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Monkey Island 3a or 'Monkey Island: The Secret Revealed Or Your Money Back'[1] was the concept for the third game that Ron Gilbert intended to create to complete the Monkey Island Trilogy.
It was thought as an alternate storyline than what was depicted in Curse of Monkey Island and the following two games, which were made by other teams.

Gilbert had said that if he ever wins the lottery, he would buy the rights to the Monkey Island franchise and make the game he had always wanted to make. Though no real work has gone into the making of the game, Gilbert has ideas for plot and puzzles.

According to Ron, he even contacted LucasArts about it and they were interested, but then "it just ended".

In a 2013 blog post named If I made Another Monkey Island, he said he was not working on any Monkey Island game, but expressed various thoughts about how he would have organized it in case, including the fact that a Monkey Island 3a would have not been the same game as his initial Monkey Island 3 idea from 1992.[2]

A Petition exists, asking Disney to sell the rights to Monkey Island to Gilbert.

Ultimately, while the rights remained with Disney, a deal was struck between them, publisher Devoler Digital, and Ron Gilbert's studio Terrible Toybox to make Return to Monkey Island, with Gilbert having complete creativity over its direction. While that game, released in 2022, begins at the location where the 1991 LeChuck's Revenge ended, it is not the original Monkey Island 3a concept due to Ron Gilbert's views having changed over the years, as well as planned ideas either being explored in other Monkey Island games [3] or being repurposed into Gilbert's 2017 game Thimbleweed Park.[4] Return is the sixth game in the series and includes a few references to the games after the second one, although it seems to ignore some of their plot points.

Game Events[]

Until 2020, Gilbert has revealed very little about what he would have put into the 3a game. He claims that he is extremely good at keeping secrets.

Some minor details have been slipped though.

  • The Secret of Monkey Island would be revealed. (This happened in Return to Monkey Island)
  • Guybrush Threepwood and Elaine Marley would not marry.
  • Lechuck would be a demon. (This ended up being used in Curse.)
  • Guybrush would go to hell. (A similar concept involving Guybrush in the afterlife was used for the fifth episode of Tales.)

Guybrush Goes To Hell[]

In 2020, as part of an 30th anniversary stream ran by The Video Game History Foundation, showcasing cut content from Monkey Island 1 and 2's source codes, Gilbert discussed how the trilogy was "planned out" (it mostly wasn't, beyond vague ideas). He mentioned the idea of LeChuck transforming across the trilogy, from a Ghost, to a Zombie, to finally a Demon. Then Ron elaborated on his idea for Monkey Island 3, which would've had Guybrush GOING TO HELL.[5]

"...The third game in my head was always that Guybrush would go to hell AND, you know, the demon pirate LeChuck would be down there, and he would be doing a lot of what he would be doing in-you know-hell. And that's-that's something telltale had done, you know, with the Tales Of Monkey Island games, completely independent of what I was thinking of."

He then went on to state that this was merely the "broad strokes" version of MI3. For now.

References[]

  1. 2002 Interview with Ron - "I would love to do another "adult" adventure game. My dream is to buy the rights to Monkey Island and do the true Monkey Island 3. I'd call it "Monkey Island 3a: The Secret Reveled[sic] or your Money Back".
  2. If I made Another Monkey Island 2013 blog post.
  3. Ron Gilbert, Dave Grossman – Return to Monkey Island Interview
  4. Ron Gilbert's Return to Monkey Island announcement was a joke '18 years in the making'
  5. The Secrets of Monkey Island - An evening with Ron Gilbert
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