That's The Second Biggest Monkey Island I've Ever Seen!

Yup, tomorrow is the day. Telltale games (the guys who made the new Sam and Max season 1 and 2 episodic titles) will, after almost 10 years of a dead franchise, release the first of a five part episodic series: Tales of Monkey Island.

Now, I'm as scared as you, because this could be a total franchise killer. I mean, monkey island 4 (and many would say 3) wasn't very good. The humor lost a lot of its wit and most people didn't like the new style. If this game turns out to be a bust, I can't see the Monkey Island series going many more places. Especially since it hasn't been anywhere in 10 years.

But, if anyone can do justice to the franchise, it's Telltale (no, not LucasArts, as they're too busy churning out yet another Star Wars title). This little developer-that-could scored ultra-cult-big with their new Sam and Max games, proving that they have the stuff that old LucasArts was made of. They've also wowed plenty with Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People (though admittedly that one was a love-it-or-hate-it game, but so is HomeStarRunner's humor, so what were you expecting?).

The design director is Dave Grossman, who created the first two games along with Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer. Sure the whole team isn't back together, so Grossman's child-friendly humor is probably much more prominent, but hey, one is better than none. In addition to Grossman, Telltale's got what looks like a mighty fine line-up of writers, designers, directors, and programmers who all got their chops from the old classic LucasArts adventure games. Check out some gameplay, it seems pretty decent at least:

Anyway, even if this turns out to be a total bust, LucasArts is remaking the original (how like them). So if this one sucks, you can always play that. I'm not really one to believe hype, but I'm pretty confident I'll enjoy this game. Though (and this is unrelated) I've got to finish Conkers Bad Fur Day first.