EN ROUTE TO THE CARIBBEAN · SINCE 1999
From print to the Caribbean · 1993 archive
May the Monkey Be With You!
Fake preview · Real history01 / 1993
April 1993: the sequel comes from the newsstand
For many players, news arrived as a fresh magazine cover on a counter. You bought an issue, hurried through its pages and hoped to spot the right name. The internet existed, but it was not yet the everyday home of anticipation about games.
After LeChuck’s Revenge, that name might be Monkey Island 3. Imagine finding it in print as a preview, followed by Guybrush among spacecraft and science-fiction settings. Your first thought need not have been ‘impossible’. It could have been ‘when can I play it?’.
02 / 1993
A pirate in space. On paper, anyway.
Issue 52 of The Games Machine, dated April 1993, presented a nonexistent third Monkey Island on page 17. The article’s printed Italian headline was Un pirata nello spazio; the altered logo carried May the Monkey Be With You!.
The fake preview imagined a parody crossing Lucas universes. This was not a LucasArts announcement: the game existed only in the magazine’s joke. Keeping that distinction makes the document worth exploring without adding a phantom game to the official chronology.
The original spread
Archive card
- Magazine
- The Games Machine
- Issue
- 52
- Date
- April 1993
- Page
- 17
- Printed headline
- Un pirata nello spazio
- Document type
- April Fool’s fake preview
03 / 1993
The verb that gave the game away
The page combines recognisable elements of Monkey Island 2 with Star Wars and X-Wing imagery. In the supplied spread, the space simulator advertisement is on the left and the fake preview on the right: a juxtaposition worth a second look today.
Its sharpest joke sits in the interface: Use the Force. Sending a pirate into space was not enough; he also needed the right verb. The invented SCUMM made the absurd seem actionable. This remains an editorial montage, not a screenshot from a playable build.
04 / 1993
Why keep it?
On Outcast, Andrea Peduzzi recalls falling for it. This is a personal account, not a measure of how many readers believed the preview.
For us, part of the appeal lies in the interval before the truth caught up: print gave an idea time to become a possible future. That is an editorial reading of the joke, not evidence of every reader’s reaction. It still takes little effort to imagine someone eagerly awaiting another adventure.
Andrea Peduzzi · Pesce d’aprile! | Racconti dall’ospizioSources and reading notes
The scan documents the headline, images and command. RetroEdicola lists issue 52/1993; Outcast places page 17 in April 1993. We do not name an individual author of the hoax or quantify its deceived readers.
Images and trademarks belong to their respective owners. The scan’s provenance is given in its caption.