The International House of Mojo

Hola!

The polls are open again! Our first question is the classic Which is the best Monkey Island game?, so go ahead and vote for your favourite!

In the media section, you will find that Files has been opened. So far there are some fan games and demos in there, but more will be added in the days to come. Thanks very much to Giocherellone from the forums for his help in archiving the fan game collection (and more is on the way!)

For people daring to brave the User Prefs page, there is now a new option available: Time zone. You can set the time of the site to your local time to see exactly when all those news posts and comments were posted when you were asleep last night.

Update: Cookie problems related to "Remember me" failing to load your preferences has now been fixed.

If you've attempted to recover a lost password using the "Password?" button, you may not have received an e-mail. The cause of this has now been fixed so if you're still waiting, fill out the lost password form again to get a new password.

Now, back to our regular programme.

If you just had subscribed to our podcast in iTunes you would already know that we have a new episode out.

In it, Jason and The Tingler speculate about future games, and The Tingler answers the phone. Don't tell me you don't want to listen to that!

Go download the file if you're too hip to use iTunes.

As the more observant of you may have noticed, Mojo was down for a bit today. This was to let us update and change our database.

The media button has now been activated and so far you can check out our archive of over 5000 images of everything from Ballblaster Ballblazer screenshots to Brütal Legend cover art!

The ribbon at the top has also had a face-lift. The social network icons can now be found to the far right and you can choose to be remembered for a week when you log in. No need to keep typing in your password for every time you open the site!

Look for more sections of Media to be opened as the days grow darker/lighter this fall/spring!

Resident expert on the female anatomy, our own SyntheticGerbil, could not help but discern that Captain Jane Starling's depiction on the US cover of Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island seemed somehow less eye-catching than it did on the European packaging.

Compare the swashbuckling rogue how she appears on the left side of this image to how she appears in this'un. Thank goodness there is someone out there with the courage to keep that smut out of our children's graphic adventure games. Infamous satyr Bill Tiller was unavailable for comment as of press time.

Source: Lucasforums

You may recall that at the beginning of the summer, hosted site The Pumpkin Post, the best gosh-durn Autumn Moon blog this side of the Mississippi, made an offer you couldn't refuse without being declared: "an idiot." In exchange for cooking up a new Wordpress design for the site, you could win, well, what it says here:

The August 31st deadline is getting inexorably closer with each passing moment, so quit picking your nose and get your head in the game. If you need a refresher, the full list of rules can be found here.

Source: The Pumpkin Post

This feature has totally been moved here.

RemiO and Jason resurrect the Mojo podcast with this E3 special where they discuss things happening since the last podcast and of course E3.

Clicky!

Episode two of Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse will be out later today is out and wouldn’t you know it, we’ve actually got a review of it written, almost as if publishing reviews for a game in conjunction with its actual release date is becoming some sort of new habit that we can’t manage to shake. Given that the Mojo engineers have still got a few switches to throw and circuits to rewire before we can go back to posting features proper, you’ll find our full review entombed in this very news post below the cut.

Keep Reading

As you're reading this, work is being done behind the scenes to make your Mojo experience even more... Mojo!

So far, latest forum posts have made a triumphant comeback and can now be found in the delectable orange box to the right. If you're logged in, you can also edit your own comments so if you call someone an idiot for liking a TV show you're not fond of, you can now remove it to avoid looking like a complete tool.

Who knows, we may even get a poll or two going before we're all dead of old age!

Faithful readers of this site with longer attention spans than those who run it probably recall that we recently ran a contest to provide an alternate cover or marketing spiel for On Stranger Tides, the prize for which was a copy of the book, and the deadline for which was March 31st.

Well, what with the launch of MojoX as well as any number of lame excuses I'd be happy to make up, we neglected to post the results of the contest. That omission ends today. The lucky winner was Krasimir Savov, who came up with this cover for his entry. Congratulations, Krasimir, and we hope you enjoy the book! (Given the international shipping I opted for, please allow 6-18 months for delivery.)

Honorable mentions include (in no order): this cover by Fealiks, this cover by JezzaTheLagomorph, this cover by Valkian, these "system requirements" by Euan Mumford, and this marketing write-up by Icebox.

Thanks to everyone who entered! We were amused.

If you visit our forums you will see that they have been given a slight lift to bring them into a similar style as the rest of the site. Thanks to Thrik for copying the changes over and making sure that it all worked properly.

We may as well mention our Youtube Channel as well. It's only a small, dear thing, but it has a few nuggets not found anywhere else (including this jem by Huz), and it will have to do until our media section is launched. Some of the videos there are courtesy of JBRAA from Mojo Art.

Well, now that we're back and capable of at least updating the news again, I suppose we'd better put our Easter candy aside and get back to work.

The main news story that occurred during our downtime was the surprise announcement that the first episode of Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse, The Penal Zone, is now available for the Apple iPad! No lie! Apparently, Telltale suddenly found themselves with the opportunity to be among the device's initial apps and couldn't pass it up. Good on 'em for expanding to yet another platform, a platform which by all accounts is a good fit for what Telltale does. The episode is available for $9.99 from the Apple store, in case you haven't figured that out. The PC/Mac and PS3 premiere remains April 15th.

In related Telltale news, a new interview with Dan Connors about his studio's unexpected iPad launch has stirred up a bit of forum chatter, mainly on the basis of the following quote:



Sounds like a good way for Telltale to try out some crazier game ideas; at least if they fail, players will have known about the possibility upfront rather than getting another Bone scenario. Your thoughts?

Update: Dan Connors vs. Randy Breen!

Source: Telltale Games

Aha! Is this thing on? Hello? Can you hear me?

Excellent. As you can see, we’re back! Mojo 9 fell apart, and died a rather spectacular death... but the spirit of the site continued on, and reformed itself into something new. It’s a little more basic for now, but we hope you’ll agree that we have the potential to be bigger and better than ever before.

The re-forging of the site is thanks to many people who offered assistance in our forums and our IRC channel, but it is mainly due to two people: Queztone and Zaarin.

Queztone gave us the design. We had a few simple requirements for this task: it should be modern yet retro, sexy yet celibate, light but dark, and big, like a planet, but at the same time as small as an atom. And maybe it should be a bit purple as well.

Initially we embarked on a long and treacherous journey into the past to round up the best designers and artists in history. We got Pablo Picasso to create a new logo and Christopher Wren to do the layout. Unfortunately, the design was rubbish, and couldn’t be used.

Luckily, once we returned to the present, we met Queztone, and tricked him into helping us out. The result lies before you. We hope you like it as much as we do, and we thank Queztone very much for all his hard work.

Zaarin has supplied us with the code. For this we also had a simple requirement: it should be so strongly built that it could withstand a nuclear attack. Not only has Zaarin done this, giving us a new, hugely stable coded site, but he has also added many clever extra features, and opened up new possibilities for the future. He has, furthermore, worked tirelessly on the project, even when other people had given up on it.

I should also say at this point that the code of the previous site was also excellently constructed (by the legendary DJG, and others), and Mojo X would not exist without everything that had come before it.

We will, of course, add the features and games database back as soon as we can – and a new section, media. There will be a period of regrowth whilst these sections are formed again, but in the mean time there is news, and the forums, and the excellent community that is what makes this site what it is.

Speaking of which, if you signed up on our previous site, you are signed up with this site as well: you will be able to just log in. If you have not had an account before, register now, and receive a free gift in the form of an avatar.

You can read more about the development of this version of the site on our forums.