We’re getting into the weeds here, with Loom set to receive the LRG treatment:
$75, so not too bad compared to some of these bundles. Currently unknown is if the EGA version will be included. We shall see soon enough.
Pre-orders start on January 13th, and it begs the question: What’s next? The Dig? Or Zak, a game Germans would legally be obliged to buy? Time will tell!
Don’t start spending those Christmas cheques yet—Sam & Max Hit the Road is running Limited on January 6th:
$100 will get you... Well, a bunch of stuff. Thrik is looking at getting a good dozen copies as Mojo’s Christmas bonus was a decree making each of us give him a cool hundy. For the rest of you:
While we were on a CEO-mandated furlough, no less than two stories passed Mojo by. And if you subscribed to our newsletter, you would have known what those stories were.
...
Fine, I’ll post them here, too:
I’m fairly certain NME—née New Musical Express—was my dad’s magazine of choice during the sixties, so it only makes sense that this grand old magazine sits down with the grand old game developer, which subsequently is being “reported” on by the grand old Mojo. That is to say, NME has a lengthy interview with Tim Schafer. There might not be a lot of new information to be found, but it is an interesting read nonetheless. Not least because of this:
On the subject of other games, Schafer says that he still finds the time to play plenty – this year, his favourites have included Ron Gilbert’s Return to Monkey Island, BlueTwelve’s feline adventure Stray, and Zelda-inspired adventure Tunic.
ReMI tops his list—that’s just heartwarming!
Doing a one-eighty, The Force Engine has hit 1.0. What is The Force Engine, you may ask? Have a gander at the trailer:
Those of us of “a certain age” may remember the original reviews of Dark Forces complained about the lack of lightsabers. Now, it feels downright refreshing.
Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders have been irreversibly tied together ever since that can of chainsaw gasoline was found on Mars, but a new fan game is taking it to a whole other level. Below is the spiel for Zak the Maniac - An Interactive Music Video:
Zak McKracken finds himself exploring the haunted mansion of the Edison family. Something has gone seriously wrong -- and if ghostly hauntings weren't bad enough, a band is using the dungeon as their rehearsal space.
This game is released as an "interactive music video" for Error 47's cover/mash-up of the Zak McKracken and Maniac Mansion theme tunes. The song is included in the download.
You can download the game and the cover tune that suggested it right here.
Source: Error 47
If you've read our big 25th anniversary interview with the Curse of Monkey Island project leaders (and if you haven't, there's still time to do so fashionably), you're well aware of the legend of Bear Pig -- a classic example of programmer art that Jonathan Ackley cooked up to occupy "room zero" to the satisfaction of SCUMM's inviolate laws.
But just as everyone sees a different statue in the marble, BearPig represents different themes to different interpreters. In his latest blog post, CMI programmer/writer Chuck Jordan casts BearPig as his inspiration for some brief reflections on the concept of art that is "good enough." Read it, and lament Ron's delinquency in reprising the series' most indelible character.
Source: Spectre Collie
Big-budget video games take something like seventy-five years development on average these days, dwarfing the investments represented by a tentpole movie or joining America's coasts by high speed rail. So you can probably expect next year's Indiana Jones movie to be celebrating at least its first birthday before you'll be playing the upcoming Indy game by MachineGames on whatever space-age platforms the average zero-gravity household will boast by then.
That we're still a ways out is endorsed by the fact that details on the title remain thin on the ground. However, a few comments were extracted out of Todd Howard of Bethesda (that would be the game's publisher, albeit one that also functions as a studio itself and which happens to share the same parent company as MachineGames, just to confuse matters) in a new interview with said Executive Producer:
... Howard says a game starring the character was always on his "bucket list" of things to do: to the extent he first pitched it 13 years ago.
"I had pitched Lucas," said Howard. "Met some people there and pitched them back in '09 this Indiana Jones concept, and kinda the deal fell apart". LucasArts wanted to publish any Indiana Jones game: Bethesda saw itself as the publisher. "I didn't really have the team to do [it] and you know we made Skyrim so I guess it worked out."
[...]
"I mean you can talk about the world of Indiana Jones but it's him, it's the character," said Howard. "I would just say it is a mashup, it is unique, it isn't one thing intentionally. So it does a lot of different things that we've wanted to do in a game. It's a unique game."
Pretty useless. But hey, at least the project is still trucking along. And if we know one thing about long-in-development Indiana Jones games, it's that it all works out in the end.
Source: PC Gamer
Did you enjoy Mixnmojo's cautious preview of Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels from our E3 2003 coverage, but wish you could have been there in person? Well, some footage from that very booth has made it into the wild, so now you can do the next best thing. As an added bonus, you get celebrity developers Malena Annable and Dan Connors hanging around the sides of the frame for some reason:
The uploader is the same archeologist who brought you leaked cutscene footage from the rarely-lamented game this past summer. I'm not entirely sure I understand where this was sourced from, although he attempts to contextualize it in his video description.
Only Father Torque knows what he means by that last statement, but maybe we somehow haven't heard the last of Full Throttle II. For now, enjoy the latest discovery -- ideally with a slice street pizza.
Thanks to forumgoer Radogol for bringing this to our attention.If you don’t keep at least semi-regular track of the LucasArts posters thread, you’re missing out. Just over the last few months, Laserschwert has gifted to the world dazzling new versions of Peter Chan’s Day of the Tentacle Star Wars parody, Zak McKracken’s cover art, and, in a direct valentine to mine own heart, some marriage-threateningly seductive Maniac Mansion alternatives. Freshly endowed with some superior Outlaws source material, he’s promising to bring that one to similar heights in the future as well.
It’s all there for the taking in the internet’s finest forum thread. Sleep on it at your own peril.
Meteor Mess 3D, the 3D fan remake of Maniac Mansion that began development in 2008, was released just three weeks ago. In other words, it still needed less gestation time than an Indiana Jones sequel.
The phrase “labor of love” gets thrown around a lot, but I think a number of recipients of it would be well within their rights to feel embarrassment in the face of this victory, which Gabez’s coverage can surely only claim some responsibility for. Investing this long toward bringing a fan game to its finish isn’t merely dedication – it’s downright hardheaded. So celebrate the occasion by grabbing your very own download of the game, and be inspired by Mojo’s solidarity in updating its gallery – yes, we had one! – with more representative screenshots.
Amberfish Arts: There’s hope for you yet.
Source: Meteor Mess 3D
As revealed in a tweet from Geoff Keighley producer of The Game Awards, Rob Smith, the author of the comprehensive LucasArts retrospective book "Rogue Leaders: The Story of LucasArts" has passed away.
Rob was also the editor of several gaming magazines over the years. You can read a mis-titled Mojo review of his book here: Rouge Leaders: The Story of LucasArts. There's also an interview with Rob himself about the book still to be found on the web archive, even though the original host site is long gone.
Source: Geoff Keighley's twitter
To quickly recap for the uninitiated, Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings was an Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game that LucasArts was developing in the arena of 2005-2008. In the end, this long-awaited follow-up to Emperor’s Tomb was cancelled, but the separate incarnations that were being developed by third parties for the Wii, PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS, and PSP ended up making it to shelves in 2009.
Lead Designer Steven Chen told us that the internal Staff of Kings had reached a “vertical slice” level of development when we had a chance to speak to him, which may explain the reasonably polished look the game in the surfaced gameplay clip below, sourced from Christopher James (Level Designer)’s online portfolio.
As many had already speculated, the game comes off as very much trying to follow in the footsteps of Uncharted, not unlike the debt the early 3D Indy games owed to Tomb Raider. The use of John Williams cues lifted straight from the movie scores throughout the level is right out of the published game, both in its coolness and its not-necessarily-motivated-ness. With another fifteen years having passed without a AAA Indy game, it’s up to MachineGames to hopefully redeem the situation, but it’s nice to steal a look at what might have been, had its team not been subsumed by Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.
Source: Cristopher James's portfolio
Chris Baker, who worked as a studio publicist for LucasArts in the mid-2000s, shared an interesting memory with Craig Derrick on Twitter today...
It’s a shame. The game would have been a beautiful fit on that handheld. Alas, in 2006 LucasArts had other priorities, such as Thrillville and hating you. But hey, with Return to Monkey Island being a bona fide instant classic and all, we live in a more optimistic time where no-brainer ports are concerned.
Source: Twitter
Man, a fella could get used to reporting on Monkey Island articles at Lucasfilm.com. As part of its “Defining Moments” series, the official Lucasfilm web presence has gone and blogged about The SCUMM Bar, and I say good on ‘em.
Among other ruminations on the iconic Monkey Island location, the author makes an interesting attempt to tie in The SCUMM Bar with the theories of Joseph Campbell, whose concept of the monomyth was famously an influence on George Lucas’s approach to stories:
The SCUMM Bar has similarities with other Lucasfilm stories as well. In Star Wars: A New Hope, Obi-Wan Kenobi introduces Luke Skywalker to the settlement of Mos Eisley, describing the spaceport as a “wretched hive of scum and villainy.” The dusty cantina they visit lives up to the Jedi’s blunt description. At an early stage in the journey depicted in Willow, the small but courageous Willow Ufgood carries the baby Elora Danan into a foreboding tavern full of human-sized Daikini. He finds no one caring enough to help him, and some are even openly hostile. And of course, we can all remember more than one instance when Indiana Jones wanders into a local watering hole.
All of these moments are examples of “crossing the threshold,” a phrase coined by mythologist Joseph Campbell (a friend and important influence on George Lucas) in his discussion of the mythical hero’s journey. Campbell illuminated how this story structure is common to ancient myths and legends from around the world. This crossing from the familiar safety of one’s home into the strange and dangerous wider world marks the start of an adventure.
Speaking of Willow – and go ahead and take in the effing BALLERINA-LIKE GRACE of my masterful segues here – we have Joanne Whalley dishing to Entertainment Weekly on her return as Sorsha in the upcoming sequel series. And did we mention Christian Slater is in it? House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings are putting forth a strong face, but we know they’re quivering on the inside.
Mixnmojo: Proving the theory that if you stubbornly stick around for enough decades, Lucasfilm will eventually grow bored enough to once again acknowledge the stuff you actually care about.
Source: Lucasfim.com
One of those names that seems to always be in the credits, Brad Taylor has had a crucial role on just about every SCUMM game from The Secret of Monkey Island onward, both at LucasArts and Humongous. Alongside Aric Wilmunder and SCUMM's originator Ron Gilbert, he was a key figure in the maintenance and maturation of the celebrated story system over its long years of service, all while preserving its critical separation of complexity from the designers, writers and artists so that their focus could stay on the creative aspects of the games.
So when Arcade Attack publishes a 100-minute conversation with the guy, it amounts to something close to self-care that you watch it:
Source: Arcade Attack
Craig Derrick, Exec Producer at LucasFilm Games, has teased that something new might be coming in the Maniac Mansion universe on Twitter.
Given Day of the Tentacle has already been remastered, we're probably talking a remake of Maniac Mansion, or a new 3rd instalment of the series, if there's substance behind the comment.
Neat!
Source: Craig Derrick's twitter
Something that came up in the Mojo interview with Ron and Dave ahead of ReMI’s release was the promise of multiple endings:
Ron: Well, you will be happy to know that I think the ending…there’s a lot of interpretation that can go into the ending.
Marius: That’s what I meant.
Ron: So yeah, I think there will be that. And there’s five variations of the ending, depending on things you did. And they all kind of have different interpretations, and so I think you will find that good, yeah.
Well, it turns out that Ron was off by at least a factor of two, because our team of interns count no fewer than ten endings. Did you find them all? You may wanna refer to Mojo's handy breakdown to compare notes. And it goes without saying, folks who haven’t finished the game yet should stay far away.
Perversely, there appears to be an institutional expectation that there should be reviews of Return to Monkey Island beyond our own. But hey, we’re easy, we can play along. So check out our roundup of today’s many reviews beneath this rockin’ Nintendo launch trailer:
I’m guessing at this point you’re all primed to play Return to Monkey Island already and don’t need to continue to be sold on it by every disposable gaming blog in cyberspace (plus Mojo). But the fact is, previews continue to get mercilessly published as these last few days tick away, and apparently we’re a fan site so, it would feel wrong not to diligently round up the coverage for a new Monkey Island to the very end.
And to answer the question on everyone’s minds: Yes, Mojo will be publishing its review as soon as the embargo lifts. And who knows? We may not be done with our ReMI coverage even beyond that. My gosh, who knew the old jalopy could still work up a horsepower or two?
People used to die of starvation staring at the official Lucasfilm web presence in the hopes of finding acknowledgment of their graphic adventure game catalog. I guess times have changed, because the company has published a nice preview of Return to Monkey Island. Check it out and be dumbfounded that you find yourself alive in such a period of history.
Source: Lucasfilm.com