Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge - Development

Development

The project leader and designer was Ron Gilbert. The development team for the game was largely the same as for The Secret of Monkey Island, and Gilbert was once more joined by Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman. Gilbert parted ways with LucasArts after Monkey Island 2, while Grossman went on to co-design Day of the Tentacle with Schafer. Schafer's future projects for LucasArts included Full Throttle and Grim Fandango.

According to Gilbert, the Monkey Island series was partially inspired by the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Monkey Island 2 features a number of tributes to it, particularly a scene with a guard dog in a prison being lured by a bone and Disneyland style underground tunnels and "E tickets" in the closing scenes. An even greater influence, however, was the 1988 book On Stranger Tides, by Tim Powers.

The game was released on floppy disks for the PC (with VGA graphics), Macintosh and Amiga (with standard 32-color graphics) in 1991, and was later included on a CD-ROM compilation of Monkey Island games called The Monkey Island Bounty Pack. Plans to release Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge for the Sega CD were scrapped after the Sega CD edition of The Secret of Monkey Island did not sell well. In 1994, the game was released on the FM Towns, the last title LucasArts ever published on that system. The game's graphic interface was later adapted for the CD-ROM release of The Secret of Monkey Island.

LeChuck's Revenge was the first title to use Michael Land's and Peter McConnell's iMUSE audio sequencing MIDI engine that enabled the compositions in the game to change interactively depending on the current environment or situation. Its capabilities are extensively explored in the game, with progressive music arrangements adapting to the story on screen for most of the game, and with logical transitions from one piece to another . For instance, the first town of Woodtick has its own theme, but every location or character the player visits within the town will produce seamless variations on the town theme, introducing new melodies, instruments, or changing the arrangement of the piece completely. The DOS version uses a variation on the MIDI system, played back by either an internal speaker, the FM synthesis of an AdLib or Sound Blaster sound card, or any other soundbank of an external, MIDI-compatible source, such as that of a Roland MT-32 sound module popular at the time. It's important to note that all MIDI files used by the game were recordings of hand-played performances over a MIDI controller, adding to the lively feeling of the soundtrack.