The International House of Mojo

Sure, by being someone who is “with it” and therefore a confirmed reader of the forums, you’re about to be told redundant information, but a new version of DREAMM always has to hit the broadsheets. Here is Aaron with the rundown of your newest testing mission, DREAMM 2.1 Beta:

Source: Aaron Giles

We’ve already granted you access to one YouTube celebration, but, not surprisingly, more keep popping up. And equally not surprising, Daniel Albu is responsible for this one.

One June 25th, one Dave Grossman will face the interrogation squad. Exactly why the description says In this conversation they discuss the history of the SCUMM engine and go over all the major milestones in Aric's career! is anyone’s guess, though maybe Dave will talk a lot about Aric? Or it’s a typo—who can even say these days?! (Mojo famously has none of those. (Footnote: citation needed)) Anyway: June 25th is when it all goes down, so check it out.

Breaking news! The typo has been corrected. On the YouTube page that is. Mojo will keep having 'em.

We’re not far from the first part of the seminal SeMI-expansion release, and even with my tepid expectations I have downloaded Sea of Thieves. Hey, Monkey Island is Monkey Island, right? Right! And, over at the forums calls for new crews has already started. If I understand it correctly, Thieves allow for four-person parties, so if you haven’t joined one yet, now is the time to do so. In other words, jump on our forums and start organizing. I have no clue if there are any particular ways for crews to intermingle—I saw some mentions of fleets—but this also seems like a good way to spread the glory of the Mojo community. And create free grassroots advertising for us be part of something bigger.

To continue the SeMI chatter, more after the cut.

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Just in case you needed another reminder of your mortality: Day of the Tentacle turns thirty this year, more specifically on June 25th. To celebrate, the intrepid onaretrotip has put together a documentary that will premiere on that day.

What can you expect?

DOTT superfan Thrik has already set off two hours on his busy calendar—you might want to do the same.

I will admit to having... mixed... feelings about Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island (more commonly known as SeMI), and after a while, my mind started wandering. What would my knee-jerk reaction have been twenty-three years ago after seeing the trailer? Anger? Probably! But would that have been fair? Probably not.

Therefore, I sat down and put some therapeutical thoughts down on paper in an article succinctly named 23 Years Ago I Would Have Written an Article Called “Not MY Monkey Island”. Read, if you so must, about my complex relationship with an unreleased expansion pack to a game I’ve never played.

In 2024 (allegedly) we're getting a new game called Outlaws with a LucasFilm games logo stamped on it. It's not a western shooter though, more of a Star Wars open-world game. The trailer is chock full of impressive looking non-gameplay footage.

"Pew, pew, pew!"

Star Wars Wrath Warth Unleashed next?

Source: YouTube

We’ve gotten past “this exists,” so now let’s see if we can collect the cold hard facts that have come to light about Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island so far.

Your first burning question is most likely, “Is Ron involved?” Frankly, I think you guys are insulting Disney by even raising that as a concern. We’re talking about the creator of Monkey Island here. We can take it for granted that they’d show the basic courtesy of at least consulting him about the project.

Uh, whoops. Well listen, I’m sure it’s perfectly innocent. They probably just didn’t know how to get a hold of him. Moving on, you’ve got this interview with Creative Director Mike Chapman which pretty much summarizes everything known so far. The product will consist of a three-part expansion to Sea of Thieves, released on a monthly basis. As you heard from the trailer, the key voice talent has been retained. And as for the story-line, well, they seem rather committed to having one:

Personally, I don’t understand the need for this “alternate history” exercise when Return to Monkey Island burnt so many calories to make the further adventures of Guybrush and Elaine as open-ended as possible. I mean, do they not even remember ending #8-Q?

Anyway, it’s not a real Monkey Island game until The SCUMM Bar anoints it an official acronym, but as we await that formality, it's cool to get the sense that the team at Rare is so enthusiastic to play in this sandbox. Stay tuned throughout the week as Mojo does its best to orient itself to the implausible reality that Monkey Island games are now a yearly event.

Source: Xbox Wire

It looks like Rare wanted in on the shtick, because what you see below is a real thing that is in fact happening:

Fans have had to deal with what they thought was a lot of change over the course of this series, but at the end of the day Monkey Island after all consisted of six traditional graphic adventure games. Never before has its fans had to process an outright genre change or dalliance with another franchise. But after the right licensing fee was negotiated with Craig Derrick (who presumably made the deal contingent on that Special Edition logo), the era of the Monkey Island crossover left the realm of the hypothetical. A lot to grapple with here.

We were fashionably late to this big news, so the chatter on the forums is already well underway, awaiting your participation. And congrats to milegend.com on what we assume was a handsome compensation package for the right to that title that makes the AltaVista guy’s cash-out look like tip money.

More to come, undoubtedly.

Source: The Forums :D

When you got yourself an Indy game that was announced two-and-a-half years ago with roughly no updates since, you’ve got a right to get pessimistic. When the game’s publisher next fails to even acknowledge its existence at their big honking annual showcase weeks before the final Indy movie arrives in theaters – and word is that’s just what happened – you have the right to some Staff of Kings flashbacks.

As usual, Indy gets seated at the reject table of the commissary. At this point, I’m putting this one in the Beyond Good & Evil 2 and In the Valley of Gods category. In retrospect, they probably should have just taken Noah Falstein up on his original offer to make a graphic adventure adaptation out of Dial of Destiny. A retro game would have at least shipped.

Try not to dwell on the fact that your projected life expectancy is now exceeded by the amount of developer interviews that are streaming on YouTube -- it might cut into the time you could be spending with Aric Wilmunder. Four hours worth, to be exact.

In his mellifluous, vaguely Nicolas Cage like voice, Aric mentions possessing “three grocery bags of design documents” (you may recall his regrettably halted efforts at scanning them for his long-404’d web site) that are currently on loan to Lucasfilm itself for some vague anniversary doings. Hopefully they’re ever seen again. It would be difficult to catalog all his other great stories, ranging from misadventures in SCUMM maintenance, the hiring of Aaron Giles, and the development of Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix, so you just as soon tear up those tickets you had for a repertory screening of Abel Gance’s Napoleon and get a-watchin’.

Source: A Conversation with...

I believe there are fewer specks of dust in Thimbleweed Park than installments in this series. And who’s complaining? The author of DREAMM steps forward for a second turn at the merry-go-round, and not all sequels are diminishing returns. The considerable advancements of DREAMM since the last chat are discussed, and some time is even spent playing the games it supports.

Source: A Conversation with...

No one cares that you’re still digesting the last one -- it’s time to spend an hour with Denny Delk, voice actor extraordinaire best known in these parts as Murray from Monkey Island, Purple Tentacle from Day of the Tentacle, and about a billion others. This guy has helped or hindered Guybrush, Ben, Indy, Bernard, the Freelance Police, and the Rebel Alliance to an extent few other resumes can claim.

This time, Daniel Albu is joined by his collaborator Paul Morgan Stetler, and their interview opens with a helpful bit of background about how this “Conversation with Curtis” series came about in the first place. In the process, the unfortunate implication is made that Paul was exposed to The Secret of Monkey Island through the Special Edition, but power through the pity and enjoy their exploration of the career of Denny Delk.

Source: A Conversation with...

Don't be a tuna head. There's even more Maniac Mansion NES romhacking news.

A ROM hacker known as gzip managed to decompress Maniac Mansion for the NES and expand the ROM. This allows the graphics and room layouts to be easier to edit.

Using this decoded ROM, gzip made an uncensored NES version of Maniac Mansion that is closer to the Commodore 64 version than ever before. Even the infamous uncensored beta ROM doesn't go as far as this one does. It even changes the dungeon layout to match that seen in the C64 version, skeleton and all.

It also fixes some bugs, namely the glitched graphics under the house and on the coin box in the arcade room, and the tape text that was assigned to the current kid rather than to Green Tentacle.

There are also a few patches included if you want to mix-and-match things. One changes the graphics on Ted's calendar to be closer to the original, a second uncensors the text on said calendar, the third changes the pennant to read "L.F.L.U. Rah!", and the fourth brings life to Douglas Crockford's Muff Diver arcade joke.

Oh, and HonkeyKong's mouse hack is also included, making this the ultimate version of Maniac Mansion for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

You're only a month and change away from a new Indiana Jones movie, but if a video game is more your speed, you're going to want to find a comfortable chair. Though announced at the start of 2021, word on the upcoming Indy console title (Footnote: Though certainly targeting Xbox, it isn't clear yet whether it will be exclusive to it.) by MachineGames/Bethesda/Microsoft/Exxon has been almost entirely absent, which doesn't bode well for any hopes that it is particularly far along, even now.

But you can always hope that the Xbox Games Showcase, scheduled for June 11th, will offer some new info. With Dial of Destiny in theaters later that month and Indy promotional dollars being at peak expenditure, it would be a tactical time to refresh the public's awareness of the project, though even if that comes to pass it would be wise not to anticipate an imminent release date. Ah, for the days when Ronzo, David Fox and Noah Falstein could turn around an Indy game in seven months.

Source: Xbox Games Showcase

Daniel Albu continues to expand his labyrinthine warehouse of LucasArts developer interviews with Noah Falstein. The preposterously prolific game designer more than justifies the two-hour chat, and naturally where his LucasArts tenure is concerned he is pumped for insights on the Indiana Jones graphic adventures as well as The Dig.

Source: A Conversation with...

This has been a long time coming. Little girl me would have gone crazy for this in 1992.

A hacker named Ryan Souders, aka HonkeyKong, has released a patch for Maniac Mansion for the Nintendo Entertainment System that allows it to have real mouse support through the SNES Mouse via a Super Nintendo Entertainment System to Nintendo Entertainment System controller adapter.

The project's Romhacking page mentions this patch is for the North American NTSC release of Maniac Mansion. So, hamsters in the microwaves are in, but classical statues are out. The project's forum thread states this patch also works with the prototype version.

No word on whether the hamster cruelty-free European PAL version or the censorship-free prototype version is, or will be, supported, but I'll keep you posted (or most likely Jason will since I'm as common as the Nintendo PlayStation around here nowadays).

Oh, FYI, HonkeyKong made a Shadowgate mouse hack too.

How does four hours with Bill sound to you, other than that it’s about fifteen fewer than you’d like? Daniel Albu is here with his latest developer interview, and with it the remainder of your day is sorted out. And yes, A Vampyre Story 2 gets a status report.

Source: A Conversation with...

We have the uncomfortable duty to remind you that Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, which was inevitably invited to the Limited Run dance, is available for pre-order through Sunday and no longer. Owning Zak McKracken boxed has until now been the exclusive privilege of billionaires. Thanks to Limited Run, you now merely have to be fabulously wealthy:

Embrace your inner German and pre-order now.

Source: Limited Run Games

Back in the day, LucasArts included a trade-in form inside the box of The Secret of Monkey Island that allowed you to mail in your purchased version of the game (plus a nominal fee) to exchange it for another. So for example, if you had the VGA version on 3.5” diskettes but decided what your heart really desired was the EGA version on 5.25” diskettes, you could fill out the card and send it off along with a check and your diskettes. Within two business weeks, you’d find yourself with the replacement disks and, presumably, happiness ever after.

In June 2002, our own telarium wrote up a personal odyssey of redeeming that Monkey Island coupon a decade after the fact, to test the extent of the company's honor. When we undertook a mission to restore all our old features, we were never able to find the two photographs that telarium included in this particular one, which is kind of lethal given the premise of it.

In the end, the retired staffer said “eff it” and reproduced the photos, and now the classic feature rides again without compromise. While we were at it, we submitted a copy to the Library of Congress for reasons of redundancy. Weirdly, they only accepted it on the condition that we send them a $10 money order.

Because he likes breaking my heart, Steve Purcell’s official Sam & Max presence these days remains…a Facebook page. Though he often uses it to re-run vintage Sam & Max art, he’ll occasionally slip in a new piece.

Trouble is, you pretty much have to be as diligent as samandmax.co.uk to notice such things in a timely manner, and who could be expected to be their equal? So if you keep up with them (as you should), you already know that Purcell rang in the new year with this gem:

Hey, why not? With the as-of-yet-undated release of The Devil’s Playhouse Remastered due out sometime this year, it will indeed be a noteworthy year for Max. It’s also the 30th anniversary of Sam & Max Hit the Road, so maybe someone out there should get cracking on the retrospective? We did ours 15 years in, so now it’s your turn. We’ll even host it for you.

Update: It's been brought to my attention that the Twitter account https://twitter.com/samandmax does a reliable job of posting any new art that Purcell puts out, so you may want to be keeping tabs on that as well.

Source: Sam & Max Funhouse