Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert hated April Fools’ Day, but the new game has changed his mind.

We’ve already had some big surprises in 2022, including the unexpected Return to Monkey Island announcement. We still don’t have a release date for the return of original creator Ron Gilbert, but we’re already sure that we can expect a heavy dose of humour. Why are we so confident? Because the veteran creator has already turned the announcement into a joke that will live long in the memory.

“I was like, oh, I’ll buy the rights, announce it on April 1, and it’ll be great.”- Ron Gilbert

Gilbert announced Return to Monkey Island on April 1, known as April Fools’ Day. As expected, no one believed it, so a few days later, he had to repeat the news, and as you can see, the internet blew up in no time. However, the creator is known to hate the date, so the community didn’t understand that this was how he wanted to promote his subsequent work.

Ron Gilbert’s plans for the teaser were revealed in an interview with Adventure Gamers. According to him, the author started toying with the idea of announcing his game on April Fool’s Day years ago: “I don’t know when I first thought about announcing Monkey Island on April Fool’s. It was maybe about the time right after I wrote that If I Made Another Monkey Island thing [in 2013], and I just thought, you know – it was a weird fantasy, I was like oh, I’d buy the rights back, and I’d announce it on April 1, and it’d be great.”

“When we did the deal for [Return to Monkey Island], I realized these dates might line up.”- Ron Gilbert

“Then when we did the deal for [Return to Monkey Island], I realized these dates might line up. If we get moving on this, April Fool’s actually might line up with when we’re able to announce it. So I kind of stuck the stake in the ground,” Gilbert concludes. Add to that the words of industry legend Dave Grossman, who is also involved in the game’s development.

“The first phone call that we had about the project included that plan of announcing it on April 1, and at the time I thought, ‘That’s a terrible idea. Oh no, we can’t do that. That’s the worst idea.’ And then I slept on it, and then in the morning I was like, ‘That’s the greatest idea!'”

All in all, it looks like Return to Monkey Island will continue to bring the humour we loved so much from the first episodes, although there are still a lot of questions to be answered. For one thing, Gilbert has already revealed the significance of Monkey Island 3 to the story and has already detailed how the canon will be respected.

Source: Adventure Gamers