The International House of Mojo

Update: Thanks to Shmargin for pointing out that it's not available for Android everywhere yet. It's currently an exclusive release in Australia and New Zealand.

Tiny Death Star, the Star Wars themed Tiny Tower game (complete with the series' signature 8-bit graphical style), is available now on Google Play for Android phones and tablets. It was developed by Disney Mobile (as was expected with casual Star Wars games after the Disney merger) and Tiny Tower developer Nimblebit.

Interestingly, LucasArts is listed as the publisher, so it would appear that the remodeled LucasArts has retained it's function as a publisher as well as a licensor.

Source: Shmargin

Disney Interactive has revealed it is about to launch a new Star Wars game for mobile devices, made in collaboration with Nimblebit.

8-bit style cute Star Warsey fun. Sure, why not...

Source: Disney Interactive

It always kind of amazed me that the game studio that wrote the book on crass movie tie-ins saw unfit to take advantage of Indy's long awaited return to the silver screen in 2008 with an opportunistic video game adaptation.

It kinda makes sense when you consider that Staff of Kings was already committed to (well, until it wasn't) by the time Crystal Skull got greenlit, and at the time the company didn't seem particularly capable of devoting itself to more than one or two internal projects - indeed, the rumor was that "choosing" The Force Unleashed to rally resources behind is what starved out the original Staff of Kings SKUs.

Still, it would seem impossible that a Crystal Skull tie-in was never conceived, and a comment left by a former developer on Kotaku's "How LucasArts Fell Apart" article confirms it:

The developer in question would have been Amaze, the company behind the DS version of Staff of Kings. That version was indeed a completely different beast than the others, but that isn't completely unheard of when it comes to handheld spinoffs of console titles. Guess there was more to the story after all.

Just another in an apparently long run of cancelled projects that LucasArts went through in its final years. Jason Schreier at Kotaku has written an extensive feature covering How LucasArts Fell Apart, covering what went on at the sinking ship.

It's well worth a read!

It seems that the Star Wars 1313 project won't be going completely to waste. If you'll remember, the project was a joint effort between LucasArts, Industrial Light and Magic, Skywalker Sound, and Lucas Animation. This joint effort between the subsidiaries apparently harkened back to the early days of Lucasfilm Games, when the charter of the studio was to make experimental, innovative, and technologically advanced video games. We'll likely never get to see the full result of this collaboration, but some of their innovation is going to be used in Hollywood films in the future.

The advanced real-time motion-capture capabilities pioneered for Star Wars 1313 enables the "production company to film an actor and then immediately capture and funnel those actions into a computer-generated character. The result is an instantaneous, photo-realistic computer-generated film that cuts down on production time".

See the technology in action in the video below:

Source: Venturebeat

Disney's LucasArts licensing house plods on, with their first release post-restructuring. Angry Birds Star Wars II was released yesterday for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.

This sequel actually is based on the Star Wars prequels, changing the titular birds into Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Anakin Skywalker, Mace Windu, and Jar Jar Binks. This time you can also turn to the dark side in the pork side mode and play as a Tie Fighter pilot, Zam Wesell, and Emporer Palpatine. The Hasbro Telepod toys can also be scanned in to unlock characters, but they're not required to play.

It seems there's more reason than a simple cash grab behind the fact that LucasArts is continuing to license Star Wars to outside casual game developers instead of having Disney Interactive develop them as the early press releases about Disney's purchase of Lucasfilm would suggest.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Disney Interactive has pulled back production in other areas in order to pour its resources into Disney Infinity, Disney's version of Activision's Skylanders (the game where you purchase toys that are then detected by the game, making the character available for play).

Disney is putting so much into this project that Disney Interactive stopped production on the Iron Man game they had in development and passed on the opportunity to make any Star Wars games. Strangely, Angry Birds Star Wars II will feature the debut of Hasbro's Telepods, which seem to be a direct competitor of both Skylanders and Disney Infinity. However, since the Telepods have a simple QR scan rather than saving the data in the toy like Skylanders, Disney must feel there is room for both products.

At the very least, at least this means the LucasArts licensing house still has a use, since it previously seemed kind of redundant after the announcement of the exclusive licensing deal with EA. Now we'll just have to wait to see if they realize that they have other intellectual property besides Star Wars that they can license out.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Remember Angry Birds Star Wars? It was basically Angry Birds Space with force powers, lightsabers, and blasters, but it turned out to actually be pretty fun. Since it was a critical and financial success, it only makes sense that fans would be seeing more. And you will be. You... will... be.

In October, a revamped version of the original Angry Birds Star Wars will be coming out on pretty much every current console, from the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii U, to the handheld 3DS and PSP Vita, and even the original Wii. These versions will feature cooperative and competitive multiplayer modes and 20 new levels.

On top of that, this September, Rovio will be releasing Angry Birds Star Wars II, which will feature new levels and new characters with powers inspired by the Star Wars prequel films. And yes, there will be toys released that tie-in to Angry Birds Star Wars II as well. This is Disney we're talking about after all.

Source: NBC News

Well I've got one for ya: The SCUMM Bar has been updated. What a world we live in.

Following a quiet and thankful revert to their old design back in February, they have now made some sizable content updates. This mainly includes a much more corpulent Tales section, a more comprehensive collection of known info about the cancelled animated film, and a revamped MP3 section that now covers Tales.

I don't mind telling you, I needed those MP3s. Go visit The SCUMM Bar! Your children may be the age you are now before its next update, after all.

Gamasutra recently got in touch with Aric Wilmunder and he regaled them with stories of SCUMM over e-mail. They compiled it all into one long feature which you can read over here.

Source: Gamasutra

Earlier this month, Paypal's TechXploration hosted a panel called The Story of LucasArts moderated by Douglas Crockford. The developers in attendance were Noah Falstein, Randy Farmer, David Fox, Ron Gilbert, Chip Morningstar, Aric Wilmunder, and Gary Winnick. For those of you who couldn't make it, Paypal made the entire thing available on Youtube in eight parts:

Thanks to reader salty-horse for the heads-up!

Source: Youtube

Night Dive Studios, the company that managed to untie the legal mess surrounding System Shock 2 to negotiate the digital re-release of that game, is apparently negotiating to digitally re-release more games that are currently unavailable.

In this case, it seems they are trying to free the LucasArts adventure games from the Disney Vault, since they posted a teaser on their Facebook page that they are "Heading to Corley Motors!" (complete with a shot of Ben Throttle on his Corley motorcycle). After posting shout-outs to more LucasArts adventure games, such as Sam & Max Hit the Road on their twitter page, they were asked by twitter user BJ Wanlund to clarify the meaning of their LucasArts teases. Night Dive Studios responded by saying "We're hoping for it as much as everyone else, that's all we can say at the moment!"

So it seems like more classic LucasArts adventure games might come out on digital distribution sites some day after all. Or, they might not. We'll just have to wait and see how this situation develops.

Source: Threepwood4life

Jukka Jylänki has ported ScummVM's SCUMM engine to HTML5 using enscripten.

Head over to the website and you can play demos of Maniac Mansion, Loom, The Secret of Monkey Island, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Day of the Tentacle, and Sam & Max Hit the Road directly in your browser!

At the E3 Gaming Expo, EA Games announced that the Battlefront franchise is getting a new installment. The 3rd Battlefront game has had a stop-start life, with several companies beginning production before they were ultimately cancelled prior to any official announcement of the game's development.

Fast forward nearly 10 years and gamers still have many of those same Star Wars gaming fantasies – but now they wish to experience those larger-than-life battles in magnificent high definition, with all of the amazing special effects, vehicle physics and gameplay intensity that the next-generation has to offer.

Star Wars Battlefront, developed by DICE on Frostbite 3, will surprise and delight fans yet again with a new experience inside this beloved universe made with our signature DICE craftsmanship and commitment to excellence."

So there we go, new Battlefront is coming. Let's hope for more Star Wars story-driven games too, along the lines of Dark Forces / Jedi Knight or the X-Wing series.

Source: Battlefront 3.net

Adventure Gamers has published a new interview with Bill as his A Vampyre Story: Year One Kickstarter hobbles past $32k. It's a satisfyingly massive article covering, if I'm not mistaken, every single moment of Bill's life, including the explanation for why over twelve months separated his initial tweet about the Kickstarter and its launch last weekend. There's some art in there, too.

Go read it. Then check out the latest updates for the Kickstarter to discover that there are some new tiers available at $20 and $40. A $20 dollar pledge gets you a free copy of A Vampyre Story and its splendid soundtrack. You'd be a fool to not be all over that. And you can tell you I said so.

Source: Adventure Gamers

LucasArts / Bioware classic RPG 'Knights of the Old Republic' is now available for the iPad. It sells for US$9.99. The game was ported by Aspyr Media, who are responsible for a number of PC-to-Mac conversions, including KOTOR.
Joystiq have reviewed the iPad version here, if you want to know what's been updated to make it work on a touchscreen.

Perhaps this bodes well for further LucasArts classics that Aspyr ported to Mac previously, such as Jedi Outcast, making their way to the iPad in due course.

Source: iTunes

ScummVM, the program that lets you play classic adventure games on modern computers, consoles, phones, and tablets, has been updated with support for four new engines, bringing support for six new games: 3 Skulls of the Toltecs, Eye of the Beholder, Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon, Hopkins FBI, Tony Tough and the Night of Roasted Moths, and The Journeyman Project: Pegasus Prime.

In addition to the new games, there's support for the Macintosh version of Discworld 1. And, of most relevance to Mojo readers, music is now improved in the Macintosh version of many LucasArts adventures. If you're not interested in Macintosh versions of adventure games, this version comes with major bugfixes to the bike fight sequences on Old Mine Road in Full Throttle.

There are also other changes included as well, such as an update to the latest Roland MT-32 emulation code, a new grid chooser for save games, an extended FluidSynth configuration dialog, and Belarusian, Finnish and Galician translations for the GUI dialogs.

Some guy started a thread on NeoGAF, observing that Lucasfilm, now a Disney subsidiary, filed four trademarks for Maniac Mansion on May 22nd. You can find the USPTO links within; check out the goods and services that Disney is reserving the rights for under the Maniac Mansion name:

While this shouldn't be necessarily interpreted as evidence that Disney is about to start pumping out Green Tentacle footwear, there does seem to be an education theme, doesn't there?

A few publications have picked up on the story, and there is some speculation that Disney is giving the classic game the HD remake treatment. While we advise against that kind of optimism, the NeoGAF guy makes a decent case for why Disney must be fixing to do something with the property and that this isn't just standard trademark renewal.

Source: NeoGAF

Geek Exchange has lovingly complied a list of many of LucasArts' best loved older games and linked to the best places to purchase them. Some of the games are probably easier to find in the UK, Australia and New Zealand due to the relatively recent Activision re-releases under the LucasArts Classics banner.

It's the sort of thing we should probably do here at Mojo someday. Until that day though, enjoy Geek Exchange's hard work.

Feel free to add to the list in the Comments section if you know of more places to legally obtain these, and any other classic LucasArts games.

Source: Geek Exchange

LucasArts Fan Felipe Machado has put together a loving tribute to the SCUMM era by mashing up several classic characters and locations.

Neat!

Source: YouTube