The International House of Mojo

In the realm of fringe dorkdom, few catastrophes resonate more rancidly and/or amusingly than the cancellation of Sam & Max: Freelance Police on March 3rd, 2004.

Yup, it’s been twenty years now, and what better way to mark this bittersweet anniversary than by cracking open our pitiful memoir on the topic for a re-read. Or at least to gawp shamelessly at Bill Eaken’s artwork for it, conveniently available with and without text. Frankly, if you don’t already have that thing framed in your house, a question is inescapably raised: Are you even Proper Mojo™?

For years* your Max plushie had to alone put up with your unregulated private detective skills and musings.

Finally the day has come for these crime-fighting and life partners to adorn your computer shelf together.

Now open for preorders on Uncute is the Sam plushie, for a seemingly high $50 pricetag. But you can't leave Max alone can you? That's ill-advised.

*if you could afford the import/shipping costs...

Source: Uncute Plushies

It's been two years since our inquiry into the public access TV show Fiction by Louie was published and we took home all those Pulitzers. Like any artistic masterpiece, it included a single imperfection to avoid offending the divine. Alerted by Remi’s cynical-minded promotion of the article on Bluesky this week, Dave Grossman caught the mistake and brought it to our attention.

One of the tidbits that appears in the article is that a MIDI track used in the show was composed by the familiar name of Patrick Mundy. Thinking that I could trust my memory of The Secret of Monkey Island opening credits, I styled him as “Patrick Mundy of Earwax Productions fame,” but Dave points out to us that the composer was in fact separate from the Earwax guys. A quick revisit of the game's opener shows that I was indeed blending credits in my head:

Dave further notes that Mundy was the composer of the music heard when navigating Guybrush around the top-down views of Mêlée Island and Monkey Island. I didn’t know that before, and as we’ve established I know everything, so it seems this all worked out profitably in the end. Though it will be your instinct, I assure you there is no need to thank me.

Remember in 2003, when all the Domino bricks started falling, and we learned that, yes, a Monkey Island movie was in production at some point? In 2013, we published a short article about it on The SCUMM Bar, and it has now resurfaced here on Mojo.

In 2021, Polygon published its own story with a lot more official-ish information, of course, but it never really caught the zeitgeist angle quite as vividly. So, go read and relive the movie that thank god never was.

Want to relive the Monkey Island 2 commentary tracks without the hassle of playing the game or dealing with YouTube? Mojo got you covered with our new Commentary Browser. Thirty-one tracks, all at your fingertips, right here!

Usual caveats apply: Minimal beta testing, may not work on your device, etc.

Rumor has it the CEO is already working on expanding this with his favorite game, Day of the Tentacle, so stay tuned.

We keep digging through the archive, this time stumbling across our #monkey-island IRC chats with Ron and Dom.

All I can do is apologize.

So, we’ve made the rounds after Xwitter fell out of favor: Instagram, Threads, even YouTube Shorts. None of them were for us. And while our Mastodon presence will remain, we have decided to take matters into our own hands: Today M soft launches.

This is a social network that has it all: Properly embedded images and videos; threading that actually works; a conversational structure. How can we achieve these things other social networks can only dream of? The secret lies in our artisanal technology stack: Mid-90s-era forums.

Yes, M is built on our existing forums. It is a forum, just with some slight alterations. M is where we post the type of short-form articles we used to post on the sosh: “Mojo Scene of the Day” is already going. “Your Daily Watch is a new thing. Much more to come over the next few days: Rumor has it Thrik is firing up his meme machine. M is short-form Mojo, in other words. Microblogging. You get the idea.

Currently, only Mojo can start topics, but we welcome everyone to join in the conversation (screw you Bluesky). Welcome to M, by Mojo. (Footnote: We actually own MbyMojo.com—don’t accuse us of spending those Patreon funds willy-nilly.)

Never you mind about what Rotten Tomatoes or some Reddit mega thread has to say. The final word on cinema, as on all matters, is Mojo’s, and you are all her constituency. With pride in this civic duty, we bring you our release date review of Indiana Jones and Dial of Destiny. After reading it, you will require no other review, or much of anything, because you’ll be dead of old age. Cripes, Jason.

Disclaimer: While we tried to be mindful about spoilers by refraining from any explicit summary of the plot beyond the first act, we can’t vouch for what your personal standards are. Go to the cinema clean if you want to experience the movie that way. And who are you kidding, anyway -- it’s not like you aren’t going see this like a good little consumer.

I have no problems admitting I don’t really “get” speedruns, but as others do, I feel like I should link this “Monkey Island 2 Speedrun History” video.

Ron even makes an appearance, so that must be worth something even for those who don’t hurry through games.

I haven’t watched the video yet, but I can only assume it takes place to the dulcet tones of “The Cook Chase.”

Source: Legend of MI

You may or may not recall how we introduced a virtual LeChuck’s Revenge code wheel replacement a few months back. While not particularly relevant to most—DREAMM and the Special Edition bypass the code screen fully—those with exquisite taste may still prefer to play the game on an Amiga emulator. (Or, if you’re Benny, the actual Amiga!)

Which all is to say, we now have a new Secret of Monkey Island code grid for your hacking pleasure. Mojo’s beta testing has, of course, been axed by the CEO , meaning... This should work, but who knows?! No money-back guarantee.

Your late-nineties self sure will appreciate this!

We had grand plans for Mojo's 25th anniversary last year, at least until Return to Monkey Island was announced. And, as the CEO had made necessary cuts to our features department (“preparations for emerging financial realities”), we could only focus on one. Needless to say, ReMI won out over Remi.

But: We're still in our 25th year, and there is plenty of time left to celebrate. (Months!) To kick it off, Jason put his mean face on and made all staffers pick their favorite Mojo articles from our vast back catalog.

And he didn't stop there.

For those who really want to reminisce, former staffers Spaff and Jake get meditative as they look back on their glory years. Even telarium gets in on the fun, sneaking in a small Tales of Monkey Island trivia.

Check out the whole 12-page extravaganza and relive some true relics from our past. And more to come, maybe.

In the end, it was fifteen days of downtime for the forums, which you’d think this community could weather standing on their heads after we’d let them rot for several years. But movingly enough, some of you genuinely seemed to miss what you didn’t have, as evidenced by your concerned messages and bricks thrown through the windows of zaarin’s home.

All of which is to say the boards are repaired, or anyway on a failure hiatus. So make with the Mojole crowing and Dial of Destiny trailer commentary like the last two weeks were just a bad dream. And have a thought for zaarin, who had to brave unspeakable depths of silliness to get the jalopy coughing out its signature blue smoke once again.

Source: The Forums :D

It was on a short hiatus, but as most have noticed, The Adventurer made its triumphant return last week. And if you’re one of those precious holdouts who haven’t subscribed to our newsletter yet, well, get over yourself and do so right now.

Meanwhile, as you may have heard, Substack has also launched its Twitter alternative called Notes. After having given the service a once-over, the CEO put forth a decree instructing Mojo’s social media staff to initiate a pilot program utilizing it as a potential Mastodon replacement. This is to say, if you subscribe to The Adventurer, not only will you receive our newsletter, but you’ll also get to enjoy our social presence. That’s a win-win for you and us!

(Rumors that the CEO is using Mojo’s Notes metrics to strategically place his new endeavor, Insert Disk 64, are still unsubstantiated.)

Back in the day, LucasArts included a trade-in form inside the box of The Secret of Monkey Island that allowed you to mail in your purchased version of the game (plus a nominal fee) to exchange it for another. So for example, if you had the VGA version on 3.5” diskettes but decided what your heart really desired was the EGA version on 5.25” diskettes, you could fill out the card and send it off along with a check and your diskettes. Within two business weeks, you’d find yourself with the replacement disks and, presumably, happiness ever after.

In June 2002, our own telarium wrote up a personal odyssey of redeeming that Monkey Island coupon a decade after the fact, to test the extent of the company's honor. When we undertook a mission to restore all our old features, we were never able to find the two photographs that telarium included in this particular one, which is kind of lethal given the premise of it.

In the end, the retired staffer said “eff it” and reproduced the photos, and now the classic feature rides again without compromise. While we were at it, we submitted a copy to the Library of Congress for reasons of redundancy. Weirdly, they only accepted it on the condition that we send them a $10 money order.

You probably noticed that the forums have been down for the past day. Rest assured that our crack staff of technicians, plus zaarin, are at work on it now, and that before you know it you’ll be exchanging favorite EMI moments with cyberspace’s most refined minds once again.

In the meantime, why not read Remi’s ReMI article forty more times? It was met with Ron approval, which more or less makes it holy writ.

You think Musk is a character? You should get a glimpse of what the Mojo workplace is like under the brutal thumb of our Chief Executive Officer. No, really - visuals get the message across in ways that words could never hope to.

There are those who would contend that a cultural mismatch was to some degree inevitable, what with a top-down management style being imposed upon an environment that traditionally thrived under a bottom-up approach that came to be seen as signature, but even still.

Why should we generate content when you do it for us?

Over at the forums, Gins’ is doing god’s work by kicking off the “Mojo Book Club” with the Monkey Island-adjacent On Stranger Tides. If you haven’t read it, this is a great—and community-centric—time to do so. And if you have already finished it, why not revisit it? It’s an entertaining read.

The book club kicks off this Thursday, with a new chapter studied and reviewed every week. Make sure you check out this simple outline for more details. Now you, too, can be an intellectual on Thrik’s level.

(Oh, and if you think you can cheat by watching the movie, don’t. The two are barely related.)

Look, we know this isn’t much of an issue anymore: The code-wheel-protected Monkey Island 2 isn’t available for purchase, and even if it was, DREAMM hacks straight through it. Like butter. Furthermore, there are virtual code wheels out there that emulate the tactile feeling of flimsy nineties cardboard.

Which is to say, why not try yet another tool to hack through LeChuck’s Revenge? Introducing The Monkey Island 2 Code Grid. Does it work? Who knows! It was something I developed for the Amiga version of the game a good while ago, and it has gotten me past the copy-protection screen on multiple occasions. (Using those virtual wheels is a true pain.) Maybe it’ll work for you, too? Or maybe it won’t. Either way, give it a shot if you so like.

There’s a lot of chatter both on and about social media today, and for good reasons. Today marks the major shift everyone was anticipating with various degrees of dread and excitement. The takeover has happened: Mojo has moved The Adventurer from Revue to Substack!

“Why” is a whole thing that will be laid out in the next issue—publishing in a few minutes. If you haven’t already, you probably should sign up. Why? Well, you can never have too much Mojo in your life! (And if you already signed up for our Revue newsletter, don’t worry. Your account was ported over to Substack.)

It was meant to be a simple beta release, but after Ronzo couldn’t contain his excitement, we decided to make it public: The Return to Monkey Island Trivia Card Game.

If you played ReMI-proper, the core should be familiar: One hundred cards, four options each, a trivia game for the ages. Of course, ours is a Frankenstein-ed version: Run and play, and see how you rank on the MojoMeter!

Needless to say, this game will contain some ReMI spoilers, so enter at your own risk.