The International House of Mojo

About a week or so ago some saintly nobody unleashed his collection of rare, vintage videos of LEC press coverage by a Los Angeles morning news station onto Youtube. Dave Grossman looks about seven. Prepare to freak out.

Update by Mr Manager: Fast forward 36 seconds into the first video to witness a "never" before seen scene from The Secret of Monkey Island. We assume the view is of the cannibal village. When confronted about the scene being cut, Ronzo had this to say: "We cut stuff all the time due to flow reasons. It's not always space. I don't remember the exact reason it went away."

Source: Lucas Legacy Youtube channel

Our coverage of an upcoming three-minute video continues into month twelve with this latest update from Bill Tiller:

The Kickstarter for A Vampyre Story: Year One is coming, guys. Potentially this month. And it needs your support in the absence of support from the puppet makers, which, just to offer a bit of general advice, you should be wary of trusting anyway.

I don't know, felt like a good headline. Here are Chuck Jordan's feelings on the closure of LucasArts from his blog. It's a pointed and honest reflection on LEC's legacy from an ex-employee's perspective that somewhat takes to task the gushing sentiments around the web. What do you think?

Saying that he hopes to have the awards for the AVS: Year One Kickstarter "set" this week, Bill reveals via photograph what one of them will be: a physical box for the game.

Judging by his referencing the CMI box's dimensions, it looks like we're in for a classic big box as opposed to the modern miniature flavor, a resort which is, needless to say, making me all sensitive beneath the skirt.

Source: Bill Tiller's Twitter

A lot of nostalgic sentiments about LucasArts have pervaded the web over the past few days, and perhaps we'll be acknowledging a few more of them, but you've really gotta read this gigantic and loving tribute by Gamasutra, devoted as it is entirely to the graphic adventure games, which I'm sure all of us would agree are the correct subset of the studio's catalog to center a proper eulogy around. Amidst the ongoing swirl of online LEC remembrances, it is the best piece to emerge so far.

The article is largely composed of quotes from folks throughout the industry, who recall the LEC adventures with relatable adoration and assert the influence they continue to have. Peter McConnell is among the voices, and the whole thing concludes with reflections by David Fox.

Absolutely essential Mojo reading, right here.

Source: Gamasutra

LucasArts Fans Starting To Lose Hope Of Ever Seeing 'Loom' Sequel

Source: The Onion

Well, you know they'll be coming all day. Figure we can collect the good ones as they are tweeted in one news post. Refresh furiously, we'll be adding more:

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There's a new interview with Telltale CEO Dan Connors courtesy of Digital Trends, and you are encouraged to read it. Naturally, the tone is pretty upbeat considering the studio's soaring eagle status as of late, but this bit is liable to provoke one or two of you:

It certainly seems like Telltale wants the expectation that they're here to revive old adventure IP to be disposed of. Arguably, with the all-but-officially-announced cancellation of their King's Quest take, Tales of Monkey Island was their only true example of that (Sam & Max was the rejuvenation of a franchise as a whole, not specifically a PC graphic adventure) so Dan's comments don't signal the abandonment of roots some will surely insist they do.

In fact The Walking Dead was very much the culmination of an evolution you can cleary see from Out from Boneville on. Sure, it perfected a balance such that it resonated with players more so than any previous release, but anyone intimately familiar with the company's whole catalog would identify it as the latest phase of what has been a fairly natural evolution. Considering that evolution has almost always been in the direction of improvement, it's hard for me not to get stoked about the company's next projects regardless of my familiarity with the property.

I will say this though, the company's grand success is making the fact that Puzzle Agent remains their only entry in the non-licensing experiment more and more difficult to justify.

Source: Digital Trends

A former employee wrote this.

Source: Reddit

Telltale's game based on Bill Willingham's Fables comic now has a title. It's called The Wolf Among Us, and it's set to come out on Xbox 360, PC, Mac and PlayStation 3 this summer. As previously reported, players take on the role of Fables' Big Bad Wolf, Bigby Wolf. However, more has been revealed (including some of the "Fables" you'll meet in the game). Bigby will try to keep fairy tale characters including Mr. Toad and the Three Little Pigs undetected in our world.

According to IGN, more news on The Wolf Among Us will be revealed in the coming weeks.

The community's glory days bore a horn o'plenty of great LEC fan sites, on that we can all agree, but I think my favorite was The LucasArts Museum. You know, the one that endeavored to collect, index and photograph the boxes, manuals, game media, inserts, and all manner of increasingly frivolous and obscure paraphernalia associated with every release version of the LEC adventure games?

As an obsessive myself, that site was my jam, but whenever I'd visit the forums I felt way out of my league. It was both enjoyable and immensely intimidating to peruse threads and see people distinguish between versions based on LFL file datestamps, argue over which pressing a floppy disk label denoted, discover some hitherto unknown budget release of Full Throttle available only from the back of a magazine, and ask for a ballpark on how much the copy of Zak McKracken they stumbled onto at a garage sale was worth on eBay.

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Source: The LucasArts Museum forums

We have a new podcast up, titled 'The Mixnmojo Campfire'. It's with the same team as the cook-chase, but the format is a bit longer and more relaxed. In this edition, we talk about Indie adventure games -- specifically Daedalic Entertainment and Wadjet Eye, as well as related sub-topics: tone, voice acting, gameplay, etc.

We are joined by the bearded Paul Franzen, who wrote the Indie adventure game Life in the Dorms. He is also founder and editor of Game Cola and writes a blog about yard sales.

The eBay item featured in our regular feature 'I found it on eBay' can be observed here.

Listen below, and, as ever, please get in touch with messages / interventions by commenting on this news post, or e-mailing us at podcast [at] mixnmojo.com

Download or subscribe on iTunes. The episode was edited and produced by Zaarin.

Telltale producers Kevin Bruner (also co-founder) and Kevin Boyle had a little chat with God Is A Geek to discuss what's going on at their adorable little company.

The two offer their theories as to why The Walking Dead was the project that cranked awareness for the near decade-old studio up to eleven, prove to be immune to attempts to have plans for the second season teased out, and of course mention Fables (real title pending), which is now the company's project of focus.

So, be ready for that.

Source: God Is A Geek

I mean, if the Kickstarter for A Vampyre Story: Year One wasn't fairly close to launching like, totally for real this time, why else would Bill be offering this little clip of animation for the pitch video? Just to hurt you?

In his narration, Bill states that "hopefully in a week we can give it to Pedro to do the sound and music," so this thing is clearly in the birth canal. You clowns better not have blown all your disposable income on Ragnar Tornquist. >:

Source: AVS on Facebook

Apparently part of a series analyzing "gonzo guns" in video games (so, all of them), Gamaustra has a brief piece up examining the legendary Land Shark Gun from Planet Moon's should-have-been blockbuster Armed & Dangerous.

Never played Armed & Dangerous? Dude, it's $4.99 on Steam.

Source: Gamasutra

I revive myself from my Mardi Gras-induced stupor to alert you to a piece on Mobiledia about Lucy Bradshaw, a key figure in LucasArts product development back when they developed products worth rallying attention behind.

Bradshaw, whose name might be familiar to you from the opening credits of games like Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, graduated from her "training ground" at LEC in the 90s to become an executive for Maxis/EA. It is the later part of her career that the article largely concerns, but I think she would agree that it was her days being rotoscoped in a wetsuit for The Dig animation tests that truly legitimized the games business as a vocation.

Source: Mobiledia

It seems I may have jumped the gun a bit when I teased Telltale Games for only openly talking about The Walking Dead Season Two rather than their other announced projects.

In an interview with IGN, Dan Connors finally revealed some of the details about Fables that fans have been wondering for years. Namely, that Fables won't be called Fables (presumably due to legal reasons due to the title's close similarity to that of the RPG Fable).

Secondly, and most importantly to readers of Mojo, some news about how the game will play has finally been revealed. The game has taken longer to release than Telltale originally anticipated due to the success of The Walking Dead. Telltale is taking that success to heart, and is working hard to incorporate many of that season's game mechanics into their as-of-yet unnamed series based on Fables.

ResidualVM, the sister project of ScummVM designed to run Grim Fandango on modern systems (with official builds on Windows, Mac, and Linux), has received a bug fix update. And what an update it is! There's around 40 gameplay fixes in the newest release, including fixes for 14 bugs that were present in the original 1998 release, making ResidualVM the best way to run Grim even if you have a computer that can handle the original executable.

Here's three Mojo tidbits for the new year:

Firstly, Did you miss the first public Double Fine Amnesia fortnight? If so, you still have a chance to redeem yourself for your misdeeds. Head to Double Fine's Amnesia Fortnight page where you can still buy the games in digital form for $10 USD. If that's not enough for you, for an extra $20 USD, you can now pre-order a collector's package that comes with a DVD with all five Amnesia Fortnight prototypes (plus the bonus prototypes Brazen, Happy Song, and Costume Quest), the 15-track Amnesia Fortnight 2012 Soundtrack, and a Blu-Ray disc of 2-Player Productions' Amnesia Fortnight documentary footage. If that's still not enough for you, for an extra $15 on top of that, you can have the package include a collector's edition cover featuring art of one of the five 2012 protoypes signed by the project leader for that prototype. If you're still not satisfied with these awesome options, feel free to pay $70 USD for a collector's package featuring covers with art from all six prototypes, all signed by each project leader.

Secondly, Telltale's finally openly talking about their upcoming announced projects, but it's not Fables or King's Quest. Instead, they're talking about The Walking Dead Season Two (which should surprise no one). In an interview with Polygon, Telltale CEO Dan Connors talks about the next season's pre-production story meetings. It seems the next season will feature at least some of the same characters as season one, since according to Mr. Connors:

"We're talking through different scenarios, though I don't think we've talked through one where we just start with a new set of characters."

Another interesting bit from that interview is that Telltale is open to the possibility of having the game characters meet the television show characters. It will be interesting to see if they can work that out, since it seems the television show and comic book are handled by two separate corporate entities (judging by the Terminal Reality developed shooter based on the television show that's coming out next month, and the fact that Telltale's game got no publicity from AMC, the network that produces the show).

Lastly, do you remember the Wallace & Gromit's Musical Marvels show at the BBC Proms last year? The one that Mojo covered because it was Ben Whitehead's (of Telltale's Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures) first official credited appearance as Wallace in plasticine form? Well, the good news is that if you missed it last year, you still have a chance to see it live since it's proved popular enough to now become a full touring show. It just premiered yesterday at The Plenary in Melbourne, Australia, and will be touring elsewhere later this year (with the short A Matter of Loaf and Death screened at each performance as a bonus). You can view a list of the full touring locations at the Wallace & Gromit's Musical Marvels website.

Today Gamaustra has published an article by psychologist and semi-regular contributor Jamie Madigan, who explores the neuroscience of how Telltale's eight hundred time Game of the Year winner The Walking Dead emotionally manipulated us.

Just what sort of malignant intent was the moonstruck Jake Rodkin embedding into the design document with crooked-grinned glee? Read to find out.

Source: Gamasutra