Well, there you have it: The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition and its Holocaust-inspired symphony of darkness of a sequel, LeChuck's Revenge: Special Edition are now on a Steam-sale. Grab Secret or Revenge for $4.99 each, or get a pack with both for $7.49. Spit on your monocle and remove the seaweed shoved up your barnacle, it's time to monkey. So much for Star Wars Week.
Source: Steam
The SOE / LucasArts casual MMO 'Star Wars: Clone Wars' for PC has launched.
From the Press release:
In Clone Wars Adventures, players become the next great hero of the Republic as they take their place alongside their favorite characters from Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated TV series including Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Ahsoka Tano. Gamers can play exciting minigames, engage in dynamic activities, attend lively social events, and access thousands of customization options for their very own personalized avatars. They will speed through space in a Starfighter, take out waves of battle droids in Tower Defense, and test their brains with challenging Droid™ Programming puzzles. Players can also purchase legendary Star Wars outfits, items and accessories through micro-transactions using Station Cash™, SOE's virtual currency.
I guess I'll be "jp-30", Jaepes Dawnglimmer (?) look me up before my kids take over...
Source: Lucasarts
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:
"LucasArts is reorganizing its teams to better address the needs of the internal studio. Unfortunately, this means adjusting staffing. LucasArts continues to be committed to creating a first-class internal studio – and to fostering relationships with trusted external partners – in order to deliver quality games that amaze and inspire fans."
Still, this is horrible news. Again.
Source: NetworkWorld
“The story and original idea,” recalls Gilbert, “came from both Gary Winnick [the game’s celebrated artist] and I. We both liked strange humour and were big fans of campy horror movies.” Winnick concurs, narrowing the field to, “teenage horror movies where the kids always split up and go off into the dark recesses of a scary location on their own. I remember the first inspirational picture I drew – an exterior of a scary house with the sign ‘WARNING: TRESPASSERS WILL BE HORRIBLY MUTILATED’ out front as a joke – actually made it into the final game.”
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!
These sources say "morale and productivity are at all-time lows" since Meegan took over...
We've also been told that another sweeping change made by Meegan is that the majority of "external" development of Lucasarts properties is coming to an end, with BioWare's Old Republic MMO to be the last game not developed internally at Lucasarts. That would presumably mean, for example, no more LEGO Star Wars or LEGO Indiana Jones titles after the upcoming LEGO: Clone Wars, as those have all been handled by Traveller's Tales.
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?).
“Darrell brings a wealth of knowledge and deep insight into games as well as the online and eCommerce space and will undoubtedly be a valuable addition to our Board”, stated Mike Rasmussen, president of Republic of Fun. “We share a passion for casual gaming and providing the masses with the ability to let their creative voice be heard, Darrell understands the space and his leadership will be a great resource in helping us achieve our vision”.
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
"While the decision to leave LucasArts did not happen overnight or come easily, I really feel that now is the best time for me to move on and explore new creative challenges and I look forward to the next phase of my career."
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)
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
Remi to post the cheques
Monkey Island movie
Source: Entertainment Weekly
Bill Tiller's latest tweet:
No CMI SE for me. Not sure there will even be one. Bummed.
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:
We're hearing all your feedback and will have news on much of it shortly. To clarify: MISE2 isn't planned for an OSX release at this time, will let you know if and when that changes!
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:
However, the developers refrained from recreating the original game's intro, which left many fans slightly upset. That is why I wanted to step into the breach - I used trailer and in-game video material as well as the music that is played while browsing the menu (which is a remake of the original theme). Using Adobe After Effects 7, I put together a trailer, I hope many fans will enjoy.
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.
This quote stood out for me:
"I have no idea why, but people actually listened to 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
