The International House of Mojo

We have awful news to share today as audio veteran Jory Prum has passed away. Since 1999, Jory has been credited on innumerable titles published by LucasArts, Telltale, and Double Fine in a broad scope of sound design, recording, and engineering capacities.

Those of you who follow Jory's colleagues on Twitter may know that he was involved in a bad motorcycle accident last month from which he sadly did not recover. You can read the statement from his parents as well as heartfelt remembrances from some of his colleagues - including Julian Kwasneski - here. It appears to be one of many articles published in tribute of Jory today.

While we may not have known him personally, any reader of this site will be familiar with games to which Jory Prum made a vital contribution. It's hard to imagine titles where sound design could be less trivial than the sort he worked on while wearing any number of hats. The reason we celebrate the best of these games as timeless is because good stories endure, and Jory's work - far from merely a technical supplement - serviced those stories. Our condolences to his friends and family.

Source: Designing Sound

Double Fine is coming to PAX East in Boston this weekend. They'll be at booth #6123 showing off Day of the Tentacle Remastered and Headlander. They'll also have three Double Fine Presents titles, Gnog, Gang Beasts, and Everything. A new title will be shown at the show as well.

They'll also be selling merchandise at the show, including the Raz and Two Headed Baby Pinny Arcade pins, and a new special edition game bundle box. The bundle contains 10 games, with 10 game cards drawn Jon Magram and Melissa King. The game cards can be seen below (click to see them in a larger size).

I'll also be volunteering at the Double Fine booth at PAX East this weekend, so if you're at the show, come by and say hello. :)

BennyBoy's great software suite now includes support for Day of the Tentacle Remastered through his DoubleFine Explorer app. Yes, that was quick!

Go explore DOTT Remastered to your heart's content:
http://quickandeasysoftware.net/software/doublefine-explorer

Thank you, BennyBoy!

Source: Q&E Software

Well, tie me down and call me Betty—our Day of the Tentacle Remastered review was published in a timely manner, much thanks to Zaarin who buckled down and took one for the team. Yes, we’ve reached the point where playing a game ”on the clock” is considered something of a chore, which means we’re old and grumpy.

Anyway!

Not surprisingly Zaarin gives the game some love, and… Just read the damn thing. We bled to get this thing out on time.

For those waiting for Day of the Tentacle Remastered to show up on Steam, it can now be pre-ordered there as well.

Like GOG.com's Day of the Tentacle store page, Steam only lists Windows as a supported platform. Mac and Linux versions are coming, but they won't be available at launch.

The folks behind Kotaku's Split Screen podcast paid a visit to Double Fine's studio to gab with Tim about the remaster of Day of the Tentacle (reminder: March 22nd!) and various other things Double Fine. A text excerpt is available, if you're ridiculous. If you're not, go listen to the hour-long conversation.

Toward the end Tim gets asked a question many of us had, which is whether Double Fine has plans to pursue additional remasters after Full Throttle. His take is that the other LEC adventures should only get restored by their respective project leaders. But since Double Fine has established the all-important relationship with Disney, I'm thinking any Moriarty or Fox or Clark or Stemmle or Ackley or Ahern who might be interested may want to start by reaching out to the two-headed baby. Won't you, guys? For Mojo?

Source: Kotaku

You can now pre-order Day of the Tentacle Remastered for Windows from GOG.com at the pre-order price of 10% off its regular rate of $15. It's also going to be released for Mac and Linux, but this isn't yet reflected in the GOG game info.

It's scheduled to be released on March 22, 2016. It will be released for PlayStation 4 and Vita as well.

USgamer has published a big heaving cover story on Day of the Tentacle ahead of the game's special edition, due for release sometime this month. The article is essentially a giant interview with Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman about the production of the original game as well as the effort of restoring the old assets:

Sensing correctly that we can never have enough DOTT retrospectives, USgamer supplemented that article with another sizable one about the game's artwork with Peter Chan and Larry Ahern, and a third about the music with Peter McConnell. I bow to everyone involved.

Source: USgamer

The Day of the Devs lounge is coming. This event, an incarnation of the Day of the Devs event that is held jointly by Double Fine and iam8bit, is being held this year at the Game Developer's Conference.

There will be a Day of the Devs lounge that, according to the GDC event schedule, will be held every day of the convention (from Monday March 14 to Friday March 18) from 10AM to 5PM PST.

There will be 12 games shown off at this year's Day of the Devs:

• Below by Capy Games
• David OReilly Game 2 by David OReilly
• Headlander from Double Fine Productions
• Day of the Tentacle Remastered by Double Fine Productions
• SUPERHYPERCUBE by Kokoromi
• Return of the Obra Dinn by Lucas Pope
• Dreams by Media Molecule
• Bound from Plastic
• Hob by Runic Games
• ARENA GODS by Supertype
• Manifold Garden by William Chyr
• Severed by DrinkBox Studios
• Line Wobbler by Robin Baumgarten
• Rez Infinite by Monstars + Resonair

So, if you're heading to the GDC, make sure to stop by the Day of the Devs lounge to play Day of the Tentacle Remastered and Headlander for yourself, and give the other games a try while you're at it.

And it is Zak McClendon*, former Design Director at 2K Marin and Harmonix who's probably best known for his work on BioShock 2.

Will he successfully design a more challenging level than the Meat Circus, or will he utterly fail at his duties? Oh, let's not stress him out just yet. He deserves to enjoy the moment.

*Unfunny Zak McKracken pun removed at the discretion of the Mojo Quality Assessment Bureau.

They just can't get enough! This time out, Gamasutra chatted with Tim about Double Fine's continued success with raising money, as demonstrated recently by the (partially) crowdfunded Psychonauts 2: Benny Fideleo's Revenge. Read it because that's just a good habit.

Source: Gamasutra

If you're a smart little catfish you've probably been watching Double Fine's "Devs Play" on Youtube for some time now. While terrific, the series is not usually germane enough for us to highlight here on the incredibly crowded front page, but I really must acknowledge the latest episode, in which Tim asks Michel Ancel questions about Beyond Good & Evil while Double Fine producer Greg Rice plays said seminal masterpiece:

Tim Schafer as good at teasing out some great anecdotes from Ancel including that the famously polite Miyamoto was kind of a dick in his assessment of the game at E3, and how one of the game's hovercraft was modeled after the limo in Full Throttle. There's also a good story about a naked Italian man. Better than mine, anyhow.

For his part, Schafer draws a spiritual connection between the game and the Psychonauts franchise. And fails to coax out a release date for Beyond Good & Evil 2.

The good folks at Electric Playground paid a visit to Double Fine and played a whole bunch of Day of the Tentacle: Remastered while Tim talked about it. Oh, and it's on video:

Source: Electric Playground

This spring for the PS4, even! Will it be based on the oft decried PS2 or the celebrated every-other-version? Who knows! But it is coming either way. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Source: PS4 blog

Tim Schafer will be on hand to answer all your questions about Psychonauts 1 & 2, the campaign, and (Justin Bailey from Fig) will be around to answer questions about Fig itself and how it works -- RIGHT NOW!

Go here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/40i8ej/iama_tim_schafer_creator_of_psychonauts_ask_me

Like the Basic Braining punching mini-game, the Psychonauts 2 Crowdfunding goal of 3.3 million dollars has been well hit. There's still 4 days left in the campaign, so there's still time to back if you haven't yet had the chance, or if you've been waiting it to hit the goal before pledging.

Okay, so you hardly needed Mojo do learn this bit of bad news, now a week old, but we should acknowledge the passing of heavy metal icon "Lemmy" Kilmister.

Other sites have done better than we ever could at attempting to put Lemmy's larger metal career in perspective, but we'll always remember him for his performance as the bass-playing Kill Master from Double Fine's Brütal Legend.

I mean, all of you -- all three of you -- had expected this: the Mojo Psychonauts 2 Pledge Goals!

As usual, we are pimping out Jason, and this time he graciously agreed to perform Coach's intro speech in Psychonauts in French! OK, he didn't agree to this, and I only assume he knows French because he's in Louisiana, but either way… Thanks Jason! All we ask, is that you make this a $3.5 million pledge, and Jason will do his thing, as he always does.

For now, we have galleries and videos from the original game for you to enjoy, many which you probably haven't watched before. More importantly, though, support Jason in his quest to get this done!

The Psychonauts 2 Fig Crowd Funding Campaign has just crossed the three million dollar mark. There's only $300,000 left to go until it reaches it's target.

If you've missed it, Double Fine has been releasing some cool stuff during this campaign. Earlier, they released an awesome two part retrospective on Psychonauts called The Color of the Sky in Your World, as well as previously unseen concept art from the original Psychonauts.

They've also been releasing season two of their Devs Play series, where developers play classic video games, usually with guests that helped create them. This season, since they've been produced to help promote the Psychonauts 2 campaign, they've been focusing on the games that influenced Psychonauts, and those that will influence the sequel.

You can go straight to the Devs Play Season Two playlist here, or view this season's episodes individually: Spiro the Dragon with Ted Price, Ratchet and Clank with Ted Price, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time with Patrice Désilets and Assassin's Creed II with Patrice Désilets.

If you missed season one, be sure to check it out as well. The first season plays around with the format more than the second, with episodes some episodes focused on speed running and emulation, but even those are worth watching. There's some really interesting tidbits in each of these episodes.

That's about what I was able to extract from this VRFocus article. As you may have already forgotten due to the avalanche of great news that's been going down the last few weeks, we're in fact looking at two upcoming Psychonauts games, and one of them will be out next year as an exclusive for the PlayStation VR, whatever that is.

The main nugget of info here is that the game will be first person, which will, and I quote, "bring unique twists to several powers, including using the character’s clairvoyance to see through the eyes of other people as well as also utilising telekinesis to move objects and pyrokinesis to burn them." Sounds like good clean fun for those of you who will be buying this PS4 accessory!

Source: VRFocus