For me, the biggest shock and disappointment to come from the news of Disney's purchase and subsequent capsizing of LucasArts was not the cancellation of any Star Wars titles in the making. In fact, almost all the talk about the company that you'll hear circling the internet (including next week's podcast discussion) will be entirely focused on the future of Star Wars video games, and that's not fair.

LucasArts made plenty of games without the Star Wars branding on them over the years. They took the point and click adventure genre to defining levels of excellence with their games such as Sam & Max Hit the Road, Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle, and one of my personal favourite video game series ever, Monkey Island.

The adventures of Guybrush Threepwood and his hilarious parody of piratey profession was one of the few series that had little to do with Nintendo, yet still managed to capture my heart with each and every new entry into the series. The creative dialogue writing, the superb voice acting from the third game onwards, the ingenious, quirky and often ridiculous puzzle solutions, the unforgettable soundtracks and supporting characters, and the endless stream of self-referencing in-jokes and tongue-in-cheek jabs at other LucasArts properties, famous movies, pop culture and, yes, even Disney, everything just came together in such a fun harmonious masterpiece of interactive storytelling.

And yet, now that Disney is at the helm, having keelhauled the LucasArts development team and begun plotting to pass around its new licenses to third party developers like so much Aztec lucre, I have a sinking feeling that Monkey Island is too niche of a title for them to care about and the company will simply let the series drift down into Davy Jones' locker. Should the series be pawned off to the highest third-party bidder (if Disney even cares enough to look past its own Pirates of the Caribbean franchise), can we really be sure that the characters and the continuous storyline will be treated with the respect and attention to detail that it deserves? Will Dominic Armato, Earl Boen and the other series mainstays be given the opportunity to reprise their voice-acting roles, regardless of the studio? Telltale's recent episodic Tales of Monkey Island game was co-developed by LucasArts and contained the work and brainstorming of several key figures in the development of earlier games, including the original series creator Ron Gilbert. Perhaps Telltale will get the chance to continue their plot, which ended with a vague cliffhanger.

Fans of the show have wanted to see the classic third installment to the series, Curse of Monkey Island, released on Steam since the first two games were remastered in HD, and unless something is done, that's never likely to happen now.

Fortunately there's a glimmer of hope in these murky depths. In an interview with Eurogamer last December, Ron Gilbert expressed his intentions to consult with Disney about reacquiring the Monkey Island franchise from Disney and hoisting it anew under the Double Fine flag. Whether Disney's recent corporate crushing and sellout restructuring will affect Ron's plans in any way is up for debate, but I for one hope that tides will turn in our Monkey-loving favour.

To offer musings of a different nature, I wonder if in all this, we could ever see Guybrush appear in Disney Infinity or even the next Pirates of the Caribbean film... Pixar? I hope you're taking notes!