What are the origins of The Tales of Bingwood?

Markus: The idea for the project was conceived in the early 1990s. I had just played through Monkey Island 2 and I was trying to come to terms with the way the things had turned out in the story. I realized with a shock that this was "The End" as far as Monkey Islands go (Ok, so now we all know I was wrong about that... However, I still haven't played neither the "Curse" nor the "Escape").

I concluded that in order to have more of the same, I'd have to make it by myself!

The setting, story and characters would be original, but the most important ingredient I wanted to capture was the humor and the underlying sense of fantastic found in the deeds (and misdeeds) of Guybrush, the wannabe pirate.

What is the theme?

Markus: I managed to recruit a fellow adventure enthusiast to participate in brainstorming the story and in creating the background art. As we played around with classic fairy tale clichés, we agreed that the saving of the princess would make an entertaining premise for an adventure. Only this time it's not the brave knight claiming half the kingdom in the process, but a lowly fisherman's son who makes up the difference with his resourcefulness and wit.

Why the retro look?

Markus: The work on the character and background art started almost as soon as we had outlined the story. The artwork was done with Commodore Amiga's excellent Deluxe Paint. The screen resolution was 320 x 240 and we had a whopping 32 color palette to work with. As the project was finally completed some 15 years later, only some minor changes were applied to the original background graphics. We never even seriously considered redoing the graphics to a more up-to-date look... it just wouldn't have been the same game anymore!

Why did it take so long to get it done?

Markus: There were a couple of noble attempts to get the project going... However, the aim was high and the programming team numbered low. Although significant parts of the game were developed on Amiga, the effort eventually lost momentum and stalled.

Half a decade later an idea emerged to make the game playable on web browsers. We only made it so far before realizing that JavaScript was not the way to go with such an extensive project. Bingwood ended up back on the shelf for a few more years.

In 2007 the project was picked up again, and this time things worked out!