The International House of Mojo

Kotaku has a large write-up on the status of Star Wars 1313, with inside sources claiming the game has been put on hold since the Disney acquisition in November 2012. Official sources are saying production is continuing.

Screw Star Wars 1313, where's my Tattooine Moisture Farmville game!?

Source: Kotaku

There's another interview with Dan Connors that talks about Telltale's upcoming Fables game, this time at Game Informer. In it, the protaganist is revealed to be Bigby, Fables' big bad wolf. There's also a hint as to how the choice based gameplay that was featured in The Walking Dead might work in Telltale's Fables game:

"Fables is coming along really well. We’ve gone back in and really tried to take a lot of what we learned from The Walking Dead and get that integrated into the story with Bigby and the characters that he meets. We want to make it a real interesting battle for Bigby between: Should he give in to the wolf side, or should he try to get along and keep everybody safe? There’s a lot of work in trying to make that work."

Also, Polygon posted an article with an image from the PlayStation Meeting 2013 showing all the third party companies that are committed to making games for the upcoming PlayStation 4. They mentioned Double Fine by name, but intrepid viewers can also spot the LucasArts and Telltale Games logos among those companies listed.

Not keen to just sit on our laurels with one post this week of tidbits not quite juicy enough to warrant their own stand-alone post, here comes another slew of Mojo related tidbits:

Will the season five finale of The Clone Wars animated television series tie into Star Wars 1313? The HD Room thinks so, and they provide some compelling side-by-sides screenshots of the finale trailer and the 1313 trailer. If nothing else, it certainly does look like the underworld Coruscant from the game.

PC World has an article on "How Adventure Games Came Back from the Dead". It features interviews with Dan Connors (the co-founder and CEO of Telltale Games), Jane Jensen (of Gabriel Knight fame) and Dave Gilbert (of Blackwell fame).

There's no news on Telltale's King's Quest, but there is news for King's Quest fans. Under the Half Dome is a kickstarter project for an album made up of orchestrated versions of Sierra songs by Ken Allen. If you don't know, Ken Allen was the composer of the music from the VGA remake of King's Quest and King's Quest V (as well as many other Sierra games), and he may or may not work on the music for Telltale's King's Quest (no composer has been announced yet, like everything else about the game). The kickstarter has many interesting tiers to choose from, so much so that it was part of Forbes' 10 Most Clever Kickstarter Rewards list (for their $500 USD and $1,000 USD tier). The base price of the album is $15 USD (for the digital version), and if they hit the $20,000 USD mark, all kickstarter backers will have their first names included in a song inspired by the "Nations of the World" song from Animaniacs.

Apparently part of a series analyzing "gonzo guns" in video games (so, all of them), Gamaustra has a brief piece up examining the legendary Land Shark Gun from Planet Moon's should-have-been blockbuster Armed & Dangerous.

Never played Armed & Dangerous? Dude, it's $4.99 on Steam.

Source: Gamasutra

I revive myself from my Mardi Gras-induced stupor to alert you to a piece on Mobiledia about Lucy Bradshaw, a key figure in LucasArts product development back when they developed products worth rallying attention behind.

Bradshaw, whose name might be familiar to you from the opening credits of games like Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, graduated from her "training ground" at LEC in the 90s to become an executive for Maxis/EA. It is the later part of her career that the article largely concerns, but I think she would agree that it was her days being rotoscoped in a wetsuit for The Dig animation tests that truly legitimized the games business as a vocation.

Source: Mobiledia

ResidualVM, the sister project of ScummVM designed to run Grim Fandango on modern systems (with official builds on Windows, Mac, and Linux), has received a bug fix update. And what an update it is! There's around 40 gameplay fixes in the newest release, including fixes for 14 bugs that were present in the original 1998 release, making ResidualVM the best way to run Grim even if you have a computer that can handle the original executable.

i09 (via AICN) is reporting a standalone Yoda movie may be in the works.
Here's a link to the original AICN story, but it's pretty much unreadable.
The clip of Bob Iger in this article confirms that both Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg are writing standalone films. Each film will be "derived from great Star Wars characters."
How many websites will report this rumor using exaggerated Yoda backwards-speak in their headline? Start counting.
Update: Much of the above is confirmed true on starwars.com - Kasdan and Kinberg are writing two standalone Star Wars movies. The lead roles are yet to be announced.

Source: i09

In a surprise move, we will be getting new games adorned with the LucasArts logo in the very near future.

Any fans of digital recreations of pinball tables in the house?

Source: Zen Studios

Disney has just announced it is closing down its Austin, Texas based Junction Point Studios gaming company, led by Warren Spector, shortly after the release of Epic Mickey 2.

While what Disney does with things that aren't LucasArts is dubious in its relevance to Mix N Mojo, I think we can all see a possible outcome of the LucasFilm acquisition if the shift from AAA titles to casual / mobile isn't successful for LucasArts.

Still, when LucasArts used a line very similar to "the fast-evolving gaming platforms and marketplace" as the rationale behind shutting a project down, it led to the formation of Telltale Games.

Source: Huffington Post

It seems that BioWare has finally taken Mojo's jokes excellent coverage to heart. In the new expansion pack named Rise of the Hutt Cartel, which we already covered briefly, BioWare has created a new planet named "Makeb" for players to visit. At the same time, BioWare is also going to be adding same-gender relationships to the game, but they will (for now) be confined to just this planet.

There has been some negative reaction to restricting same-gender relationships to one planet. Kotaku has referred to this as "pay-to-gay". They also posted about a response to BioWare's announcement: (Warning: NSFW) The Hunt for the Gay Planet. (Double Warning: May be more fun than The Old Republic, or at least less repetitive)

Oh, and BioWare revealed some details about the upcoming 1.7 update.

Source: Ars Technica

Hidden in a background shot of the latest Star Wars: Clone Wars episode (season 5, episode 12) as an Easter Egg are these three rather familiar looking posters. This was the 100th episode of the animated show.

(click for high res version)

Thanks to mixnmojo lurker Join the Schwarz for the heads-up.
Update: Join the Schwarz says that the Aurebesh text on the posters read "Kowakian Monkey Island", "Full Throttle" and "Day of the Sarlacc".

Mojo's back! It's a Festivus miracle!

Some Star Wars Battlefront Online concept art from Slant Six leaked this month. Because canceling Battlefront III wasn't enough, apparently.

News about cut scenes from Return of the Jedi also came out: Three female fighter pilots were dropped from the Battle of Endor.

In Episode VII news, both Samuel L. Jackson and Ewan McGregor said they would both like to come back to reprise their roles as Mace Windu and Obi-Wan Kenobi, respectively. More likely Ian McKellen would take over Obi-Wan just because he seems to play every old wise mentor character nowadays. There was also a leak supposedly revealing plot details about the movie, but this was later proven incorrect.

And for those still playing Star Wars: The Old Republic, there's good news! After a year of being online, EA has a new expansion pack for you to buy called "Rise of the Hutt Cartel". It almost feels reminiscent of Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption with its whole "third party vying for control of the galaxy" scheme (except, this time, the Hutts). Those who order before January 7 will get to access it three days early and those who are subscribers will get 50% off the $19.99 price tag.

(Bonus: This is just cool.)

ResidualVM, the interpreter that allows users to play 3D adventure games on modern PCs, has reached a major milestone. After 9 years of development (the ]initial revision of Residual (the original name of ResidualVM) was released by former ScummVM and ResidualVM project leader James "Ender" Brown on August 15, 2003), the first stable release is here, with full support for Grim Fandango. The stable build, version 0.1.0, is available to download for Windows, MacOS, and Linux.

PC Gamer conducted an interview with Ron Gilbert, where Ron stated that he wants to make a Monkey Island game and that he intends on talking to Disney at some point about getting the rights to Monkey Island so he can “really make the game I want to make.” However, he also stated that he wasn't optimistic that he'd ever retrieve the series he created, saying that Disney seems like a company which "hoards IP". And in a related interview with Metro about The Cave where they discuss Ron contacting Disney about making a Monkey Island game, Ron states that he wouldn't be willing to change the genre of Monkey Island for a new game stating that "Monkey Island has to be a point 'n' click adventure game".

There's another Ron Gilbert interview at Eurogamer, where Ron explains why his upcoming adventure game, The Cave, has no inventory.

Telltale is raking up the awards for The Walking Dead, including 5 awards from Spike TV's Video Game Awards: "Game of the Year", "Best Adapted Video Game", "Best Downloadable Game", "Best Performance By a Human Female" (for Melissa Hutchinson's Clementine), and "Studio of the Year". Telltale was also awarded "Best Downloadable Game" and "Best Character Design" for Lee Everett at the Inside Gaming Awards.

ResidualVM is making progress on its supported games. Escape from Monkey Island is now playable to Lucre Island (and is still a work in progress, and not officially supported), and ResidualVM's only supported non-LucasArts game, Myst 3, is now completable with glitches and missing features (as of the December 9 daily builds). The ResidualVM team can still also use your help in testing Grim Fandango (which is fully completable and fully supported). They request that any bugs that you encounter be submitted to the issue tracker and that you post on their forums when you complete the game.

The UK's Channel 4 commissioned an online adventure game inspired by LucasArts classics for their animated sitcom, Full English. The game contains five chapters (which are individually selectable at any time) and features Day of The Tentacle inspired multiple playable characters with inventory sharing. It also includes references to a certain Lucasfilm license.

Edge Online has an article on Star Wars 1313 that talks about the technology, and some of the gameplay, of Star Wars: 1313. The most interesting part of the article is that every Lucas subsidiary seems to be involved in this project:

"And it’s here that a significant collaboration is happening, with visual effects house Industrial Light & Magic, Skywalker Sound, Lucas Animation and LucasArts all working together for the first time – now under Disney’s banner."

It seems LucasArts is really shooting for the stars with this one. It will certainly be interesting to see if it lives up to expectations (and if LucasArts allows it enough development time to do so).

We were aware that Star Wars: Battlefront III got well into development before it checked in to the Dew Drop Dead Inn, but in an interview with gamestm last week former Free Radical employee Steve Ellis decided to assign a provocative percent to the game's state of completion:

Considering that "99% finished" is a reckless claim for most of LucasArts' released products, it came as little surprise when a second source emerged to contest it. The source was a former LucasArts employee, and anonymously they dispatched a rebuttal to Ellis' comments to Gamespot for maximum exposure. This'd be the highlight:

Such generosity could not go unobserved. Ellis sent Gamespot a lengthy response to the response (to be found in the same article) that reads, in part: Avail yourself of the whole drama, which if nothing else features fun candor from the sparring parties (the LEC source likens Free Radical to a Ponzi scheme) and sheds a little extra light on internal LucasArts circa 2008, which Ellis diplomatically describes as "a company with problems."

Source: Gamespot

The Star Wars MMO "The Old Republic" has launched its Free-To-Play option for those who don't care for monthly subscriptions. The press release says:

“We want to give our players the freedom to enjoy Star Wars: The Old Republic when and how they want,” said Matthew Bromberg, General Manager of BioWare Austin. “There has never been a better time to start playing with us.”

Also today, BioWare released Game Update 1.5: HK-51 Activated, which adds new areas to explore, a new Companion character and more... So there you go, if you've wanted to play more Old Republic Era Star Wars game, but don't like the thought of monthly fees, give it a try.

Source: Star Wars The Old Republic

It's a funny thing. The Disney buyout seems to have served, in part, to remind people of all the great games LucasArts once made, leading them to wonder why in the hell they're being kept in cold storage. The remarks by Disney about a potential focus on mobile platforms in particular has fueled the question: why not bring the oldies to handheld devices?

You take this guy over at Android Apps, who searches for logic in the dearth of PC games, modern and legacy, on his favorite gadget, and comes up short:

And what about this suggestion by Pocket Gamer of ten LucasArts classics to find a home on iOS and Android? The list, which represents the space opera only with Super Star Wars, reads like a roll call of beloved LEC originals.

It almost seems like there's this indeterminately sized society of weirdos that loves those old games and would like to see them given the modest respect of a place in the digital space. It's too bad this admittedly profane cult of individuals can't happen to include the people who actually have the power to make it happen.

Angry Birds Star Wars is out now for 99 cents on iPhone, $2.99 on iPad, in HD format on Android for $2.99, on regular format for Android for free (with ads), on Windows for $4.99 (including Windows 8), on Mac for $4.99, on Kindle Tablet for $2.99, and on Windows Phone 8 for 99 cents.

According to Nokia, Angry Birds Star Wars will also be available for Windows Phone 7.5 once Rovio and Nokia "make sure everything works as well as it can".

I just played through the Tatooine level, and it's actually pretty fun. It's essentially a blend of Angry Birds and Angry Birds Space with lightsabers, blasters, and the force, but the latter are implemented well and make for an entertaining experience.

It seems LucasArts will have their name on a game release this year after all (not counting Kinect Star Wars as a game). Three days to go!

Source: MTV Multiplayer