The International House of Mojo

It seems like only last freaking May that Boss Fight Studios announced their license to produce collectible Sam & Max figurines. Seeing as it's the only upcoming Sam & Max thing in existence, you'd think I'd be more grateful for the fact that we can keep dragging the coverage out.

But not for much longer! Earlier this week, the full Sam & Max toyline was finally unveiled, and I have to say it looks pretty rad. Furthermore, "These premium action figures will be offered in attractive window box packaging with new illustrations and a new comic strip by creator Steve Purcell!" New comic? I guess there are more Sam & Max things to look forward to after all.

The bad news: the release date is "TBD" 2019. The good news: Zaarin assures us that he's got just enough window caulk to keep the Mojo servers humming until TBD, give or take a downtime.

Source: http://www.actionfigureinsider

Hard to believe, but in less than two weeks it will be the fifteen-year anniversary of the cancellation of Sam & Max Freelance Police and the death of LucasArts.* I was pretty sure that the occasion would come and go without incident, because really, what left is there to come out about the game that we haven’t already covered in our big informational round-up article?

As it turns out: some cutscene storyboards! Last month, artist and Grickle creator Graham Annable (who served as Lead Animator on Freelance Police) tweeted that he had found a “whole stash” of storyboards for the assassinated adventure game, and shared an enticing photographic peek as proof. The storyboards reveal that Bernard and Hoagie from Day of the Tentacle were set to make cameo appearances in the game sometime before marketplace realities invited them to go to hell.

You’ll want to read the whole Twitter thread, wherein Annable estimates that the game was “80% completed” and is encouraged by some dude to have his unearthed storyboards scanned and/or donated to The Strong Museum. Not sure if any progress has been made on that front in the month that has passed since the tweet (shut up), but it’s safest to assume those photos are the last Sam & Max 2 thing you’ll see until someone leaks a playable build of the game while the grown-ups aren’t looking. Hey, if it can happen with Warcraft Adventures…

*True, the studio didn’t technically die for another eight years, but only the most cynical person would call what LucasArts was doing between 2004-2012 “living”.

Source: Graham Annable's Twitter

According to Variety, Ad Hoc studio has been founded by four former Telltale designers to continue the narrative game legacy into the future.

The four founders are Michael Choung, Dennis Lenart, Nick Herman, and Pierre Shorette. That's some heavy hitters right there. Hopefully, this batch of creative awesomeness leads to some excellent titles in the future. They're interested in developing live-action interactive narratives, which could be interesting.

Or maybe they'll be like Telltale and hone their craft on Sam and Max. One can only hope.

Source: Variety

Mark Ferrari, one of the most important LucasArts artists during the early SCUMM era, has relaunched his web site, and you have reason to be exited - I particularly want to draw your attention to the Image Archives section, where Mark is hosting rare samples from his older work. JP has already been fomenting an irresponsible tizzy on Twitter (but not here, for some reason ¬) by suggesting that some of the screens may belong to an unreleased Star Wars adventure game.

So check out Mark's new site, which he promises is merely a work-in-progress. And unlike Mojo, it may actually graduate from that status at some point.

Source: Mark Ferrari

This had been acknowledged on Twitter during the downtime, but I figured the passing of British actor W. Morgan Sheppard merited front page mourning. The Mojo faithful will recognize him as the voice of Guybrush Threepwood's loyal if reckless navigator Ignatius Cheese, who is additionally revealed to be the owner of The SCUMM Bar*, in Escape from Monkey Island. He was also that one guy from The Prestige, among about a thousand other roles. Sheppard was 86.

*In fact, I considered titling this "Owner of The SCUMM Bar dies", but that seemed in poor taste given that people might have interpreted that as being Remi, and why get people's hopes up?

Source: Deadline

Mark Darin created a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. You may remember Mark Darin as a designer at Telltale that helped create some of their best games (Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, Puzzle Agent, Hector: Badge of Carnage, The Walking Dead, Tales from the Borderlands, and Batman Season Two, among many, many others).

Now he is going back to his roots. Before he became a designer at Telltale, he designed two free adventure games: Nick Bounty: A Case of the Crabs and Nick Bounty: The Goat In The Grey Fedora. He is now creating a third game in the series, that you can help fund now by going to the Nick Bounty and the Dame with the Blue Chewed Shoe Kickstarter page

Friendly reminder: Given the studio's uncertain future, you may want to re-download your past Telltale orders while their servers still hum. Simply head over to https://telltale.com/account/games, log in to your old account, and archive your collection.

The word on the street is that Telltale had recently updated their older titles to be DRM-free. I'm hearing that this is true for all their games from Telltale Texas Hold'em through The Walking Dead: Season 1. While I can't personally vouch for whether this is true in the case of every one of those titles, it certainly has been true for all the oldies I've tried so far. (By the way, turns out Sam & Max: Season 1 is still pretty great.)

Obviously, this only applies if you purchased your games directly through Telltale rather than some other outlet. (And if that outlet was GameTap, you're probably too embarrassed to admit it.) So if you're not one of those poor dopes, get those installers now and worry about when you're going to use them later.

Since Telltale ate its gun last Friday, social media has seen a lot of heartfelt reminiscing from the quasi-late studio’s ex-employees and collaborators, among them Jake, Bay Area Sound, and voice actress Melissa Hutchison. Today, via Facebook, Steve Purcell has added his voice to the eulogy with the following statement:

It’s hard to disagree with his view -- Telltale did right by Sam & Max. And while it would have been nice to have seen more games starring them since 2010 (cripes, has it been that long?), there’s no denying that under Telltale’s stewardship, we got a ton of great Sam & Max content following ten years of nada. That resurgence came not just in the form of the games, but in the Surfin’ the Highway and animated series re-releases, killer schwag and other assorted paraphernalia. Man, remember the old Telltale Store? The one that used to: sell stuff?

Speaking of which: Steve, if you're reading this, any chance of re-issuing that old Desoto T-shirt? My 2006 incarnation and I do not have shirt sizes in common.

Source: Twin Galaxies

While the enduring characters keep an eye out for a new game developer to license themselves to, Sam & Max have been busying themselves with being made into collectible toys. As a loyal reader of Mojo, you already knew this.

Today, Boss Fight Studio (the company manufacturing the collectibles) has offered a first look at the design. They stress that the below rendering is a work-in-progress, but it's surely the kinda progress I can get behind:

Source: Facebook

A glass-is-half-full personality is going to zero in on the positive elements of this new interview with Bill Tiller courtesy of the rakish charmers at Arcade Attack. After all, it offers delightful career anecdotes from one of the industry's best artists, including his time back at LucasArts (and the attendant travails under Randy Breen).

Unfortunately, it also offers this:

Despite the headline, I don't honestly blame this turn of events entirely on Zaarin's failure to relaunch the Mojo forums by now after a clear mandate to do so, but let's face it: his dereliction of those duties probably did nothing to help.

One silver lining in all this grief is that we intend to celebrate A Vampyre Story's tenth anniversary in some way before the year is through, so look forward to that.

Source: Arcade Attack

Updated: Added Thimbleweek Park figures and some comments from Ron Gilbert.
A recent leak in Valve's Steam API has allowed clever people to extract the number of players of particular games, for the first time ever. In an article published on technology site Ars Technica, precise player estimates for 13,000 titles have been shared. Of note are titles published by DoubleFine, TellTale and, of course, LucasArts.
Note: The list shows the number of people who have played a particular game since achievements were added to it (so older games that had achievements added later will have higher scores than shown). And crucially, the list does not show the number of owners (which will be higher than the players).
In the publishers that Mojo readers are interested in, there are some predictable results and some surprises.
From most popular to least, the list is topped with TellTale's most popular license, beating even the most popular Star Wars title:
The Walking Dead - 2,846,244 players
STAR WARS Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords - 1,529,038
But hot on their heels are the two biggest Double Fine games:
Brutal Legend - 1,235,714
Psychonauts - 1,207,186
After that Campo Santo (well done!) and TellTale make an appearance:
Firewatch - 959,053
Poker Night at the Inventory - 952,378
Poker Night 2 - 671,540
Given the popularity of the Poker Night games, it does make you wonder why TellTale stick to licenses, especially when we drop down and find the bulk of the adventure titles:
Game of Thrones - A Telltale Games Series - 598,965 players
Grim Fandango Remastered - 516,584
Broken Age - 419,666
Minecraft: Story Mode - A Telltale Games Series - 346,763
Costume Quest - 341,308
Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge - 288,297
Batman - The Telltale Series - 272,720
Game of Thrones - 272,599
The Cave - 271,663
Day of the Tentacle Remastered - 265,169
Stacking - 248,039
The Walking Dead: Michonne - A Telltale Miniseries - 197,450
MASSIVE CHALICE - 161,770
Gemini Rue - 130,615
Iron Brigade - 109,286
And then, for some comparison, several indie adventure titles, including Ron Gilbert's Thimbleweed Park, and a big shock at how far down DoubleFine's last adventure game remaster is:
Thimbleweed Park - 98,491
Batman: The Enemy Within - The Telltale Series - 80,154
The Blackwell Legacy - 79,474
Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series - 69,783
Full Throttle Remastered - 61,757 players
Costume Quest 2 - 57,457
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards: Reloaded - 56,138
Blackwell Unbound (Blackwell 2) - 52,347
Blackwell Convergence (Blackwell 3) - 49,385
Blackwell Deception (Blackwell 4) - 46,844
Headlander - 44,476
The Shivah - 38,128
Blackwell Epiphany (Blackwell 5) - 20,146
Also surprising is how a sequel to DoubleFine's most popular Amnesia Fortnight title, Costume Quest, performed so poorly when compared to the original. This explains why there were no similar attempts at sequels.
Finally, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the VR only title:
Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin - 2,155 players
Are adventure games dead? You decide.
UPDATE
Thimbleweed Park figures have been added (I searched for them before, I swear!), and Ron Gilbert offers the following interpretation:
"Remember these numbers are terribly skewed for games that have been on sale (sometimes in deep discount). Also games that were part of Humble Bundles where the play quickly booted it but never played it. Don’t read too much into these numbers. TWP has been massively successful on Switch and I have no doubt that is cannibalize Steam to some extent. By next month we will have sold more on Switch than Steam and Switch shows little signs of letting up."
And also:

"...games that are on sale for $1.99 are going to have horrible skewed numbers from games that are $19 and rarely go on sale. When a game gets past a point, it’s bargain binned and if you only look at units, you not getting the whole story. I’ve bought several $1.99 games, booted them once and never again. I don’t think this is a “valid” sale when comparing to other games (it’s even worse for games that have been in a Humble bundle). As a dev, you’re moving a lot of units at $1.99 but making very little money. If the game is 5 years old, that’s OK. Just don’t compare units from that 5 year old game to a 2 year old game that’s rarely been on sale. It’s not a realistic or even useful picture."

Source: Ars Technica

ScummVM and its sister project, ResidualVM are participating in the Google Summer of Code once again.

This year, the students are working on the following games:

ScummVM:

Pink Panther: Passport to Peril and Pink Panther: Hokus Pokus Pink. Student: Andrii Prykhodko

The Immortal. Student: Joseph-Eugene Winzer

Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Star Trek: Judgment Rites. Student: Matthew Stewart

ResdiualVM:

The Longest Journey (currently completable with missing features). Student: Liu Zhaosong

While we're on the subject of ScummVM and ResidualVM, both projects have had updates lately:

ResidualVM 0.31 has been released. This is a bugfix release that fixes a few bugs in Myst III, in preparation for Cyan's upcoming digital release of Myst III that will use ResidualVM to play the game.

ScummVM's addition of Xeen, the first RPG engine added after ScummVM changed their guidelines to allow RPG games alongside the adventure games, is now completable in the daily builds. There are five RPGs that are currently completable: Might and Magic IV, Might and Magic V, World of Xeen, World of Xeen 2 (CD Talkie), and Swords of Xeen. If you want to play these games in the daily builds, make sure that you place xeen.css in the same folder as your game files.

ScummVM announced today that Cyan Inc., the creators of the Myst series, and ScummVM are "establishing a new partnership, with both teams working together as closely as possible in the future".

Later this year, Cyan Inc. is re-releasing the entire Myst series, thanks to a successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the original Myst.

Myst: Masterpiece Edition and Riven: The Sequel to Myst will be powered by ScummVM, and Myst III: Exile will be powered by ScummVM's sister project for 3D adventure games, ResidualVM.

The ScummVM team stated that they'll be working together in the future to "make your journey through the Ages even more pleasant". More news will follow soon. It will be really interesting to see what else will come from this new partnership.

Telltale announced on their website that, due to the "fundamental changes" (likely referring to the restructuring after a round of layoffs that happened due to a toxic environment that cultivated in the studio after the surprise success of the first season of The Walking Dead), The Wolf Among Us Season Two has been delayed until 2019.

They've stated that the reason for the delay is because they are "committed to exploring new ways to tell our stories. Taking this extra time will allow [them] not only to focus on quality but also to experiment and iterate in order to craft something truly special".

If this means that the gameplay will be significantly different than the cut-and-paste style gameplay that's been in Telltale's games since The Walking Dead, then the delay is certainly most welcome.

Of course you do. And you're in luck, because that's just what was recorded at something called "EGX Rezzed 2018." I assume that's the name of an expo, though it may also be the model of dirt bike my nephew got for Christmas. For those of us who happened to be washing our hair during Tim's panel, here's a handy Youtube embed of the whole interview:

I haven't watched it myself yet, but reportedly Tim mentions the possibility of further LucasArts remasters, iterating once again that he'd insist on the original creators being involved. Hasn't Brian Moriarty been pretty upfront about wanting revisit Loom? Anyway, Tim evidently talks a bunch about Psychonauts as well, so it's sure to be a worthy listen all the way around.

Keep a look out on your US shelves for the May issue of PC Gamer magazine, because inside is a 5-page preview of Campo Santo's (otherwise known as Vano Rodko) "In the Valley of Gods"

There are lots of pretty pictures accompanying the article, if you like that sort of thing. Also, it sounds like the game mechanic may owe just a little to Beyond Good and Evil, though it's not namechecked.

Source: PC Gamer (USA)

It happened without warning, and goodness knows it happened decades later than it should have, but the the original Maniac Mansion is now available on Steam. Sure, you already have it as a free bonus feature within Day of the Tentacle, but don't you want the pleasure of buying it individually, especially since the last time you could do so was like forty years ago?

And anyway, it's less than five bucks. So do it. Do it now.

Source: Steam

Rock Paper Shotgun published an interesting article yesterday about the artistic merit of remastered video games. Ron, Tim, and Brian Moriarty are all on hand to weigh in on the technical and even ethical pitfalls of "upgrading" a classic:

Harsh! But Ron has a point. And as we've seen, the "original version" you can switch back to often isn't the perfect recreation it purports to be. After all, the only "classic" version of Monkey Island 2 that anyone can buy has vertical scrolling effects removed and some dialog altered. My grandkids will grow up without the "white slavers" line, so I hope you're proud of yourself, Craig Derrick!

Source: Rock Paper Shotgun

All of Disney's catalog is currently on sale at GOG.com. That includes tons of LucasArts games:

Afterlife

Armed and Dangerous

The Dig

Loom

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb

Monkey Island 1 SE

Monkey Island 2 SE

Outlaws + A Handful of Missions

Sam & Max Hit the Road

Star Wars: Battlefront II

Star Wars: Empire at War

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II

Star Wars: Dark Forces

Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Dark Forces II

Star Wars: Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast

Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 3D

Star Wars: Tie Fighter

Star Wars: X-Wing

Star Wars: X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter

Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance

Star Wars: Rebel Assault 1+2

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds Saga

Star Wars: Rebellion

Star Wars: Star Fighter

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders

The adventure that was featured on our forums (when we had them), The Journey Down, sees the release of its third chapter today. With this release, SkyGoblin's excellent adventure inspired by LucasArts adventures like Grim Fandango and Monkey Island 2 is finally concluded. Find out what happens to Bwana and Kito, as they finally manage to journey down to the Underland on Steam,

GOG.com or iTunes.