The International House of Mojo

We're not quite through selflessly promoting "Video Game History Hour" - that would be the podcast of the Video Game History Foundation - which just last week delivered another Mojo-baiting episode by having Noah Falstein as their guest.

Noah's always a great listen, and this is no exception. He also at one point mentions having a "thick stack of design docs" still in his possession, which can only be interpreted as fishing for a bribe. Anyway, treat yourself to recollections from one of the industry's most storied careers, and thank me later.

Source: Video Game History Hour

The Nintendo version of Maniac Mansion is an odd duck in the best possible way, sporting loads of charm and a number of unique features. Part of its popularity is that it’s the version that many played first, but there’s more going on here, or SEGA CD The Secret of Monkey Island would be held up as some sacred cow (No offense, Dom).

A major distinction of the Nintendo version is its soundtrack. Typical of its time, the original PC version of Maniac Mansion was a relatively silent affair, with its audio consisting of little more than a title theme and the odd ambient sound effect. Wall-to-wall music wasn’t really a thing for the SCUMM games until Monkey Island 2, but it was very much the norm for Nintendo games.

So when the Maniac Mansion console port had just about wrapped up its development, the publisher, Jaleco, was wondering aloud where all the music was. Eleventh hour marching orders for a full-bodied soundtrack came down, and project lead David Warhol, something of a game composer himself, brought on three local musicians to split what ended up being a workload of twelve tracks.

To provide an in-game justification for all this music, the seven playable teenagers were given a CD player as a default inventory item, each loaded up with a genre pastiche representing his/her favorite fictional band. Serving not only the requirement for a fuller soundscape but also functioning as a kind of character-building conceit, the end result is surely one of the most varied of all 8-bit soundtracks, and who better to speak about it than the composers themselves? This is where I stop typing and link you to the article.

I admit that this is almost as much a non-story as Ron’s tired schtick, but if you’re into this Prime Gaming thing you should be aware that Monkey Island 2: Lechuck’s Revenge: Special: E:d:i:t:o:n::: is included on the service as part of this month’s arrivals.

No word yet on when Gametap will have it.

We're a bit late on this news by some standards. Relative to our Sam & Max VR review, however, we're right on time.

If you're not familiar with Jimmy Maher of The Digital Antiquarian, you probably ought to be. His ambitious goal to chronicle the history of computer entertainment for eleven years running has produced some pretty terrific essays thus far, including many devoted to the antics of ol' George Lucas's interactive division, I forget the name. You can find those Mojo-relevant articles, by the way, rounded up here for your convenience.

His most recent of the LucasArts-centric articles was a probe of The Dig last summer. The Dig is decidedly not the most beloved of the SCUMM games, but it's perhaps the most rewarding to write about, as the neverending turmoil behind its eighty-five year production cycle makes for deathless, compelling, smutty drama. It's like our Bridgerton or something.

Although Maher's article was exceedingly well-researched (look no further than his citation of Mojo as a source to be confident of that), there's just no bottom when plumbing The Dig's calamities, so he teamed up with Frank Cifaldi of The Video Game History Foundation (someone else you ought to know by now) to produce a podcast companion piece. So get some history delivered into your ears.

And one of you get to work on recording the defense argument so we can report on that nine months later too.

Source: Video Game History Hour

Remember the turn of the century, when getting the SCUMM games to run properly on Windows was a herculean task? The arrival of ScummVM delivered us to conditional salvation, but many reasonably pondered why LucasArts couldn’t provide an official solution by updating the native interpreters themselves.

Well, they did. Or at least, programmer Aaron Giles did, on the studio’s behalf. The problem is that among these sparkly, XP-compatible exe’s, only a few saw the light of day -- gradually, and without much fanfare.

After quietly throwing two of them onto a Europe-exclusive compilation pack in 2002, LucasArts presumably became too busy cancelling Sam & Max sequels to continue with such re-releases despite being armed with ready-to-go updates that had been handed to them on a silver platter. A few more of Aaron’s updated SCUMM launchers made their way to Steam in 2009, which came across as LucasArts burning off the remnants of a long since suspended initiative presumably codenamed What If We Didn’t Suck.

These days, the SCUMM games are sold on digital storefronts bundled with ScummVM, and the native interpreters, original or updated, don’t get reliably circulated with the data files, which puts a heckuva lot of pressure on your rotting floppies to preserve them. We decided to reach out to Aaron Giles to get his opinions on that dilemma and gain insight on what it’s like to be on the receiving end of the surrealistic insult that is updating a studio’s library only for said studio to indifferently put that work in a drawer.

And let’s be honest: it got the dignity of the drawer only because the dumpster was already filled with Ben Throttle standees.

Our thanks to Aaron Giles for his generosity with his time.

A few years back I penned a dubiously-formatted article that pondered the art style of Maniac Mansion, its sequel and its promotional materials under the fraudulent pretext that I had insight to lend to the exercise of comparing them.

Along the way I made a point of highlighting the cover of Nintendo Power Issue #16, which advertised the game’s NES port in the form of a clay diorama depicting the mansion and some of the characters built very much not to scale. It’s a super-rad piece of work that I was always taken by, and I was bummed that we couldn’t track down the artist for their recollections.

But the web has a way of turning things up, and it appears that last year Comic Art Fans published a little stub about the diorama. It is revealed, unsurprisingly, to have been destroyed after being used for the magazine, but the artist apparently had it in their yard for a while, and some photographs survive which really show off the craft that went into the commission. You can check out the photos at the link. I’ve also thrown them in a gallery because after all, theft is the sincerest form of stealing things.

Source: Comic Art Fans

Max, the adorable anthropomorphic rabbity thing you may remember being featured in a comic once in 1987 has been stuffed with fluff and is available for you to purchase, specifically if you have been unable to acquire one in the last year or so as they come in and out of stock.

What was new to me this time around with them coming back in stock is perhaps a new comic done by Steve Purcell, whom you might remember being the screenplay writer for Pixar's Brave.

I love that they were able to pick on the scarcity of the Max plushie they've encountered. I hope no one has to ever give in to the high prices being asked for on eBay.

Source: Uncute

The long-awaited Monkey Island anthology boxed set from Limited Run Games began shipping this month, and fans who have been receiving the apparently gargantuan package have been sharing their reactions to finally having in their hands the irresponsible purchase they made twelve months ago. Some of those reactions have been enthusiastic, some have been heartbreaking, and almost all of them can be found in this forum thread.

Rather than try to recap that ongoing discussion which reveals many more details, I thought I’d at least front page what’s been learned about the actual game builds included. Limited Run’s original product listing mentioned (and in fact still does) that “archived versions” of the first two games would be included, with specifics to be determined.

Well, now that people have begun exploring the USB stick included with the package, we have a clearer idea of what that actually means. It seems that there are a few versions of Monkey 1 and Monkey 2 offered in the form of disk images and KryoFlux streams (for the uninitiated, see here), which is pretty exciting, as it represents the first time those games have been officially available with their original .exe files since the internet age.

So, what versions of the five Monkey Island games wound up on that flash drive in the end? The breakdown appears to be as follows:

• MI1: Amiga version diskette images and flux streams; IBM EGA version diskette images and flux streams (5.25"), IBM VGA floppy version diskette images and flux streams (3.5"); special edition.
• MI2: Amiga version diskette images and flux streams; IBM version diskette images and flux streams (3.5"); Macintosh version diskette images and flux streams; special edition.
• CMI: The installer seems to be the same as the GOG version, which means the resource files are bundled with ScummVM, and the original .exe is not included.
• EMI: The installer seems to be the same as the GOG version, which as far as I know translates to a faithful, as-is copy of version 1.1.
• TMI: Includes the Earl Boen'd version of Episode 1, which is I believe the only variable that would have applied to this game. We were wrong, its the original non-Boen version.

Beyond obscure/translated versions of the games which probably would have been too much to ask for, the main absences appear to be the CD version of Monkey 1 (though that’s essentially included in the Special Edition as “classic mode”) and CMI’s original interpreter, the latter being a huge, and hugely addressable, bummer from a preservation perspective despite the fact that it’s notoriously helpless on modern Windows. Really pleased about EGA Monkey 1*, though, and if you’re gonna get one version of VGA Monkey 1, surely it’s just that it be the one with the stump joke.

Among the physical extras, the book was the biggest unknown and also sounds like the biggest highlight. At over 200 pages, it’s said to contain a lot of terrific content (including new interviews) especially for the first two games. It’s a shame to think of it as being exclusive to a mega-priced collector’s box that won’t be re-issued and is destined in many cases to sit shrink-wrapped in temperature-controlled cabinets, so here’s hoping Limited Run finds a way to make those pages available on their own some day for the enjoyment of fans who aren’t pulling in Jazz Age incomes.

Special thanks: Jan.

*Don't worry though, we can Glass Is Half Empty that one too: zaarin points out that it's lacking the Roland MT-32 upgrade disk.

It happened for Save the World last year, and the joined forces of Skunkape and Bay Area Sound weren’t about to drop the ball on the even more ambitious soundtrack for the second season. What I'm saying is the re-release is available now from Bandcamp and Steam for a ludicrous ten bucks. (The old release is still up as well, so don’t be getting confused.)

As you know well from playing the remaster fifty times already, it includes eight all-new music tracks, extending an already gigantic score. It looks like the album cover got some rethought lettering as well (old versus new), though the comparison mostly just serves as a reminder of how awesome Purcell’s artwork is. One wonders: Since The Devil’s Playhouse never received a proper album back in 2010 and Skunkape seem to possess the kind of taste that would make addressing that an imperative, might we see the trilogy completed at last? I guess we’ll find out in a year or so. For now, exercise the privilege of owning Jared Emerson-Johnson’s staggering opus for Beyond Time and Space.

Like all major movie franchises, Indiana Jones inevitably appeared in pinball form courtesy of manufacturer Williams in 1993.

But suppose your local bowling alley didn’t have this particular table in its arcade room, and you were left deprived of its trilogy-spanning 12 modes? That’s where Zen Studios comes in. Using their simulator Pinball FX3 which is available from all the usual storefronts and is apparently known for this sort of thing, they’ll be offering a digital recreation of Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure March 2022.

Nintendo Enthusiast has the full details.

Source: Nintendo Enthusiast

Since only those with a higher education in LucasArts adventure history read this site, you already know “SCUMMlette” as the term of affection for the junior programmers being trained in the SCUMM engine. There were two waves of these cadets between 1989-1990. In the first class you had your basic Tim Schafer, Dave Grossman, Jenny Sward, and Ron Baldwin, while the second batch consisted of Mike Stemmle, Tony Hsieh, Sean Clark, Tami Borowick, and Wallace Poulter. (Sources: Mike Stemmle)

Some of those names will be more familiar to you than others, but they all played integral roles in games you rank in importance above your own loved ones. In the case of Tami Borowick, those contributions are now far less shrouded thanks to an excellent new interview published by the highly scholarly and inescapably Italian Lucasdelirium.

As you’ll learn, Borowick’s primary LucasArts project was Monkey Island 2, after which she became one of the developers who followed Ron across the desert to Humongous Entertainment where she co-created the Freddi Fish series. The full interview is a real barn burner, with lots of great war stories from a most romanticized period at LucasArts, including how Borowick implemented the pants-falling gag in the Woodtick cemetery, and how Ron accidentally obliterated her laborious dialog tree for Rum Rogers. There’s even a photograph of an office whiteboard she shared with Dave and Tim in 1991. What more could you need?

Source: Lucasdelirium

You’ve gotten your Milk Duds and Diet Mr. PiBB and found your seat again, all just in time to catch the second half of Genesis Temple’s roadshow interview with Larry Ahern. Picking up where we last left off in August, the story continues with the post-CMI act of Ahern’s LucasArts career, a similarly frustrating stint at Microsoft, the noble casualty that was Insecticide, and an only recently ended stretch as a Disney Imagineer that sometimes reunited him with his old cohort Jonathan Ackley.

It’s an altogether great read, but I draw special attention to the fact that Ahern divulges new information about Vanishing Act and Attempt #1 at the Full Throttle sequel (which was never really called Full Throttle: Payback, a moniker which he indirectly chides Mojo for perpetuating), as well as some soon-to-be-stolen concept art for those games that I don’t believe have surfaced before. (Update: After review it turns out we did already have them. I should have known better; fortunes have been lost betting against Mojo.)

I guess it’s up to Dune: Part II to disappoint you, as the back half of the Larry Ahern interview delivers the goods.

Source: Genesis Temple

Yesterday brought a new video of the Skunkape crew playing twenty minutes or so of their latest Sam & Max remaster, commenting on some of the new stuff they've added:

One of the highlights is the much larger hole blown through the wall separating the Freelance Police's office and Flint Paper's, allowing the opening office scene to be cinematically shot through it. In fact, it's already the talk of the forum. But as a member of the "in" crowd you knew that already.

Source: IGN

Or your Limited Run Games pre-order, if you prefer to look at it that way. Check it out:

You can read a few more words about Ron's sorrowful passion here.

Loyal readers who dug into our Bay Area Sound interview from April will not have been shocked to notice in Skunkape's announcement this morning that Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space Remastered will be boasting eight new music tracks. That's up from the five additional cues the first season received.

You might be wondering if these bonus arrangements will be of similarly high production values replete with live instruments. Well, let this tease that Skunkape just uploaded to their Youtube channel put that question to bed:

While it's been confirmed by implication nine different times now, Skunkape has officially announced their expected remaster of Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space, aka the second season of Telltale's better-with-each-installment take on Purcell's property after LucasArts fatefully said, "Nah, give us Thrillville."

Knowing you, you're probably still coming off the high of thwarting Hugh Bliss's hypnosis conspiracy in painstakingly re-lit HD, but Skunkape doesn't see your recovery time as their problem. They're ready to start hyping you up for the next mission in Sam and Max's oeuvre, which you may recall involves improbable excursions to the North Pole, Easter Island, a zombie rave in Stuttgart, the malleable fourth dimension, and the middle management bowels of Hell itself. Behold what these once poly-starved destinations look like in all their newly uprezzed fury by checking out the trailer:

Don't forget to start saving up for some absurd physical editions from Limited Run Games that history has sculpted us to anticipate are sure to follow this launch, and of course you'll want to get loudly and pre-emptively outraged about whatever CENSORSHIP! is sure to be committed by those known vandals of art over at Skunkape -- the better to impress your friends on the Steam forums.

Whatever you've gotta do to prepare your body and soul, be quick about it: launch is December 8th.

Source: Skunkape

This fan is a defense attorney's dream witness -- he really sticks to his story:

What do you mean Mojo has no business making fun considering we are dining out on this to disguise our paucity of things to report on?

Source: Twitter

Mike Stemmle's Linkedin profile isn't just a resume, but a platform for expressing latent regret. Have a look at the LucasArts section and you'll see what I mean:

There, you see? He apologized. And that's more than you can say for whichever monster is responsible for that assemble-the-turtle-skeleton puzzle in The Dig. These people need to be held accountable.

On Tuesday, the passing of prolific voice actor Jack Angel was reported by multiple outlets. Among his many roles across film, television and video games, Angel contributed voice work to a number of LucasArts titles, including Star Wars: Dark Forces, Full Throttle, Outlaws, and most notably Grim Fandango, where he played the roles of Bruno Martinez, Seaman Naranja, and ol' Chepito, whose substandard sense of direction and undying love for the "Lil' Chipper" were legendary.

Happily, Angel's talent is eternalized via these classics. Now lift those knees, stay close to his light, and try to sing in key:

Source: Legacy

After bringing the world to its knees with his revitalization of the Monkey Island 2 cover, Laserschwert decided to direct his talents toward The Secret of Monkey Island. I forget which installment that is, but Lemon Head liked it all right so I’m guessing it’s one of the good ones.

Using a cross-section of rare sources of Purcell’s iconic art smuggled to him by Jake, who definitely didn’t murder any orphans to obtain them (so put that idea right out of your mind), Laserschwert was able to complete a smashing restoration that’ll have people making out with your wall. The amount of recovered detail isn’t exactly negligible, as the comparison images prove, and even more alternates are said to be on the way. You might as well cancel Christmas now because Santa just got preempted.

Source: Mojo forums