The International House of Mojo

Hey, Jason called it years ago, and now Wired has caught on, too: videogames are serious art. Let’s just treat you to an excerpt from the article:

Want more? Read the whole article, or check out the book it is excerpted from, Bit by Bit: How Video Games Transformed Our World by Andrew Ervin.

I will question if Brütal Legend is Tim’s best game, but no-one asked me, anyway.

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Source: Wired

Adventure Gamers has a ten day old brand new interview with Tim for your enjoyment. It's primarily about Full Throttle Remastered, but it's pretty well-rounded. Tim even talks a bit about the old LEC vs. Sierra rivalries:

Read the full interview here, and prepare yourself for Full Throttle Remastered tomorrow!

Source: Adventure Gamers

The two fan picks are The Gods Must Be Hungry, led by Asif Siddiky, and Darwin's Dinner, led by Devin Kelly-Sneed.

The Double Fine team's pick was Kiln, led by Derek Brand. Tim Schafer's pick was I Have No Idea What I'm Doing, led by Zak McClendon. The latter title is a VR party game, so you'll need a VR headset to play it.

All three community games are going to be developed. The main game is Pongball, conceptualized by Kjell "lightsoda" Iwarson and led by Josh "Cheeseness" Bush. This one will get guidance by the Double Fine team. The other two are The Lost Dev Team, conceptualized by Anemone and led by Jennifer "Jenni" McMurray, and Amnesia Adventure, conceptualized by Ben "TimeGentlemen" Ward of Size Five Games, and led by Jennifer "Jenni" McMurray and Eivind "flesk" Nilsbakken.

Join in on the fun of developing the community prototypes by posting at the Double Fine forums.

Original story: Double Fine's Amnesia Fortnight has returned for a third go-around of pitches for public consumption.

There's a huge range of prototypes to choose from this year, so go take a look at the pitch videos and make your choice. If you buy the bundle at $5, you'll get prototypes from previous Amnesia Fortnights, and if you buy it at $15, you'll get previous Amnesia fortnight prototypes that have been made into full games!

The community developed Amnesia Fortnight also returns this year. This year, you can choose between three pitches, and then you can join in on the development or just watch it as it happens. You can see the video below (you might notice a familiar name on the pitch for the third prototype :P). Feel free to vote for whichever one you like most over at the Double Fine forum.

Some news requires no comment, other than: w00t.

Here's Tim humbly suggesting that you pre-order from GOG:

One last cool thing: apparently Tim had the original demo of the game (a PC Magazine exclusive) remastered as well because it featured unique dialog not heard in the shipped game, and Tim wanted all of Roy Conrad's lines preserved in high quality. Pretty rad.

Source: engadget

As with Day of the Tentacle Remastered and Grim Fandango Remastered, Double Fine had to go through the LucasArts archives to resurrect Full Throttle, and Tim talked about that effort with GamesIndustry.biz:

It's a comfort to know that Roy Conrad's line readings will liberated from that Turkish prison that is MONSTER.SOU.

Source: GamesIndustry.biz

Business Insider has an all-encompassing new interview with Tim up that you should read while ruing the time change.

Source: Business Insider

The data to play the first new Psychonauts adventure in more than a decade? February 21st.

Look forward to a Mojo review as soon as a) somebody gets a headset and b) they actually get around to writing something about the game.

Or hey, maybe a non-VR compatibility mode will be developed, so the rest of us can enjoy the game, too?

We're now a week into 2017, which means it's the perfect time for a new poll. We couldn't just put one up on the first day of the new year. That's just not The Mojo Way™.

There's a lot of goodness coming out this year, from just about every company that this site covers. So go to the poll on the right and let us know which one has you excited the most.

Let's just quote our friends at Birth. Movies. Death. on this one:

"If you've got a PlayStation 4, a PlayStation Plus account and you have exceptionally good taste in video games, you need to be aware that LucasArts' classic adventure game, Day Of The Tentacle, will be free to own during the month of January, starting on Tuesday."

Well, if BMD says so, though they accidentally forgot to mention it also was Mojo's Game of the Year in 2016.

Look down in the comments and you will see one Jake Rodkin trolling around, decrying Grim and poo-poo-ing the new Full Throttle trailer.

Oh, and if you own a 360, Mojo Game of the Year… what, 2013?… is free for Gold members. That's The Cave.

If I know you, you're going to want to give this a watch.

Source: Youtube

Yeah, I don't know what PSX is either, but Psychonauts: Rhombus of Ruin was apparently available to play there, and consequently a bunch of new previews popped up. Here's a list:

Boy, that sure seems like some kind of video game!

The screenshots compare classic mode to the remastered version. Head on over to IGN to see them.

Source: IGN

Let's get right to it.

Gonna be a treat to hear Roy Conrad's gravelly voice uncompressed after all these years.

Source: Youtube

It was almost a year ago that Full Throttle Remastered was announced, and since then we've known we could look forward to a developer commentary just as Day of the Tentacle had.

Well apparently that commentary was recorded this past week. Check out the photo Double Fine posted on Facebook:

Hopefully media from the game is soon to follow.

Source: Facebook

While Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp will not be a playable environment in Psychonauts 2, the team has recreated Raz's old stomping grounds in the new engine as a sort of sandbox for prototyping the sequel's gameplay and upgraded graphics. Check out the newly released video of Tim and project lead Zak McClendon playing this demo that we never shall.

Source: Youtube

"That's as good as money, sir. They're IOUs."

Back in May, it was reported that Psychonauts 2 had not actually yet collected the entirety of the $3.8 million it had raised in its massively successful Fig campaign.

This is because nearly half of that funding came in the form of investment money, a pledge option which Fig offers to backers as an alternative to the Kickstarter-like option of simply donating money in exchange for rewards. It's kind of Fig's whole premise. The problem is that allowing such investment, which can come from just about anybody, constitutes a bit of a legal thicket, and while it was being sorted out the significant money contributed by investment backers was actually just a reservation to pledge, meaning Double Fine didn't actually get the money.

Happily, it's all been sorted out on the legal end with Fig being granted SEC approval for non-accredited investors. Now Double Fine has to actually go and collect the money from those backers, who are hopefully just as eager to complete the transaction now as they were back in January.

In the meantime, production of the game itself seems to have been going smoothly. At least Remi did nothing to prevent that.

Source: Polygon

It appears that the Day of the Devs lounge that was at the GDC in March isn't the only Day of the Devs event that's being held this year. Double Fine's fourth annual Day of the Devs event is going to be available to the general public soon.

It is a day that is full of gaming fun, from Double Fine and other developers. Plus this year, they are accepting game submissions from the public. The game selection will be locked down in the next few weeks, so if you want to take part, head over to the website now and fill out the form linked at the bottom of the page.

The event takes place this November 5th at The Midway in San Francisco, and, as always, admission is free.

Jennifer visited PAX East and she wrote about it! Read about the whole thing here.

Mandatory second link.

Josh "Cheeseness" Bush, the man behind the recent port of Double Fine's Day of the Tentacle Remastered to Linux, has posted an excellent retrospective on his experience in porting the game. He has also shared the sourcecode of the Coming Soon app that was live on Steam before the Linux port was released.

Be sure to check it out, if you're a fan of Day of the Tentacle (who here isn't?), as it's quite an informative and interesting read.

Wow, nice. There's something perversely "Space Mountain pre-show in a straitjacket" about this, and I'm on board.

Source: Youtube