The International House of Mojo

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."

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.

Source: YouTube

And not just one sequel... potentially three more Gungan Frontier games!

Fusible has found a few new domain names that Lucasfilm has registered. There's a few interesting ones in here besides Gungan Frontier:

Source: Fusible

Yeah, so this happened.
Lucasfilm Ltd. and Disney Interactive are entering into a multi-year, multi-title exclusive licensing agreement with Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) for the creation of new high quality Star Wars games spanning multiple genres for console, PC, mobile, and tablets.
"Exclusive"!? Holy sith.

Source: Star Wars Official Site

ScummVM release testing season is upon us again, as version 1.6.0 of the program that lets you play classic adventure games on modern platforms nears release. The ScummVM team needs your help testing the new games which will added to ScummVM this release: 3 Skulls of the Toltecs, Eye of the Beholder, Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon, Tony Tough and the Night of Roasted Moths, and The Journeyman Project: Pegasus Prime.

Additionally, they need your help testing Hopkins FBI, which will be added to ScummVM 1.6.0 only if they get testing results on several platforms for several versions of the game (which includes BeOS, OS/2, Linux and Windows). Also, in what is of the most interest to Mojo readers, they are looking for people to test Full Throttle.

So, if you have any of the games listed, help the team out by testing the game out using a daily build of ScummVM, posting any bugs you might find to their bug tracker, and reporting your findings on their forums, so they can update their 1.6.0 Release Testing page. Remember, stick to their release testing guidelines, and as always, happy adventuring!

About a week or so ago some saintly nobody unleashed his collection of rare, vintage videos of LEC press coverage by a Los Angeles morning news station onto Youtube. Dave Grossman looks about seven. Prepare to freak out.

Update by Mr Manager: Fast forward 36 seconds into the first video to witness a "never" before seen scene from The Secret of Monkey Island. We assume the view is of the cannibal village. When confronted about the scene being cut, Ronzo had this to say: "We cut stuff all the time due to flow reasons. It's not always space. I don't remember the exact reason it went away."

Source: Lucas Legacy Youtube channel

I don't know, felt like a good headline. Here are Chuck Jordan's feelings on the closure of LucasArts from his blog. It's a pointed and honest reflection on LEC's legacy from an ex-employee's perspective that somewhat takes to task the gushing sentiments around the web. What do you think?

There's been lots of reports about LucasArt's demise, but here are a few you may have missed:

• The PA Report on the human side
• Former LucasArts employee Jesse Harlin posts a eulogy on Facebook
• A photo essay by Joel Aron, showing LucasArts staff on one of their final days
• A BBC News article on LucasArts' closure, focusing on The Secret of Monkey Island (thanks to Michael Smith for the tip)

I'm sure there's many more out there -- so if you know of any more good ones please post them in the comments.

Also, we're planning to make a LucasArts Memorial podcast. Please e-mail comments, thoughts, memories etc. to podcast [at] mixnmojo.com either as a sound file or a text message! If it's a sound file we will include it directly in the podcast. Thanks.

A lot of nostalgic sentiments about LucasArts have pervaded the web over the past few days, and perhaps we'll be acknowledging a few more of them, but you've really gotta read this gigantic and loving tribute by Gamasutra, devoted as it is entirely to the graphic adventure games, which I'm sure all of us would agree are the correct subset of the studio's catalog to center a proper eulogy around. Amidst the ongoing swirl of online LEC remembrances, it is the best piece to emerge so far.

The article is largely composed of quotes from folks throughout the industry, who recall the LEC adventures with relatable adoration and assert the influence they continue to have. Peter McConnell is among the voices, and the whole thing concludes with reflections by David Fox.

Absolutely essential Mojo reading, right here.

Source: Gamasutra

LucasArts Fans Starting To Lose Hope Of Ever Seeing 'Loom' Sequel

Source: The Onion

Read the man reminisce.

Source: Grumpy Gamer

It's just that his require more than 140 characters.

Source: The Inspiracy

Well, you know they'll be coming all day. Figure we can collect the good ones as they are tweeted in one news post. Refresh furiously, we'll be adding more:

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Disney has shut down LucasArts and canceled any game in development.

We all saw this coming, but it's a bit sadder than I would like to admit.

Source: Kotaku

Not so long ago, Hardcore Gaming 101 launched a terrific feature dedicated to Zombies Ate My Neighbors and its sequel, Ghoul Patrol. Because the two-part extravaganza is larded with quotes from Mike Ebert and Kalani Streicher (the games' respective project leaders), loads of great behind-the-scenes information is incorporated.

One such tidbit is that at one point LEC alumnus Dean Sharpe tried his darndest to get LEC to bless a GBA port of the original game. This heartfelt petition culminated in the predictable nothing at all, enabling LEC to dodge a dreaded Somebody Might Accidentally Still Like Us bullet.

Speaking of this franchise, do you know what's become of that Zombies Ate My Neighbors movie that was supposedly being written by this guy? No, I'm really asking you.

Source: Hardcore Gaming 101