The International House of Mojo

It’s been a surprisingly vibrant year for Monkey Island fan games, but we can’t forget our history, so it’s nice timing that a complete playthrough of The Fate of Monkey Island has been uploaded to YouTube.

Too young to remember The Fate of Monkey Island? Built in 1999 (Footnote: Jesus Christ) by “Scurvyliver” using the then-ubiquitous Klik & Play game-making tool, it was considered the criterion example of fan games, mostly based on the following unique features:

• It got finished

One-a dem dere “sidequels,” the game takes place during the events of Monkey Island 2 and helps fill in some backstory for Curse by depicting what the monkeys had to go through when LeChuck went into the amusement park business. Yes, the game sees you playing not as Guybrush, but as a monkey named Squinky. (Spielberg would approve.)

The success of the game led Survyliver to embark on a more ambitious sequel, complete with a SCUMM-like interface, but progress was halted when LucasArts cried copyright infringement. Obviously, it wasn’t the best look for the studio, but it’s impressive that they could take some time out of not bug-testing Star Wars: Jedi Power Battles to fire off the cease-and-desist. The scandal even reached the awareness of print media:

While you can still download Fate (and for that matter, the abandoned sequel) and hope your modern operating system can fathom its charms, the following video may satisfy the requirements of those who wish to know their history without necessarily getting it stuck on their shoes.

Source: YouTube

You, and definitely not us, probably need to catch up on the two Tech Talk interviews since the session with Larry the O. First up is James ‘Purple’ Hamilton, playtester extraordinaire from LucasArts’ olden days:

Then there’s Elaine Marley herself, Alexandra Boyd, whose long-form chat with Cressup only awakened her appetite for streamed interviews rather than bedded it down.

We should also point out that Daniel’s past interviews with Mike Levine and Aric Wilmunder, which uncovered a number of new anecdotes about Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix, have done much to inspire a new article about the cancelled game by the folks at Time Extension.

Staying faithful to the theme of occasions gone unmarked, how about Steve Purcell busting out some hugely justifiable re-runs in honor of Thanksgiving, and now the yuletide season?

And The Devil’s Playhouse keeps on rolling, this time with some updates to Benzo’s Quick & Easy software. Specifically, Telltale Explorer, Music Extractor and Speech Extractor.

Putting on his patented Mojo Cynic hat, the post caps off with, “This is a slightly bittersweet update as Devil’s Playhouse will probably be the last game ever released using the old Telltale engine.” I mean, OK, that is probably true, but one can always hope that more is on the horizon.

That risen phoenix of Monkey Island fan sites, The Legend of Monkey Island, continues to walk the walk by resurrecting the long-offline web comic adaptation of The Secret of Monkey Island by artist Paco Vink. Like a number of masterpieces, it stands unfinished, but that only compounds its mystique.

Legendofmi.com’s coup was accomplished by brokering a deal with Dalixam, the webmaster of the defunct World of MI fan site (the comic’s original custodian), a brutal negotiation that sources say took an army of attorneys eighteen months to hammer out. But in the end, the unwholesome favors were exchanged, the blood debts were paid, and the copyrights transferred. Better still, the comic is being offered in higher resolution than was the case in its first-run presentation, so you really need to check it out with some urgency.

When it comes to the (apparent) arms race of hosting legacy fan content of premium caliber, The SCUMM Bar is hardly going to allow itself to fall behind. That’s why it’s now the licensed home of Marius Winter’s celebrated Monkey Island flash videos. These include the one man band's adaptations of the first two games along with his breakout “I Wonder What Happens in… Tales of Monkey Island” speculation videos, a tightly scheduled bit of inspiration that Telltale itself wisely made part of the series’ official hype machine throughout its episodic release back in 2009-2010.

As they say, healthy competition benefits the consumer. As for unhealthy competition, like the sort we’re witnessing? Well, I think the sky’s the limit.

Source: The Legend of Monkey Island

If you’ve been one of those who’ve wondered why Quick and Easy’s “EMI Background Viewer” hasn’t worked with the PS2 version of Escape from Monkey Island, wonder no more. And celebrate that it once again works:

Now give Benzo your forgiveness, and run and download the software. Run, I said!

It’s been a long runway, but it seems The SCUMM Bar, founded in 1996, is finally starting to hit its stride. If it’s escaped your notice that it’s been seriously upping its Trivia game for the past month or so, well, it’s probably a good thing we were here to point it out.

Heck, even ReMI trivia as oven-fresh as this divulgence from Dave Grossman only yesterday has been accordingly filed into the site’s downright show-offy new Trivia Viewer infrastructure. Clearly, our motivational criticism has been heeded. We do what we can. As for you, now could be the time to flatten out the creases of your Phatt Island library card (Footnote: Yes, I know that reference would make more sense for a site called The Bloody Lip Bar. Calm down. We're doing the best we can here.) and patronize The Bar as a regular once more and always.

Source: The SCUMM Bar

Being a Zak McKracken aficionado, you already know that Annie Fox is the namesake of Zak’s principal ally in The National Video Game of Germany, and you may also know that she and David Fox are the forces behind Electric Eggplant.

But if you really want to go deep into Fox’s career as an educator, game designer, and New Media maven – which is inclusive of contributions to the Putt-Putt series for Humongous Entertainment, you’re not going to want to settle for less than her new interview with Daniel Albu. That promo for the Marin Computer Center at 3:47 alone may have more historical value than the Magna Carta.

Much as I tried, I couldn’t find a good pun for “Bajakian,” so my apologies for the vanilla headline. But he does chat, Clint! For four-and-a-half hours.

Interesting as I’m sure it is, I haven’t started it yet because… four-and-a-half hours. One handsome man’s unsolicited opinion is that something like this is better suited for podcasts, a medium designed for chunk-sized on-the-move consumption. I’m sure listeners gladly would chip in on Patreon, too, just for the convenience.

But, if YouTube is what we got, then that’s what we’ll try to watch.

And speaking of Patreon…

Did you know that Michael Land composed The Secret of Monkey Island theme in fifteen minutes? Or that LeChuck’s theme was conceived at a urinal? These are just some of the crazy facts you’ll learn in the latest entry of the “Conversation” series:

Almost three hours long, so buckle down!

So, you’ve already downloaded DREAMM to play all those classic LEC games—that’s just the connoisseur you are. But, instead of going through Zak for the umpteenth time, you want to see something different. Something weirder. You want more.

Enter our collection of LucasArts demos.

During the nineties, there were a bunch of chunk-sized samples to try, ranging from the bizarre to pre-release bugfests. And we have collected them all (Footnote: -ish) for you to load into DREAMM. (Or, as it is, features editor elTee has—his Christmas bonus looks pretty sweet this year.)

Jedi Knight and Yoda Stories? They’re right there. That weird standalone Secret of Monkey Island? We got you covered. Outlaws? Grim Fandango in French? All there.

There were, of course, a million different demo bundles through the years, but seventy-one different picks should be enough to get you started. We even provided a handy little filter for a smoother search.

Run download to your heart’s content, if only to summon your inner elTee!

(Oh, we added demos for non-PC platforms, too. Give ’em a try in ScummVM, too!)

Do you remember the day Grim Fandango hit the shops? I more or less do—Wikipedia claims it’s October 30th, though many-to-most believe it’s actually November 2nd—and so I feel old. Twenty-five years? I mean, good grief…

Us barrelling toward the retirement home aside, Grim is, of course, one of the all-time greats, and what better way to celebrate than having the Grim Fandango Network spring back from slumber. Thrik has given the site a spiffy overhaul, and the former .net has been switched out with a fashionably trendy .network. This is just the beginning, and we can look forward to regularly updated sections in the coming weeks and months.

Want more? The fan site has become active on the socials with a shiny Bluesky profile as well as a not-so-active home on Mastodon. Thrik isn’t kidding around.

Happy birthday Grim Fandango and welcome back Grim Fandango Network!

For their 400th episode, popular podcast The Retro Hour have a two-part interview with Aric Wilmunder. Aric always has plenty of interesting stories so this will be well worth a listen.

Our only fear with posting interviews like this is that Mojo CEO Thrik will demand that we jump back on the podcast bandwagon. Look out for our 15 part retrospective on Star Wars: Pit Droids soon.

Source: The Retro Hour

Just because we slow down doesn’t mean the rest of the world does the same.

First, as you’re well aware, we’re quickly approaching ReMI’s first anniversary. And during the last few weeks, Terrible Toybox has gotten quite busy on the sosh. Today, for example, over on their Facebook page, Rex has tossed out a piece of concept art alongside a short anecdote. (It’s also over on Xitter, so pick your poison.) Keep an eye out for more.

Speaking of the sosh: We’re on Bluesky! Expect the same quality content you find on Mastodon. Our handle is mixnmojo.bsky.social—rolls right off the tongue.

Finally, elTee has started doing god’s/the CEO ’s work, gathering information for all of LEC’s international releases. It’s... a project. Learn more here.

And that’s all!

If you missed out on the last few episodes of Conversations with Curtis (as we have), it’s time to catch up. And what better place to start than with this Kyle Balda interview? Balda is mostly famous for being the intern behind the DOTT credit screen (our CEO’s favorite game ) and also directed small indie features like Minions.

What else have you potentially missed? Hal Barwood; Mark Ferrari; Ronzo himself. Maybe even more! So go check it all out.

If you frequent our forums—and why wouldn’t you?!—you will have seen this thread from bot-meister JP LeBreton. Entitled “a comprehensive collection of all LucasArts background art (1987-2000),” his current project is... Well, let the man describe it himself:

Read the whole thread for more, or, if you’re more of the passive type, go check out the bot that posts the backgrounds to Mastodon: LucasArts Places. While we can’t confirm elTee broke down in tears after seeing this EGA scene, odds seem good that it happened.

Looking for more passive entertainment? We post a daily screenshot both to Mastodon and M. And even ol' SCUMM Bar has gotten in on the fun: Follow @scummbar for a daily Monkey Island scene. (“More to come,” we have been told.)

Over to Marius:

Some of you may remember Jake and Marius’ stream of the two original Monkey Islands—we documented the first one right here Now, they’re doing it again, albeit with SeMI.

That’s tomorrow (Saturday), 11am PT/8pm CEST. Be there—the cool kids are sure to be.

Mojo’s German bureau chief, Marius, has just finished an impromptu Twitch playthrough of the first part of The Secret of Monkey Island. Dubbed A walk through monochrome Mêlée Island on the Atari ST you can stream it here:

Of note is his platform of choice: An OG Atari ST with monochrome graphics and three channels of bleeps. Presumably, it’s not something many have witnessed, so now is your chance.

Update! Marius has YouTube-d up a highlight reel and gave us a controversial statement: The Secret of Monkey Island is really good.

Last year we brought some attention to the work of one @ScrungusCrungus, who has apparently devoted their time on Earth to reverse-engineering the Psychonauts source code, and more broadly to the discovery and collation of every fragment of esoterica related to the classic game. Certainly, Mixnmojo should be the very last to judge such an obsession.

The ongoing quest has included the search-and-seizure of rare pre-release media, which means the disreputable archives of certain fan sites and communities active in Double Fine’s earliest days are being plumbed, to the justifiable horror of us all. Mixnmojo, the Idle Thumb forums, and Thrik’s dedicated yet sadly unmaintained (Footnote: Not to get political, but I find this delinquency fairly reprehensible in light of the fact that CEOs are currently posting record profits.) fan site Razputin.net (which today redirects you to an Archive.org snapshot) are but a few of the resources that have fallen into the crosshairs of this Robert Caro-esque level of research:

ScrungusCrungus even politely noticed that The Grim Fandango Network (another milestone from Thrik’s executive training days) underwent a rather yawn-inducing theme change, leading to a bonding moment that international relations could stand to benefit from looking to as inspiration.

You can find some of ScrungusCrungus’ most notable findings collected on this blog dedicated to the purpose, but you’ll want to work up some loyalty toward the Twitter account if you want the minute-by-minute updates. And let’s not kid each other: you do.

The fearless correspondents at Pixel Refresh decided the time had come at last to puncture the veil of the sordid, rock’n roll world of LucasArts poster restorations by chatting it up with Jan Hofmeister (the unlikely handle of your friend Laserschwert), who requires no introduction here. Put aside an hour you don’t have and listen to what goes into his masterpieces of masterpiece-conservation:

Next up is the ongoing “Conversation with Curtis” series hosted by Daniel Albu, who previously brought you interviews with such luminaries as Brad Taylor and Aaron Giles. This time his subject is ScummVM’s project leader Eugene Sandulenko (again, you better know him by the name on his birth certificate: sev), and they dive deep into the twenty-year history and ever-expanding future of a project that some of us would still call miraculous. You can even hear the official ScummVM perspective on DREAMM if you scrub over to 1:16:28.

Incidentally, Remi decided to climb off the tanning bed long enough to do something useful, and the forum now has a catch-all thread for these increasingly frequent hour-plus long interviews.