Comment by benihana | Hacker News Reader

Comment by benihana | Hacker News Reader

If anyone is unaware, they've got some pretty good versions of MI 1 and 2 on the Apple App store. I played it on my iPad a couple of years ago, and it was great. The adventure format works really well on a tablet. You can even play with updated graphics or in classic mode. Easily worth the 10 bucks or however much it costed.

Unfortunately Disney pulled the iOS versions from the App Store in April.

https://help.disney.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/About-The-Secret-...

I don't see it listed in the app store when I search. Does this mean if you bought it, get a new iOS device and don't have a backup, the game has essentially been erased from your collection?

If you purchased them and they're in your collection, then you are able to download them again from the App Store. I just did it and they play fine on the current version of iOS.

Ah, the "Disney Vault" is alive and well...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault

The best part of that article is the end:

See also: Artificial Scarcity

I honestly had no idea that was a thing. How on earth can that possibly create a net gain for the company? All it does is encourage piracy...

Wow, I'm surprised.

From that page: "this will allow us to focus on building new and more engaging games" - I'd like to hear them explain that!

IMO the updated graphics are an unmitigated disaster that ignore what made the original great. Since there is a classic mode, it is still a great way to play these games.

The updated graphics work better for MI2 than MI1. That's because the MI2 graphics were scanned. (They even admit to that in the audio commentary.)

I just played the updated versions a few weeks ago. I'm a lifelong MI fan—I first played MI1 on my family's Tandy 1000 (16 colors and 3-voice sound!). I also was disappointed by MI1, which felt like a cheap money grab more than a faithful remake. The remake of MI2, OTOH, was a masterpiece—beautiful graphics and less clunky overall.

One really cool thing that both remakes offer is the ability to seamlessly switch between the remake and the original: At any point in the game, press the correct function key (F10 in MI1 and F1 in MI2—not sure why they switched that) and the game morphs between the remake and original without skipping a beat—down to the dialogue, music, etc. It didn't really add anything to gameplay, but it was really cool.

There is also a remake of Grim Fandango I saw on there. I haven't played it but I loved the original. Amazing game.

the remake was done by Double Fine, and is essentially a port of the original game with a few touch ups. They did a great job!

They're actually not that great since they lack the creator commentary, which I did not know about when I bought them. I should have bought the xbox360 versions, but I thought they were the same, and decided portability was a good enough factor to go for the ipod touch versions.

Oh boy. That's my weekend gone.

The normal course of action used to be: You build a game for console & Windoze, then wait 10 years, then maybe port it to Mac.

The current course is: You build a game for console & Windoze, then wait 4 years, then maybe port it to iDevice, and probably never to Mac.

That's at least a relative improvement over before, even if it's still not really satisfying for folks that don't have a console or a PC.

Here you go!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/secret-monkey-island-special...

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