The International House of Mojo

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

Skunkape’s exulted remaster of Sam & Max Save the World has long been available from all your favorite digital storefronts, and there were the Limited Run Games collectors editions for those who demanded it expensive and in their hands. You might have thought that accommodated every possible consumer, but that would have overlooked the people who required to see it on Best Buy shelves:

I’ll admit, it hurts that they’d go with a pull-quote from Nintendo Life when Mojo’s contemporary rave, “Is it okay to say that I prefer Bone?” was there for the taking, but everyone sees a different statue in the marble, I guess. Literally go out and buy!

Source: Best Buy

You’ll sometimes see people bellyache about how the post-Ron Monkey Island games got the personalities of certain characters wrong. Elaine was never that lovey-dovey, they’ll say. “There was never any precedent in LeChuck’s psychological profile to suggest that he would favor slaw so much, by Jove!” We’ve all heard that at some point. “Wasn’t Wally a lot hornier in his original depiction, what with the love bomb and all?” Ten times a day, I think I get that one.

Of course, it’s all the raving delusions of the hoodwinked, because the fact is that ruining characters isn’t the province of subsequent teams – the practice goes all the way back to Monkey Island 2, at the hands of the original writers. The victim: Stan. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Prepare your innocence for departure and read our new indictment, which like all formal charges are brought with the aid of EGA screenshots. Be warned: we don’t pull punches.

One of the advantages of being Noah Falstein is that he gets to be a beta tester for Return to Monkey Island, and you do not. To further parade this privilege, the battle-tested veteran participated in a new interview with Twitch streamer Cressup (the selfsame host who brought you that rather terrific conversation with Mike Stemmle for EMI's 30th anniversary).

So okay, Noah's depicted motives might partially be projection on my part, but you would be right to presume that the talk touches on the subject of ReMI, and he drops some intriguing hints about the thematic depths Ron set out to plumb with the game.

You should check out the full interview, which is wide-ranging, but forumite "neocolor8", who knows how you operate, has got the time-stamped URL for the ReMI part.

Source: Twitch

If you read our interview with Aaron Giles back in March, you’ll remember that we touched a bit on the dilemma of faithfulness with running the old SCUMM games on modern systems, leading Aaron to drop this juicy nugget:

So what exactly is DREAMM, and what purpose does it serve in a world where both ScummVM and DOSBox exist? Well, you get to find out for yourself seeing as the software is now in public beta, but this snippet from Aaron’s FAQ sums it up pretty nicely:

The “limitation” of DREAMM is that it is Windows-only and relies on you having the original .exes (which, inexcusably, are often missing from the official releases on Steam/GOG, since ScummVM acts as a replacement), so you’re going to have to dig out your old floppies and CDs. But for any DOS-based version of the SCUMM games (plus, in a heroic exception to complete the catalog, the natively Windows The Curse of Monkey Island), there is no better or more convenient way to play them with faithful exactness, making DREAMM a wonderful new tool to add to the True Fan™’s arsenal.

Source: Aaron Giles

Ron seems to be having fun zapping out teases for that little adventure game he's knocking together. And why not? For example:

While the true sickos inferred this back in April and so won't be surprised by the confirmation, Hammon's casting is a noteworthy departure from Return to Monkey Island's trend of reprising the voice actors from The Curse of Monkey Island and the Special Editions. Stan's been performed by three voice actors to date: Patrick Pinney was tapped for CMI and later the SEs, while Pat Fraley played Stan in EMI. Gavin Hammon voiced the character in TMI.

While I personally think all of Stan's voice actors have been good, I always found Pinney's delivery a bit lethargic for a character so pushy and animated, while Fraley may have been a slight overcorrection by going full-on Jim Carrey. Hammon felt like a nice balance to me at the time, so I'm happy to see him continue the part.

But that's just like, my opinion, man. So let's stick to facts. Statistics. Hard data. Like:

If Ron's on the level with that figure, it's pretty astounding. For reference, genuine epics like CMI, Grim Fandango and Psychonauts capped out in the upper thousands, while EMI was portrayed as being fairly bananas for hitting 10,000 voiced lines. This isn't a contest or anything, but ReMI is winning. Maybe Ron is juking the numbers by having these guys actually sing 1000 Bottles of Beer on the Wall?

Boy, those pirates must have been happy to get that phone call from their agents. Naturally, all this stuff is being discussed to a fare-thee-well in our world famous ReMI forum thread. And if you really need more reason than that to participate, it may interest you to know that the thread has been graced by the presence of none other than the voice of Guybrush and man of the people Dominic Armato. Or "Dmnkly," as he's known on the street. Enjoy his company before he comes to his senses.

The appendix of the Freelance Police folio threatened that it would be a “living document” to be updated if new material ever came to light. Though successful in nabbing most of the key team members for interviews that would inform the article, I was unable at the time to make contact with Steven Chen – a regrettable omission, as he was Lead Designer on the game.

You may be familiar with Chen from his work on Indiana Jones and Infernal Machine; his Indy bona fides were later leveraged on Staff of Kings (the cancelled, good version). In the middle there, he also had a dalliance with Double Fine where, as one of the original employees, he worked on Psychonauts for the first two of its sixty years in production.

Well, now you’re about to be more familiar: Mojo bumped into Chen by chance at a monster truck rally the other day, and, after being plied with enough candy and cheese popcorn, he agreed to dredge up his memories of working on two of the most promising games LucasArts put on the docket in its post-2000 era. Both of which were of course killed, because, you know, LucasArts. Consequently, there’s a new inclusion in the Freelance Police interview compendium here, while the article itself has been quietly nourished with the designer’s insights.

Now then, who’s left?

Special thanks to retired Mojo staffer telarium for helping us get in touch with Chen. And of course, extra special thanks to Steven himself for taking time out for us.