The International House of Mojo

Yesterday, popular website Hardcore Gaming 101 posted an article on Lucidity, a flawed but nevertheless important LucasArts game from 2009. The article, which contains the phrase "somber twilight farm", gives you a brief overview of the game and examines its flaws. It also makes several tracks from the Jesse Harlin-composed soundtrack available for download, and they are a treat.

You may be wondering why I consider Lucidity to be "important". All I can say is this:

• Other LucasArts games weren't as frowned upon nor as praised as Lucidity, but that's because they don't exist.

• Lucidity never had Clint Hocking or any other internationally acclaimed designer helming it; but unlike other LucasArts games, Lucidity actually exists.

• It's true that it's easier to make licensed games if you just want profit; however, unlike original LucasArts games, licensed LucasArts games developed in-house or Democratic ballsiness in a congressional hearing, Lucidity brought in some money because Lucidity actually exists.

Source: Hardcore Gaming 101

Not content to rest on my laurels after finding a long-lost room from Loom, I've delved further into the realm of old French computer gaming magazines. This has yielded interesting results, such as this early version of the Monkey Island 1 title screen:

I also found

.
And here's a scan of Kate Capsize's ship from MI2, which was later almost entirely redesigned. The waterfall on Phatt Island, also seen here, was likewise redrawn to look more realistic.

Speaking of MI2, here's some long-lost original background art:

A joke from Last Crusade, sadly cut out:

Fate of Atlantis with prototype inventory icons.

I've also got a nice scan from Joystick magazine showing Fate with its initial MI1-style GUI:

(That early GUI was also seen in

already shown on Mojo.)
Finally, some scans featuring Brian Moriarty's The Dig from Génération 4 and Joystick, covering CES of summer 1993.

Among other things, these articles show off the gory death scene of Toshi Olema (the fourth Dig astronaut later removed by Sean Clark), who tried to cross a lake of acid, with predictable results.
Also check out this translated description of the original Dig script Steven Spielberg intended for the Amazing Stories TV show:
"It was about a team of future archaeologists who unearth a statue of Mickey Mouse, then Sleeping Beauty's castle, etc., ultimately discovering that they have located Disneyland."

I think we can all be thankful Disneyland is not in the final game.

This week's selection from the video archives is an excellent sit-down that 1up arranged with seven LEC ex-developers: Tony Hsieh, Larry Ahern, Ron Gilbert, Dave Grossman, Bill Tiller, Noah Falstein, and Mike Levine. This was recorded in 2008, and supposedly a lot of material ended up on the cutting room floor. Not sure what role a cutting room floor needs to ever play when it comes to footage of these guys reminiscing about the olden days, but you'll have to take that up with 1up.

Lucasarts historian ATMachine has unearthed several screenshots and some video footage from older games early in their development. First up is a missing room from Loom mentioned on the Lucasforums years ago, but never seen by anyone else but French people that happened to buy Tilt magazine issue 81 in September 1990:

The hour glasses appear in the background of the glassmakers city in the EGA version of Loom, but they were painted out in the VGA version.

We now have a better version of the

, also from Tilt magazine, and below is a video showing early footage from the game taken from the CD-ROM based Interactive Entertainment Magazine (issue 5, September 1994):

Say what you will about how Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels was looking - with a score by Peter McConnell, we were most certainly going to be getting a righteous soundtrack. The maestro seemed pretty excited about his work when we did an interview with him back in 2003 (not that I can link to it). Oh well.

But McConnell wasn't the only composer on the project - contributions were also being made by LEC regular Gordy Haab, and four lovely background tracks that he did for the game have been found online. They're now on Mojo. Here, let me help you with that.

It's been a long time coming, and I'll bet most people thought it was already dead. Star Wars Galaxies, the ill-thought out MMO collaboration between LucasArts and Sony, finally comes to an end on December 15th, 2011. Mourn it do not, miss it do not. This is actually the first Sony Online MMO to close, as even Everquest is still going. The main reason appears to be that their licence to use Star Wars expires in 2012 and they didn't feel it was worth renewing. A smart choice in my opinion, especially with The Old Republic around the corner.

Oh well, there's always Clone Wars Adventures right? Right?

Source: Rock Paper Shotgun

The authors of two "Top 10" lists to appear on the internet recently have betrayed a certain degree of education by including various LucasArts adventure games. Comic Book Resources has pegged Sam & Max Hit the Road as one of the "Ten Best Comic Book Video Games Ever Made." Hit the Road also appeared in the "Ten PC Games Games That Had Great Voice Acting", where it is joined by Grim Fandango and The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition.

Hell, even [the intern who logs into] the LucasArts Twitter page could not help but do some fist-pumping in response to the distinction earned by their old graphic adventures. To be fair, the company really does support their back catalog so long as you don't count making it available as an expression of support. They've got to draw the line somewhere.

To quote Crow T. Robot, there's no tradition like a new tradition, and why not one to raise awareness of the newly launched video archive that Zaarin unveiled a single news post ago? Every Sunday, we'll fish a video from the ever-growing collection to award the front page treatment. Like, remember this Armed & Dangerous trailer?

What a fun-looking game! I'm sure it will sell like hotcakes. Anyhow, I think you get the idea. Check back next week for another selection, which will be no difficult investment being that you visit us every day for the general wealth of quality gunk we always have on tap for you!

Making good on the pledge to not let anything too interesting happen under his watch, LEC president Paul Meegan has guided his studio through perhaps its leanest E3 to date. There were exactly two games on the show floor they could claim a kinship to - Star Wars: The Old Republic, which they're so uninvolved with at this point that they're not even publishing, and Kinect Star Wars, which is apparently more Microsoft and Terminal Reality's production than LEC's.

But you keep your cynical remarks to yourselves, you buncha Negative Nancys. So what if those secret projects remain unannounced? There's no drive-thru at Commander's Palace - these things take time! And who cares if the Steam re-release effort from two years ago suffered a stroke after four graphic adventures with no progress in sight? Digital distribution of SCUMM games is a multi-billion dollar investment. And quit your whining about Indiana Jones' 30th anniversary being left thoroughly unexploited - can't you be happy that Star Wars fans are going to finally have their day after years of neglect?

Besides, the company's got bigger fish to fry here. That's right, bitches: there are Old Republic peripherals to put out!

Boy, do you look like a fool. I hope now you'll consider the bigger picture before rushing to judgment about a company's commitment to innovation. Feel free to apologize to LEC at your earliest convenience.

Source: GameGuru

Reader and understandably fervent Maniac Mansion fan BionicBoots has alerted me to a music video he made where he adds lyrics to Dave's theme music from the NES version of the game (the only version where there was music for the kids). I think his effort was commendable and certainly no less misguided than the "Raiders March With Lyrics" Youtube video we pimped some time back, so here it is. Oh, and believing that two is more than one, BionicBoots went ahead and made a "rock remix" version of his own music video; you'll find both achievements below.

It probably won't be deemed the most exciting headline to come out of this week, but there ya go.

Source: Gamasutra

Don't think LucasArts care about their past glories? Get ready to eat your words when you see Kinect Star Wars, a game similar to The Phantom Menace-titles in more ways than one. Except, of course, that you get to jump around like a fool with this game.

Run over to their website and look!

Before we begin, just take a deep breath.

The LucasArts president for this year, Paul Meegan, hasn't been very vocal since he took over. Then again, the whole of LucasArts has been pretty much under lockdown. Now MCV have finally got some details out of the man and... well... sigh.

Hmm, not as bad as I'd been expecting really. A few quibbling points to be raised, such as the need to cull those "bright and creative people" every couple of years, the fact that he's ignoring the want for re-releases, and that he's pretty much saying everything Jim Ward did and look where that got him. Still, not bad, don't know what the fuss is about rea-

Oh dear.

Source: MCV

If you fancy listening to some Tales of Monkey Island tracks played on a piano, click here. YouTube user checkthesouth has covered a wide range of the game's soundtrack for your enjoyment, and I've been listening to this stuff as I study. It's worth a listen!

Source: YouTube

Whenever a new Pirates of the Caribbean movie comes out, it's customary for the community to share what they see as blatant plagiarism of the Monkey Island games on the part of the writers. While such observations almost assuredly amount to coincidence, there's no doubt that even the most casual Monkey Island fans can point to some downright uncanny "reminders" of favorite moments from Guybrush's exploits in this mega-grossing Disney franchise.

Well, last weekend's On Stranger Tides was surely no exception, and I've given everyone a head start on the ongoing compilation of Totally Not Ridiculous MI Connections in this forum thread. Come play along, and of course, spoilers ahoy!

Rum Rogers sent in this news: "I was playing this flash game to kill time, and accidentally discovered its background music CLEARLY includes the main Monkey Island theme."

The flash game can be played here, and it does indeed come with a sort-of House (?) remix of the Monkey Island theme. Sounds pretty great. The game itself can best be described as 'Lemmings with Zombies'.

Update: Thanks to 'bony' for point out the composer of the remix: Kupa.

If you're hankerin' for longer, more professional gaming podcasts, then perhaps you should point your ears to the PC Gamer US Podcast #273.

This week their special guest is Chuck "Not the Plant or the Country" Jordan, LucasArts and Telltale adventure-game-veteran:

Hold on to your hats boys and girls, because they just might be blown off. As any regular long-term readers of Mojo will know, one of my favourite LucasArts games is Indiana Jones and Infernal Machine. I've spent many happy hours playing that game, and I'd thought I'd uncovered all its secrets. Apparently not!

One of the things that always bugged me was the identity of this little boy wearing an Indy hat in the minecart switching hut. Well, out of the blue today I received an email from Paul LeFevre, who worked at LucasArts from 1992-2000 (the wonder years) and was Lead Programmer on Infernal Machine. This is what he said:

Hooray, mystery solved at long last! But wait, there's more:

There's a secret in that game that I didn't know about?! Apparently so. At least one person seems to have found it inadvertantly. In the Palawan Volcano level, behind the huge gong in the lava/statue/Russians room there's a block you can push. Push it to the end and you'll find some treasure... but if you push the bare bit of wall opposite you can find the "Filipino Princess"!

Incidentally, in the N64 version of the game (which was found first) there's a stone carving of an N64 instead. Much less fun.

Impressed? I was!

Remember how LucasArts teased us with Sam & Max: Freelance Police and rapidly made us go from ":-D" to ":-(" and then to ">:-("? Of course you do, and a crazy time it was.

With three seasons of Sam & Max now available from Telltale, it might be time to take a look at what could have been. Our ancient preview is once again available, as is our angry manifesto. The latter has been padded with some crazy hate-art from the gone but never (never!) forgotten Wibble-Wobble Hatstand.

One that might be a bit more obscure is our Freelance Police retrospective, now imaginatively (re-)titled " The Kinda, Sorta, But Not Really Secret History of Sam & Max: Freelance Police." In it we take a look at the history of the game, and show some of the test-animations from the game. Remember the Max butt-shave? If not, you should probably revisit it.

So yes, roll back in time, and think what could have been.

LucasArts may be announcing nothing, but they're certainly committing something to that nothing. They've just announced via press release that they have signed the popular (some might say "ridiculously overused") Unreal Engine 3 from Epic Games, as used in such titles as Gears of War, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Bioshock and a fair few others, for use in the long term in whatever games they're not telling us about.

Zak Phelps, technology director at LucasArts, had this to say:

Mark Rein of Epic also says:If it's an Indiana Jones game, that'll do me.