HackerTubewatch
Surprise me
Frame from The Secrets of Monkey Island - An Evening With Ron Gilbert Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

The Secrets of Monkey Island - An Evening With Ron Gilbert

The Video Game History Foundation
Interviews
YouTube
Cited on HN 3 times, 2020–2023, never outright recommended score 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Pointed to as a rare look at the real SCUMM code of a classic adventure game.

A very long livestream in which Ron Gilbert and Frank Cifaldi look at the making of The Secret of Monkey Island, including its SCUMM source code, which they edit and recompile live.

“There is a (crazy long) Youtube video [1] where they take a peek at the SCUMM code for the first Monkey Island, and hack it almost on the fly.” (HN, 2021)

3 citations · Interviews · intermediate

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@dividuum Nov 2020 Cites it
on HN thread Guybrush Fact vs. Fiction
The closest we ever got was in a recent stream with Ron Gilbert himself (from [link] ). Jump to 4:29:23. If only there wasn't a cutscene :-) [this video]
Ron Gilbert stream with a notable moment at 4:29:23
@lou1306 Jul 2021 Cites it
on HN thread Roll your own minilanguages with mini-interpreters (1989)
Just to be pedantic, ScummVM is a re-implementation of the original SCUMM, which totally was an instance of this approach. There is a (crazy long) Youtube video [1] where they take a peek at the SCUMM code for the first Monkey Island, and hack it almost on the fly. Pretty good for a 1990 game. Of course, Infocom's Z-machine may be an even earlier example. [1] [this video] (the relevant bit starts at around 3:09:30)
Live look at the SCUMM code of Monkey Island
@bonki Dec 2023 Cites it
on HN thread Welcome to the Video Game History Foundation Library
Read more
Funny, I literally just watched a VGHF video of Frank Cifaldi talking to Ron Gilbert about the making of Monkey Island where Frank made SCUMM script changes and recompiled MI live on stream (sic!) [0]. I had no idea the VGHF even existed until 4 hours ago. I have been thinking a lot about (video game) preservation over the years and I'm excited to see there are people working on this with such dedication. With that being said, I'm not hugely thrilled about the interface shown in this clip, I think there is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to accessing and presenting the actual data and metadata, but given this seems to be WIP I'm sure things will improve (and maybe it's better when you actually use it yourself). [0]: [this video]
Frank Cifaldi and Ron Gilbert recompile Monkey Island live

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

Keyboard shortcuts

/
Search
j k
Next / previous video
r
Surprise me
l
Like (video page)
w
Watch later (video page)
?
This help
Esc
Close