough. This is the tune I came out with. I hope you’ll enjoy it!
P.S: Speaking about the video thumbnail, it’s always great to see that image lossy compression is still terrible in 2022 for red nuanced colors.