Before E3 last month, I had given up all hope of ever seeing another adventure starring Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate. In fact, in our TechStuff podcast about E3 predictions, I listed a new Monkey Island game as my wishful thinking prediction that I never thought would come true. I even wrote about it in our article on the best video games never made. But then I heard some news that knocked my socks off in a nautical way: We will soon have two new Monkey Island games, developed by two different companies. One of them is an all-new adventure. The other is a faithful adaptation of the first game to star Mr. Threepwood in his quest to become the most famous pirate on the seven seas.

The new adventure is called Tales of Monkey Island and comes to us from TellTale Games, the same company that produced the recent Sam & Max and Strong Bad games. Like those games, Tales is episodic in nature — customers will be able to download the game in five chapters. The first one, “Launch of the Screaming Narwhal,” goes live today. The development team for the game includes members who worked on the original series of Monkey Island adventures. That includes voice actor Dominic Armato, who first gave voice to the protagonist Guybrush in The Curse of Monkey Island. It also includes Michael Land, the composer of the Monkey Island soundtrack. Land’s theme is one of my favorite pieces of music from a video game. Tales of Monkey Island will mark the fifth game in the series and is available for the PC. Here’s a video demo of the gameplay:

The other game, The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition comes straight from LucasArts, the company responsible for the first four games in the series. Back when the original Secret of Monkey Island premiered, adventure games featured a simple point-and-click interface. There was no voice acting, the graphics were fairly primitive and the music, while inspired, was hindered by the limitations of hardware at the time. Now LucasArts has recreated the game with a new interface, a richer orchestration, better graphics and a voice acting performance from Dominic Armato. And if you want to switch back to the original game you can do it with a touch of a button. It will be available later this summer for the PC and Xbox 360. Gamespot has a great behind the scenes video of the game:

Are adventure games making a comeback? I’d love to see that happen. Back when I was a kid, I loved playing games like King’s Quest or Space Quest. And if this means we’ll eventually see a follow-up to the masterpiece Grim Fandango, I’m on board.

Learn more about video games and pirates at HowStuffWorks.com:

How Pirates Work
How Video Game Systems Work
How Xbox 360 Works