Mêlée Island

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Mêlée Island™ is a fictional Caribbean island in the Monkey Island series of adventure games from LucasArts. It is the capital island of the Tri-Island Area and the home of governor Elaine Marley. Mêlée, which appears only in the first and fourth games of the series (The Secret of Monkey Island and Escape from Monkey Island), with a brief cameo appearance in the second (Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge) and third (The Curse of Monkey Island), is largely covered by a thick forest of pine trees despite the games' Caribbean setting.

[edit] The Secret of Monkey Island

In the series' first game, Mêlée Island is sparsely populated. Apart from one small town, appropriately called Mêlée Town, the island features a used ship lot run by Stan, a small traveling circus, a swordfighting school run by Captain Smirk, and the hidden home of the Sword Master. Just off the northeastern shore of Mêlée is tiny Hook Island. A pirate named Meathook lives here, attempting to express his artistic side.

Mêlée town is home to a pirate bar (The SCUMM Bar), a general store, a church, a jail, a voodoo shop run by The Voodoo Lady, and the governor's mansion.

[edit] Escape from Monkey Island

By the fourth game, both the town and the island have changed considerably. The governor's mansion has somehow moved further away from Mêlée Town, and the former site of Stan's Used Ship Lot is now the official island harbor where ships are issued for official use. Meathook has finally built a bridge leading to Hook Island. Many of the familiar stores in town have been closed; eventually, even the SCUMM Bar gets replaced by a trendy, tourist-friendly place called the Lua Bar. (This is an in-joke: EMI marked one of the first games that used the Lua programming language rather than LucasArts' venerable SCUMM engine.)

[edit] Trivia

• The alley behind the church appears briefly in MI2.
• Portions of The Curse of Monkey Island also allows Guybrush Threepwood to briefly "revisit" Mêlée Island. Guybrush's head emerges from a stump in a forest; this stump was the basis of an infamous joke in The Secret of Monkey Island. He quickly retreats because "stunningly-rendered rabid jaguars" are coming to get him. Several dozen commands to walk into the sea on the Blood Island shore eventually give access the scene on Mêlée where Guybrush drowns.
• In SMI, the town clock is stuck at 10 PM. In EMI, however, the clock seems to be stuck at 3 AM. In either case the island is always under night, no matter when Guybrush visits and stays on it.
• Guybrush remarks that Mêlée is home to the original "International House of Mojo" shop run by the helpful Voodoo Lady. Actually, in SMI her business was not named. The International House of Mojo didn't appear until Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, where it was located in a swamp on Scabb Island.
• "Ye Olde Rubber-Chicken-with-a-pulley-in-the-middle Shoppe" is across the street from the Voodoo Lady's shop in SMI. Of course, the game features a rubber chicken as well.