The International House of Mojo

Remember how the SCUMM Bar was updated? Jason did, and angrily deemed the movie section to have skipped over the perceived Pirates of the Caribbean/Monkey Island connection.

And you know what, he might have been right.

Therefore the editorial staff of the SCUMM Bar accepted his long, vaguely scary manifesto; edited it into their own views; drizzled some facts and rumors on top; and came to a conclusion that will leave you in shock and awe. (It probably won't leave you in shock or awe.)

With the many crazy rumors surrounding these two movies out there, we did at least try to keep our views balanced and let sanity prevail. Read it and see if you agree.

Well I've got one for ya: The SCUMM Bar has been updated. What a world we live in.

Following a quiet and thankful revert to their old design back in February, they have now made some sizable content updates. This mainly includes a much more corpulent Tales section, a more comprehensive collection of known info about the cancelled animated film, and a revamped MP3 section that now covers Tales.

I don't mind telling you, I needed those MP3s. Go visit The SCUMM Bar! Your children may be the age you are now before its next update, after all.

If you don't frequent the Telltale forums -- and heavens, we can understand why you don't -- you have missed out on an actual interesting post titled "Monkey Island photography". In it, a deranged passionate fan has put together diorama replicas of various Monkey Island screenshots and... All snark aside, these photos are pretty damn impressive.

Run over and check them out. Fan-art sure has taken the right turn from what it used to be like.

Double Fine's Massive Chalice has already jumped over its $725k goal, and is on its way to do very well indeed. Not Broken Age well, but let's face it... Times have changed as far as Kickstarting games go.

Proof in the pudding is Tiller's Year One Kickstarter limping toward $20k, or 10% of its goal. We all think you owe it to Jason to make this game happen -- did you see his video?! -- and come on... It's an adventure game from Bill Tiller. It will if nothing else look gorgeous, and his introduction video is pure class. Run and Kickstart if you haven't already done so.

And finally we have Telltale teasing six seconds (and another six seconds) of what looks like it might be The Walking Dead Not Season 2 But Something To Keep Your Attention. Hey, it should be good, whatever it is.

bgbennyboy, owner of Quick & Easy Software and creator of several explorers and the famous USB ejector, has released a new program called DoubleFine Explorer. As the name suggests, you can use it to explore the innards of various post-Psychonauts Double Fine games and extract titbits you may find useful.

Source: Quick & Easy Software

Valkian has finally finished the second issue of The Thrillville Quarterly! I'll let him describe the new issue himself:

Now go read!

Source: The Thrillville Quarterly

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:

ResidualVM are about to reach a major milestone, their first Beta release, and they need your assistance in testing it.

All you need to do is download the latest pre-release build (not daily build) of ResidualVM for your system from here, and play Grim Fandango.

The devs will appreciate any information about major bugs you encounter here!

Source: ResidualVM.org

Have you still not sent all your Christmas cards because you're looking for that perfect Monkey Island one? Look no more! Redbeard1973 over on the Monkey Island forums has redone Jake's old Monkey Island Christmas card in a higher resolution. Have a look.

To grab the high-res version, right-click the thumb and click "Save linked content" or your browser equivalent.

As noted by Benny on the forums, some enterprising fellow has adapted the recent Psychonauts Steam update into a patch for all other PC versions of the games (meaning retail and digital versions from non-Steam vendors) so that we too may enjoy the enhancements.

Download the patch, which may or may not blow up your computer, here.

Source: GOG Forums

Reader and understandably fervent Maniac Mansion fan BionicBoots has alerted me to a music video he made where he adds lyrics to Dave's theme music from the NES version of the game (the only version where there was music for the kids). I think his effort was commendable and certainly no less misguided than the "Raiders March With Lyrics" Youtube video we pimped some time back, so here it is. Oh, and believing that two is more than one, BionicBoots went ahead and made a "rock remix" version of his own music video; you'll find both achievements below.

The popular hosted site Quick & Easy has had a facelift. Benny's page hosts several popular tools he's writen, including the Telltale Explorer, a replacement Grim Fandango installer, the USB Disk Ejector, and many more. Tools like the Telltale Music Extractor are updated often to support Telltale's latest games so make sure you stop by from time to time to check out the latest updates.

Whenever a new Pirates of the Caribbean movie comes out, it's customary for the community to share what they see as blatant plagiarism of the Monkey Island games on the part of the writers. While such observations almost assuredly amount to coincidence, there's no doubt that even the most casual Monkey Island fans can point to some downright uncanny "reminders" of favorite moments from Guybrush's exploits in this mega-grossing Disney franchise.

Well, last weekend's On Stranger Tides was surely no exception, and I've given everyone a head start on the ongoing compilation of Totally Not Ridiculous MI Connections in this forum thread. Come play along, and of course, spoilers ahoy!

Top hosted site Nightlight Productions have released part three of their internet radio-serial Beneath Monkey Island.

This week, Governor Phatt oversees the trial of the Zombie Pirate LeChuck! You can catch up on to all the previous parts here.

In other fan audio news, Bad Asp!'s parodic retelling of Telltale's Sam & Max series reached Episode Five earlier in the month.

Nightlight Productions, creator of professional sounding Monkey Island, Star Wars and Grim Fandango-inspired radio plays, have released the first part of a hilarious new series based on Sam & Max.

In this episode Sam & Max get a new case, and Max eats a table leg.

The series has apparently gained "the blessing of Steve Purcell," which presumably means he has chanted Latin hymns and sprinkled holy water over the web-site.

Discuss this in the forums.

Last week top hosted site Nightlight Productions released another installment of their Monkey Island radio play, "in which Guybrush Threepwood finds himself with a case he can’t win, and Carl (the Swordmaster of Jambalaya Island) gets a cryptic message from a mysterious person." You can listen to the latest episode, and catch up on the rest of the series, here.

More episodes will be coming soon -- and in an e-mail we were teased that "next month's Nightlight offering will involve a dog and rabbit..."

If you haven't been to Overclocked Remix, you really should. All good-to-excellent fan remixes of videogame music. They've just completed a new project, OCR Vs Bad Dudes, and it's utterly superb. One remixer does the themes for a hero in a videogame series, another does the villain.

Why does that interest us, other than being frickin' awesome? Well, Monkey Island is one of the games remixed. Guybrush can be downloaded here and LeChuck can be got at here.

I won't spoil either, as they are both utterly excellent. You'll have a fangasm once you realize what they're singing behind the Monkey Island theme in Guybrush's mix. LeChuck's mix isn't quite as adventurous at first, then goes very cool fast. Check them out all out here.

Source: Overclocked Remix

It's been a long time since we've had any Indiana Jones news at all, let alone Indy gaming news! Fortunately that ends right now, as fans once again show that if the people in charge don't care, just bloody do it yourself!

First off is Screen 7 and Indiana Jones and the Fountain of Youth, who are promising an exciting year - hopefully culminating in a release! Their new year surprise is a revised demo, featuring an updated game engine and a small Easter Egg. Let's just say it involves a mysterious ring and someone who might know about it! They're also promising a new mini-adventure, entitled Indiana Jones and the Valley of the Kings. Let's hope for great things, since the demo is arguably more impressive than even Fate of Atlantis!

The second fan project is Binary Legends with Indiana Jones and the Seven Cities of Gold, who have just released their first demo.

We wish both projects luck, and we can only hope that LucasArts are inspired by their efforts that they stop f***ing around and give us some Indiana Jones news from them too. If not, I think these two are enough to get excited about for now!

I’ve written a lot of complaints about certain games we like not turning up on PC. With Double Fine recently saying “it’s not our fault”, DeathSpank parts 1 and 2 coming out and my own constant moaning becoming a running joke here at Mojo, I thought it was time I set the record straight about my opinion.

I think Double Fine’s games have to be on PC. Read on for my justification, and why it’s probably not going to happen just yet.

Read more...

You love Steve Purcell, you love Sam & Max, so what's not to love about a Sam & Max blog from Steve Purcell?

There's not a whole lot to see there yet, but we can only assume that will change soon.

Go read!