The International House of Mojo

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.

The team behind the fan remake of Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis released a 7 room demo in late November, so Mojo keeps up its fine tradition of being behind the cutting edge of LucasArts related news. Months behind.

The file is around half a gig, so if you have the time and hard drive space, give it go. There are PC and Mac versions available, plus a demo of the circular stones, if that floats your boat.

To give feedback, or simply follow the project's development, check out the game's Facebook page.
Here's the download link again in case you can't be bothered looking back through the first paragraph for it. Keeping Mojo traditions alive into 2017 and beyond...

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.

Check out the full interview here.

Source: Gamecrate

If I know you, you're going to want to give this a watch.

Source: Youtube

The screenshots compare classic mode to the remastered version. Head on over to IGN to see them.

Source: IGN

Let's get right to it.

Gonna be a treat to hear Roy Conrad's gravelly voice uncompressed after all these years.

Source: Youtube

You probably remember watching Brian Moriarty's superb Loom post-mortem which debuted at GDC 2015. If you haven't seen it, you're encouraged to do so. At the end, Moriarty threw out the names of a few studios (including Double Fine and Telltale) he considered ideal collaborators for a Loom sequel, essentially extending an invitation to them to get him on the horn.

Moriarty has given his talk a few more times since, including at an expo in Argentina this past March. At the end of that talk, he mentioned that some discussions took place with some of those studios. When pressed for details, he offered this. Watch it before proceeding.

I'm dubious of the claim that Double Fine had specifically optioned Loom along with the Tim Schafer relevant IPs, and more so of the idea that Double Fine ever actually committed resources toward a Loom project before learning that this supposed option had expired. And if Brian's got the facts right, and Disney's claiming someone else has an exclusive on Loom, who the hell could it possibly be? Of the precious few studios likely to be interested in the property, I can't think of one that would wish to shut Moriarty out. Sounds to me like someone's getting the runaround here, or maybe there's just some miscommunication.

Moriarty also gets probed a little bit about The Dig, but the Q&A - the online version, anyway - gets suspiciously interrupted just before he can detail how his version would have ended. Can't wait to hear ATM's take on this and how it might fit in with your post-war commie conspiracy.

Update: Mild correction. It seems the Argentina talk actually happened in late 2015, rather than this year.

Source: Youtube

Why can't you people make content like this?

ATMachine has reappeared in order to publish his career best - a deeply researched, legacy-defining thesis that Guybrush Threepwood is in fact a woman in men's clothes.

"Do the math."

Source: ATM's site

It was almost a year ago that Full Throttle Remastered was announced, and since then we've known we could look forward to a developer commentary just as Day of the Tentacle had.

Well apparently that commentary was recorded this past week. Check out the photo Double Fine posted on Facebook:

Hopefully media from the game is soon to follow.

Source: Facebook

ScummVM is the project that aims to re-create the engines used in adventure games (and, since this year's Google Summer of Code, role-playing games) so they can be played on systems ranging from Windows, Mac, and Linux to iOS, Android, and even consoles such as Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, and Wii.

Right before a major release they do a public testing phase for new and improved games, which helps them iron out any remaining bugs. This testing cycle includes two new games: Myst (and Myst: Masterpiece Edition) and U.F.O.s (also known as Gnap). There also have been a lot of improvements in the SCI engine as of late, so they are also testing Conquests of the Longbow, Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist, King's Quest V, King's Quest VI, Quest for Glory 1 VGA, Quest for Glory 3, Space Quest 1 VGA, and Space Quest 4. Other games that have seen recent improvements and are undergoing testing include Beneath a Steel Sky, the Commodore-64 version of Maniac Mansion, Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Rose Tattoo, and Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel.

So, if you have any of those games, play them through in a daily build of ScummVM on your platform of choice, and report any bugs you find at the new and improved ScummVM bug tracker. Then tell the team about your experience, and any bugs you filed (or if you didn't spot any bugs at all) in this thread on the ScummVM forum.

As some of you may be aware, there is a fan remake of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis in production. An hour of livestreamed footage is now up on the game's Facebook page. It will surprise nobody to learn that the developers are finding it difficult to licence the game from the Mouse House. Therefore this may be as close as we all get to actually playing the game.

The first couple of minutes are filmed sideways, so lock in your device-rotate or lay across your desk.
Here's the link.

The good stuff starts around the 20 minute mark.

Source: Facebook

Josh "Cheeseness" Bush, the man behind the recent port of Double Fine's Day of the Tentacle Remastered to Linux, has posted an excellent retrospective on his experience in porting the game. He has also shared the sourcecode of the Coming Soon app that was live on Steam before the Linux port was released.

Be sure to check it out, if you're a fan of Day of the Tentacle (who here isn't?), as it's quite an informative and interesting read.

Playing catch-up in the aftermath of the Iron Phoenix madness...Aric Wilmunder made a few other uploads a few days ago. The new design docs are:

- Rebel Assault
- Defenders of Dynatron City (under its original name "Defenders of Dynamo City")

• The Telecommuter (Not a game!)

It looks like he also meant to make Shadows of the Empire available, but that one doesn't appear to be selectable yet. Anyway, find the above and all the rest on Aric's site, as always.

Source: Aric's World

It's a terrific listen courtesy of the Dev Game Club podcast. Day of the Tentacle is the primary subject, but a broader discussion about adventure games emerges.

What makes the interview particularly worthwhile is that the hosts are Brett Douville and Tim Longo, who worked at LucasArts around the turn of the century, when a developer's assignment was pretty much guaranteed to be a Star Wars title. It's interesting to hear the different perspectives from the four alumni who were involved in different eras and concentrations of the studio. More crucially, Jake gets namechecked.

Source: Dev Game Club

Here at Mojo, we’ve always been particularly interested in the near-misses, the might-have-beens, the ones that didn’t make it. After all, we cheekily referred to all the released LucasArts adventure games as “Secret History,” so you can imagine how piqued the cancelled games must get us. And the loss of Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix, the would-be follow-up to the seminal Fate of Atlantis, probably registers second only to Sam & Max 2 on the Gnashing-Of-Teeth-O-Meter.

The game isn’t completely unknown, thanks to a comic adaptation, a few stray details and a much-circulated Anson Jew animation of Hitler’s face blowing up. But what this doomed title always lacked in my eyes was a definitive chronicle. And if Mojo wasn't going to do it, who the heck would?

Thus I reached out to all members of the team who were willing to share their memories (oh, and design documents) of the game, from its conception to its collapse. I do believe you’ll find the big honking article I pieced together from the results of minor interest.

Huge thanks go to Aric Wilmunder, who unearthed the materials that made this article possible and offered to time their release with our publication. Remi, as always, bailed me out with the header image. Enjoy!

He's said he'd keep them coming, and he's delivered. Check out Aric's site to find the list of downloadable LucasArts design docs updated with:

- Labyrinth
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (a very preliminary doc)
- Sam & Max Hit the Road
- The Dig (seems to be for the Falstein version)
- The Curse of Monkey Island

So nevermind your previous Fourth of July weekend plans; it's SCUMM history you need to be honoring.

Source: Aric's World

This seems to happen every once in awhile. Ron will make some overture, like this tweet, about wanting to buy the Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion IP from Disney, dozens of sites will seize upon it, fans will work themselves into a tizzy, and then nothing happens.

And nothing happens because nothing will happen. Big companies do not sell their properties pretty much as a matter of policy, and even if they did it's not like Ron would ever be able to meet their quote. It took having the right friends at Sony for Double Fine to get licenses for their recent remakes from Disney, and Ron has made it clear that licensing isn't good enough for him. So what motive is there to beat this drum?

The last time Ron made sure to pump some oxygen into the flame of that mythical creator-sanctioned "Monkey Island 3a" was last fall:

So guys, please, don't bug Ron about making another Monkey Island until Disney sells the IP to him first. Be reasonable here. I mean, gosh, why were you guys even bringing it up in the first place?! Wait...

Maybe I'm just a jerk, and Ron is shrewdly trying to build enough interest to get himself invited to a negotiating table. Maybe that is somehow something that's actually possible in the real world. Show me the light in the comments if you've got any to shine.

Source: Ron's Twitter

You've really got to admire this kind of stubbornness.

A fan-made remake of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis has been incubating for over two years now. I'm not clear on how far along the project is - indeed I've lost track of the Fate of Atlantis fan projects over the years - but the Facebook page has screenshots.

Labors of love like this traditionally just get put out at the risk of cease-and-desist orders, such as 2004's Maniac Mansion Deluxe, which as far as I know faced no legal repudiation, although the risk of getting the kibosh rises steeply when fans start dabbling in the big IPs, specifically Star Wars and Indy.

Whether for that reason or some other, the team has apparently sent a formal request to Disney to obtain a license for this remake. They even included some schwag! I find this admirable and crazy in roughly equal measure, but color me impressed.

I have a hard time imagining these good folks will get a response, much less approval, but I'm also a curmudgeon-y bastard without a sliver of optimism. At any rate, this has gotta be unprecedented, no? Correct me below if I'm wrong or at least join me in being awed by this team's hard work and indomitable spirit that's reminiscent of Indy himself.

Source: Facebook