Sure, we're all perfectly excited about that fireside chat at the end of the month. But what does Ron know about Monkey Island, really? Was he there or something?
The fact is, if you want the real scoop, you go to the experts. And that would be Youtuber "onaretrotip", who's put together an 80-minute documentary about the making of The Secret of Monkey Island as part of the 30th anniversary internet love bomb we're in the midst of. Included throughout are quotes from the core team, and I think some of these recorded reflections are new. Let me know if I'm wrong, and I'll see to it that the correct people are fired.
Being cool and popular, we recently received the following email:
Hi Mixnmojo,
My name’s Tim. I worked with George “The Fat Man” Sanger for a long time to release his master recordings from the Humongous Entertainment games he worked on. We worked really hard on the albums, restoring and remixing a lot of lost content, and taking them from raw ADATs to excellent listener-ready spreads. Now they’re finally out.
They sound fantastic, missing the 11025Hz distortion so characteristic of SCUMM games with digital music, and I thought your readers might be interested.
They can be found at thefatmanandteamfat.bandcamp.com
I run the Curator YouTube channel, too, which has some fun Putt-Putt related interviews and other content you might like.
Thanks for the great coverage over the years!
Do I need to draw you a road map? Go download those digitally liberated soundtracks right now!
Another 30th anniversary article for the venerated series comes by way of LADbible. An excerpt:
Which is to say: this game is in my blood, a part of what makes me, me. Not just a favourite game, but an experience of my childhood - like a favourite movie, or book, from a lifetime ago - that always, without fail, puts a smile on my face. It still makes me laugh aloud, even when I can see the jokes coming - which the best TV and film can do, too. Not fall-around-the-place hysterics, as I grew out of that. But a chuckle, a titter, just the gentlest guffaw. It's enough to make me not feel my age, for a moment at least - and The Secret of Monkey Island is an experience that'll forever remind me why I love video games so much.
Who among us cannot relate? Click here for the whole piece.
And while I've got you here, let me sneak in this recent blog post by Chuck Jordan reflecting on Habitat. You didn't even see that coming, did ya.
Everyone's favourite adventure game virtual machine (ie. the thing that allows you play classic adventure games on modern computers), ScummVM, is having its 3D-based sister, ResidualVM, merged into it.
What does that mean for you, dear adventure fan? Simply that Grim Fandango, Myst III - Exile, The Longest Journey, Escape from Monkey Island (Remi's favourite!), and an unfinished engine for Revolution's In Cold Blood, are now part of ScummVM.
Hopefully it will still support Grim Fandango Deluxe, because that might be finished one day ;)
Say what you want about Escape from Monkey Island -- it enjoyed an interesting spate of promotional memorabilia. Coasters, bottles off grog...and perhaps most memorably an inflatable monkey doll that was presumably meant to be in the divine image of Timmy the Monkey, a character introduced in EMI as a pet of the Threepwoods. Despite being an instant hit with the fan base, Timmy was somehow excluded from Tales of Monkey Island, which is a bit like writing Tom Hagen out of The Godfather Part III. (Jake was unavailable for comment at the time of this writing.)
The doll’s first appearance, we believe, was at the Escape from Monkey Island Playstation 2 release party, which Mojo attended, taking home plenty of photographic proof. The doll had a tendency to pop up on a few occasions in subsequent years, like in the earliest photographs of the Telltale Games office space, way back in 2004, which kicked up a lot of runaway speculation.
Well, his latest cameo is on eBay, where he can be had right now for $275.00. Not sure what LucasArts vet, or what fan that might have mugged a LucasArts vet, needs the money so badly for, but why not help them out and give Timmy a new home?
In the aforementioned Wireframe Magazine spread on Monkey Island for the series’ 30th anniversary (buy it here, or click here for a preview), a fairly remarkable tidbit is casually mentioned. In a section on CMI, a screenshot of The Barbery Coast is featured alongside a revamped, HD version of the location with the following text:
Bill Tiller has recently been repainting some of the game's backgrounds in the hope of convincing Disney to release a new HD version of The Curse of Monkey Island for fans to explore.
This glimpse of the hi-def version is definitely appealing and unsurprisingly reminiscent of Tiller’s more recent adventure game work, although I question whether the spirit of Larry Ahern’s art direction really survives the choice to lose those pencil outlines. Like them or not, they are an elemental component of CMI’s look.
But whatever! The point here is that Bill Tiller has been redoing CMI backgrounds, and that’s headline news. I don’t know how successful he will be at getting Disney’s attention, but maybe the fans can help see this project through somehow. Godspeed, in any case.
I should also mention that there is another magazine spread on Monkey Island this month, published by Retro Gamer in their October issue. You’ll want to buy that too, surely.
Craig Derrick is undoubtedly the most vocal - if not the only - Monkey Island enthusiast still on Lucasfilm payroll. Around 2008-2011, he was part of a small group at LucasArts (the-so-called "Heritage" team) who were pushing to get legacy revivals and small, original games off the ground. All they managed to convince Scrooge to greenlight in the end were the (highly outsourced) Monkey Island special editions and Lucidity.
This team no doubt intended to keep going, but inevitably the higher-ups got wind that somebody was being paid to think about something other than Star Wars and consequently ordered all of these developers shot [citation needed]. A bullet-ridden Craig managed to crawl out of the mass grave and even more impressively survive the shuttering of LucasArts by the Disney acquisition; today he serves some nebulous executive role at Lucasfilm.
What Craig does over there is anybody's guess, but every now and then he'll say something on Twitter that seems designed to titillate fans of the company's adventure game properties, which he is clearly a champion of. We're grateful he exists, and hopefully our sometimes moody expression of that gratitude can be forgiven when LucasArts' history with this sort of thing is accounted for. The latest:
Considering that Limited Run Games plans to release their Monkey Island boxed set in October, I have a hard time believing this doesn't relate to that. Perhaps Craig is one of the main Lucasfilm folks interfacing with Limited Run Games on this effort, and there are some exciting details (like extras?) forthcoming. We'll just have to wait and see. Might I respectfully suggest the authentic inclusion of the original versions of the first two games, which the special editions nobly fell short of?
As someone whose experience playing Maniac Mansion on the NES (30th anniversary, incidentally!) was a formative one, that game means a lot to me. Consequently I’ve had a lot of inchoate and way-too-personal thoughts over the years about the game’s atmosphere, how promotional imagery managed to capture it, and how Day of the Tentacle opted to recast it. I also find myself struck by the attractively open-ended future this fairly unexamined series has, should anyone care to give it one.
Regrettably, I didn’t bother to actually pull those thoughts together before publishing them in an article, but hopefully the pretty pictures will distract from that. Don’t be a tuna-head; read it, and preferably not on a phone! MojoEx isn't up to it.
This one was irresistible. It turns out that The Orlando Sentinel does a pretty admirable job of digitizing its archives, as this online version of an editorial from August 16th, 1991 proves.
Here's how it opens:
We're getting letter after letter from readers wanting to know more about the Nintendo Entertainment System's Maniac Mansion ($54.95). To answer everybody's questions about this great (not to mention funny) strategy game, we'll take you on a run-through from the beginning. Remember, this is just one of dozens of possible scenarios. Try it out and use the same kind of strategy to solve the game with other characters.
You'll have to read the article if you want to see their useful hints for yourself. Tough break for the LucasFilm Games hint line.
Anyway, this is awesome. And a reminder that video games were always appallingly expensive. I would point out that the Nintendo version of Maniac Mansion was released in September 1990, so if they were getting "letter after letter" eleven months later, the game must have been big in central Florida -- and particularly so relative to the rest of the country, as the cartridge did not sell well enough to earn a second North American printing.
Because it is apparently compulsive for LucasArts legends to subject themselves to 90-minute interviews over Zoom, David Fox strapped himself into a headset and took his turn for a grilling over broadband. He and the interviewer cover a lot of ground about halcyon LEC, so do check it out when you're done with the Tim one, and just hope that someone will give enough of a damn about you when you are David Fox's age to put you through this:
Fox is apparently the darling of YouTube, as he's sat for quite a number of these over the years, and I doubt we've caught them all. If you find yourself craving more, Youtube is your friend.
I am currently doing a Coding for COVID-19 fundraiser. This is a game making fund drive with funds being raised through the West Elmira Computers Museum, with game development by my company Cydoca Entertainment with support by Double Fine through use of their
Three games are currently being developed: a conversion of Host Master and the Conquest of Humor from Flash to Wintermute, A Host Master Carol - a sequel that sees Tim Schafer work with himself in three time periods to make sure he has a game for each time he hosts, and OpenQuest II, a sequel to Michael Sheail's OpenQuest that takes place right where the last one left off. All games will be available for Linux, Mac, and Windows through ScummVM. More games will be added as the charity drive goes on.
UPDATE: It's over now, and it was excellent. Dominic Armato showed up about 90 minutes in, and the gang played through the Three Trials section before adjourning. If you missed it, you can watch the entire three-and-a-half-hour stream here. Stay tuned to Jake's Twitter to find out when they will schedule the continuation.
I dunno how all this "Twitch" stuff works, but I always credit the Mojo readership with being hipper than I, so here goes. Jake informed the world yesterday that he and designer Marius Fietzek will be streaming their playthrough of The Secret of Monkey Island through his Twitch channel. If listening to Jake talk about the game for hours was on your bucket list, I'm happy to say you can die soon.
It all starts streaming at https://www.twitch.tv/ja2ke? come 11AM PT/8PM CEST. That's a little under than two and a half hours from now. Be ready.
It just isn't Lent without an anniversary of the cancellation of Sam & Max: Freelance Police.
Kind of weird to keep marking it every year like a bunch of creeps, I'll admit, but Mojo never was good at letting things go, and the event is, for better or for worse, an inextricable part of the site's history. And we'll be exploring that link in some depth soon.
I've recently let the cat out of the bag that we're at work on a big fat Sam & Max 2 feature. And when I say this article has got a calorie surplus, I'm talking President Taft, here. And we can't wait for you to see it, but unfortunately we need even more time to address a few...complexities...between now and publish time. And, to be frank, some of them were pretty darned avoidable. I don't why, for example, Remi insisted that the totality of the White Album be licensed for continuous streaming on each page of the article, but there's just no getting him to budge on his artistic principles. Your patience is appreciated.
In the meantime, make the most the occasion by reheating a Glazed MacGuffin or two and getting your pre-order of those deluxe figurines in. And have a thought for a graphic adventure that was guillotined amidst that bloody period of revolution in the Spring of 2004.
When they're not productively pondering what makes the Indiana Jones movies problematic, Vice Magazine can apparently find time to dash off the odd Loom retrospective. And they're pretty good at it! Check out their newly published appreciation for Brian Moriarty's spellbinding point 'n click classic in honor of its 30th anniversary.
Now for somebody to get the EGA version of the game commercially available.
So back in July, the official Arby's Twitter posted this.
That is a real thing.
Not sure what I can really add to this. I knew Stan was a whore, but...social media?
I'd make a smart aleck comment about how Arby's is doing more to promote Monkey Island than its actual copyright owner, but what point would I really be communicating? Everyone, by definition, is doing more to promote Monkey Island than its copyright holder.
J’accuse! See Stan there? That’s shamelessly stolen from the venerable SCUMM Bar. How do I know this, you may wonder. Simple. Notice Stan having a black something or other coming out his mouth. When Skyfox created that animation for TSB, he did it by hand, capturing each frame manually, removing the background . . . All while thinking Stan was smoking a cigar, when it was actually part of the background. Arby’s, have you no shame? - Remi
Always nice to see Humongous get some love. The good folks over at Vice have put together a lovely history of the studio that brought SCUMM to kids with the likes of Pajama Sam, Freddi Fish and Putt Putt. The article contains new quotes from Ron as well as Humongous designer Tami Borowick, so do check it out.
And don't forget that the old Humongous titles are readily available these days, just like all the other SCUMM games, now that I mention it. And no matter how jaded you've become about this world we live in, that's a pretty rad thing.
The tenth anniversary of A Vampyre Story came and went this past fall with little incident. As you may know, Bill Tiller's planned gothic saga has been in limbo due to frustrating rights issues - while Bill owns the IP itself, the distribution rights to the original game and its long-stalled sequel have been tied up with German-based publisher Crimson Cow Games.
But judging by the update Bill posted to the AVS Facebook page today, the Denver boot is finally off Mona de Lafitte:
Hi all. Good news, I have all the rights to A Vampyre Story back! Over this summer I will be trying to figure out the best strategy for moving forward so I can get the sequels and prequels funded. If you have any suggestions or funding ideas contact me at billtiller@gmail.com
It's unclear if the rights have simply reverted to Bill or if a blood sacrifice was involved to make this happen. We look forward to covering the quest to get AVS2 funded and back on track. In the meantime, it's always a good day when an IP and its creator are reunited. Congratulations, Bill!
Our thanks to reader Threepwood4life for bringing this to our attention and in the process bravely outing himself as a person who reads Facebook.
I can't really set this up, because I obviously haven't taken the time to watch it (yet), so, um, cleave tight to your Grail Diary and...Dig in? Or something.
