The International House of Mojo

The Double Fine Mega Action Mega Sale is going on now. Every game by Double Fine is on sale for one week in celebration of October, or Rocktober as it was called during Brütal Legend's release.

Costume Quest is discounted by 50 percent, Brütal Legend is discounted between 69-81 percent (depending on platform), Psychonauts is discounted by 50 percent, Stacking is discounted by 50%, Iron Brigade is discounted by 33-50 percent, Double Fine Happy Action Theatre is discounted by 50 percent, and Once Upon a Monster is discounted by 15 percent.

It's rare when a fan game comes along that is inspired by both Sierra and LucasArts adventure games, but Pledge Quest II: Noodle Shop of Horrors (or Vohaul the Cat's Revenge) certainly falls in that group. It was created to support the SpaceVenture stretch goals through Paypal. Since SpaceVenture is created by the Guys from Andromeda, the creators of Space Quest, the jokes and references primarily relate to the Space Quest series and related games. However, the primary plot device is inspired by a classic LucasArts adventure, and there's references to a certain property that was licensed by Telltale as well.

The game itself is a three room adventure that is kind of a blend of both worlds, having the interface of Sierra games with the game philosophy of most LucasArts games. You can't die in this game (although if you look hard enough, you'll find at least one reference to Sierra's death sequences). It's a well made fan game that is well worth playing. The one room original Pledge Quest is fun as well, if you haven't tried it yet.

Source: Decaffeinated Jedi

A few months ago, Telltale joined the DRM-free movement at GOG.com with 3 of their best series, Sam & Max Save The World, Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space, and Tales of Monkey Island.

Now two more Telltale series are available DRM-free on GOG.com: Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse and Back to the Future: The Game.

Each of these releases contain bonus features, like the soundtracks of the first two Sam & Max seasons (still no Season Three soundtrack, not even in digital form), developer commentaries, animated shorts (Wallace & Gromit's Cracking Contraptions and an unknown short with Season Three - perhaps Our Bewildering Universe?), and more.

IGN's Up At Noon show has the premiere of the trailer for The Walking Dead episode 4 along with an interview with the writer of the episode, Gary Whitta. Skip ahead in the video to the 10 minute and 25 second mark to view The Walking Dead portion of the show.

There's few things that Detective Inspector Hector enjoys more than drinking down enough pints to get himself sloshed. So, it's only fitting that The Indie Royale Oktoberfest Bundle includes the Straandlooper developed and Telltale published adventure game series Hector: Badge of Carnage.

You can pay whatever you want for the bundle as long as you meet the minimum price (currently just over $5.50 USD). The other games in the bundle include Chime, Adventures of Shuggy, Dangerous High School Girls In Trouble!, The Network, and the bonus game The Witch's Yarn. If you pay more than $8.00 USD, you will also get the music albums Calm Your Nerves and Chip unDeath.

Gaming Examiner has a glimpse of the first screenshot of The Walking Dead episode 4. They also have a statement, direct from Telltale, that the episode will be launching "very soon this October".

Telltale also has a video of their Walking Dead presense up at PAX, as well as a link to the a video of the complete PAX panel at the end of the video.

Thanks to a tweet on Telltale's Telltale's official Twitter, we now know The Walking Dead will be complete, barring any unforeseen circumstances, by the end of the year, since it will be coming to retail disc on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on the 4th of December.

Release dates for the retail version of the game in Europe have not yet been announced.

There's been a bit of news of the fluff variety, so like last month, I'm going to include all the tidbits in one post.

The development period for Telltale's The Walking Dead is brisker than usual for the series, as Nick Herman updated his twitter with news that the episode 4 playtest has already been completed.

On the subject of Telltale, a rumor that a second season of Back to the Future: The Game is coming comes straight from Christopher Lloyd, who announced at the Fan Expo in Canada that he's once again playing Doc Brown in an upcoming game in the series.

Finally, over at Double Fine, the lead artist of Middle Manager of Justice, Mark Hamer, posted about the art of the game, including some concept art. Along with this comes the news that this game started out as one of the Amnesia Fortnight titles which was refined from it's original seriousness and rigidity into the quirky title that it is today (or will be when it's released shortly).

As you may know, Sam & Max turn a quarter of a century old this year, and Telltale is celebrating with various discount offers on their three seasons across the various platforms they've made their way to over time.

Honestly, this is a rather quiet way to commemorate the characters' 25th year of existence (and would it kill LEC to throw Hit the Road up on Steam?), but given that Purcell was recently canvassing for ideas about their future on his blog as well as expressing desires to see the duo adapted to other mediums, we may well be experiencing the calm before a tempest of Freelance Police mayhem in the upcoming years.

Source: Game N Guide

Another year of PAX Prime has come and gone. The companies that Mojo covers were represented there, so I thought I'd make a big post covering everything Mojo-related that happened there. But then I realized that the pickings were small for the Mojo crowd this year, so a long post isn't needed.

Telltale had their live recording of their Playing Dead webseries that looks inside the making of The Walking Dead game with questions asked by fans and answered by the writers and developers of the game. They also had some neat swag called the Undead Survival Kit that they were giving away to a lucky few attendees. That's it, unfortunately. It was all Walking Dead oriented. No news on King's Quest or even Fables, which was said to be arriving by quarter three of this year. Since this month would be the last month of the Q3 2012 release window, I think it's safe to say Fables will miss it's original announced release date.

Double Fine was also represented there, with footage shown from the 2 Player Productions documentary about the Double Fine Adventure. They also showed off Ron Gilbert's upcoming adventure with platforming elements, The Cave. There's a load of new screenshots at Mr. Gilbert's blog. The big news is that The Cave isn't just coming to PlayStation 3, PC, and Xbox 360. It's also coming to the Wii U eShop.

Double Fine also showed off their sequel to Happy Action Theater, which has been renamed Kinect Party (it's a wonder publisher Microsoft let them use a clever original title for the original in the first place). Interestingly, in an interview with Eurogamer, Double Fine mentioned they'd like to do an "after dark" version with minigames that aren't child friendly such as "a level that made players shoot explosive diarrhea from their bottoms anytime they'd bent over", "a system that allows you to attach objects to characters such as extra limbs or body parts, and some of them are not meant for family", and most interestingly "having scary things happen only when one player would be present. Then people would drag their friends over to show them the offending terror only for it to not happen with another person present. Then they'd look crazy". Letting the Double Fine go crazy with uncensored Kinect minigames would certainly be interesting, to say the least.

Those waiting for The Walking Dead episode 3 on PC, Mac, Xbox 360 and PS3 shouldn't have to wait much longer. Telltale has handed off the episode to their release partners and are waiting to get word on when they will be releasing it on their respective services. Telltale posted a new episode 3 screenshot on their twitter with word that it's coming VERY soon (emphasis is theirs).

While the rest of gamers interested in Telltale's latest series wait for episode 3, iOS users will finally be able to play episode 2 of The Walking Dead later this week according to Telltale's blog.

Rounding out the Telltale related tidbits is Wallace & Gromit's Musical Marvels: Wallace & Gromit at the BBC Proms 2012 (Prom 20), which aired on BBC One yesterday and is available on iPlayer to those in the countries where iPlayer videos are available. What makes this Telltale related is that Wallace is played here by Ben Whitehead (who voiced Wallace in Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures), rather than Peter Sallis. This makes it Ben's first credited role as the voice of Wallace in plasticine form (although unofficial word is that he played Wallace uncredited in the short film for the National Trust for Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee, Wallace and Gromit in A Jubilee Bunt-a-thon, as well).

Update: It's been a long time coming, but The Walking Dead Episode 3: Long Road Ahead is out now on PlayStation 3 through the PSN today in North America. It will be out on PC, Mac, and XBLA tomorrow. The iOS version of episode 2 will be released tomorrow as well.

Update 2: PC/Mac and XBLA versions of Episode 3 are out now. Episode 2 is out on iOS as well.

Reacting to the imminent end of Nintendo Power magazine's twenty-four year run (Lord, the memories), Christina Warren of Mashable tearfully selected her favorite ten covers. Making her cut is issue #16, which had a Maniac Mansion cover story teased by a bodacious clay art take on the mansion and the cast.

We've scans of all the pertinent content from that issue in our galleries, by the by. Check them out:

Source: Mashable Entertainment

Dominique Pamplemousse in "It's All Over Once the Fat Lady Sings!" is a unique musical (with singing!) detective adventure game using stop motion animation by Deidra Kiai, who worked on Deathspank and was formerly an intern at Telltale Games. It is currently on Indiegogo (a service akin to kickstarter) to fund it, and the goal amount is a paltry $9,500.

She has a demo of the game available in flash available on her website. It's likely to be the only stop motion musical adventure game released any time soon, so give it your support.

Getting back to the Mojo standard of reporting news three weeks after it happens, Sam & Max creator Steve Purcell has something he'd like to ask you. Or that he asked you three weeks ago. Maybe he's still listening?

Tell him on his blog, and also tell us here.

Source: Sam & Max Blog

Indie Royale's July Jubilee is still going (for one more day), even though it's August now. If you pay the minimum amount (currently just under $5.50 US), you will receive Puzzle Agent, Geneforge Saga, Oniken, Mutant Storm Reloaded, SWIFT☆STITCH, and Unepic. If you pay $8.00 or more, you will also receive the music CD, Chiptune, full of (shocker) chiptune music.

Former Telltale employee (and I think still intermittent contractor) and justly lionized designer/writer Chuck Jordan posted his thoughts on Telltale's first two episodes of The Walking Dead on his blog after getting around to playing them. He's ahead of me there, I'm embarrassed to say.

Most reviews don't warrant their own news post, but then most reviews aren't 7000 word exegeses as worthy of your time as Jordan's. Whenever he ruminates on his favorite topic, interactive storytelling, he catches third gear and his thoughts become even more compulsively readable than usual, and The Walking Dead clearly struck a chord with him, to our benefit. Recommended reading.

For a chaser, why not enjoy this haphazard Dumb and Dumber meets SCUMM mock-up that appeared on Cracked at some point? Empty calories are largely harmless in moderation.

ScummVM, the Sentimental Community Undertaking Maintaining Marvelous Visionary Masterpieces, is now at 1.5.0 with the release of "Picnic Basket".

Along with the 2D LucasArts adventure games, most 2D Humongous Entertainment games, and countless others, the new release supports another Humongous Entertainment game: Backyard Baseball 2003.

It also has new support for other games that don't fall under the Mojo banner: Blue Force, Dreamweb, Geisha, Soltys (including an English translation for the first time), and the children's games Gregory and the Hot Air Balloon, Magic Tales: Liam Finds a Story, Sleeping Cub's Test of Courage, and The Princess and the Crab.

At this point the story of Insecticide has surely been burnished to a shine on your brain by yours truly and you'd pay good money not to hear me repeat it, but since relevant news on the game tends to be separated by many months I will quickly recap: Insecticide was the action/adventure hybrid that LEC vets Larry Ahern and Mike Levine developed back in 2007-2008 under the label Crackpot Entertainment. There were two versions: one for the Nintendo DS and a two-part PC release. The second part of the PC version was cancelled.

While the two versions are the same in terms of story and level design, the DS version is obviously scaled down severely, and as a consequence of space constraints on the cartridge none of the in-game dialog is voiced and some of the FMV cutscenes were reduced to still images with accompanying subtitles. Ahern and Levine have been claiming for years that they would try to at least get the cutscenes (which, by the way, feature some stellar work by LEC/Telltale animator Peter Tsaykel) from Part 2 of the PC release up on Youtube. Finally, that day has arrived.

To commemorate the occasion, a lengthy interview with Larry Ahern has been published by Adventure Classic Gaming. Ahern mostly relates, frankly and humorously, the ambitious plans and difficult development of Insecticide, but you also get some anecdotes about the productions he was involved with at LucasArts in the bargain. These include previously unknown information on Vanishing Act and Full Throttle: Payback (except it was never actually called that). Did I mention the flurry of unreleased concept art? Oo De Lally!

Source: Adventure Classic Gaming

The Verge's gaming site, Polygon, received word direct from Telltale that "the five-episode series would not be the only games set in the Walking Dead universe that the studio plans on creating".

Along with the news of additional games by Telltale set in the Walking Dead universe, they have also announced plans to give the first five episode season a disc release to retail outlets in North America after episode five is released.

Activision also announced today that they are publishing an unrelated The Walking Dead game (confusingly called The Walking Dead Video Game), which will be developed by Terminal Reality (the developer's of Kinect Star Wars and Ghostbusters: The Video Game). Terminal Reality is basing their game on the television series rather than the comics (the latter is the universe Telltale's The Walking Dead is set in). It's going to be a first person shooter, though there is supposedly a limited amount of ammo and options for stealth available as well.

You can't chuck a box of Tentacle Chow anywhere in Germany without it hitting someone working on a Maniac Mansion fan game. But the one brought to my attention by Cyrus7 on our forums is a little bit different.

Crazy Mansion presents an original story that takes place in the universe of the Maniac Mansion while adroitly sidestepping copyrighted names in order to escape legal problems. The team is a group of longtime friends and Maniac Mansion fans who call themselves Desperate Studios and have apparently been tinkering with homemade game development since the Commodore 64 days.

They seem to have gotten far along enough in the conceptual phase of Crazy Mansion to show off a bunch of stuff and are trying their hand at crowdsourcing the game's development - check out their indiegogo campaign where you can read an overview of the project as well as see a bunch of concept art and the following trailer. I do like the art style they've landed on: