Fighting like a cow about to come back into fashion

MIGHTY pirate Guybrush Threepwood is officially making a comeback - and it's the second biggest we've ever seen.

If you get the reference perhaps like me you spent some part of the early 90s somewhere in the Caribbean, swigging grog, insult sword-fighting and trying to hire a ship from the dodgiest vendor in the Tri-Island area TM.

To this day The Secret of Monkey Island and its sequel can stake a claim to two of the "greatest of all time" awards from the annuls of video game history.

First, the best ever point-and-click adventures - even if it's fair to say the genre rapidly declined with the end of the 2D era.

Perhaps more impressively the titles - 16 bit, subtitled and made by the sort of small team you could comfortably fit in a skiff - are the funniest ever released. It's a disgrace that more than 30 years on so few games have shared a sense of humour.

So imagine the delight of fans when an April Fool's Day post a few days - casually confirming a long-awaited revival proved to be a superb double-bluff. 

A follow-up message earlier today revealed the creative team were, for once, deadly serious. We are genuinely getting a new Monkey Island and it'll be with us by the end of the year.

Almost a decade since original developer LucasArts met its end - a direct result of Disney enveloping George Lucas' former empire (with a small 'e', not the one with the Stormtroopers) - it seemed increasingly remote that fans would ever see a new instalment.

In fact the fourth and final game in the main series released more than 20 years ago.

An online, largely episodic follow-up - overseen by Telltale Games - dropped in 2009 and around the same time remastered versions of the first two entries were also pushed out.
While these glossy updates would have been a fitting bookend there was no doubt disappointment that the series had otherwise weighed anchor - most likely for good.

It appeared the "secret" first teased in an era of floppy disks and "cheat" helplines would never be revealed.

That was until the shock announcement by series creator Ron Gilbert that a new project, helmed by his new studio Terrible Toybox, had been in development for two years and was now just months away.

A brief trailer - and it is brief, lasting little more than a minute - hints that we'll be returning to a less pixelly version of the 2D environments which defined the series.

It's been reported that story-wise we're heading for something of a "soft reboot", largely picking up the plot after the second game, after which Gilbert had taken a backseat role.

Although a brief appearance by Murray - a jabbering skull and fan favourite introduced in the third game - seems to suggest some elements from later releases will be absorbed into a new canon.

None of the main cast - not Guybrush himself, his no-nonsense love interest Elaine, nor the couple's nemesis, the zombie ghost pirate LeChuck - have been revealed at this stage.

Although the credits confirm that original voice actor Dominic Armato - who debuted in the third game and would seem impossible to replace as Guybrush - will be back.

Also returning is another series stalwart, the composer Michael Land. Again his instantly recognisable main theme - the very definition of jaunty - is held back from the teaser, but I'd imagine we'll get a full blast when a longer trailer lands in the coming months.

In the meanwhile there's just enough time to get your cursor finger flexed and steel yourself for another round of fiendish puzzles.