The International House of Mojo

Since April they’ve taken questions from the professionals, mitigating the risk of death with regulation harnesses and safety nets, and now at last they’ve worked up the nerve to go BASE jumping. Or as the hobbyists and civilians call it: a Mixnmojo interview. Don’t bother releasing your Monkey Island game without one.

Join acknowledged heartthrobs elTee and Marius (in his Mojo debut!) as they chat up Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman about their much-ballyhooed return to the shores of Monkey Island -- a sequel which is so hotly anticipated, we’re actually starting to have to consider paying our server costs up through its release date (Footnote: You know, the one that’s days away, for goodness sake?). I’m rather excited myself to see how much of the interview ended up making it past the Lucasfilm brand director, so let’s all enjoy it together.

If you've been following Aaron on Twitter, it's pretty clear that his efforts to emulate Grim Fandango (in its original, shipped-in-1998 form) for presumed DREAMM support have made material progress. Perhaps the clearest sign of that is this morning's implication that he's already started down the path of standing up the second of the GrimE engine duology, that undisputed crown jewel of the LucasArts adventure pantheon, Escape from Monkey Island:

Bless him.

Source: Aaron's Twitter

A lot went down at PAX in Seattle over the weekend, and as you may have gleaned if you’re one of those social media types, good times were had by all who attended. As with Gamescom last week, an elaborate booth devoted to Return to Monkey Island – a wooden replica of the High Street of Mêlée Island – was on hand for photo opportunity and general shock and awe:

This time, the team was also in the hall for fans and press to mingle with, and the panels were evidently no slouch either: You may have caught the livestream of the expo’s much-touted gathering of influential old people, otherwise known as “Adventure Game Heroes & Legends.” Moderated by Frank Cifaldi, the hour-and-a-half-long conversation featured Ron, Ken Williams, Roberta Williams, Al Lowe, Dave Gilbert and Jane Jenson. If you weren’t tuning in live, you can find it archived below:

As for ReMI-specific coverage, so far there’s a pay-walled interview with Ron from Rock Paper Shotgun (what the hell, guys), and presumably more to come, but you’ll probably find the real gold on the developers’ Twitter accounts. Highlights include the ReMI team photo (probably the first time many of them were physically together since the game got started), the starstruck gushing of Neil, Druckmann, and hands-down the event’s best T-shirt.

The benevolent madness was said to have culminated in a ReMI wrap party, which Mojo may have technically attended by abstraction if the rumors (or, you know, photo evidence) that Jake weaseled his way past the bouncer are true. I’m getting the light here, so in closing I’ll steer two interviews out of Gamescom that we'd overlooked your way: one from publication Heis Online (original German here; English translation here), and another from Hobbyconsolas (original Spanish here; English translation here).

Those of you who didn’t have the spending money to hit PAX should have plenty of material from the expo (occurring as we speak) to look forward to soon. Even ahead of it, though, the ReMI press tour sailed on with a new interview from webzine GamersGlobal featuring Ron, Dave and Rex. The article is in German, the official language of adventure games, but here’s an excerpt from Google’s loose English translation:

Though the noun came out the other end of the AI as “china,” one ascertains that Ron isn’t the biggest fan of the porcelain joke, and thus this trait of Guybrush’s will be censored in ReMI, which is just how Ron rolls.

There’s more great stuff in the interview, including the surprisingly open-ended position Ron takes on the series’ future (Relevant: Beloved, you-thought-he-was-dead community member Captain Mystery has triumphantly returned to notice that the descriptor “conclusion” has been artfully expunged from ReMI promotional spiels), so do read the full article for maximum cognizance of all Monkey tidbits.

Source: GamersGlobal

Though the movie is still almost a year away, the score for Indiana Jones 5 is currently being recorded, and John Williams got permission to play a piece for a live audience at The Hollywood Bowl. A rogue cell phone then did what it must. Enjoy “Helena’s Theme,” which belongs to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character:

And let me round up a few items while I’m here by pointing out that the Willow series was recently previewed by Entertainment Weekly. Meanwhile, The Dig gets its turn being rotated into the Prime Gaming catalog. Nice to see they’re getting to seemingly every last one.

Source: YouTube

DREAMM was originally intended as an emulator for the DOS-based SCUMM games, but Aaron just couldn't abide a missing title, so he walked one last barefooted mile in broken glass, emulating just enough Win32 to support The Curse of Monkey Island.

Without promising anything, it seems he's being plagued with another itch:

Though the geography of the Edison mansion makes about as much sense as the Overlook Hotel when you try to diagram it out, the principles of sound engineering haven’t stopped amusing attempts at visualizing some parody of a floor plan. Take, for example, this loose stab at the impossible from the game’s Nintendo Power preview back in the fall of 1990:

Well, it looks like you’ll be seeing another attempt to map the mansion, along with the overworlds to 35 or so other NES games. It’s all part of the upcoming book Video Game Maps: NES & Famicom: Greatest Hits Edition, which appear to be a curated version of a larger book. Here’s a promotional tweet that shows Maniac Mansion made the cut:

Pre-order the book here.

Source: Retro Game Books

Show your love for the Fatherland and enjoy Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, available on Prime Gaming as part of the August batch of titles:

It doesn't make up for cancelling Truth Seekers, but I suppose Amazon accidentally knows what it's doing now and again.

Source: Prime Gaming

You might not consider Hitman 3 fertile ground for a Monkey Island easter egg, but with the launch of the new extra-piratey location, Ambrose Island, that has very much changed.

Eurogamer reports of a gravestone in the level, for one "G Threepwood, Mighty Pirate," and not only that, an associated treasure hunt you can engage in to dig up some treasure from our favourite swashbuckler's grave.

Apparently they do it in this very long video, but I took literally minutes to look through it and couldn't find it, so I'll leave that as a little challenge for YOU, the reader.

Source: Eurogamer

It's all in this tweet:

The correct answer is clearly "monkey6.exe", but I can be a good sport and carry on the fiction of democracy by encouraging you to cast a vote yourself.

Source: Twitter

So this showed up on Twitter:

I dunno anything about DeathCharger, but these offerings look rather bootleggy to me, and Laserschwert seems to think that some of this stuff is derived from restoration work of his (thx, Jan), and faulty old versions at that.

On the other hand, history tells us that merchandise which is shamelessly fan-sourced doesn't necessarily mean it isn't authorized, and here we have a Lucasfilm employee promoting it, so it's hard to know what to think.

For my money, the only item of interest here is the recreation of the vintage long-sleeved T-shirt that few mortals have had an opportunity to own since 1991, so it'll be interesting to hear how well those came out. And can we do the Maniac Mansion one next?

Source: DeathCharger

The British quiz show "The Chase" had a Monkey Island question the other night, and someone on Twitter has the proof:

Source: Twitter

If you’re not paying attention to samandmax.co.uk, you’re decidedly not part of the cool crowd. The site’s latest feature is an interview with voice actor Chuck Kourouklis, a recurring cast presence in the Telltale catalog. His more notable roles were Mr. Norrington in Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse and the Ferryman to the pirate crossroads in Tales of Monkey Island.

Read his recollections in full, and look forward to re-experiencing his Sam & Max performance in higher quality whenever Skunkape can get that Season 3 remaster to you.

And speaking of Sam & Max voice actors, let me quickly work in this month-old tweet of a fan’s happy run-in with Bill Farmer, the original Sam and parenthetically the voice of Goofy.

Source: samandmax.co.uk

Twitch hostess extraordinaire Cressup is continuing to notch her belt with sensational long-form interviews. This time her subject is your lawful Guybrush and internet friend Dominic Armato, who so badly wants to share more about Return to Monkey Island than he's allowed to, but the sheer enthusiam he gives off is sales hype enough. Watch and be delighted.

Source: Cressup

This is a rather momentous year, and was shaping up to be that way before we came down with an aggravated case of Return to Monkey Island. That announcement would have been enough to dine out on through December 31st, but you might recall that we were already celebrating the 25th anniversary of The Curse of Monkey Island*, the third and in some respects most influential Monkey Island game.

And while we can’t speak for how you were celebrating it, we were doing it the Mojo way: By kidnapping Jonathan Ackley and Larry Ahern, trapping them in a giant bottle, foisting 600 questions on them to answer in longhand, and occasionally reminding them that air holes are for closers. The end result is right here for your discerning entertainment. If Lucasfilm doesn’t see fit to give this game a remaster, you know who not to blame.

*Not to mention Mixnmojo itself, as the fan scene and CMI are very much joined at the hip in that babymaking heyday of early internet access that was the mid-to-late-90s.

Bill Tiller has decided to acknowledge the aforementioned availability of A Vampyre Story on Zoom-Platform with some cool art. Hey, whatever pretext he needs. Check it out:

Source: AVS Facebook Page

If you’ve been following Aaron’s DREAMM page or forum thread, you may have been keeping up with the various beta builds of DREAMM he’s been regularly unleashing to your testing efforts. Well, he’s now reached the milestone of the final beta release, which means it’s the last call for you to submit issues before Version 1.0 is minted.

So do your part: download the current version, dust off your Hebrew version of Loom, and report your findings. Put this thing through its paces for mankind’s benefit.

Source: DREAMM Page

As of late last month, it was noticed that A Vampyre Story had been abruptly de-listed from seemingly all of the digital storefronts it was hosted on, including GOG and Steam. Eventually, the mystery was solved:

So what is the effective consequence of this? Seemingly, not much. While I’m unfamiliar with ZOOM (even though it’s apparently been around since 2014), it seems to sell its games as DRM-free downloads, so the exclusivity to that platform thankfully doesn’t do much to limit the accessibility of A Vampyre Story. Plus, the purchase comes with a bunch of cool extras, although I honestly don’t remember if that was also the case with GOG/Steam.

But is there anything to be read into the fact that ZOOM wanted to be the game’s sole vendor in the first place, which might have cost as much as fifteen dollars? Does its love for Mona extend to coming up with the end money for the sequel? I’d better slow down; there’s probably nothing to see here.

But Mojo’s on it anyway.

Source: Zoom Platform

When community mainstay and poster restoration maven Laserschwert isn't scouring the globe for ever-better sources to feed his scanner, he's trying to sell you on the potential of AI upscaling technology.

You might have caught his case for training such tools on the barely-in-need-of-remastering CMI, a taste of the future which was enough to challenge an orthodoxy or two. Further beliefs may be shaken in the wake of his latest proof of concept, which tackles Sam & Max Hit the Road:

More examples can be found in the forum thread (at the above link) he made elaborating on this experiment.

While I personally am frightened, triggered and dehumanized by the very concept of imitation brush strokes and machine-learned artwork (not to mention the horseless carriages that the kids are into these days), I have to admit I'd have preferred these results over what the Day of the Tentacle remaster achieved (and which in turn I found way more desirable than the no doubt well-meaning efforts of the Monkey Island special editions), and it's not a bad punt on an approach to such a project if the reason Disney is holding back is on the basis that it shouldn't exceed the cost of a 12oz. soda.

So betray your values, knuckle under in the presence of The Algorithm and behold what dispassionate 1s and 0s can accomplish when put to work on the true issues of the day.

Source: The Forums

Marius Winter - Flash animation extraordinaire, celebrated intern of Telltale and Double Fine, co-conspirator of livestreams with Jake, reaction video artisan, reluctant imbiber of root beer, and unanimously elected* mascot for all of Monkey Island fandom - was not about to allow basic human needs like eating and sleeping apply any kinda deacceleration on his ever-escalating contributions to your happiness.

In fact, after coming down with an aggravated case of being awesome, he's putting the final touches on his greatest achievement yet: a Flash film version of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. Stare directly into the burning bush by checking out this sneak peek ahead of Monday's premiere:

*Not that it was gonna stop Germany were it otherwise.

Source: MajusArts