Retro Reviews Part Four: LeChuck's Revenge

Page content

The Magic of the Big Whoop

LeChuck Revenge was the second installment on the Monkey Island Series, and it was one of the controversial games of the franchise due the bizarre ending, but we are going to speak about the ending in a while. With the second game, some improvements arrive such as a boost in the graphics, giving more details to the scenarios and the character, i.e. Guybrush sprite was greatly improving giving him more details in his wardrobe and in his looks, such as the beard he sports at the begging of the game.

Monkey Island 2, give some tie-ins to the first part to explain what happened between the games, such GuyBrush leaving Elaine and LeChuck been resurrected by one of his former minions, but the most important aspect is the faux real ending that tried to explain that the Monkey Island universe was only the fantasy of two brothers who wanted to be pirates, LeChuck been the eldest and GuyBrush the youngest one and the Big Whoop the so called fountain of power is nothing more than an amusement park, but the twist comes when Chuck the older brother of GuyBrush breaks the fourth wall and looks at the camera with some traces of black magic giving the idea to the viewer that probably nothing is what it seems to be. The ending disconcerted many people because of the ambiguity, leaving the question if the ending was real or something else, my theory is that Big Whoop was a source of mystical power who could saw the inner desires of the people and turning them in reality, but that was only something crazy that I though, the other theory I had the last part where LeChuck breaks the fourth wall and smile exhorting the evil power it was more of a gag rather than anything else, a gag to show how naughty some kids can be, but the ending is just open to interpretation.

The narrative of the game is interesting due the reason GuyBrush tells part of the story giving the opportunity to the player to interact with GuyBrush memories, but at the same if the player tries to alter the curse of the story, i.e. trying to killing GuyBrush, he will be interrupted because is a illogical paradox of how a dead guy can tell a story if he is alive. As the first installment there are many pop culture references and some references to Walt Disney World such as naming Walt to a dog and Guybrush trying to get free from a prison cell while he bribes Walt the dog to give him the key, that scene is recreated similar on the first game and is a homage to the ride of Pirates of the Caribbean.

The game itself is quite as the first one, but as a fan of the series I am happy that they developed two more sequels and they give a proper end to the series, even some fans want a fifth part in my opinion the game ended good with Monkey Island 4. If you want to acquire Monkey Island two, you can to Abadonia.com or to Amazon.com where many people are selling original versions of the game, if you like to have a piece of game history.

This post is part of the series: Gus Retro Reviews

Retro Reviews is a series that condense many old games that marked a hint when they appeared, such as Monkey Island, Beneath a Steel Sky and many others.

  1. Retro Reviews Part One: The Secret of Monkey Island
  2. Retro Reviews Part Two: Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis
  3. Retro Reviews Part Three: Beneath a Steel Sky
  4. Retro Reviews Part Four: LeChuck’s Revenge
  5. Retro Reviews: Roller Coaster Tycoon 2
  6. Retro Reviews: Grand Theft Auto Vice City
  7. Retro Reviews: Age of Empires
  8. Retro Reviews Part Five: Duke Nukem
  9. Retro Reviews: Little Big Adventure
  10. Retro Reviews: WWE Raw
  11. Retro Reviews: Unreal
  12. Retro Reviews: Turok