Scumm Bar
From Monkey Island wiki
The Scumm Bar is a pirate-friendly establishment situated on Mêlée Island and owned by Ignatius Cheese. His employees have included the Chef and the Scumm Bartender.
Contents |
Name
The Scumm Bar is named after the game-engine SCUMM, which was used to create the first three Monkey Island games. The Scumm Bar appears in The Secret of Monkey Island and again in Escape from Monkey Island. In the latter it is renamed the Lua Bar. The engine powering Escape from Monkey Island is the GrimE engine which is based upon LUA, an open-source scripting language.
Information
In The Secret of Monkey Island it appeared at the start, and was where Guybrush met the three quest-giving Pirate Leaders who told him that, to become a pirate he must prove himself in the arts of sword fighting, thievery and treasure hunting. In Escape from Monkey Island it appeared both at the start of the game and again later on and involved numerous puzzles.
Background
According to Estevan, the bar is so full of pirates in the first game because LeChuck has made them all to scared to sail. One of the Important-looking pirates in the next room explains: "So, no pirates means no swag, and no swag means no grog, and we're getting dangerously low on grog...". Estevan claims that pirates often take a mug and sneak into the kitchen to steal grog.
Ignatius Cheese won the bar in a game of Insult Go Fish against its previous owner, a guy named Ron. Whether Ron or Cheese owned it at the time of the first game is uncertain.
The Secret of Monkey Island
There are a total of eighteen pirates, one chef and one dog found in the bar. Twelve pirates are drinking, three pirates are sleeping, and one is standing atop anchor lamp. One of the pirates in the entrance room is a blonde girl flirting with another pirate. The three last pirates can be found in the next room; these are the Pirate Leaders, who give Guybrush his three trials to become a pirate.
The second room has a door to the kitchen. Above the doorway a skull is painted on the wall. But the chef doesn't like to be disturbed in the kitchen, and if he sees Guybrush trying to go in, he will say "Hey!" and then "Don't go into the kitchen." Therefore Guybrush must make sure to go in when the chef is in the other room and can't see him.
In the kitchen there is a picture of someone that looks like a cook. One bare wooden table has a large hunk of meat on it at all times, and there are multiple bloodstains on the wall behind. Guybrush can also find a pot under the table. A pot of stew is bubbling on a lit stove. Guybrush won't pick it up because it's boiling hot, though he will take the hunk of meat. In one corner of the room is a barrel, marked with skull and crossbones to indicate this contains some dangerous pirate grog.
From the kitchen, Guybrush can go outside the Scumm Bar, onto a short pier. There he will find a seagull feeding on a red fish (a herring).
Notable patrons
Escape from Monkey Island
In the first Act of Escape from Monkey Island you must return to the SCUMM Bar, where you can meet its owner Ignatius Cheese. When asked, he tells you he has managed to fend off Ozzie Mandrill through Insult Arm Wrestling, something you must beat him at to get him to join your crew. The SCUMM Bar has four other patrons in this game, making it notably quieter than it was in The Secret of Monkey Island; the Bartender blames this on Ozzie Mandrill. Aside from Ignatius Cheese and the Barkeep, the patrons include the Tall and Short Dart Players, competing in a Mêlée Island Dart Championship, and a drunken sailor in the corner with an empty pretzel basket.
When you return to Mêlée Island in Act II, the SCUMM Bar has been acquired and transformed into the Lua Bar, a modern bar which sells sushi.
Notable Patrons
- Drunken Sailor
- Short Dart Player
- Tall Dart Player
Lua Bar
The Lua Bar is what the SCUMM Bar on Mêlée Island is turned into in Escape from Monkey Island. In the absence of its owner, Ignatius Cheese, Ozzie Mandrill somehow gets ownership of the bar and turns it into a tropical tourist-trap. Guybrush comes back from Lucre Island to discover this dramatic change. The player can choose whether or not to tell Mr. Cheese of the change.
The sign outside the building no longer has the trademark smiley face, and instead just spells out Lua Bar in tropical lettering. The interior also carries over the tropical look; there is a very long sushi bar that runs down the right side of the building. The sushi bar is a long moat with little boats that carry the sushi to the customers, and runs back into the kitchen. The walls are lined with tiki masks and idols, as well as leis and other decorative tropical items. The kitchen though has remained the truest to the original building, except for a big brass monkey furnace. Two identical brass monkeys push down on levers that pump the water that propels the little sushi boats. When Guybrush examines them he says "Brass Monkey!" and the monkeys rhythmically reply, "That Funky Monkey!" (a reference to the Beastie Boys song "Brass Monkey"). Whether or not the bar was transformed back into the SCUMM Bar after Ozzie Mandrill's demise is currently unknown.
Personnel
The staff of the Lua Bar includes a very peppy waitress and a very mellow and laid-back patron at the sushi bar up by the kitchen, who compliments Guybrush on his dead-on pirate look. As in The Secret of Monkey Island, the Chef has to be lured out of kitchen before you can go back there, and much like the Chef in the original game, he is in a white apron and hat. The only difference is that he has a French accent and appearance including a curly mustache.
Patrons
Trivia
- In the first game, the name of the Scumm Bar was always capitalised as such. One character refers to the "SCUMM BAR", but this appears to be only to indicate emphasis. Whereas in Escape from Monkey Island the Scumm Bar has become the "SCUMM Bar", and is always capitalised as such in scene descriptions and dialogue. This is used as a running joke in the same way that Monkey Island is always referred to with a trailing ™.
- In the first game Estevan mentions that the bar used to have a dartboard until a "horrible accident", after which it was removed. Despite his warning that "darts and drinking don't mix", there is a dartboard again by the time of the fourth game.
