The International House of Mojo

British S&M guy reporting for duty. That wasn't an April fools joke (learnt my lesson on that one), as weird as the choices for the second wave seem.

P.S. Hoorah for pod racing!

The biggest program is the open graph title being set instead of just taking the title of the page. Should take two mins to fix. (Although pulling in the article image header would also be ideal.)

As for the Mojo engine, you could build a whole new Mojo in a few hours using something like Laravel. Again, happy to help. If you put the database schemas online somewhere, and maybe the website codebase in a private repo on Github, maybe we could all chip in?

Things are in motion.

We'll see if a vaccine or the forums come first, though.

Also also please make some forums because this quarantine thing is boring the hell out of me.

Also those British S&M guys shared some concept art for a second wave of those Sam & Max figurines, consisting of Sergeant Blip & the Rubber Pants Commandos and Max being strangled by an octopus, which looked neat but which might have been an april fools joke.

I would like to have it put on the record that I fully support any and all Star Wars snark on this website. It wouldn't be Mojo without it! And I say this as someone who had a lot more fun playing Ep 1 racer compared to, say, Zak McKracken.

On another note, I was looking through the SamAndMaxUK twitter account, and apparently they found out that the old Telltale Sam and Max games are now (re-?)published on the appstore, with the publisher listed as "Skunkape Games", which apparently is a new publishing company started by Dan Connors. You know, the Telltale CEO the employees actually liked. There's a website for Skunkape Games but I'm afraid I'm too lazy to look it up right now.

Also of interest: Skunkape Games is now listed as the publisher for the Sam & Max games on Steam as well. I've actually been replaying the Steam version of Devil's Playhouse recently, and I don't remember seeing a mention of the new company in the ingame credits, but it's definitely mentioned on the Steam Store page.

I think it's a safe bet that the sole purpose of that company is republishing those old S&M games (and maybe some other easily negotiated titles like Strong Bad down the line), rather than actually making new Sam & Max games, but it's neat that Connors is making an effort to make those games available again.

OG is pretty far down the list as it requires updates to both the database and Mojo's underlying engine.

With that said, I notice og:description is missing, and we should already be supporting that for news (not articles), so I'll look at adding it back in.

I experienced this very thing on Twitter yesterday. Had to follow up with a tweet explaining what the link was.

In other news: Can the Mojo web monkey take a look at the OG tags. I tried to share one of our lovely articles to a Facebook adventure gaming group I'm a member of, and Facebook couldn't see any of the details of the article at all. It seemed to actively ward away potential clickers.

Oh, I see that Jason has addressed this now. Didn't mean to pile on.

Hmm. As an older timer, the snark does seem misplaced. There's some wonderful Star Wars games that deserve love. Sure, this may not actually be one of them, but if you love it, I'm happy for you. The way I see it, Disney/LucasFilm are spending money on their back catalogue, and that's actually not a bad thing for anyone. At least they're aware of it, rather than letting it die.

I'm bemused that this has struck such a chord. Lucasfilm prioritizing Star Wars above all else, and Mojo impotently snarking about it, is a tradition that is approaching its twenty-fifth year. I get that this shtick isn't to everyone's tastes, but a swerve it is not.

For the record, I'm sure Star Wars Episode 1: Racer is a solid racing game, and I do not question the sincerity of the people expressing excitement for this new port. I also contend that a promotional interview on StarWars.com touting the title's "emotional resonance" is hilarious and demanding of mockery. Both things can be true.

I'll admit, it is with some impish delight that I learn that I have violated a sacred cow for some of you by throwing shade at a pod racing game. Fair enough! And I'm sure there are at least 150 outlets that are reporting this news without sarcastic disdain. Surely there's room for one Crabby Old Asshole Take amidst that.

I remember playing Racer for a minute. "Forgettable" is a generous summation of it.

I normally don't mind your snark but I think it's misplaced here. Episode One Racer is often mentioned on lists of best or most nostalgic games, and its popularity had nothing to do with the terrible movie that inspired it. It was simply a fun game in its own right. Admittedly that interview lays it on a little thick (I really don't think anyone played it for the emotional resonance...) but to say the game was forgettable leaves me scratching my head. Quite the opposite, it's one of the most widely and fondly remembered games of that era. If you didn't know that, I'm surprised.

In fairness, Monkey Island 1 and 2, Grim Fandango, DoTT and Full Throttle have already received spruced-up re-releases.

Episode 1 racer probably outsold them all combined.

It's a dig at the fact that the non-franchise titles of the LEC catalog are as legendary as they are historically neglected, so when resources are expended on a spruced-up re-release from the library and the title chosen is - drum roll please - a Phantom Menace racing game, it has a way of inflaming Mojo's snark.

Episode I Racer is a great game and was developed in-house at LucasArts (in an era where licensing to others happened a lot). I'm not sure I understand the issue here. Or is this a dig at Aspyr?