The Secret of Monkey Island

The Secret of Monkey Island dropped in 1990 and instantly became a point-and-click classic for anyone who grew up on PCs. Built by Lucasfilm Games (later LucasArts), it put you in the shoes of wannabe pirate Guybrush Threepwood, exploring Melee Island, sword-fighting with insults, and chasing down the ghost pirate LeChuck. It ran first on MS-DOS and Amiga, then hit Atari ST and Macintosh, and got a VGA update in 1991 with 256-color graphics that felt next-level at the time. The game’s humor, open exploration, and zero dead-end design made it stand out in an era when most games punished you hard. It even got a full voice-acted Special Edition in 2009, but the original floppy-disk version is what hits hardest for anyone who lived through the golden age of adventure games.