Escape from Monkey Island

Escape from Monkey Island is an adventure game that consists of dialogue with characters and solving puzzles. The game is controlled entirely with the keyboard or alternatively with a joystick, making it the only non-point-and-click game in the Monkey Island series.

A feature of the game are action-lines: Guybrush will glance at any items that can be interacted with; the player can use 'Page Up' or 'Page Down' to select the item that he wants Guybrush to look at.

Guybrush Threepwood and Elaine Marley return to Mêlée Island from their honeymoon. They find that Elaine has been declared officially dead, her position as governor has been revoked and her mansion is scheduled to be demolished. The governorship is up for election, and suddenly a person known as Charles L. Charles presents himself as the lead candidate.

As Elaine begins her campaign to recover her position, Guybrush hires navigator Ignatius Cheese in a game of insult arm-wrestling, meets again with two of his old "friends", Carla and Otis, and heads out to Lucre Island to recover the Marley family heirlooms and obtain the legal documents to save her mansion. During his trip, Guybrush learns of the Marley family's greatest secret: a voodoo talisman known as the Ultimate Insult, which allows the user to spread insults so heinous, it destroys the spirit and will of those who hear it. He is framed for bank robbery by crook Pegnose Pete at the hiring of the Australian land developer Ozzie Mandrill, but proves his innocence.

The game was made with Sean Clark and Michael Stemmle as lead designers, both of whom worked on LucasArts' previous adventure titles Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and Sam & Max Hit the Road. Sean Clark also worked on Loom and The Dig. Escape uses a slightly improved version of the GrimE engine introduced by Grim Fandango. Compared to the rest of the series, the SCUMM scripting language was replaced by the Lua programming language. This is referenced in-game; the pirate-themed SCUMM Bar, which first appeared in The Secret of Monkey Island, is replaced during the game with the tropical-themed Lua Bar.

A new version of the iMUSE interactive music system incorporating MP3 compression, among other changes, was built and used for the game. Interactive programming of the music and ambiance streams in the iMUSE system was done by lead sound designer Larry the O. Escape's introductory music is identical to that of the third game, unlike the earlier sequels which featured newly composed remixes of the well-known Monkey Island theme. Clint Bajakian, who had previously been an additional composer on Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, acted as the game's main composer, with additional tracks by Michael Land (who had been the lead composer on the previous three Monkey Island games), Peter McConnell, Anna Karney, and Michael Lande (not to be confused with Michael Land).

Discussing Escape from Monkey Island's performance in December 2000, Simon Jeffery of LucasArts said that the company was "really happy with the [game's] success". He noted that it was "selling well" in the United States and "incredibly well in Europe", which he called proof that a market still existed for adventure games, despite a widespread belief that the genre had died. The game's computer version sold 55,275 copies and earned $2 million in the United States by the end of 2000, according to the market research firm PC Data. In the German market, Escape debuted at #4 on Media Control's computer game sales chart for November 2000.

It placed ninth and 16th in its following two months, respectively. PC Data estimated its sales in the United States at 32,576 units for 2001, and 9,168 for the first six months of 2002. Its jewel case SKU sold 11,061 copies in North America during 2003.