The International House of Mojo

So, anyone got any good Ewok/Back To The Future puns? The best I could do was "EndorLorean".

UPDATE: Followed up by this. We now need Ewok/Back To The Future/Spaceballs gags.

Source: CNET

Or in plainspeak, LucasArts canned 30% of its staff to "better address the needs of the internal studio". Which means they want to spend less money to make money.

UPDATE by Tingler: Kotaku have some words from some of these ex-employees. They call it a "massacre" (they don't actually kill their ex-employees do they? Mind you, we haven't seen Sean Clark in a while) while reporting that at least 85 people have been shown the door. Around 60 of those came from internal development.

A statement from the company reads:

Well, at least that might mean Tales of Monkey Island Season Two might still be on.

Still, this is horrible news. Again.

Source: NetworkWorld

The Edge magazine has a lovely retrospective article online regarding the making of Maniac Mansion.

And while you're here, you might enjoy this Monkey Island comic. Take a look at some of the background objects too...

Thanks to Ron Gilbert's twitter feed for both tipoffs.

Source: The Edge

UK multiformat gaming magazine GamesTM is one of my favourite reads, and always has great Retro articles. They are also great fans of the LucasArts adventures and often have some sort of feature on them.

Like Issue 98, which should hopefully be still in the shops, which has a big feature on The Curse of Monkey Island to rival even their great Fate of Atlantis article (anyone got a link for that?). Being out of the UK right now I can't read it, but I'm told it's very in-depth, with lots of photos and a huge interview with project leader and friend of Mojo Larry Ahern.

Go buy! And report back to us with your findings!

Kotaku has posted a rumour that LucasArts are up to their old tricks. With the arrival of a new President, the tradition is that LucasArts have to cancel a lot of promising-looking games and axe a lot of staff. The Circle of LEC may be coming round again.

According to Kotaku's unnamed sources at the studio, new president Paul Meegan has cancelled the in-production Force Unleashed III, will let a lot of TFU2's staff go when that comes out this October, and has put another unnamed project (possibly fish-related) on hold.... Which would be quite a feat after what happened the last time a Force Unleashed game shipped.

Just to make him Meegan seem completely insane and contradictory, after this in-house scrubbing and axeing session, this quote is the most worrying:
This would mean that, if true, a Tales of Monkey Island Season Two would not be happening.

Let's hope that these rumours prove untrue. After the departure of Darrell Rodriguez, many executives and Haden Blackman however, I wouldn't be surprised if there was truth in here.

Source: Kotaku

Ex-LucasArts President Darrell Rodriguez, who made a sudden and unexpected departure from the company a few months ago after just one year as President, has now joined casual gaming company Republic of Fun on their Board of Directors (is that a job?).

We wish Mr Rodriguez the best of luck in his new position, and we wish he could've stayed with LucasArts longer. Under him LucasArts re-released many of their classics, remade Monkey Island 1 and 2, gave Monkey Island 5 to Telltale, and made their first original title in years with Lucidity.

Gamasutra reports that the PSP version of The Force Unleashed II has been canceled, presumably over the mathematical concerns of attempting to profit off a user base of seventeen. Or maybe the port just blew? I don't know, but I'm guessing most of you weren't even aware that there was to be a PSP version.

All other versions of the game, which include Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo DS, Wii and PC, remain on track for a Fall release. The sales of the original game suggest that something on the order of 7 million folks consider that to be an event of some magnitude.

Source: Gamasutra

Gamespot reports that LucasArts has recently hired Clint Hocking, who served as Creative Director at Ubisoft Montreal (where he contributed to Far Cry 2 and the Splinter Cell series) and will now serve the same role on an unannounced game at the Star Wars studio.

Who knows what the mystery game will turn out to be, although I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that it isn't Handsome Halibut.

Source: Gamespot

IGN is reporting that long-time LucasArts employee and Force Unleashed series producer Haden Blackman has resigned.
STFU2 is still on schedule for an October release, according to an anonymous LucasArts spokesperson.

Source: IGN

You whined and LEC listened. According to our forums the Steam version of LeChuck's Revenge has been patched, fixing many of the audio issues people were complaining about. In other words, the bone song should now be synced.

No word if the other versions of the game have been updated yet.

Update: Full list of Alterations

Direct from LucasArts, here's everything you need to know about the patch, in full:

• Adjusted timing delays for certain puzzles

• Fixed missing music in Dinky Jungle

• Fixed music synching issue with the Bone Dance sequence

• Fixed various music cross-fading issues

• Added intro and outro credits sequences to the Classic version

• Added acceleration curve to cursor speed

• Increased volume level of “Classic” Chester

Who says LucasArts don't listen to you moaning gits? ;)

Something I've never really thought about before, and suddenly have a deep appreciation for, is Mark Ferrari's colour cycling work on Loom and The Secret of Monkey Island. But what's colour cycling, you ask?

It's the clever technique used to make water look like it's rippling, or fire dancing, or clouds racing, without having to use sprites. It's accomplished by changing the colour palette, which basically means it's very, very hard. Here is a bad example to show you what I mean.

Joseph Huckaby, though, understands this well. And he's actually managed to replicate Mark's advanced understand of how to use colour cycling properly using HTML5 - and the results are very pretty indeed.

So, thanks Mark Ferrari - your work continues to be appreciated by us all. And thanks to you, Joe, for reminding us :)

Source: Effect Games (via Kotaku)

e find ourselves at an unexpected point. If you'd told me in 2004 – or 2001, or even 2009 – that LucasArts had just released a remake of Monkey Island 2 that did, for the most part, live up to the original game, I wouldn't have believed you. This wasn't part of the accepted future of LucasArts.

Neither was Lucidity, for that matter, which I didn't play. But it was an important game for them to make, because LucasArts are a powerhouse studio – there's no doubt about this; they’ve put out some of the most well-funded and technically accomplished games of all time, as far as such things can be measured. And whilst Lucidity doesn't fall into that category, it's significant because it wasn't set on Tatooine.

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Yet another thing on the 'Will Never Happen' list has happened: Entertainment Weekly is pimping out Monkey Island 2. Possibly one of the most mainstream recommendations of the game yet, to a crowd that might be called the opposite of 'hardcore adventure game fans'. What the hell next?

Will Never Happen List

1. LucasArts re-release classic adventure games

2. Monkey Island 5

3. Tim Schafer to go on late night talk show

4. Monkey Island appearing in Entertainment Weekly

5. Ron Gilbert to release game

6. Jake to make Sam & Max game

7. Jake to make Monkey Island game

8. Trapezoid youtube video to hit 83 million views

9. Remi to post the cheques

10. Monkey Island movie

Source: Entertainment Weekly

Bill Tiller's latest tweet:

Not sure what Bill knows that we don't about the likelihood of The Curse of Monkey Island special edition, but I guess he got his response from LEC. It's fair enough and probably just as well if the project isn't being planned - as awesome as an enhanced version of CMI would be, the original game holds up far too well for Bill or LEC to sacrifice precious time on a remake that they can devote to new projects.

Hopefully, if it is indeed the intention for the Special Edition treatment of the Monkey Island saga to end with the second game, LucasArts can work on some re-releases. I think we can all agree that there's really no excuse for things like this having reason to exist.

Source: Bill Tiller's twitter feed

Down at the official Monkey Island Facebook page, LucasArts has this to say:

Monkey Island 2: Special Edition managed to rock the socks off of even the most cynical of fans, with only some small gripes regarding how immaculately preserved the classic version of game was. What, then, does LEC mean by that first sentence in the quoted statement? I don't know, that's why I'm asking you.

Source: Monkey Island Facebook page

If you read Mojo, you've probably already bought the Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge Special Edition by now. But hear me out.

For the first couple of days of its release, MI2:SE was only available on PC through Steam, and thus the game required a working Internet connection every time it booted up, instead of only once when it first ran.

Now, however, LucasArts has also made the MI2 Special Edition available (sadly for Americans only, I believe) through Direct2Drive.

If you live in the US, you may want to seize this chance to own the MI2:SE, ever so slightly more concretely than you can via Steam. Or not.

UPDATE by Tingler: D2D UK now have it too, so there's really no excuses.

Also, you can use Steam offline. Everyone knows that.

It pays to be a Monkey Island fan: seems that someone, somewhere, was disappointed about the lack of intro in the Special Edition of Monkey Island 2, and so created their own version. In their own words:

Said fan then goes to apologize about his lack of mad skillz, and says the thing could be done better. To which I say, hey, at least you made it. Watch it here, Monkey Maniacs.

Source: YouTube

Heard of Lisa Foiles? Me neither, but while a teenage actress she worked for Nickelodean, and while there she had the opportunity all of us dream of - to be able to pitch a Monkey Island movie to a big Hollywood film executive who could make it happen. More than that, it was at the exact time pirates had just become popular again thanks to a certain Jack Sparrow, so the timing was never better.

She screwed it up, obviously.

This quote stood out for me:

I don't want to be mean Lisa, but, well, you look like this. There's a reason people listened to you. I would listen to you too (admittedly now that I know you're a big Monkey Island fangirl as well I really want to listen to you).

The end result: no Monkey Island movie. Again. Nevermind Lisa, the guy sounded like a dick anyway. (And the art Kotaku used was utterly kickass incidentally)

Source: Kotaku

elTee's review of Monkey Island 2 Special Edition can now be found over here.

You wouldn't believe the ego of some of these online gaming sites, thinking that they can just go and review Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge like it's some run of the mill computer application. Nonetheless, IGN has posted one of the earliest reactions to the Special Edition, awarding the game an 8.9 out of 10 alongside a number of flattering adjectives. Still though, a pox on their first born!

Source: IGN