Lucasarts' finest hour, and in my opinion the finest hour of the point and click adventure genre, period. Monkey Island 2 took everything that was great about the original and expanded it in all directions. Hand-painted locations scanned in and presented in gorgeous 256-colour VGA, the iMuse system providing an evocative, dynamic soundtrack, and of course all the favourite characters returning for another daft tale of pirates, romance and voodoo.As in the first game, the main bulk of Monkey Island 2 set the player on a multi-threaded quest that could be completed in any order. This time locating and acquiring the four pieces of a map revealing the location of the fabled 'Big Whoop' treasure. A side order of kidnapping and another run-in with the fearsome pirate LeChuck was thrown in to round out Guybrush's woes.
Monkey Island 2 was the game that made me suddenly very aware of how attractive PC games were becoming. I remember reading the review in ACE magazine and comparing it later to the screenshots of the Amiga version. While still very nice, the 32 colours of the Amiga couldn't really compare to the lush palette of the PC. It would be years before I could actually play it on the PC however, and I contented myself with the 11-disc extravaganza on an A500 with a single disc drive.
So many great moments! Striking a match in the dark to find yourself in a room full of dynamite, then dropping the match... finding a telephone in the jungle and calling the Lucasarts game hint hotline... contaminating a bowl of soup with a live rat, then ordering the soup, seeing the chef fired and taking his job on the spot (then leaving the kitchen via the window, salary advance in hand). There's barely a duff moment or flat punchline in the whole game, and as a result it's relentlessly entertaining from opening to end credits.
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