The International House of Mojo

Now we've got a brand spanking new Mojo, but not much new news to report, let's take a look backwards into some (possibly) forgotten history.
Back on February 8th, 2003, exactly 16 years ago to the day, Bill Tiller (famed lead artist on The Curse of Monkey Island), graciously attended a fan-hosted IRC chat (ask your grandparents), and for 30 minutes answered their questions. One question came out of a thread on TheScummBar's LucasForums, and it was this:
The "secret" of Monkey Island has come up in some forums recently. Can I just ask you - what was Ron Gilbert's Secret of Monkey Island? Do you know it? Was it all a kid's imagination or is that just a theory?

Bill Tiller went on to give probably the most explicit and straightforward answer regarding the "secret" of Monkey Island, and Monkey Island 2's contentious ending that has ever been given.

And it was this:

(Note: On this day 16 years ago... yesterday (unless you're in the US). I missed it by a few minutes!)

Source: #brimstone

Mark Ferrari, one of the most important LucasArts artists during the early SCUMM era, has relaunched his web site, and you have reason to be exited - I particularly want to draw your attention to the Image Archives section, where Mark is hosting rare samples from his older work. JP has already been fomenting an irresponsible tizzy on Twitter (but not here, for some reason ¬) by suggesting that some of the screens may belong to an unreleased Star Wars adventure game.

So check out Mark's new site, which he promises is merely a work-in-progress. And unlike Mojo, it may actually graduate from that status at some point.

Source: Mark Ferrari

This had been acknowledged on Twitter during the downtime, but I figured the passing of British actor W. Morgan Sheppard merited front page mourning. The Mojo faithful will recognize him as the voice of Guybrush Threepwood's loyal if reckless navigator Ignatius Cheese, who is additionally revealed to be the owner of The SCUMM Bar*, in Escape from Monkey Island. He was also that one guy from The Prestige, among about a thousand other roles. Sheppard was 86.

*In fact, I considered titling this "Owner of The SCUMM Bar dies", but that seemed in poor taste given that people might have interpreted that as being Remi, and why get people's hopes up?

Source: Deadline

It's Black Friday, even though it's Thursday, which is to say that both GOG and Steam have discounts on their LucasArts games. If for whatever reason you still haven't vacuumed-up both attempts at Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Star Wars: TFU, or STFU if you're in a hurry), now's your chance.

Additionally, Steam's got a sale going for Double Fine's games, including The Cave; both Costume Quest games will put you back $3.24 together. And there are other adventure games on sale, such as the excellent Kathy Rain or all the Wadjet Eye stuff (highly recommended).

Telltale's output isn't included in either sale. Wonder why that is.

As an aside, I was curious about the name "Black Friday"; surely, I thought—being an edgy, black-clad cynic—the name also referred to other, less capitalist Fridays? As it turns-out, it does: Hollywood Black Friday was part of the eventual break-up of the Confederation of Studio Unions. Which doesn't seem so bad. And also a lot of other Black Fridays, all of which are depressing.

On the one hand, never say Mojo isn't educational. On the other, people suck. Anyway, you could forego the sudden urge to drink the sorrows away by playing some sweet games instead.

Obligatory second link here (in the sense we don't play favourites).

I’m sure you’ve read it elsewhere, but just in case you haven’t, a slew of LEC games have appeared on Steam. I thought they already were there, but there you go. The list:

• Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
• Sam & Max Hit the Road
• Outlaws + A Handful of Missions expansion pack
• Afterlife
• Escape from Monkey Island
• Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine
• Star Wars Episode 1: Racer
• Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb

Go get them if you love yourself some DRM. ¬

Remember that thread on LucasForums fifteen years or so ago about the canceled VGA version of Secret of Monkey Island? Of course you do, because all of you who are here now were there then.

If you don't recall: There was an early effort to create a fairly straight VGA port of the in-development EGA version. Presumably LEC decided to attempt something a bit more extravagant, and we do, of course, all know the final VGA version which today might be considered the de facto MI1. (Although that, really, should be the Amiga version. ¬)

The earlier version was in a playable state, with some (but far from all) of the graphics converted to 256 colors. See below for a screenshot, which, to me, reminds me of the VGA version of Loom.

The good news: This version of the game works with ScummVM, and we will have the resource files available hopefully within the next week. (Which means you can play the game if you already possess MI1.) Our deep throat is putting a couple of compatibility fixes into place as we speak, so stay tuned for more soon.

For now -- this is what could have been:

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Late night host Conan O'Brien maintains a pretty active online presence, and one of the things his digital wing sometimes does is post video game live streams to the Conan Youtube channel. These streams are hosted by the Conan team's resident gamer Aaron Bleyaert.

Well, it looks like the latest one of these deals was for Grim Fandango. The stream just ended, but it is available on Youtube for posterity. I kinda skimmed through it, and it looks like Aaron liked the game, without getting very far. Check it out below:

Or, as it is, totally Infernal Machine. That's right, ATM informs us the 1999 classic -- if you're into this kind of stuff -- is available for purchase over at GOG. (Windows only, natch.) Grab it if you so desire.

Source: ATMachine

Former LucasFilm Games developer David Fox is hosting a slew of Zak McKracken & LucasArts activities at the Cervignano Film Fest this weekend. There may even be is a livestream on at this very moment (Saturday 22 September 20:00 – 23:00 CEST or 11am-2pm PDT). The video of his LucasArts presentation from the day before will also be available soon.

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Source: Twitter

A glass-is-half-full personality is going to zero in on the positive elements of this new interview with Bill Tiller courtesy of the rakish charmers at Arcade Attack. After all, it offers delightful career anecdotes from one of the industry's best artists, including his time back at LucasArts (and the attendant travails under Randy Breen).

Unfortunately, it also offers this:

Despite the headline, I don't honestly blame this turn of events entirely on Zaarin's failure to relaunch the Mojo forums by now after a clear mandate to do so, but let's face it: his dereliction of those duties probably did nothing to help.

One silver lining in all this grief is that we intend to celebrate A Vampyre Story's tenth anniversary in some way before the year is through, so look forward to that.

Source: Arcade Attack

Or, indeed, Wednesday if that’s when you’re reading this. Or any day, but I digress . . . We love ourselves some Outlaws music here at the old Mojo, enough so we want to share it with you:

• MP3
• FLAC

That’s right, MP3s and FLAC -- we treat you so fine! Now go listen, and agree that Outlaws is an underrated classic, be it soundtrack or game.

Mojo regular Laserschwert has used the original LucasArts X-Wing PC game midi files to create an upgraded score for the work-in-progress X-Wing Virtual Machine project which we first reported on back in late 2016.



Hear Laserschwert's amazing work on his soundcloud page here.

Source: Facebook - x-wingvm

This year, the students are working on the following games:

While we're on the subject of ScummVM and ResidualVM, both projects have had updates lately:

ScummVM's addition of Xeen, the first RPG engine added after ScummVM changed their guidelines to allow RPG games alongside the adventure games, is now completable in the daily builds. There are five RPGs that are currently completable: Might and Magic IV, Might and Magic V, World of Xeen, World of Xeen 2 (CD Talkie), and Swords of Xeen. If you want to play these games in the daily builds, make sure that you place xeen.css in the same folder as your game files.

• Yes, everyone in the whole world.

Source: YouTube

The best non-Lego, non-arcade, non-pinball game based on Star Wars: Episode I is now available digitally.*

Star Wars: Episode I Racer is now available from GOG.com.

*It's probably not coincidental that podracing is also the best part of the Star Wars: Episode I film.

Of course you do. And you're in luck, because that's just what was recorded at something called "EGX Rezzed 2018." I assume that's the name of an expo, though it may also be the model of dirt bike my nephew got for Christmas. For those of us who happened to be washing our hair during Tim's panel, here's a handy Youtube embed of the whole interview:

I haven't watched it myself yet, but reportedly Tim mentions the possibility of further LucasArts remasters, iterating once again that he'd insist on the original creators being involved. Hasn't Brian Moriarty been pretty upfront about wanting revisit Loom? Anyway, Tim evidently talks a bunch about Psychonauts as well, so it's sure to be a worthy listen all the way around.

Because why the hell not? In anticipation of an upcoming Escape from Monkey Island extravaganza, we give you the soundtrack:

• Disc 1
• Disc 2

Che[ck/que] can be sent to the regular address.

Update (April 17th)! Some of you had issues with the zips; these should now be fixed.

Ken Macklin, the artist behind Maniac Mansion's iconic box art (and who was supposed to do the Thimbleweed Park box), was interviewed last year about the development of said art. It's brief but you'll be glad you read it. A year later.

Now all that's left is for somebody to leak all of Macklin's background art for Noah Falstein's version of The Dig. Anybody got that lying around?

Source: VGArc

For once, we’re not (too) late on some old news. We might even have reported on it back in the day, who knows? (I’m too lazy to check.) Anyway!

A Retro Gamer article on the making of Sam & Max Hit the Road is up on PC Gamer for your reading enjoyment. You might not learn a whole lot from it, but entertaining it is, anyway.

Source: PC Gamer