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No, not that Adventurer – this Adventurer. You know the one. The newsletter we unleashed with a roar and then kind of forgot about because of a shiny object that flew by. (The CEO has taken an unhealthy interest in Duke Nukem Forever, for example.) Anyway – it’s back and you should subscribe…

… because we’re totally gonna keep it going this time, maybe. Hell, even if we did drop the ball, the worst thing that would happen is that you’d receive fewer emails. Which is kind of a bonus.

So, don’t be a butt – subscribe!

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In the SCUMM catalog, there are three early games that found themselves produced during a transitional era of graphics cards, where VGA (256-color) was most definitely around, but EGA (16-color) still had the dominant install base.

As a result, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Loom, and The Secret of Monkey Island initially shipped as EGA versions, but had their art retroactively redone (often within a year) in elitist fancy VGA form by other artists.

Over the years, the argument from purists that the EGA originals should be privileged has grown louder -- and also more tragic, as those most definitely don’t tend to be the versions offered by Lucasfilm. Regardless of individual preferences, for which there can be no right answer, the comparison is always interesting, and a typically Norwegian hero has made this inspection easier than ever.

Though he hasn’t gotten to Monkey 1 yet, you’ll have a lot of fun hovering your mouse over backgrounds from Indy 3 and Loom. Check out how much bigger that Sam & Max totem pole got in Indy’s office (and is that a subtle ode to the Great Monkey Head added to the top shelf there?), or how superior Loom was in its original form in every way. Above all, bow down before the one true Cobb:

Source: SuperRune

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We’re a good twenty years past the heyday of Monkey Island fan games, but you can only really contain the disease, never cure it. The latest confirmed case comes out of Italy. Behold The Booze of Monkey Island:

I mean, it sure doesn’t look like something that was slapped together over a lunch break. Go forth and download before the LucasLegal of 2001 somehow catches wind.

Source: Bean Adventure Agency

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As promised, the month draws to a close with a whole bunch of new hands-on impressions of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. No really, there’s a lot of them. Too many, frankly. We’re a little insulted.

Here’s what I rounded up before my hand fell off. People seem to be liking it.

The game is out December 9th. Two weeks before you finish reading all of these, in other words.

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To go along with this morning’s announcement, Jack Allin of Adventure Game Hotspot had a chat with Bill Tiller of Autumn Moon and Šarūnas Ledas of Tag of Joy (co-developer) to learn all the details behind the long-in-the-making revival of A Vampyre Story: A Bat’s Tale.

How do you envision the distribution of responsibilities for a shared game? Will you be very hands-on, Bill, or more in an advisory, consultancy role?

Bill: We are sharing the development duties 50/50. Autumn Moon will focus on our core competency, the creative side, with a lot of input and ideas from Tag of Joy. And they are going to focus more on the technical and business side, with some of our input, though we don’t program so I am wisely very hands-off there. We have been working together for a while now and we got our process and working relations working very well. It’s been honestly great, and very smooth.

Šarūnas: Personally, I love this collaboration, because both sides are very hands-on, and it wouldn’t be as fun if Bill wasn’t actually doing what he does best. It’s an equal partnership in many regards – workload distribution, creative control, etc. Of course, it’s still Bill’s concept and story, but both sides share ideas and feedback with each other on all aspects of the game. Naturally, though, there are some areas that each side covers more, as Bill mentioned. Bill and Dave Harris are the lead writers/designers, and Bill is obviously the lead background artist. From our side, we bring the tech and framework, and so we set up the scenes and script the logic too. And then we share other responsibilities: e. g. Bill makes sketches and storyboards, we make 3D models and animations for the characters, and so on.

There’s a heck of a lot more in the full interview, including the somewhat sobering reveal that we may still be years out from release, but nevertheless it's all exciting stuff. Maybe even life-affirming.

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The day actually came. Check out the announcement trailer for A Vampyre Story 2: A Bat's Tale, which will be released by Autumn Moon games alongside a new partner, Tag of Joy.

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The full press release can be read here, you can check out some new screenshots over on the Steam page, and last but not least there's Autumn Moon's relaunched web site. Let's hope they're able to bring Pedro Macedo Camacho back.

No doubt there's more to come, but for now let's just luxuriate in the fact that Halloween is saved.

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As a game designer, Dave Grossman is celebrated, while as a pumpkin villain he remains unarrested. But we benefit from that, as he's carved up his annual entry for The Pumpkin House of Horrors to delight and disturb one and all. Behold "Mutual Assured Destruction":

I spent over an hour hobbling around the pumpkin patch on a sprained ankle, searching for a matched set where one had an overbite and one an underbite. But the shapes aren't at all obvious in the final carve! Also, when I fit them together I bent the upper one to get it over the stem of the other, and then I was afraid to take it back off. So I carved all the teeth and eyes with them already stuck together.

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Double Fine published their appropriately loving tribute to their sophomore release last week, so why shouldn’t Mojo get in on the action on this most prestigious anniversary?

For us, the fun was revisiting what it was like to follow the game’s development all those years back, and it was quite the odyssey. In fact, we think it all played out a bit spicier than you may have mellowed it down to in your headcanon, though we should probably speak for ourselves given our well-established signs of mental deterioration. Anyway, join us as we travel back to the Age of Metal and relive the ecstasy and pain of Brütal Legend’s storied forging. Embrace your inner Doviculus, and you may recognize there is no distinction.

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As they do (mostly) every October, Skunkape has invited fans to submit Sam & Max fan art for the chance to win Big Prizes, which this year includes plushies and soundtrack keys for The Devil’s Playhouse (which I take as a hopeful sign that the soundtrack will in fact exist). You’ve still got a week to enter, so review the details and do us proud. We’ll only feel entitled to the usual 40% of your winnings.

If you think that’s the extent of Sam & Max Halloween news, then you must be one of those poor dears who didn’t even know that Steve Purcell auctioned off some new Sam & Max art as part of the Hero Initiative. Even if you hold the embarrassing position of not being the winning bidder who plunked down $5,500 to own the physical art, you can still enjoy it in cyberspace:

By the way, if you weren’t around for the piece Purcell contributed to the annual benefit last year, it was no slouch itself:

There’s no reason to ostracize Double Fine from the Halloween fun. Their claim on the occasion would be their trick ‘r treat RPG masterwork, Costume Quest, which is celebrating its fourteenth birthday. I think you know what to do.

All things considered, I’d say the only thing holding back October 2024 from perfection is that there sadly seem to have been no new developments on the A Vampyre Story front. But you’ll certainly want to find the time to play the still-unsequeled 2008 graphic adventure, what with its recent re-introduction to Steam in more stable form.

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A Little Something A Schtick to the Past Ron’s as yet untitled RPG has been a fun project to track on his Mastodon account, where he regularly offers tantalizing glimpses or charming anecdotes about a stubborn bug he's looking to squash.

It’s always come across as a project he is largely flying solo on his own nickel, but perhaps A Little Something more will be required to get it to the finish line, as earlier in the month he ran this little poll:

Hey, he’s just putting feelers out. Still, now’s as good a time as any to look into renegotiating the terms of your mortgage.

Source: Ron's Mastodon

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Wake up on the Bright Side of the Moon with these fluffy critters adorning your tootsies.

Again, in collaboration with Steve Purcell, the Uncute crew behind such fluffy friends such as "Max" the stuffed animal and more recently "Sam" the stuffed animal, have done the impossible. Two Max's, which we haven't seen the likes of together since Season 2: Ep 4 "Chariots of the Dogs". The pre-order price is $35 dollars and should arrive in time for your family tradition of replaying Season 2: Ep 1 "Ice Station Santa".

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Designed in collaboration with Steve Purcell for a limited run, they’ll be ready to ship just in time for the holidays.

You either die a gumshoe detective or it's a slippery slope to become the villain.

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Source: Uncute

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It feels like only yesterday that Brütal Legend released—Rocktober 13th, if you remember.

The face-melting solo, guitar-axe-wielding open world action game (with a surprise RTS mode in the middle) featured Eddie Riggs (played by Jack Black), a roadie whose yearning for authenticity in metal music ("Like, the 70s?" "No, earlier. Like, the early 70s") has him gleefully murdering metal music-inspired demons in a metal music-inspired fantasy world when he's transported to it.

As you do.

It was a game Mojo enjoyed, more or less.

Double Fine has a little write-up on the game's legacy fifteen years on. I look back on the game fondly, personally, so this was a fun read.

Source: Double Fine Action News

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I’m not sure why you’d look for the latest Indiana Jones and the Great Circle news here on the front page when the forum coverage by “Threepwood4life” is far more dependable, but perhaps the time has come to play catch-up, if only to keep up appearances and maintain our eligibility for government subsidies.

The last non-LEGO Indy title back in 2009 was, shall we say, a furtive affair, and I think we’re starting to bear witness to what unrelieved repression ultimately leads to. Wanting to project a show of force in marketing gimmick game, Microsoft is offering up an exclusive, Indy-themed Xbox Series X console to the lucky few who want that thing in their home. What you do is haul yourself over to one of three metropolitan hubs (London, Sydney, and New York) starting November 12th. At these “Microsoft Experience Centers” you will find an Indy display that will challenge your ego with some sort of puzzle. Use your background in adventure games to solve it, and you’ve done and gone and entered for your chance to win. It’s all terribly cute. Full details of the sweepstakes are here, and below is a look at the hardware you’ll be publicly debasing yourself for:

Not exhibitionist enough for you? Then try on for size the four-wheeled promotional consideration the game will be enjoying at the Circuit of the Americas racetrack in Austin this weekend:

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Somewhere in all of this you might have maintained some curiosity about the game itself. As we are drawing closer to release, more hands-on impressions are fixing to emerge. Fans are already photo-journaling extravagant Great Circle events that Bethesda is putting on, and word is that we can expect previews to turn up before the month’s out.

Indiana Jones and the Middling Parallelogram releases December 9, 2024 on the Xbox Series S|X and on PC, with a Playstation 5 version to follow in 2025.
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I mean, not Cover-up image in the classic sense, but rather that we’ve added another section to MojoDB Preview Edition: Cover Art. Frankly, LucasArts Posters is where you want to go for high-quality scans, but then, do you really want to forego browsing classic artworks like this?

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That’s the kind of bespoke content you can only find at MojoDB, your friend in LucasArts+ covers.

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On Crooked Islands and Small Big Whoops

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We keep adding to the living article, where we look at Monkey Island 2 and what could have been. This time with some factoids you may or may not be familiar with, from “The Mysterious Island of Cleptomaniac Parrots” to Big Whoop being not much of a big whoop at all. And some other stuff, too. Have a read:

27 Sep, 2024 in M
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Remi must have missed this interview with Dan Connors and Jonathon Sgro of Skunkape Games last week, and it’s too bad, because it’s quite good. Most of the discussion focuses on what went into the development of the Sam & Max remasters, including throwing Jake under the bus at one point. But if I know you, you probably want to know what they said about The Future™:

Time Extension: With the Sam & Max games done, it would be interesting to hear what's next for the studio — what have the conversations been like internally regarding Skunkape's future? Do you anticipate working on more remasters like this or do you envision yourselves making something else entirely?

Connors: Well, we've developed something that's really powerful, which is the ability to remaster games in the Telltale engine, and there's a lot of stuff there, but they all have tricky situations around them because it's not like four years ago.

Now there's different ownership around a whole bunch of it, so we're trying to develop the right relationships there, because that's super interesting to us, and we're the right people to do it. I think the Sam & Max stuff has shown that. You know, aside from that, that's something we've got to figure out because everybody's too talented to not be working on something cool. So we just gotta figure out what it is.

Time Extension: A big thing that I've seen people say online in terms of Skunkape's future is, 'I hope they do this for Tales of Monkey Island' or 'I hope they do this for another Telltale game'. We definitely think Tales, in particular, is a game that definitely could benefit from this kind of treatment, with new lighting and things like that. It would look amazing. And I guess Disney has kind of shown some interest in doing stuff with Monkey Island again: reuniting with Ron and letting him kind of do his thing with Return to Monkey Island, but then also like doing the Sea of Thieves' crossover as well.

Connors: Yeah like we would love that. That would be amazing.

Time Extension: Yeah, I think it would definitely help introduce those games to a new audience and get the message out, 'Hey, you know these Telltale Monkey Island games are fun to play'. What do you think?

Connors: Yeah, there are things in Tales that I think we might have rushed or concepts that we thought were gonna work, that we got to a certain point, and then kind of failed before we had fully executed them. And even on Sam and Max, there were a couple of those, and when we do this process, we can say, 'Those two or three last things that we wanted to do to make this sing, we can do now.' And I think that's one of the subtle things that makes these remasters so great.

Sgro: Yeah. I love working on these things because back at Telltale — like I worked at every game on Telltale — there were always things that we couldn't have done because of the technology or the budget or time or all of that stuff combined.

You look at the final result and it's like, 'Yeah, it's great, it could be better.' So now it's just been fun taking the Sam & Max games and trying to make them the best that they could possibly be and improve all those things that we didn't have a chance to do originally. So, personally, I'd love to do that to any Telltale product pretty much. But it's limited on what we could do.

Connors: If we had a time machine, we would go back to when we got Sam & Max and try to do more but you know it is what it is.

Well, that all sounds rather definitively…ambiguous. Check out the whole thing, and buy The Devil’s Playhouse eight more times.

Source: Time Extension

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A Trip to the Library

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Did you know that the Monkey Island 2 demo included a bunch of books in the Phatt Library that were censored from the final game? Well, even if you did or you didn't, we have added a list of them to our demo examination article, because that's just how nice we treat ya.

21 Sep, 2024 in M
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Craig Circles in on Indy

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Frankly, I’m posting this just to beat Jason to the Indy punch. If The Great Circle is something you’re looking forward to, then you can do worse than reading this interview with the Craig Derrick.

17 Sep, 2024 in M
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Make Today a Demo Soundtrack Friday

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The ceo has us working hard on some LeChuck’s Revenge content these days, which is as good of excuse as any to post the “hidden” tracks from the game’s demo. Feel free to check out our demo article, too.

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06 Sep, 2024 in M
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Seeing as your life quite properly consists of watching long-form video interviews with occasional interruptions to touch grass in the form of Amiga Monkey Island playthroughs you’ll be only too happy to learn that Steve Purcell was the latest guest on Pencil to Pencil, a web series in which comic artists interview comic artists.

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Purcell can trace a decent line and all, but personally I’m awaiting an interview with the visionary behind MojoComics himself, Gabez. Maybe they don’t want to frontload the obvious guests.

Special thanks to Jake for taking time out of not inviting us to Skunkape events to give us a heads up on this one.
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