The International House of Mojo

Unlike other former staffers we could name, telarium respected his roots enough to submit his five favorites.

1. Cooking with Spaff (2002)

Who doesn’t love graphic adventures and the fine art of culinary delights? It also helps when the officially anointed Guybrush Threepwood voice actor is also a professional foodie. In my opinion, articles like this gave Mojo its trademark goofy fun and somewhat eclectic style. Plus it had some A+ banner art. (Didn’t Mojo for a time tried selling cooking aprons with this logo on it? Or do I just wish that had actually happened?)

2. Gold Guy Exposed (2003)

Some real hard-hitting journalism coming from Mojo. I was pleasantly surprised when I reached out to Dave Grossman for comments about the original logo design, and he said, “Oh I still have a t-shirt of that in my garage.” (Thanks for the pictures, Dave!) The real conclusion of this article took place at E3 after this was published, where LucasArts was celebrating the company’s 20th anniversary or something. The head of PR asked me, “Hey, did you see that cool article we wrote about the history of the Gold Guy on our website?” I guess he hadn’t seen our article yet.

3. Mojo at E3 2001 (The Simon Jeffery interview)

Spaff asking the then president of LucasArts about a cartoon of him where he made a funny noise truly established Mojo as a credible, responsible journalism outlet. Fun fact: Mojo actually stood up Simon Jeffery for an interview the following year at E3 because of LA traffic.

4. April Fools 2002

I still can’t believe LucasArts gave us permission to do this. Things came full circle seven years later when I was able to sneak in a subtle reference to this hoax in the third episode of Tales From Monkey Island while working at Telltale Games. Now Mojo and Monkey Island are officially forever intertwined.

5. My Monkey Island Coupon Experiment (2003)

This was my favorite article that I ever wrote. I was pleasantly surprised that LucasArts honored the coupon, even if it wasn’t exactly in the way they were supposed to. Props to them. (Sorry, I realize that three of the articles in my picks were written by me. I promise I’m not a narcissist.)