Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge is an adventure game developed and published by LucasArts in 1991. Players control the pirate Guybrush Threepwood, who searches for the legendary treasure of Big Whoop and faces the zombie pirate LeChuck.
Like The Secret of Monkey Island (1990), development was led by Ron Gilbert with Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman. Monkey Island 2 was the sixth LucasArts game to use the SCUMM engine and the first to use the iMUSE sound system.
Monkey Island 2 was a critical success, but a commercial disappointment. It was followed by The Curse of Monkey Island in 1997. A remake was released in 2010, following a similar remake of the first game. In 2022, Gilbert released Return to Monkey Island, set after the cliffhanger of Monkey Island 2.
Gameplay
LeChuck's Revenge plays like most SCUMM-based point-and-click adventure games. Actions and dialogues are depicted on an Animation Window which covers the top of the screen; verbal commands are listed in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, while Inventory items are shown as icons on the lower right-hand corner. A Sentence Line is located below the Animation Window and serves in describing the actions of the player.
LeChuck's Revenge was one of the few adventure games that offered the player a choice in levels of puzzle difficulty. In some versions, before starting, the player is prompted to choose between regular version and "Monkey 2 Lite", a relatively stripped-down experience that bypasses many puzzles entirely. On the back of the game's packaging it is jokingly stated that this mode is intended for video-game reviewers.
Plot Several months after the events of The Secret of Monkey Island, Guybrush Threepwood is on Scabb Island searching for the legendary treasure of "Big Whoop". He is robbed by Largo LaGrande, former first mate of the pirate LeChuck whose ghost Guybrush defeated in the previous game. Largo has imposed an embargo on the island, preventing anyone from leaving. Visiting the International House of Mojo in the island's swamp, Guybrush receives guidance from the Voodoo Lady who assisted him in his first adventure. Through actions involving laundry collection and grave-robbing, Guybrush collects the necessary materials for her to make a voodoo doll of Largo, which Guybrush uses against him. However, Guybrush makes the mistake of showing Largo LeChuck's still-living beard, which Largo steals and uses to resurrect LeChuck as an undead zombie.
From his island fortress, LeChuck swears revenge against Guybrush. The Voodoo Lady reveals that Big Whoop contains the secret to another world which will allow Guybrush to escape LeChuck forever. She gives Guybrush a book which says that the four pirates who discovered the treasure created a map to its location which they divided into four parts. One of the pirates was the grandfather of Guybrush's love interest, Elaine Marley, who has broken up with him. Guybrush charters a ship sailed by Captain Dread, and sets out to find the map pieces.
Guybrush's search takes him back and forth between three islands: Scabb, Phatt, and Booty. On Phatt Island he is imprisoned by order of Governor Phatt, who hopes to claim the bounty LeChuck has placed on him, but Guybrush manages to escape. On Booty Island he encounters Stan, a used ship salesman from the first game who is now selling used coffins. He also reunites with Elaine, who is bitter toward him and says that their relationship was a mistake. Through various quests involving a Mardi Gras party, a spitting competition, a bloodhound, a drinking contest, a glass-bottom boat, a sunken ship's figurehead, rigged gambling, a library catalog, and temporarily resurrecting the dead, Guybrush manages to collect the map pieces. He takes them to diminutive cartographer Wally, who determines that Big Whoop is on Dinky Island. Wally and the map are soon kidnapped by LeChuck. Guybrush infiltrates LeChuck's fortress but is captured, and LeChuck places him and Wally in an elaborate death-trap. They manage to escape, but Guybrush accidentally sets off an explosion which propels him to Dinky Island. There he encounters castaway Herman Toothrot, who he previously met on Monkey Island.
Navigating a mazelike jungle with the help of a talking parrot, Guybrush locates the site where Big Whoop is supposedly buried. He digs until he hits concrete, and uses dynamite to blast through it. Elaine hears the explosion from Booty Island and sets out to investigate, finding Guybrush dangling over a deep hole which he then falls down, winding up in an underground facility. LeChuck arrives, claims that he is Guybrush's brother, and proceeds to torture him using a voodoo doll. In the tunnels, Guybrush discovers an E ticket, a first aid station, a "lost parents" area with the skeletal remains of his parents, and an elevator leading to Mêlée Island, which he previously visited in The Secret of Monkey Island. He creates a voodoo doll of LeChuck, and dismembers his foe by tearing its leg off.
LeChuck begs Guybrush to remove his mask, revealing that he is actually Guybrush's creepy brother, Chuckie. Their reunion is interrupted by a workman, who says that "you kids" should not be there. The two brothers, now appearing as children, exit the tunnels together and meet their parents above-ground in the "Big Whoop" amusement park. Guybrush is confused, and Chuckie's eyes glow with evil energy. Back on Dinky Island, Elaine wonders if LeChuck has cast a spell over Guybrush.
Development Origin The idea of a sequel to The Secret of Monkey Island came about during its planning by the director, Lucasfilm Games employee Ron Gilbert. Gilbert envisioned The Secret of Monkey Island as the first of a trilogy of adventure games, although without fully developing their overarching narrative direction yet. The possibility of a second Monkey Island game was alluded to by Gilbert in a late 1990 interview with in-company newsletter The Adventurer, and he told Retro Gamer in 2006 that "I knew there was going to be a sequel" before he completed work on The Secret of Monkey Island. He proceeded to conceive ideas specifically for Monkey Island 2 before Lucasfilm Games set about publishing Secret. Gilbert remarked that his opportunity to develop the sequel came in part from the company's contemporary project management practices which he likened to the narrative setting of Lord of the Flies, as the staff was free to "[run] around and do whatever we wanted". Further motivation for Monkey Island 2 stemmed from Lucasfilm Games staff's desire to explore unused ideas from The Secret of Monkey Island. Gilbert explained that, although the earlier game's team had omitted several of its design decisions to complete it within deadline, "it didn't matter [...] because I could just save the work out and come back to it in the sequel".
The reason Monkey Island 2 began, according to Gilbert, was his personal interest in expanding his work in the original game rather than commercially driven suggestions from Lucasfilm Games' management. Gilbert commented that the game's origin would have been improbable in the latter case, as the company was unable to assess the viability of a potential sequel due to its then limited knowledge of the first title's sales performance. The initial uncertainty of the first game's commercial success also encouraged Gilbert to start the Monkey Island 2 project without express approval of the wider company. He wanted to avoid a scenario where Lucasfilm Games' discontent with the first game's sales would prompt the company to forfeit any new Monkey Island titles in favor of ventures with greater consumer appeal such as Star Wars licensed games. Gilbert eventually convinced Lucasfilm Games to commit to the creation of the sequel regardless of its profitability, a decision which Gilbert attributed to the "simpler days" of that period of his involvement with the company.
In 1990, around the time that the development of Monkey Island 2 was sanctioned, Lucasfilm Games and other Lucasfilm subsidiaries were reorganized into integrated divisions of the newly formed LucasArts Entertainment Company. Monkey Island 2 thus became the first adventure game by the company produced under the LucasArts brand name. Development of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge began shortly after The Secret of Monkey Islands release in October 1990. As with most of their contemporary releases, LucasArts developed the sequel and published the game's original release.
Production
LucasArts sought to commit its projects to a new, more structured production template, to which Monkey Island 2 was one of the company' first games to conform, along with Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. This meant that a dedicated production schedule was set, under which further "rough due-dates" were decided and a fully recruited team was allotted to Monkey Island 2.
The principal staff members from the original game reprised their duties for the creation of its sequel. Gilbert reassumed the role of project leader, and The Secret of Monkey Island co-designers, programmers and writers Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman also returned to work on Monkey Island 2 in their respective capacities. Grossman briefly disengaged from the production when LucasArts requested him to assist The Digs then-director Noah Falstein in the early development of that title. After concluding this assignment, Grossman resumed his work on Monkey Island 2 until its completion. Staff returning from The Secret of Monkey Island also included lead artist and cover illustrator Steve Purcell; animator Sean Turner; composer Michael Land; LucasArts playtesting supervisor Judith Lucero, who also authored the instruction manual; and game tester James Hampton. At the same time, Monkey Island 2 was supplemented with newly hired personnel such as artists Peter Chan and Larry Ahern as well as a scripter-programmer. Shelley Day, formerly of Electronic Arts, was appointed to produce Monkey Island 2 at LucasArts alongside Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
Engine and interface Monkey Island 2 uses the fifth revision of LucasArts' proprietary game engine, SCUMM. The company added a dedicated interpreter for the scripting language (internally dubbed SPUTUM), and background programs that managed the location of objects and characters and simulated character activities. This included FLEM, the code for object states and walking area boundaries, and BILE, a "cel-based animation emulator" that allowed artists to animate individual body parts. The variety of subset programs allowed the engine to execute multiple script functions for an entity, such as those handling the rendition of its audiovisual data. Though the engine was designed as cross-platform, Monkey Island 2 was developed for IBM PC compatibles with the MS-DOS operating system, as with LucasArts' other games at the time. Full transcript .
Also revised was the graphical user interface, which employed verb-based commands as player input. For increased accessibility, the team enlarged the point-and-click command list menu, and they removed the "turn on" and "turn off" options. They also updated the player inventory, which replaced the text-only descriptions with icons.