The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition is LucasArts' 2009 remaster of the 1990 point-and-click classic, preserved alongside an entirely reimagined modern presentation. You play Guybrush Threepwood, a young man who arrives at the port of Mêlée Island with no money, no skills, and the unshakeable desire to become a pirate. The plot — twisting, repeatedly funny, anchored by the romance with Governor Elaine Marley and the menace of the ghost pirate LeChuck — is as influential a piece of writing as the genre has produced.

The new edition rebuilds the visual layer in a hand-drawn art style that lifts the original's pixel scenes into feature-animation-quality compositions. The score has been re-recorded in full orchestration, dialogue is voiced for the first time in the game's history by the cast that voiced the rest of the Monkey Island series, and a one-button hot-swap lets you toggle between the original 1990 EGA presentation and the new edition mid-scene without breaking your progress.

Quality-of-life additions include an in-game hint system pitched for players who don't want to spend an hour on a single puzzle, an updated control interface, and the full set of side-splitting puzzles intact — the insult swordfighting, the Sword Master, the rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle. Two decades after the original release, the Special Edition is still the most accessible way to encounter the game without sacrificing what made it work in the first place.