The International House of Mojo

Man, I can't believe I was looser than Gabez. Or whatever that meant... anyway yeah, comics are good ;

Abandonia has been "allowed" by the ESA to let:
Monkey Island 1
Monkey Island 2
Loom
Secret Weapons...
Indy Crusade

fall into Abandonware as LucasArts hasn't actively gone to protect it. Zak, for some reason has been actively protected, so that wasn't included.

http://www.abandonia.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=13536

I don't buy it.

(Well, I do buy the games)

That doesn't sound all that official to me.

Hey, that's how I feel. Apparently Abandonia will put up games that fall into the 15 year since publishing mark, AND aren't actively protected or sold. I don't know what constitutes to them "actively protecting", but they mention that the ESA will mail them if they make a mistake. We'll see. I would much rather let LucasArts take care of their products, but then again, I wouldn't just want LucasArts to butt in and do nothing still with their oldies but goodies.

Yeah, exactly what does "actively protected by the ESA" even mean? And whatever it means, who's to say that it equals the game no longer being under the ownership of LucasArts, which is the only way it could possibly be freely distributed beyond LucasArts doing what Revolution did with BASS?

Whatever random protection these games supposedly fell out of, it will always be illegal to download them until LucasArts releases them for download themselves. That or LucasArts fails to renew their license, which is something that probably costs no money and which only needs to be done every million years.

Even though, the Scummbar was voted unlikely to return, I noticed that there was a fanart update there today. Was this a mistake?

A good read. The comics made me lol.

I like Mixnmojo. I go there a lot. Oh snap.

Are the individual survey results compiled and archived somewhere? That merged thread is a bit of a jumble and the actual polls (bar one) have been lost.

Sorry, the complete poll results have been lost. It's a shame that the merged threas option doesn't work a bit better.

I don't quite understand why the individual threads were merged to begin with ? ?

Some 2001-era Metallusesque attempt to "clean up the forums" or something?

He's gone mad with power!

I just thought it looked messy and confusing (like the merged version is any better). I probably won't merge them if I do this again.

Archive them in their own subforum next time ;

That's how the pros that I just conjured up for the sake of argument do it.

These comic strips need to continue. That's all.

Thanks for the concept credit for my Wolfgang Brent observation. Those two comics in particular are just beautiful.

As for 'where are the fansites' comment? Back in the day we needed the fansites bacause LucasArts wouldn't ever release any info - well, not much anyway. It took over a year after the announcement for the first concept image from KOTOR to be released. But thesedays the companies that Mojo follow have a wonderful flow of information and thriving communities on their various message boards and blogs, pretty much negating the need for an independent 3rd party fan-site to collate and distribute info and screenshots.

This is definitely true, though I remember that there were still some sites that just wanted to archive information and help players out, and I think there's a need for that again. If I wanted to get all nostalgic about Outlaws, where do I go? There's not much information out and about for the more obscure LucasArts titles, like Outlaws, Zak Mckracken, Maniac Mansion, et al.

A Bone site that organised lots of interviews with the developers, a la The SCUMM Bar, would also be cool - and anyway, it's always nice to have an unofficial, non-partisan fan-site as an alternative to the company's (though Telltale do such a great job at information, it's not as neccesary to do so).

Ouch.

Well, I guess if Maniac Zombies was included in the poll, it would win worst updated site, but still, I'm trying. I've got quite a good amount of info on four LucasArts games and two of the four games are completly obscure.

Oh yeah, I shouldn't have used Maniac Mansion as an example, but I temporarily forgot about your site. Sorry. Do you want hosting, by the way? I can set that up for you.

Oh, I agree some fansites for both the old games and the new would be great. Some for old games still exist.

http://www.df-21.net/ springs to mind, and there is a great community for X-Wing Alliance (especially for adding in improved models and textures) at xwaupgrade.com

Still, they weren't obscure titles as you say.

Plus everyone just makes sites about themselves these days. Go, blogosphere!(?)

A great article on almost every front. Write more in 2007, Gabez. >:

You mentioned that you wish A Vampyre Story should be of a modest length similar to Full Throttle...I think Tiller said that would in fact be the case.

I knew I should have researched that point first... I found him saying that Full Throttle length is pretty good in this thread, but for some reason I thought he also said that he would ideally like to raise the money for a Curse of Monkey Island length adveture... mind you, he might had said that ages ago, and decided to go for a shorter game in the end.

Yeah things could definitely have changed either way after getting a publisher that is...er, actually a publisher. Based on everything I remember him saying about the game's size from the beginning, I'm expecting AVS to be longer than Full Throttle, but not dramatically so. 'tis my hunch.

Yes, the comics are actual, actual genius. Especially the David Brent ones. More, more, more!

I love those comics