I remember the first time I read this I just chuckled. That was 10 years ago and the myth keeps going. It’s been printed (well, web printed) so many times that it is slowly going to become fact and I want to set the world straight.
What is true
During the early days of Monkey Island I didn’t have a name for Guybrush. We just called him the “guy”.
When Steve Purcell was doing concepts for “the guy” he was doing them in dpaint. In dpaint you could select a section of the screen called a “brush” and save it out.
It was these files I got from Steve. I saw the file names so many times that the name “guybrush” stuck.
What is NOT true
I have seen multiple places recount this story (most recently) but they get one fact wrong.
The file I would get from Steve was called guybrush.lbm not guy.brush. All artwork on Monkey Island was done on the PC under MSDOS. MSDOS had a limit of three letters for filename extensions. It could not have been .brush. One of three things is going wrong here.
- People are forgetting or never knew that MSDOS had a three letter file extension limit and the files dpaint saved out where
.lbmor.bbmfiles.
or
- The Amiga allowed longer filename extensions and people assumed we did art on the Amiga. We did not. It was all done on MSDOS using dpaint or dpaint animator.
or
- It makes a better story and screw the facts. Facts are so 2015.
If you read this incorrect fact anywhere, please direct them to this link.
[1] For Monkey Island 1 all the art was gone in dpaint on MSDOS. For Monkey Island 2, the backgrounds were scanned on a Mac using Photoshop 1.0 and then moved to a PC and finished on dpaint.