Ron collected a few thoughts commemorating this occasion on his blog.
He also can't help but reference Monkey Island 3a, which is unfortunate.
Other than that, it's a good read. Pictures included!
Source: Grumpy Gamer
Articles
You can find them over at the Double Fine forums. We haven't gotten any audio/visual of Day of the Tentacle: Special Edition just yet, but some of these responses - a combination of reflections about the original game and details about the remaster, will whet your appetite and then some. My personal favorites:
Are there uncompressed voice recordings from the original game? Will they be used? - d_Stilgar
Matt: Yes. There are. We found the original DAT tapes from the recording session and we’ve painstakingly gone through and re-edited the sessions to pull out high quality audio for the voice, which is what we will be using for the special edition!
Any cool discoveries (that you can talk about) this time [regarding interesting things found in the game’s data files]? Maybe Grossman nonchalantly revealing the Secret of Monkey Island somewhere? Remnants of lost puzzles? - Alfred J
Matt: We did find out one interesting thing actually, about Ben!
Spaff: Oh yeah! Whilst reading through Tim’s DOTT notebooks I spotted reference to one ‘Ruben Throttle’ - Was this Ben Throttle’s full name? I asked Tim and he confirmed it was. That’s a fun fact in and of itself, but it gets better. in 2001 or so my friend Jake and I asked Tim if Hoagie was Ben’s brother, and he said something along the lines of “how did you know that!?”. When I asked him about the Ruben Throttle thing, Tim brought up his relationship with Hoagie again and said “their mom named them both after sandwiches”. So there you go!
Eddie Riggs is clearly related to them somehow too, but maybe as a cousin or something seeing as he doesn’t have a sandwich name? Unless Eddie Riggs is a stage name, hmmmm.
I don't know about related, but Hoagie definitely namedrops "my friend Eddie" at some point...I think when looking at the horse in hallway? Oh, and I'm jazzed to hear they uncovered the original recordings. It was possibly my biggest concern, because that MONSTER.SOU file doesn't leave a lot of breathing room.
Now stop consuming everything Buzzfeed-style and go read all of the team's responses. Spaff spent a lot of time on it. >:
Source: Double Fine Forums
With the Day of the Tentacle: Special Edition just around the corner, it might be time for you to familiarize yourself with the commonly held American history myths that DOTT makes reference to.
With this in mind, Johnny "ThunderPeel2001" Walker has stepped in, and created a helpful Day of the Tentacle History Lesson for non-Americans to help you appreciate the American folklore and jokes (and puzzles) in the game.
Get reading now (although don't necessarily use what you learn in a history exam -- Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman weren't big on historical accuracy!)
Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick's upcoming adventure game will debut on Xbox One on the same day it releases for Windows, Mac, and Linux. To mark the announcement, a new trailer has also been released.
Campo Santo proves that it's good for more than making absurdly promising games; it's also positioning itself as Mojo's replacement by recently siphoning Full Throttle reflections out of Tim Schafer. Those memories combined with perspectives from folks you might recognize make for an insightful retrospective on the game and its impact on Schafer's career thereafter.
Acknowledgement is also made of Tim's good fortune to see both of the game's unsanctioned sequels die on the vine, quelled threats that nonetheless motivated his departure:
One day, deep into production on Grim Fandango, Schafer noticed that the project leads on the third Monkey Island game were at work on a new project, and asked somebody what they were up to. “Someone said, ‘Oh, I think they’re working on a Full Throttle sequel. And I was like, ‘They’re wh-wh-what? Nobody told me about that!” I went and asked them, and they were like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, man!’ ‘And no one even asked me?” ‘Um, I don’t know… yeah…’
“I was upset about that. I was horrified. I felt so personally attached to that game; those are my characters. The idea that someone else could make a sequel to it… I was so horrified that I didn’t own it.” It was one of the reasons Schafer would leave LucasArts after making Grim Fandango. “It was fair,” he acknowledges, “I mean, they did pay me for the time. I’m not saying they stole it from me.
Stop putting your lips on that and go read the whole thing, but don't enjoy it so much that you forget that we too used to generate decent content about these games. :(
Source: The Camp Santo Quarterly Revie
The penultimate episode of Telltale's Game of Thrones, A Nest of Vipers, is out now on several platforms, including PSN, Xbox One, and for PC and Mac at Telltale's store. It will be released for PC and Mac on Steam and GOG.com on Tuesday, on Xbox 360 on Wednesday, and on iOS and Android on Thursday.
Double Fine's Broken Age Kickstarter received plenty of attention during and after its lifespan due to being what was at the time the most successful project on the crowdfunding site, video game or otherwise.
Some of that attention proved to be negative, with scrutiny becoming particularly fashionable when the scope of the game, and therefore its schedule and cost, began to inflate. I always saw it as a weird sense of entitlement that required the willful misunderstanding of what a donor is (versus an investor), but at any rate there was, at one point, in some circles, what you might call a controversy.
But it doesn't seem to be a controversy the studio has profited from. Reports Schafer:
"My expectation with Broken Age in the end was just to break even," Schafer said. "With Kickstarter, the risk is gone of losing money on it, so you know you've broken even if you just make the game to that amount of money. But we made it [for], like, twice as much almost as we got in. Or more. So we will just about make that back."
Tim clarifies that the purpose of crowdfunding from his perspective is to remove the categorical dependence on publishers, and by that criteria, the Broken Age experience was very successful.
Source: gamesindustry.biz
At the Skybound panel at Comic Con today, Telltale and Skybound unveiled a little bit more about their miniseries about Michonne, which is set during the period in the comics when Michonne is not present.
It tells a story during a time when Michonne is at her lowest, and she is "bereft". She also will be wielding a machete rather than her trademark sword, as she doesn't have it at this point. Since Michonne is an action character, the game will require more action, and Skybound tweeted that "you will be pleasantly surprised". It will be released as a three episode DLC for Season Two late this fall.
They also released two pieces of concept art for The Walking Dead: Michonne during the panel.
Sad news today as we learn that character actor Irwin Keyes has passed away at the age of 63. Check IMDB for a list of the actor's many credits, the most famous probably being his roles as bodyguard Hugo Mojelewski on "The Jeffersons" as well as the inhaler-dependent assassin Wheezy Joe in the Coen Brothers’ Intolerable Cruelty.
Here at Mojo though, he will always be remembered as the voice of Bruno the Bigfoot, whose rescue is the primary concern of the 1993 classic adventure game Sam & Max Hit the Road.
Source: The AV Club
Can anybody explain to me what Disney Infinity is? I did my due diligence and skimmed the Wikipedia page, but I can't make heads or tails of it. I'm just too old.
But the reason I'd like to know is that there's this Polygon interview with some vaguely-titled muckety–mucks of Lucasfilm and Disney Interactive where they say, well, this:
I asked Ada Duan, vice president of business and franchise management at Lucasfilm, what other properties the studio might be considering for Disney Infinity.
"Are you thinking about Howard the Duck?" she said to laughter from Disney Interactive studio vice president and general manager John Blackburn and Disney Interactive vice president of production John Vignocchi. "In terms of Star Wars content, there's definitely more Star Wars coming out. What these guys have been saying is that Disney Infinity is a platform for all the IP across the company, Star Wars being part of that. You'll see more. As more movies and TV shows come out and there's evaluation of what we can support, I think Infinity is going to support all the IP across the company. As Lucas comes out with more IP and more Star Wars."
Blackburn added that Disney Infinity's studios are always pitching ideas to Duan, who job is to look after the interactive division of Lucasfilm and work with gaming partners on all Star Wars and Lucasfilm properties.
It was Duan, Blackburn pointed out, that helped get Tim Schafer and his team at Double Fine Productions the ability to work on Day of the Tentacle.
And even those old adventure games aren't off the table, Vignocchi said.
"I'll be like, please, can we do Secret of Monkey Island?" he said. "And she'll say, ‘Can we talk about how relevant this is? There are so many other things we could do.'"
Duan acknowledged that, for now, the company is "looking forward."
What the hell, Ada?!
Source: Polygon
I always try to do a news post of Mojo related tidbits after our downtime. This one's going to be a long one. At least, with the new server, it'll likely be the last.
Christian Adam has found a solution to allow the people who have graphics hardware below the requirements of Grim Fandango Remastered to play the game in classic mode.
Double Fine is making games in conjunction with Adult Swim Games, as well as Zoink Games.
On the subject of Double Fine, Massive Chalice went out of early access and received it's full release, and Iron Brigade has had Game for Windows Live replaced with Steamworks, fixing matchmaking. The latter was possible thanks to the fact that Double Fine has regained the rights to Iron Brigade from Microsoft.
At E3, it was revealed that ex-Mojoer and former Telltale developer extraordinaire, Jake Rodkin's company Campo Santo will have the console debut of their first game Firewatch on PS4. It is also going to be released on PC, Mac, and Linux. No release date has been set, but Campo Santo is aiming for release by the end of 2015.
Telltale is making a three episode miniseries that will be DLC for The Walking Dead: Season Two called The Walking Dead: Michonne, set during the period of the comics when Michonne is absent from the group. They also finally showed a little bit of what their Minecraft: Story Mode will look like.Lucasfilm is working on a fully interactive 3D virtual Star Wars world, via their ILM experience lab.
Humongous Entertainment games are starting to make their way to GOG.com. The Pajama Sam series made its way to the service earlier this month.
The co-creator of Maniac Mansion and Thimbleweed Park, Gary Winnick, had his best selling comic, Bad Dreams, released in trade paperback format on the 17th of June.
While we're on the subject of Thimbleweed Park, be sure to check out the Thimbleweed Park development blog, as lots of good inside information about the development process of that game is being posted regularly.
In his capacity as the illustrious guest on the latest episode of the Playstation Blogcast, Tim discusses all kinds of topical Double Fine things, including Broken Age, Grim Fandango, and his favorite text adventure game.
And there's a shoutout for Spaff as well!
Source: Playstation.Blog
Eurobricks member Vitreolum has lovingly recreated Monkey Island's Guybrush Threepwood and Largo LeGrande in LEGO. Click through for more images.
Source: Eurobricks
Brian Moriarty's postmortem on LOOM that he presented at GDC 2015 is now available to view in the GDC vault.
Our very own curator of all things cut and changed from LucasArts and Sierra games, ATMachine, has captured three of the images from the video and corrected the aspect ratio (as the images in the presentation were cropped, meaning the original rooms must have been even wider). He has presented them to you in the most authentic manner possible.
These images are from lost rooms in Crystalgard. They include an alternate shot of the outside of Crystalgard, the hall of mirrors with the Chromax Conundrum, and the infamous lost room with the three sandglasses.
Source: ATMachine
The GOG and Steam releases of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream included an enhanced version of the soundtrack.
With the help of ScummVM developers, two fans by the names of SirAlastor and Alpheon, went through the game and found all the music cues, and Alpheon posted instructions tto change the music from the included soundtrack to tracks that ScummVM would read, so the music could be played within the game itself. He also posted a video showing the enhanced music in action, compared to the music from the original game, which you can view embedded below or here if the embedding doesn't work for you. The difference is quite striking.
IF Games has announced that their adventure game, The Perils of Man, which has a design by Bill Tiller and Gene Mocsy of Autumn Moon, and is also co-written by Mr. Mocsy, will be released on April 28, 2015 for Windows, Mac, and iOS. Episode 1 of the game was previously only available on iOS, and for those who have already purchased the iOS version of Episode 1, the app will be updated to the full version at no extra charge once it's released. They also released an announcement trailer for the game, which has been embedded below. You can see the trailer here if the embedding doesn't work for you.
Update (26th of March): The Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter page has been updated with the news as well. As suspected, the computer versions won't have separate release dates. Broken Age will release on Windows, Mac, and Linux worldwide on the 28th of April. Only the PlayStation releases will vary by region, since releases on those platforms only happen on certain days, and the release days are different in North America and Europe. The cover art for the Nordic Games retail release has been revealed in that update as well. The backer box will be bigger and will have a different design (although the art of the box will be based on this one).
The release date of Broken Age Act 2 has been announced. It will release on April 28, 2015 in North America and April 29 in Europe. It will be released for Windows, Linux, Mac, and will be available for cross-buy on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita. It's unknown if the separate release dates for regions relate to the computer versions as well, since the IGN article makes it seem this way. This is unlikely though since Steam and GOG.com don't have any region blocking for ordering (unless, presumably, required by law), as far as I know. However, even if that ends up to be the case, at least it's only a day.
While you're at IGN, if you don't mind spoilers for Act I and the first part of Act II, they have a video up where they play through the same 12 minutes of the game that was previously revealed, but this time they play through it with Tim Schafer. They discuss what has transpired in the three years since the Kickstarter was announced, the decision to split the game in half and what to expect from the rest of Act 2.
IGN has just posted a video of the first 12 minutes of Broken Age Act 2 from the PlayStation 4 version of the game.
I doubt you're going to be watching this if you haven't played the first act yet, since it's going to be spoiling a bit of Act 2 for you, but just in case, it should be noted that the video does contain spoilers from Act 1.
Telltale just announced the release dates for the third episode of their episodic cinematic adventure based on Game of Thrones. It will be released tomorrow on Windows, Mac, and on PS4 and PS3 in North America. Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4, and PS3 in Europe will get it on Wednesday. Then on Thursday, it will be released for iOS and Android.
They also released a launch trailer for the episode, which you can view below, or if the embedding isn't working for you, you can watch it here.
Double Fine has just announced that they have just locked down the release candidate for Broken Age. All that's left now is for one final week of testing to go on to track down any remaining bugs, after which it will be submitted to Sony for certification on PlayStation 4 and Vita, and sent to the pressing plant for discs to be made for the Nordic Games retail release on PC, Mac, and Linux.
Since they are in the final stretch, the promotion period will begin, which will consist of IGN dedicating a week of coverage to the game beginning on Monday. They will also be announcing the release date as part of that coverage, as well as including an interview with preview footage of Act 2.
Since the game is at release candidate stage, 2 Player Productions has nearly finished filming the next episode of the Double Fine Adventure documentary about the project, except for a few interviews. They are going to be working on making a final cut of the episode and making a final audio pass, and then the next episode of the documentary will be released as well. The project is truly reaching the home stretch now.