The International House of Mojo

Campo Santo proves that it's good for more than making absurdly promising games; it's also positioning itself as Mojo's replacement by recently siphoning Full Throttle reflections out of Tim Schafer. Those memories combined with perspectives from folks you might recognize make for an insightful retrospective on the game and its impact on Schafer's career thereafter.

Acknowledgement is also made of Tim's good fortune to see both of the game's unsanctioned sequels die on the vine, quelled threats that nonetheless motivated his departure:

Stop putting your lips on that and go read the whole thing, but don't enjoy it so much that you forget that we too used to generate decent content about these games. :(

Source: The Camp Santo Quarterly Revie

I always try to do a news post of Mojo related tidbits after our downtime. This one's going to be a long one. At least, with the new server, it'll likely be the last.

Christian Adam has found a solution to allow the people who have graphics hardware below the requirements of Grim Fandango Remastered to play the game in classic mode.

Double Fine is making games in conjunction with Adult Swim Games, as well as Zoink Games.

On the subject of Double Fine, Massive Chalice went out of early access and received it's full release, and Iron Brigade has had Game for Windows Live replaced with Steamworks, fixing matchmaking. The latter was possible thanks to the fact that Double Fine has regained the rights to Iron Brigade from Microsoft.

At E3, it was revealed that ex-Mojoer and former Telltale developer extraordinaire, Jake Rodkin's company Campo Santo will have the console debut of their first game Firewatch on PS4. It is also going to be released on PC, Mac, and Linux. No release date has been set, but Campo Santo is aiming for release by the end of 2015.

Telltale is making a three episode miniseries that will be DLC for The Walking Dead: Season Two called The Walking Dead: Michonne, set during the period of the comics when Michonne is absent from the group. They also finally showed a little bit of what their Minecraft: Story Mode will look like.

Lucasfilm is working on a fully interactive 3D virtual Star Wars world, via their ILM experience lab.

Humongous Entertainment games are starting to make their way to GOG.com. The Pajama Sam series made its way to the service earlier this month.

The co-creator of Maniac Mansion and Thimbleweed Park, Gary Winnick, had his best selling comic, Bad Dreams, released in trade paperback format on the 17th of June.

While we're on the subject of Thimbleweed Park, be sure to check out the Thimbleweed Park development blog, as lots of good inside information about the development process of that game is being posted regularly.

The GOG and Steam releases of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream included an enhanced version of the soundtrack.

With the help of ScummVM developers, two fans by the names of SirAlastor and Alpheon, went through the game and found all the music cues, and Alpheon posted instructions tto change the music from the included soundtrack to tracks that ScummVM would read, so the music could be played within the game itself. He also posted a video showing the enhanced music in action, compared to the music from the original game, which you can view embedded below or here if the embedding doesn't work for you. The difference is quite striking.

The still unique and haunting Loom was a welcome addition to yesterday's GOG.com LucasArts drop, but it poses a problem for purists: the version offered - the only version commercially available - is the VGA Talkie version.

This is a fine version of the game and no doubt for some definitive. For others, the original version, with its incredibly inventive EGA graphics by Mark Ferrari, complete script (the voiced version was re-written for disc space restraints) and gorgeous character close-ups is at least as worthy of preservation.

And the game's creator, Brian Moriarty, took to Twitter to count himself among them:

So buy Loom, then play the version of it you want.

Also, this is a good time to mention that the version of Zak McKracken that got released yesterday is the excellent FM-Towns version. No word yet from David Fox on whether he tacitly supports obtaining the older versions after purchase, but my nearest available authority, Remi, feels that "it's probably fine."

Source: Brian Moriarty's Twitter

The timing of this couldn't be better, seeing as his magum opus Zak McKracken is today available after what might literally be fifteen years out of circulation. Industry vet and adventure game icon David Fox was video interviewed for an hour and a half by "Sup Holmes?," which appears to be a weekly Youtube show by some Destructoid refugees that is by all accounts significantly better than its name.

Though the Skype-like video is a little unsettling in effect, I encourage you to power through the creepiness in order to get to that warm nougat center of insight and great stories from Fox, who covers his history at Lucasfilm Games all the way up to his current projects, which include Thimbleweed Park. I guarantee you will be ninety minutes older after watching it.

Source: Sup Holmes?

ResidualVM, the interpreter for playing Grim Fandango and Myst III on modern platforms, has been updated with a bug fix release. Version 0.2.1 fixes a crash when using subtitles in the Polish version of Myst III. In addition, a new port has been added. In addition to Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Amiga OS 4, ResidualVM is now available on SGI IRIX workstations.

ScummVM has just announced support for two new games in their daily builds, Zork Nemesis and Zork: Grand Inquisitor. In order to support these games in the next stable release, they need people to help them out by playing through them and reporting any bugs they find to their bug tracker so the ScummVM team can squash them. They also need people to submit screenshots for the games.

When you're done testing, don't forget to let the team know whether you could complete the game and post links to any bugs you submitted to their tracker in this post on the ScummVM forums.

Source: Kolzig

While we were down, ResidualVM, the project that aims to support 3D adventure games on a wide range of modern computer platforms, received its latest stable release.

This release brings Myst III: Exile support, fixes some bugs in Grim Fandango, and adds game data verification on first launch (so that you'll know if your game data was copied correctly from your CDs). There are builds available for Windows, Linux and OS X.

In the unstable builds of ResidualVM, Escape from Monkey Island is also completable with a few glitches. The ResidualVM team is going to continue to work to get that game supported in 2015.

The testing period for ResidualVM 0.2.0 is now here. They need people to test Myst III and Grim Fandango for the latest release. If you want to help, pick up or compile the latest daily build on the platform of your choice. Play through the game, without skipping dialog, and without updating ResidualVM during your entire play through.

If you find any bugs, submit them to the ResidualVM issue tracker. Then report whether you were able to complete the game and any bugs you might have found on their forums.

(Again, this will be a retread for the Twitter crowd, but allow us to return from downtime with an artificial splash. We need this.)

When the remaster of Grim Fandango was announced, the first thought that rushed to everyone's head was, "That's great, but what about sprucing up the most beloved installment of the Monkey Island series while you're at it?"

That's where our own bgbennyboy comes in. With some gentle nudging from yours truly, Benny has put out a new release of his excellent Escape from Monkey Island launcher. Here is the full list of features, the killer one being that the cutscenes now play at twice their original resolution, which I believe was accomplished by violating the PS2 version of the game, which always had the better quality cutscenes.

But Benny needs your help testing his noble work. So grab your EMI discs and enjoy the fruits of his labors, which were literally four years in the making. (No, seriously - go to the beginning of that thread.)

Source: The Forums

The latest daily builds of ResidualVM now officially support a game besides Grim Fandango, Myst III: Exile. In order for the game to be fully supported in the next stable release, they need your help to ind the last few rough edges by playing through the game in the latest daily build thoroughly and submitting any bugs that you find along the way to their issue tracker.

In other ResidualVM news, you might be wondering how ResidualVM's first Summer of Code went. Quite swimmingly, it seems, since Escape from Monkey Island is now completable with glitches in the latest daily builds. Unlike Myst III, this game isn't ready to be added to their supported list, but they are now accepting bug submissions for Escape from Monkey Island at their issue tracker if you want to give it a try.

This year's ScummVM Summer of Code went quite well too, as Sfinx is now completable in the latest daily builds (the English translation isn't yet up for public consumption though, so you'll have to use the Polish original to play). Galador: The Prince and the Coward is also completable, but you'll have to compile it from the sourcecode yourself if you want to try it at this point, since it hasn't yet been added to the main tree (and, likewise, the English translation isn't yet ready for public consumption).

Chapter Two of The Journey Down, the adventure game inspired by LucasArts classics such as Grim Fandango, is scheduled to release on August 25th. If you pre-order now, it's only $5.99 and you get The Journey Down Chapter One as well (the key is transferable if you already own Chapter One). Half of all pre-order revenue will go to help the Mavuno girl's school project. Find out more about the pre-order deal and see a couple of scenes from the upcoming chapter in the trailer embedded below:

The latest release of ScummVM, the interpreter that lets you play classic adventure games on modern (and not so modern) systems, is now available. This release adds support for 5 new games: The Neverhood, Mortville Manor, Voyeur, Return to Ringworld, and Chivalry is Not Dead.

In addition, the MT-32 emulator has been updated, an OpenGL backend has been added, many aspects of the GUI have been improved, the AGOS engine has been enhanced, Urban Runner's videos are now less CPU-demanding, tons of bugs have been fixed in dozens of SCI games, the Adlib sound in Loom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade has been made to sound more like the original, and platform portability for the Tony and Tinsel engines has been improved. The Steam versions of the four LucasArts adventures that were released on that platform are now supported as well.

You can pick up the latest version for your platform of choice at the ScummVM homepage.

The project lead on the LucasLabs Lucidy game David Nottingham has his own studio, Dynamighty, which he founded prior to the Disney takeover of the Lucas Empire. He also worked on the Monkey Island remake.
IGN has info on the foundation of the studio, which is made up of a good number of former LucasArts employees, and a guy from Pixar.

They have a game 'Counterspy' under development, and you can see an early trailer below.

One to keep an eye out for if you have a Sony gaming device (or a mobile device / tablet) in your household.

Source: IGN

ScummVM, the program that allows you to run many adventure games from many different developers, such as LucasArts, Sierra, Revolution, Coktel Vision, and more, on modern operating systems, phones, tablets, and consoles, is gearing up for their latest release. That means that they have made quite a few improvements, and added new games, and they need your help to test them to make sure they play as they should.

The new games that will be added in 1.7.0 are Chivalry Is Not Dead, Mortville Manor, Return to Ringworld, The Neverhood, and Voyeur. They have also changed their Adlib player for the DOS floppy versions of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Loom, so they need your help testing these games as well.

If you own any of these games and would like to help out, then fire up ScummVM on your platform of choice and test. Let them know how you made out on the ScummVM forums and if you find any bugs, submit them on the ScummVM bug tracker. The results of testing will be posted on the ScummVM wiki.

In related news, keep an eye on the ScummVM Planet. The Google Summer of Code is going on now, ScummVM is a part of it again, and this year their sister project ResidualVM is involved too (with ScummVM acting as an umbrella for both projects). GSoC students are adding support for Sfinx and The Prince and the Coward to ScummVM, as well as improving support for Escape from Monkey Island and improving the TinyGL renderer in ResidualVM. They've already accomplished a lot on these tasks, so it will be really interesting to see what they manage to get done by the end of the summer.

While we were down, things kept right on going. So, here's what we missed during our downtime:

The Wolf Among Us Episode 4 finished releasing on the already announced platforms (PC/Mac/PSN/XBLA/iOS) and The Walking Dead: Season Two Episode 3 finally received a release date for PS Vita: June 3rd in North America and June 4th in Europe. Also, Telltale announced a bunch of disc versions of their games: PS4 and Xbox One will be getting The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, and The Walking Dead: Season Two. There will also be disc versions of The Walking Dead: Season Two and The Wolf Among Us for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. No release dates yet have been announced.

And last but not least, Ron Gilbert's Match 3 puzzle game, Scurvy Scallywags, is now on Android, Tommo and Night Dive released 5 more Humongous Entertainment games on Steam, and bjbennyboy's Telltale Explorer now supports Poker Night 2, Law & Order: Legacies, and The Walking Dead: Season One.

Grim Mouse, the modification of Grim Fandango and ResidualVM that allows you to play through Grim Fandango with just a mouse, has been updated to 0.4. All of the bugs that kept it from being played through with just the mouse should now be fixed. I've played through all parts of Grim Fandango with Grim Mouse (albeit, in separate playthroughs), so Grim Fandango should be completeable with just a mouse now.

If you get a crash in year 3 when entering the engine room, you might have to compile Grim Mouse from source, as it is caused by a bug that was fixed in ResidualVM, but isn't in the new Grim Mouse build (although it is in its source tree). The author said he'd release a new version of Grim Mouse with the fix for this problem. It only seems to affect a small amount of people (which did include myself, so I can confirm it plays fine when compiling it yourself from source), so you can try playing through 0.4 now, since it's possible this bug won't affect your playthrough.

Polygon has an interview up with Cabel Sasser of Panic, Inc. He explains why they decided to finance Campo Santo's first game, and the extent of which the funding extends.

"Campo Santo would produce the game they'd pitched to Panic, and Panic would be there to finance the project, and offer support, creative input about things like UI design and, if necessary, even testing and ports."

It's quite an interesting read, and our first real glimpse into how the collaboration will work between the app giant and the new studio founded by Telltale veterans Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman, Star Wars poster designer Olly Moss, and Mark of the Ninja lead designer Nels Anderson.

Campo Santo is a new game studio formed by former Mojo staffer Jake Rodkin and his fellow Idle Thumbs founder and co-lead on Telltale's The Walking Dead and Puzzle Agent 2, Sean Vanaman. Their first game will be coming out for Windows, OS X, and Linux, and is funded by, and will be a collaboration with, Oregon-based Panic Inc.

We at Mojo would like to congratulate Jake and Sean on their new studio, and wish them the best of success. We'll keep you updated on the game as more news is released.

Source: Destructoid

Jukka Jylänki has ported ScummVM's SCUMM engine to HTML5 using enscripten.

Head over to the website and you can play demos of Maniac Mansion, Loom, The Secret of Monkey Island, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Day of the Tentacle, and Sam & Max Hit the Road directly in your browser!