The International House of Mojo

Tingler, you really thought Indy3 was the shortest of LucasArts games? I mean, I guess if you know what to do it's brief, but surely Loom and Full Throttle have it beat on briskness?

Yeah, I just noticed this myself. Loom was far easier and shorter.

I need to read this baby at lunch tomorrow, but I thought I'd just mention that I love the header art!

Those developer reflections are superb, great word ThunderPeel (and thanks for letting us use them :))

There are some really interesting things in there - I mean I still get a strange fanboy rush when I read about these game designers having meetings with Lucas and Spielberg back in the day. And weirdly I'd never connected the swordfight system in Sid Meier's Pirates! with the LucasArts boxing thing, although now it's been pointed out it's very obvious. I'm glad they went over to the word-based system for Monkey Island, though.

Great WORK. Heh. Also I just noticed the Indy image was updated; good idea.

I'm really glad these things eventually saw the light of day. It's so nice to know that they're finally being seen by people (I often wonder if Falstein and Fox ever noticed that their words never appeared online as promised - I felt so guilty!). This is a perfect place for them, so I'm glad that they can be appreciated!

Apologies for any missed/naff questions (why didn't I ask about the creation of the Grail Diary - doh!). I did post a message on the forum here asking for questions to ask... but nobody had any!

Anyways, "hurrah" once again. I'm so pleased I actually managed to find them and they've been included in Mojo's best feature.

Let me know when you get to Fate of Atlantis ;)

That's probably why they didn't get back to Jason this time. After your interviews never turned up they swore they would never get hurt like that again...

My theory is they saw the LSD post and decided they wanted nothing to do with a site of such DECADENCE.

hmm i mailed you guys a small review/personal experience of the game...yet i don't see it here, how strange!

perhaps i inserted the wrong disk no. for this article?

100% my fault. I'll see if I can make Gabez add it get it added.

Did not I also write a little something? Ah well!

Couldn't find anything in a quick search through my inbox.

My bad. Um...

"I love this game. It's so underrated! With a slightly better interface, improved dialogue trees and fighting system, it would have been one of the LEC greats!"

fair enough, laddie! :)

STOP THE PRESS!!!

Exclusive interviews on their way!!!

With whom?

Noah Falstein and David Fox!

Yippee!

It's the first time they've ever been seen by human eyes (mostly).

I love the question about who added the Harrison Ford movie references.

Noah's answer: I suspect maybe David

David's answer: probably something Noah added.

Is Paco's beautiful header image available in higher res? Would make a lovely desktop wallpaper...

The 750x303 version is OK, but if it was (or could be) supplied bigger, that'd be sweeeet.

Here you go.

Oh. Wow. Thanks Gabez! And Paco, of course! :D

Wicked! Thanks guys!

This was a great article as usual. I really love this series, and I really look forward to reading the next installment each month. :)

Oh, and I finally completed the Dig. Now Labyrinth is the last LucasArts adventure game I haven't played yet.

I really would love to see a Labyrinth secret history article. It deserves more than a blurb in the Maniac Mansion article.

That being said, It's too bad that Lucasfan Games never got to make their Labyrinth Deluxe game. It would be great to see the game get a graphic adventure overhaul.

The decision to not include Labyrinth is not a statement about the quality or significance of the game, it just feels like it's part of a different "family" than the SCUMM and LUA adventure games were. I personally associate it with the "early" LEC games like Ballblazer and Rescue on Fractalus. To me the LucasArts adventure games era as it's commonly seen began with Maniac Mansion.

As elTee said, there is some interest in doing articles like these for the non-graphic adventure (and Labyrinth) original LEC titles sometime after this series is over. I'm not sure how we would decide which ones we'd do (I could definitely see doing Outlaws, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, etc.). Maybe we'll run a poll or something. Like elTee also said though, we would only do that after we finish all the adventure games, which is gonna keep us quite busy for awhile considering there's still eleven to go. :)

I'd definitely vote on (and be happy to write up) Outlaws and Indy Infernal Machine.

See you in 2009.

I'll be there!

We talked about starting with Labyrinth, but in the end we decided that none of us were enthusiastic enough about it to give it the glory of being first in our series of articles. The SCUMM-coded games are the ones we all remember fondly, and still play from time-to-time.

But there's certainly a door open at the moment for us to return to games like that when this series is over... in like, a year :/

Were they really going to make that? (The Labyrinth fangame)

It was one of the games that they proposed on their poll of which fan game to work on next. Of course, Raiders of the Lost Ark won the poll, and when they announced that they were working on that game they shut down shortly afterwards. :(

The way I remember it was after the poll was finished they admitted that adapting Raiders was their intention all along and that the other poll options were just put their for fun. I could possibly be making this up though.

So Monkey Island is next?

Loom is next, then The Secret of Monkey Island.

Oh, I forgot: it is technically possible to achieve a maximum of 505 points in one playthrough. To do this you have to talk past all the guards in Castle Brunwald, THEN knock them all out! (But leave one alive, since you want to be captured and go to Berlin to get Hitler's autograph for max points.)

Just one thing: the bit about the Grail leaving a ringmark in the Amiga version is just a rumor.

What's really the case is that in the EGA versions (both Amiga and PC), if you pick up one or two of the glowy Grails, the game fails to erase them from the background properly, leaving pixel detritus which looks like a glowing ring mark. The error was fixed in the 256-color upgrade.