It happened without warning, and goodness knows it happened decades later than it should have, but the the original Maniac Mansion is now available on Steam. Sure, you already have it as a free bonus feature within Day of the Tentacle, but don't you want the pleasure of buying it individually, especially since the last time you could do so was like forty years ago?
And anyway, it's less than five bucks. So do it. Do it now.
Source: Steam
Rock Paper Shotgun published an interesting article yesterday about the artistic merit of remastered video games. Ron, Tim, and Brian Moriarty are all on hand to weigh in on the technical and even ethical pitfalls of "upgrading" a classic:
“We had limitations back then” recalls Gilbert in an email interview, “and the artist worked magic to make the game work within those limitations. They often turned working within those limitations into an art all its own. When classic games get ‘hi-resed’, you lose all of that.”
[...]
“It’s true that you can often switch back to the original graphics,” he says, “but that is also true of colorizing black and white movies.
“You can always watch the original, but that doesn’t make colorizing it any less of an artistic sin. Saying you can switch back to the original art feels like a cop-out.”
Harsh! But Ron has a point. And as we've seen, the "original version" you can switch back to often isn't the perfect recreation it purports to be. After all, the only "classic" version of Monkey Island 2 that anyone can buy has vertical scrolling effects removed and some dialog altered. My grandkids will grow up without the "white slavers" line, so I hope you're proud of yourself, Craig Derrick!
Source: Rock Paper Shotgun
In case you missed it at the bottom of Remi's news post three weeks back, here's an hour long (almost) interview with composers Michael Land and Clint Bajakian about their days at LucasArts. It also gives us a chance to test out our new embed code for Vimeo. Mojo: Truly on the cutting edge of technology.
Source: Vimeo
In a surprising move, some sort of LucasArts remnant's social media manger posted a photo on facebook and the "company" are apparently hiring given a comment on one of the replies.
If the next game after their alleged Star Wars: Commander and Star Wars: Rivals appeals... Star Wars: Aenemia maybe (!?), get in there and apply for a position!
Source: Facebook
Tim is the subject of a new article on Medium in which he speaks about the oft-documented strain - and, perhaps, the needlessness - of crunch mode, a period at the end (or sometimes throughout) of a game development cycle when teams work around the clock to meet looming deadlines.
Speaking about his experiences at both LucasArts and Double Fine, Tim's thoughts on the subject are sobering and even personal, such as when he relates how the passionate and relentless climate at LucasArts during his early days at the studio brought consequences at home:
Schafer saw the crunch periods become more demanding as time went on, and it wasn’t long before he experienced the heavy price of that kind of working culture. His first marriage, he said, collapsed after just a year.
“You don’t realize until it has happened that you’re doing all this damage to your personal life by staying at work all the time,” he said. “You can mentally put the rest of the world on hold, but the rest of the world can’t necessarily be put on hold by you. I was so gung-ho about it. If you think someone will wait for you and tolerate you not being around… people move on.”
Even then, with a relationship falling apart around him, the work came first. The rewards were just big enough, and the aura of George Lucas radiant enough, that it felt impossible to leave. Schafer only met Lucas three times in the 10 years he worked for him, but says his presence was felt in the craftsmanship and artistry of the house and its grounds. The attention to detail exuded an air of quality that reminded everyone that things needed to be done right.
Source: Medum
Our fine friends over at The Onion have pulled a Mojo and reviewed ranted about the TT Games LEGO Indiana Jones videogame series some years after release.
Consider: While the Indiana Jones of film punches out Nazis, his mute Lego doppelgänger spends far more time attacking trees and flowers. Indy can scarcely walk five steps without finding a cluster of greenery that he’s compelled to destroy in order to collect the tiny Lego studs that constitute the in-game currency. Even when outrunning the giant boulder—that most iconic moment from Raiders—he’s evidently supposed to risk his life brutalizing the vegetation for a few extra studs. So you’ll understand, Adam, if I’m at a bit of a loss as to what makes this game “pretty fun.”
Source: The Onion
PC Gamer published an interview with Tim about Full Throttle in their June issue, but you don't buy magazines anymore, so you didn't read it. At least not until its ink exclusivity ended and it wound up online, which is now.
At the time a LucasArts adventure was expected to sell around 100,000 copies, but Full Throttle sold over a million. And now, 22 years later, the game has been re-released with remastered graphics and audio. I ask the game’s writer/director Tim Schafer what it’s like going back to something he made when he was in his early 20s.
“It’s been interesting looking at how I wrote dialogue back then based on my life experiences at the time, and how I interpret it differently now that I’m older,” he says. “And now that I’ve actually been a biker on the run for a crime I didn’t commit, that adds a lot of depth to it too. I had no idea what that was like back then.”
You know what I did in my early 20s? Not make Full Throttle. Learn more about how Tim outclassed me by reading the full article.
Source: PC Gamer
29 years after it was shut down, Habitat is set to go live again. The (at the time) groundbreaking online game is considered a bridge between the MUDs (multi user dungeons) of the time to today's MMOG (massively multiplayer online game), and it will relaunch at midnight under the name Neohabitat.
Yeah, I don't even know, but check out more info on the official site, if you so wish.
The easter egg itself is very silly, and isn't the secret to Monkey Island or anything, but it is amazing that we're still finding secrets after all these years! Enjoy!
Source: Double Fine
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:
Schafer called it a sort of "digital archaeology." For Full Throttle, the art was completely repainted, often with input from original artists like Larry Ahern and Peter Chen. 3D elements like the game's motorcycles had to be remodeled from scratch because the originals weren't archived. Roy Conrad, the original voice actor for the game's protagonist Ben, died over a decade ago, so they had to track down the uncompressed DAT tapes of his original voiceover sessions in order to remaster them in stereo.
"We're in a unique position where we remember where the bodies are buried," he said. "'I think that sound guy took home a box of tapes once, and I know so-and-so has that thing in their attic.' And at Skywalker Ranch there's an archive that has a lot of cool stuff there, and we got access to those. We got to dig through these flat files, finding these great pieces of art and putting them in the concept art browser for the first time to let you see all this stuff when you play the game. It's more like a fun treasure hunt."
One might expect that the hassles of remastering projects like these would cause Double Fine to re-think the way it preserves its current titles for the future.
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
You may recall that time a year ago when we reported that an indomitable band of Germans were seeking to get official approval for their HD remake of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
Those of you who hate surprises, I should warn you: this isn't going to be one.
Hi Fans!
Quick announcement!
Fans community is strong, full of talented people and nobody is going to stop us from doing what we love, because we are doing it right! This is not the end of this project and this is not the end of any fans projects...big companies need to understand that: "All things come to him who waits." #lucasfilm #lucasarts #adventuregames #disney
Source: Facebook
Hey, we’re back! You might have thought we had been back for a while, but as our admin feature wasn’t working… Well, that’s neither here nor there.
So what’s happening? First, Xbox Gold members will be able to download Monkey Island 2 for free from February 1-15. You do, of course, already own the game, but it’s worth nabbing anyway—it plays well on the platform. And from February 16-28 you can get Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, lovingly known as STFU around these parts.
More importantly: Our very own elTee spawned last week, and is the proud father of a baby boy, Johnny D Tones (I think was the name). Congratulations to him from all of us!
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.
Source: Facebook
Sure, the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade graphic adventure has been available from Steam since forever, but I know you kids love things that are DRM-free, so consider yourselves accommodated. And just like the Steam version, you get the unabridged Grail Diary in all its .pdf glory.
There was a time when GOG was releasing LEC games more regularly, then that all stopped, and if you think that wasn't the consequence of a sinister, labyrinthine conspiracy, get a clue. But does the unceremonious appearance of Last Crusade signal that the seal has been broken again? We still need Monkey Island 3 and 4 up there, bare minimum.
Source: GOG
Festivus is over lads, so back to work. Earlier this week, Gamecrate asked Bill Tiller a few questions about his career. Among other things the interview gives us an idea of when Duke Grabowski Episode 2 will drop.
So, when is the second episode of Duke Grabowski: Mighty Swashbuckler due out?
We're planning on five episodes. The plan is to have the second episode come out in the Spring. I've already written it, and we're doing pre-production on it now, and have some sketches done, as well as some of the puzzles.
Check out the full interview here.
Source: Gamecrate
