 The Secret of Monkey Island was the fifth Lucasfilm Games project powered by the SCUMM engine , originally developed for Maniac Mansion . The company had gradually modified the engine since its creation . For Maniac Mansion , the developers hard coded verb commands in the SCUMM <unk> language . These commands become more abstract in subsequent versions of the engine . The developers carried over the practice of referring to individual segments of the <unk> as " rooms " , even though the areas in Monkey Island were outdoors . The game uses the same version of the engine used in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade , with minor changes . A dialog tree was added , which facilitated conversation options and the sword @-@ fighting puzzles . The developers removed the " What is " option ( an input command that describes an on @-@ screen object to the player ) in favor of allowing the player to simply highlight the object with the mouse <unk> . The game 's improved interface became the standard for the company 's later titles . The game also introduced logical verb <unk> , which could be performed with the mouse ; for example , clicking on a character <unk> to the " talk " action , the most obvious action in the situation . SCUMM 's visuals were updated for the game — the original <unk> version had a <unk> pixel resolution rendered in 16 colors . According to artist Steve Purcell , that became a major limitation for the art team ; due to a low number of " <unk> " colors , they often chose bizarre tones for backgrounds . They chose black and white for Guybrush 's outfit for the same reason . The VGA version of the game later corrected these issues by implementing 256 color support , which allowed for more advanced background and character art . The VGA ( and other platform releases ) removed the infamous " stump joke " from the game , which was a joke in the <unk> version in which the player would examine a tree stump in the forest . Guybrush would exclaim that there is an opening to a system of catacombs and attempt to enter , but this would result in a message stating the player needed to insert disc 22 , then 36 , then 114 in order to continue . The joke resulted in numerous calls to the LucasArts <unk> asking about missing discs . As a result , the joke was removed from later editions and is a mentioned as a conversation option for the LucasArts <unk> <unk> in the sequel . 
