Monkey Island's insult swordfighting now playable for free in your browser
"You're no match for my brains, you poor fool!"
Arguably classic adventure game series Monkey Island's most well known bit involved a quip-based spin on combat in which you fought malevolent scallywags with your rapier wit rather than your, well, rapier.
Now the infamous insult swordfighting can be relived for free in browser form thanks to dedicated modder Karza. For those not familiar with insult swordfighting, it involves collecting a series of wisecracks and retorts from sharp-tongued pirates before you can best them in a game of [s]wordplay.
It's a rather simple match game at heart, but the banter is genuinely clever and much of the game is just training for the final boss where it's revealed that every response has a double meaning that needs to be paired with an all new set of puns.
This browser-based version contains all the insult swordfights from Monkey Islands 1 & 3, as the second game skipped out on the mini-game, while Escape from Monkey Island's "Monkey Kombat" was essentially the same game with primate onomatopoeias, which wasn't nearly as funny. Curiously, the first Monkey Island's insults were penned by notorious sci-fi author Orson Scott Card, who later went on to co-write Shadow Complex and restrict rights to gay people. But at least now you can enjoy some of his finest work without donating to his disgusting cause.
