The International House of Mojo

You all remember Limited Run Games’ rather promising-looking Loom package back in January of last year. True to the average turnaround time, it began shipping just recently.

Loom has long suffered a pretty compromised position in terms of availability. Like other SCUMM games that debuted with EGA graphics but received a subsequent VGA treatment (Last Crusade and Monkey 1), the latter eventually became defacto. Loom’s VGA version is unique, however, as it was also LucasArts’ earliest foray into “Talkie” editions. This prototypical effort relied on CD audio, which resulted in excellent sample quality (far better than LucasArts games would boast for years afterward, in fact), but with brutal trade-offs: the struggle to animate lip-syncing led to the game’s signature close-up artworks being almost entirely eliminated, while space limitations prompted an economic rewrite of the entire dialog script – without the involvement of its original project leader. In essence, the original game was replaced by what might be called a novelty version; to date, the legal copy of Loom you can buy on Steam or GOG is this CD Talkie revamp, not the game that Brian Moriarty actually presided over in 1990, and which is often considered the apex of what could be wrung out of a 16-color palette.

So you can imagine the relief when it was revealed that the USB stick included as part of the Limited Run Games release would have the EGA build tossed in. Except, not so fast. Two reports from customers who have received their package seem to confirm that this supposed inclusion fell to slaughter, like so many Glassmakers under the Great Scythe.

Heartbreaking. It’s enough to temporarily put one off their arbitrary SCUMM Bar feud.

Source: The Forums

Getting old ain’t for the cowardly. With bones that crack when we so much as try to lift a yellow flower petal, it isn’t easy for we front page custodians to keep up with the hiatus-free Tech Talk parade, which is why we always recommend keeping tabs on the forum thread.

But the tortoise wins the race in the end, or something, and we’re here to catch you up on Daniel Albu's latest interviews. First up is Ken Macklin, illustrator extraordinaire best known for the Maniac Mansion cover art and his regrettably scrapped backgrounds for the first version of The Dig. Just recently, some incredible promotional art he did during the early Lucasfilm Games years emerged, so it's very much the Month[-ish] of Macklin. Here’s the interview:

Next up is Charlie Ramos, who served as animator on Outlaws (Lead Animator, in fact), Full Throttle and The Dig. And that's another theme: The Dig war stories. Honor your veterans:

Source: Tech Talk with Daniel Albu

While the Good Neighbor policy that Thrik enacted upon starting his term (Footnote: Possibly a misnomer, as his “term” has limits in the same way Putin’s does.) as CEO (after the mass layoffs, of course) has been indicted by some as a performative and cynical device for Mojo to applaud its own virtuousness, it does carry the benefit of promoting fellow fan sites when they’re delivering the goods.

One of the “advantages” of a Monkey Island game being released into the modern world is that it’s loaded to the gills with achievements, a promise that Return to Monkey Island more than made good on. The question remains: how are you possibly going to keep track of them all? Why, with the elaborate achievements guide published by legendofmi.com, of course. Hopefully this sort of thrown gauntlet encourages the Monkey Island fan sites that tend to rest on their laurels to up their game, but you don’t drop coins into a wishing well with the expectation of getting a return on your investment, after all.

Update: The SCUMM Bar claps back.

Source: The Legend of Monkey Island

Your most valued friend Aaron Giles is back to give you first crack at an upcoming version of DREAMM. Version 3.0 Beta includes a ton of new supported games and features. Frankly, it’s too much to list out – let’s just say those lonely, Fate of Atlantis: The Action Game-free nights are over – so you just as soon head on down to the web site for the details and your obligatory download.

Be sure to share your findings and/or gratitude in the corresponding forum thread. Now go forth and enjoy a privilege previously only known to the royal family: Roland upgrades and simulated CRT scanlines.

Source: DREAMM

The game documentarians at Noclip have chosen as their latest subject Return to Monkey Island, a natural for this sort of retrospective seeing as it’s now roughly as distant an event as the First World War.

Since Noclip had the good sense to involve Ron Gilbert, Dave Grossman, Jenn Sandercock, David Fox, Rex Crowle and Dominic Armato as talking heads, it was inevitable that it would be good. Proceed therefore with burning the next 90 minutes in the security that the investment carries the Mojo Seal of Approval.

Source: Noclip

There’s an official LEGO site called LEGO IDEAS, which is exactly what you’d expect it to be: A place where people can post ideas for future LEGO products. If the idea reaches 1,000 (update: 10,000) votes, it will be reviewed by the LEGO Illuminati and potentially become the real deal. I admittedly know Jack about LEGO, but elTee does, and he excitedly posted this little gem (not to Mojo, but… ¬¬):

If that’s not enough to sell you, check out this video:

That’s right, the sucker opens.

The set has 259 votes at the time of writing, but after being Mojoed, I think it’s safe to say this will happen within the next two years or so. Go vote

Update! As pointed out by gdeligne in the comments, the LEGO idea requires 10,000, not 1,000 votes. What’s an extra zero amongst friends anyway?

Source: LucasTones

You’ve seen the videos, now it’s time to read the articles.

First up is an interview with game director Jerk Gustafsson featuring all the unflinching gossip and hard-hitting questions you’d expect from Lucasfilm.com.

Meanwhile, Entertainment Weekly confirms that Indy is being performed by Troy Baker, known for playing a guy name Joel in that game The Last of Us, and context clues suggest that people who are familiar with video games made since Obama’s second term are going to find that exciting. For the rest of us, we’ll be replacing all the lines in our heads with Doug Lee.

And while you’re at it you might as well check out the game’s press release over at the official Bethesda site, which also includes the first screenshots. Naturally, Mojo already has them all gallery’d up, because we pull out all the stops for our readership.

Yup, that’s really the title. The game is due out by the end of this year on PC and Xbox Whichever One We’re On. Without further ado, here's the goods:

About six hours from now, at 12 p.m. PST / 3 p.m. EST / 9 p.m. CET, the Xbox Developer Direct event will be streaming at the YouTube video embedded below. As you know, the broadcast will include the first look at the new Indiana Jones title by MachineGames (among about seventy other studios, it sounds like):

Of course, for you sensible people without FOMO, you can always just wait for the highlights after the fact.

Source: Xbox YouTube Channel

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

(That’s all I got.)

Source: The Forums—Read them daily!

It was an impressive trick on the part of the upcoming Indy game, getting itself announced prior to the fifth movie going before cameras and managing to stay a committed no-show all the way up to the present, on the other side of Dial of Destiny’s home video release.

But that is scheduled to change later this month, as Eurogamer reports:

It’s all part of the Xbox Developer Direct showcase, which “will be broadcast on 18th January at 8pm UK time - that's 3pm Eastern or midday Pacific.” We’ll be here to point you to that stream when the time comes. I mean, probably.

Source: Eurogamer

If you’re an avid Wireframe reader, this article should already be familiar to you. If not, get ready to dig into the many towns of the Monkey Island universe, from Secret to Return in a scholarly essay. An excerpt—and as this is The Year of “Escape from Monkey Island”, it seems like an appropriate example:

That’s from Sean Clark, speaking about Lucre Town. In fact, almost all the familiars are quoted in the article: Gilbert, Grossman, Fox, and so on and so forth. As far as Monkey Island architecture goes, it’s a must-read .

Author Konstantinos Dimopoulos might be familiar to some of you—he co-wrote Virtual Cities: An Atlas & Exploration of Video Game Cities which covered Grim Fandango’s Rubacava among other things. It got stellar reviews around these parts:

“DON’T BE SUCKED IN” —

But Escape from Monkey Island’s 25th anniversary isn’t until next year, you cry, and right you are. What needs to be taken into consideration is Mojo’s track record with anniversaries, which is... less than stellar. In that sense, it only makes sense to start a year earlier, and when we finally hit the actual date, we may or may not match up. It’s all more or less logical.

So, to start it off, we have videos. Many, many videos.

And if you don’t want Mojo’s fake(-ish) EMI trailer, you can spend your day comparing the PS2 cutscenes to the PC ones. Dig through all the EMI videos to find official trailers and who knows what else?! (And for those who are YouTube averse, we’re in the process of putting all of this up on Mojo proper.)

More to come! And if you followed us on Mastodon or Bluesky you would have seen most of these, as we often provide exclusive previews there.

By now you should recognize Cressup as the UK task force in this internationally bustling Interviewing Adventure Game Adjacent Humans For A Long Time genre. She has notched another great interview, this time with voice actor Bill Farmer. Best known generally as the voice of Goofy for Disney, Farmer is most treasured by us as the original voice of Sam in the multimedia debut of Steve Purcell’s characters, Sam & Max Hit the Road. It stands as the only published instance of Farmer voicing the character, though as we all know he was reprising his role in LucasArts’ ill-fated sequel before the assassin’s bullet found its mark. (Footnote: We’ll always have that trailer, though.)

Farmer discusses both of his Sam & Max experiences as well as his broader career in the enjoyable conversation, available in full below. We're above giving Cressup any grief over the misleading choice to put the Telltale/Skunkape version of Sam's model in her video's preview image, so that's why I'm not even gonna bring it up.

Source: Cressup

I don’t know how many times we have to stress that Laserschwert’s poster thread is basically the nexus of all that makes the internet esteemable -- a status aided by the fact that it’s pretty much the only example of it.

Why just this week, none other than legendary illustrator Ken Macklin decided to serve the cause by offering up three gorgeous pieces he did for Lucasfilm Games during the 80s. Behold some truly mindblowing, never-before-seen (Footnote: At least in raw form, in the case of The Eidolon.) art for The Eidolon and Maniac Mansion, along with some context by Laser:

Weird, yes, but it makes them especially noteworthy that the Maniac Mansion pieces are artifacts of an earlier phase of the game’s conception, when Weird Ed was imagined as a far friendlier character and even the villainous meteor had a decidedly cuddlier demeanor. (Well, a demeanor period.) Naturally we’ve welcomed these images into our concept art gallery, where you can find some Gary Winnick sketches from that same trimester of the eventual classic’s incubating identity.

Source: The Forums

Afterlife may not be something we (for whatever reason) talk much about here at Mojo, but child-of-Kotaku, Aftermath, has a lot to say about it. One Mike Stemmle, in particular, gets downright confessional:

Go read.

Meanwhile, over at YouTube, Daniel Albu has yet another brief conversation, this time with Steve Purcell.

Longtime fan site The Legend of Monkey Island is still busting out jams. (Footnote: Remi points out that this article got advertised heavily on “the socials,” but I figure civilized people deserve to know about it as well.) To celebrate the 26th anniversary of The Curse of Monkey Island, they’ve published an ambitious new article detailing the differences between the game’s demo and the shipped final product. There are even some fresh quotes from Bill Tiller to give it that extra prestige. Read it and remind yourself that great Monkey Island content isn’t exclusively hosted on or by Mojo. Even though it's basically a rounding error.

Source: legendofmi.com

We’re barreling headlong toward the 20th anniversary of Sam & Max: Freelance Police’s cancellation now, yet there always somehow seems to be a few drops more blood to squeeze out of the stone.

Karen Purdy, who worked as an environment artist on the game, was the source of the last bits of known media, through her online portfolio. Reader Emma T has alerted us to the fact that Purdy has since revamped said portfolio with some additional art from her LucasArts projects, including Sam & Max 2.

We’ve dutifully made both our screenshot gallery and preposterous feature-length Feature current in accordance with this development. Scroll down to the bottom of this page for our attempts to contextualize the latest additions.

Need more Freelance Police autopsying to bring your day to its fullest potential? Daniel Albu’s ongoing series of developer interviews, which you can always keep track of in the dedicated forum thread, has included a recent chat with Dan Connors. This timestamped link will drag the needle to where most of the Freelance Police talk is.

I wish I liked it. But I don’t. I do hope you enjoy “The Lair of LeChuck,” though! And feel free to read my opinions.

I mean, that’s about it.