The International House of Mojo

Double Fine has stuffed the stocking with the following holiday greeting slash Psychonauts 2 update. It offers all kinds of nuggets about the sequel while revealing that development has hit an exciting milestone: the game will be undergoing content lock as the year draws to a close and is firmly entering the polish phase. We made it!

Want more? How about IGN’s lengthy new interview with Tim?

We were all sixteen years younger the last time a Psychonauts game was this close to shipping. This occasion is not only awesome, but rare, so enjoy it! And in case we don't see ya, Happy Holidays from all of here at House of Mojo!

Source: Youtube

The reaction to William Eaken's header art for that loopy Sam & Max 2 article was predictably positive, but it has been brought to our attention that Laserschwert poster enthusiasts at large would be even merrier if they could also get a "clean" version of the art without the title and dialog bubbles.

Well, despite conflicting reports about how well behaved you've been this year, we set our elves to the task, and they've emerged from the Photoshop mines with the goods. It's almost enough to make us feel like heels about paying them in Planet Threepwood coupons.

Risk taking Mojo down and simply click here to grab the image while Remi figures out how much cruelty will need to be inflicted on his stylesheets to add it as a second download link at the top of the feature. It's the best Festivus ever!

Thanks again to William Eaken for the brilliant art.

A lot has been written about Sam & Max: Freelance Police (2004) over the years. It would hardly seem to have gotten more relevant during that time, and many would reasonably argue that there isn’t much left to say on the subject.

We disagreed, and what’s more decided that we were the only ones qualified to prove our conviction that the history of Sam & Max 2 had not yet fully and satisfactorily been entered into public record. We accomplished this show of respect to a heady subject by - literally, according to some definitions - writing the book on it. Weep for our priorities and cozy up next to the fireplace with our indefensible digital tome, The Unabridged History of Sam & Max 2: A Mixnmojo Memoir.

The most unwieldy article Mixnmojo has ever published has been a long time coming. Hindsight tells us that the cancellation of Sam & Max 2 is the major event in The Mojo Histories™, and the theory was that the definitive account of the project’s life, death and legacy could only be written this far out and by the site that, for better or for worse, it had the most impact on.

This was a job too important to be left to the professionals, who would have left out the strikethrough humor and Dan Pettit references. Nevertheless, we did bamboozle William Eaken into crafting us professional-grade header art, and you’ll want to be downloading that (link inside) in its full-resolution glory because: my word. And in case you die of natural causes before reaching the appendix, I should point out here that all the new interviews we conducted for the article have been organized as a separate feature for convenience.

Yes, the fact that there is an appendix should raise some red flags. It took a minute to put this monstrosity together (At one point, this was meant to be a tenth anniversary article, then we punted to the fifteenth anniversary before giving up on a pretty number altogether), and at the outset no one could have predicted it would ultimately clock in at this biblical word count, but the important thing is that Mojo’s equivalent of The Aeneid is now here and available for your consumption. And unlike that hack Virgil, we finished what we started.

Now leave us alone, would you?

Many questions have surrounded the upcoming Monkey Island bundle from Limited Run, so we decided to put our Pulitzer Prize winning* journalist, elTee, on the case. In his interview with the company, you can among other things learn about the edition of Tales they have included:

Go read the whole thing right now, if you know what's good for you!

* Unconfirmed.

As someone whose experience playing Maniac Mansion on the NES (30th anniversary, incidentally!) was a formative one, that game means a lot to me. Consequently I’ve had a lot of inchoate and way-too-personal thoughts over the years about the game’s atmosphere, how promotional imagery managed to capture it, and how Day of the Tentacle opted to recast it. I also find myself struck by the attractively open-ended future this fairly unexamined series has, should anyone care to give it one.

Regrettably, I didn’t bother to actually pull those thoughts together before publishing them in an article, but hopefully the pretty pictures will distract from that. Don’t be a tuna-head; read it, and preferably not on a phone! MojoEx isn't up to it.

We reported on a Firewatch movie back in 2016, and now it seems things are gaining traction.

Snoot Entertainment and Campo Santo are joining forces this time around to produce a movie, nay, piece of cinema, centered around the 2.5-million-copies-sold game. Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman – no introductions needed – will receive production credits.

Meanwhile, the rest of Mojo staff is still doing Mojo, because we’re not sell-outs and not at all questioning certain life choices.

Way back in 2002, LucasArts.com, which was a site that once existed (ask your grandparents), underwent a revamp as the studio was celebrating its then 20th anniversary. In an effort that arguably represented the only substantial content the official site ever laid claim to, a 20th anniversary section was launched with all sorts of multimedia goodies. Aside from the immediately looted concept art gallery, most of that stuff has been lost to time, presuming you can't be motivated to board The Wayback Machine.

Among the offerings were three nice features -- one a four-part history of the studio, one a collection of employee memories, and one a series of profiles of five veteran developers: Jon Knoles, Sean Clark, Eric Johnston, Mike Stemmle, and Larry Holland. Thinking that these pieces deserved better than being lost to the ages, we went ahead and ported them to Mojo for posterity:

• LucasArts.com 20th Anniversary History Feature
• LucasArts.com 20th Anniversary Flashback Feature
• LucasArts.com 20th Anniversary Developer Profiles

As you might expect, not all media survived the Wayback Machine crawls, and LOL on trying to match the LucasArts.com layouts in MojoEx to any pleasant effect. But whatever, at least they're essentially intact, and can now be enjoyed for centuries to come. Or until Zaarin misses a payment next Tuesday.

What could possibly be better than watching Jake and Marius's [and Dom's] Twitch stream yesterday? How about reading us watching it?

It's the third installment in our Excerpts from the Slack series, and it's available here in a global launch for all browser platforms.

One of the more insane and popular features this site has ever published was the tenth anniversary article by Gabez in 2007 -- a particularly fruitful year for the mischievous staffer. When it ran originally, the celebration/exposé garnered over a hundred comments. Even DJG himsef got in on the act.

Six years later, Remi re-published the article, but his effort to import Gabez's abusive HTML into the far less tolerant MojoX was predictably compromised. Today, we've gotten it into more faithful shape, and thought that would be an excuse to milk Gabez's deranged opus a third time. It's still a mess, but what can you do? Read it.

It just isn't Lent without an anniversary of the cancellation of Sam & Max: Freelance Police.

Kind of weird to keep marking it every year like a bunch of creeps, I'll admit, but Mojo never was good at letting things go, and the event is, for better or for worse, an inextricable part of the site's history. And we'll be exploring that link in some depth soon.

I've recently let the cat out of the bag that we're at work on a big fat Sam & Max 2 feature. And when I say this article has got a calorie surplus, I'm talking President Taft, here. And we can't wait for you to see it, but unfortunately we need even more time to address a few...complexities...between now and publish time. And, to be frank, some of them were pretty darned avoidable. I don't why, for example, Remi insisted that the totality of the White Album be licensed for continuous streaming on each page of the article, but there's just no getting him to budge on his artistic principles. Your patience is appreciated.

In the meantime, make the most the occasion by reheating a Glazed MacGuffin or two and getting your pre-order of those deluxe figurines in. And have a thought for a graphic adventure that was guillotined amidst that bloody period of revolution in the Spring of 2004.

So here's the deal.  Mojo may or may not be gearing up to publish a massive feature to commemorate the fifteenth sixteenth fifteenth anniversary of the canceled Sam & Max: Freelance Police.

So massive, in fact, that we thought it deserved more than one header.  Perhaps, thought I, with unwonted optimism, there could even be a unique piece of art crowning each one of the feature's numerous pages?* That's where you come in.  We are inviting all artists, professional and amateur, to contribute artwork related to Sam & Max 2 for display in the article, which we are arrogantly approaching as the final word on the subject.  We ask that it somehow be related to the cancelled LucasArts sequel specifically.  What that means is for you to intepret.  Go nuts.

If you are interested in making such a contribution and achieving immortality, please email your work to webmonkey@mixnmojo.com.  And tell your artistically inclined friends, because statistically speaking, they are unlikely to be Mojo readers.

Get drawing!

*In the unlikely event that we get more original art than there are pages, we promise that any work we accept will be given a place of prominence somewhere in the article.

To spite Temple-shading elitists like Remi and Thunderpeel, I decided to follow in the footsteps of Shiva by consecrating the 35th anniversary of the second – and, according to the sexual endowed, best – Indiana Jones installment with a three-page valentine as feverishly out-of-control as its endlessly rewatchable recipient.

Read my truth, then respond with yours in the comments.

You might have seen this posted in the comments by the suspiciously named “custard,” but in case you haven’t, this Twitter thread by contracted In the Valley of Gods writer Duncan Fyfe is worth a read.

We do, of course, sympathize with Duncan -- we got woefully little left to write around these parts, although Jason is pushing hard for more Larry content. But hey, there’s always an opening for you at Mojo, Duncan. We pay in love and hugs.

When Valve swallowed up Campo Santo, Zaarin predicted Jake would jump on a Steam overhaul project. Turns out that was closer to correct than what we had expected.

In a statement accidentally sent to Polygon instead of us, Jake said:

And that's all we got.

Source: Not Jake

Days of arguing brought us to this: Which one is better, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull or Temple of Doom. I said the former, and to prove it, I sat through it, and live-Slacked it. Some would call that a huge mistake, and some might be right.

Read the result. Or don't. But do.

Some of you may have had little to no luck subscribing to the MojoCast through Apple Podcasts, after we unceremoniously were kicked out from the directory by who we can only assume was Tim Cook himself. After an arbitration period, we can now happily announce that Mojo Legal has managed to negotiate our way back in, and you can once again subscribe to our casts. And that's about it.

“Mojo does what Idle Thumbs don't.” -AlfredJ

Jason, Zaarin, and myself got together sometime last year and recorded a tearful, in-depth* good-bye to Telltale, in the third episode of People With Unrelated Accents, "Toldtale." We reminisc about everything from Texas Hold 'em to The Walking Dead and even some of the games released in the later years. Run and listen to the MP3, or subscribe for continuous fun:

• RSS
• iTunes
• Google Play
• Stitcher

* The podcast is neither tearful nor in-depth.

Disclaimer by Jason: Though I haven't listened to this, I should acknowledge that my side of the conversation was accidentally recorded through an internal laptop mic, hence the awful fidelity. Apologies, and it will not happen again, until it does.

Hey, it only took us, what? Half a year or so to release the second episode of our People With Unrelated Accents series. This time, join Jason, Remi, and Zaarin alongside podcast O.G., elTee, as we discuss Loom, without really knowing a whole lot about it. At all.

Is it any good? Who knows?! I haven't listened to it, but Zaarin had to spend months massaging it into a listenable state, so how bad could it really be? Check out the MP3 or FLAC file, or subscribe, like a good person would do:

• RSS
• iTunes
• Google Play
• Stitcher

Over the years, a number of Mojo’s articles have been casualties of various badly handled transitions (like the one you’re enjoying now), leaving them only partially accessible via frustrating trips to The Wayback Machine. This isn’t a handful of features we’re talking about here – well over fifty percent of Mojo’s celebrated, and now twenty year strong, body of work evaporated over time, including some of the site’s best material, like the entirety of its E3 2002 coverage (including Sarah’s infamously unsporting preview of Gladius), Cooking with Spaff, and a trove of valuable interviews.

(The years also spawned some content we’re less proud of, like that pompous Sam & Max: Season 1 uber-review that concluded with The Tingler collating a didactic list of dubiously reasoned flaws for Telltale to address (Posing the breathless question: “You want a perfect 5 review Telltale?”) that piqued Chuck Jordan; that description-defying Christmas 2008 Contest Results article that Gabez punished us with; also, everything I’ve ever written – but we’re not gonna go all George Lucas on our history by gouging out the less flattering parts. We can’t learn from Vietnam if we whitewash it.)

Despite valiant efforts undertaken by just about every staffer at some point, the restoration of Mojo's body of work has been one of the modern world's most intractable problems due to tons of lost media and irreproducible formatting. The process of dragging those old HTML features into the world of BBCode is a torturous one, particularly given the creative use of mark-up Gabez seemed intent on making the staple of his articles, leaving them about as easy to translate as coffee-stained Sanskrit ciphered into reverse Wingdings. Not to speak ill of the dead.

What we did in the end as an alternative to ritual suicide was preserve at least the text of all missing articles. Where we could, we went beyond that. The individual results of anguished, nonstop compromise range from borderline pointless (like an article exploring various versions of the Gold Guy logo that doesn’t actually contain images of the Gold Guy logo), to hard-won success stories made possible by the discovery of virus-laden FTP backups.

What you’ll discover quickly is that the work is still very much ongoing, but given that every article sitewide is knackered to various degrees right now thanks to formatting bugs MojoEx introduced, we figured there was little point in holding back what we have. Their actual condition aside, we do believe every article is accounted for, and do let us know otherwise. To the extent that they can be improved, it'll just have to happen on the same time table as everything else in this dump.

So what are you waiting for? Click around the Features section and reacquaint yourselves with old classics and embarrassments. If you’re anything like me, you’ll have forgotten that half this stuff was ever published. And who knows? Maybe that Mojo CD Jake supposedly has buried in his closet is more than an old legend, and we can get everything looking as it actually should. But don’t count on it.

OK, so that server update took a bit more than what we expected—what are a few weeks among friends?—but Zaarin got it back and running. More or less. If something doesn't work, well, then that's how it'll be for now.

And, hey, MojoEX has finally gone live, in all its Alpha glory. This first phase is known as "Works Kinda OK On Your Phone." Enjoy! Or don't. Mojo loves you all the same!