A Childhood Memory: Lost in Monkey Island 2
I must have been about eight or nine years old when I first played Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge on my old, creaky family PC. The monitor was one of those chunky CRTs that hummed faintly and flickered if you looked at it too long. The game came on a series of floppy disks, and just getting it to run felt like an adventure in itself. But once it loaded, it was magic.
I still remember the first time I heard the steel drum theme in the opening credits. It instantly transported me to another world — a strange, hilarious pirate-infested archipelago where nothing made much sense and everything was somehow perfect. Guybrush Threepwood, the wannabe pirate with too much confidence and too little sense, became my hero.
I didn’t understand all the jokes back then — some of them were definitely aimed at adults — but I laughed anyway. I’d sit for hours trying to figure out puzzles, sometimes completely stuck. The infamous spitting contest, the monkey wrench puzzle — they drove me crazy, but I was too proud to ask for help. There was no Google, no YouTube walkthroughs. Just me, the game, and a notepad full of scribbles and doodles.
Sometimes my older brother would come and watch, offering sarcastic advice like, “Try using the banana on the monkey. You know, because monkeys love bananas.” That actually worked once, and he wouldn’t let me forget it. We didn’t always get along, but Monkey Island 2 gave us common ground, something to laugh about.
Looking back now, I realize it wasn’t just about the game. It was about the atmosphere — the pixelated sunsets, the witty dialogue, the feeling of being immersed in a story so rich and absurd that it made the real world disappear. It was one of the first times a video game made me feel like I was part of something bigger, like I had a role in a grand, quirky adventure.
It wasn’t just a game. It was part of my childhood — a reminder of the joy of discovery & the magic of imagination.