'Return To Monkey Island' Is Coming And It's A Huge Deal

Ron Gilbert has just announced a sequel to his long-dormant Monkey Island series, so while longtime fans are downloading boats or whatever it is that the pirates of today do to celebrate cool stuff, we'll take the time to explain why people who aren't fans (yet) should begin feeling the hype as well. Even though it might sound just like it, the Monkey Island series isn't a low-budget video game spinoff of Planet Of The Apes, but rather a series of original games responsible for inspiring the good film in the Pirates Of The Caribbean series. 

The story of wannabe pirate Guybrush Threepwood is but one of many hits by Lucasarts. That's one of the greatest video game companies of all time, one that younger gamers might think we've just made up because Disney shut it down after it swallowed George Lucas whole and spat out everything not related to Star Wars. The Monkey Island games provided a fun alternative to the games from competitor Sierra not just because they were way less punishing, but also because they brought some damn good comedy writing to video games.

Details are still scarce on the upcoming Return To Monkey Island, but we already know some really cool things, like how it has been secretly in active development for two whole years, and how they're using the 2d hand-drawn visuals that we all love:

The updated 2D look rocks, but what we really care about is the comedy.

But how can we be sure it'll be good from just looking at a title screen? Well, we're pretty confident that Gilbert's comedy skills must have aged as fine oil, as the announcement was the incredibly courageous culmination of an April Fools' joke from nearly a decade ago

No, really. The only reason the Internet is only talking about this on the 4th of April is that nobody believed it when he announced it back on April 1. 

Top Image: Ron Gilbert