The International House of Mojo

Mixnmojo rarely covers sales deals anymore, but we'd be silly to not mention Humble Bundle's Starlight Children's Foundation Bundle, which nets you a few Star Wars games, including both Knights of the Old Republic, the LEGO Star Wars games, and the Double Fine remasters of Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, and Day of the Tentacle. Plus a serotonin dose for helping kids in need. Up the donation for extra serotonin. Plus serotonin to whoever you give your extra copies of these games to, since if you're reading this, you probably already have these games. Actually, could be dopamine, not serotonin. I've never really learned the difference. Whichever you get helping out kids in need.

Anyway! You don't need me to say it twice.

Source: Humble Bundle

If you've been following Aaron on Twitter, it's pretty clear that his efforts to emulate Grim Fandango (in its original, shipped-in-1998 form) for presumed DREAMM support have made material progress. Perhaps the clearest sign of that is this morning's implication that he's already started down the path of standing up the second of the GrimE engine duology, that undisputed crown jewel of the LucasArts adventure pantheon, Escape from Monkey Island:

Bless him.

Source: Aaron's Twitter

A lot went down at PAX in Seattle over the weekend, and as you may have gleaned if you’re one of those social media types, good times were had by all who attended. As with Gamescom last week, an elaborate booth devoted to Return to Monkey Island – a wooden replica of the High Street of Mêlée Island – was on hand for photo opportunity and general shock and awe:

This time, the team was also in the hall for fans and press to mingle with, and the panels were evidently no slouch either: You may have caught the livestream of the expo’s much-touted gathering of influential old people, otherwise known as “Adventure Game Heroes & Legends.” Moderated by Frank Cifaldi, the hour-and-a-half-long conversation featured Ron, Ken Williams, Roberta Williams, Al Lowe, Dave Gilbert and Jane Jenson. If you weren’t tuning in live, you can find it archived below:

As for ReMI-specific coverage, so far there’s a pay-walled interview with Ron from Rock Paper Shotgun (what the hell, guys), and presumably more to come, but you’ll probably find the real gold on the developers’ Twitter accounts. Highlights include the ReMI team photo (probably the first time many of them were physically together since the game got started), the starstruck gushing of Neil, Druckmann, and hands-down the event’s best T-shirt.

The benevolent madness was said to have culminated in a ReMI wrap party, which Mojo may have technically attended by abstraction if the rumors (or, you know, photo evidence) that Jake weaseled his way past the bouncer are true. I’m getting the light here, so in closing I’ll steer two interviews out of Gamescom that we'd overlooked your way: one from publication Heis Online (original German here; English translation here), and another from Hobbyconsolas (original Spanish here; English translation here).

Those of you who didn’t have the spending money to hit PAX should have plenty of material from the expo (occurring as we speak) to look forward to soon. Even ahead of it, though, the ReMI press tour sailed on with a new interview from webzine GamersGlobal featuring Ron, Dave and Rex. The article is in German, the official language of adventure games, but here’s an excerpt from Google’s loose English translation:

Though the noun came out the other end of the AI as “china,” one ascertains that Ron isn’t the biggest fan of the porcelain joke, and thus this trait of Guybrush’s will be censored in ReMI, which is just how Ron rolls.

There’s more great stuff in the interview, including the surprisingly open-ended position Ron takes on the series’ future (Relevant: Beloved, you-thought-he-was-dead community member Captain Mystery has triumphantly returned to notice that the descriptor “conclusion” has been artfully expunged from ReMI promotional spiels), so do read the full article for maximum cognizance of all Monkey tidbits.

Source: GamersGlobal

Though the movie is still almost a year away, the score for Indiana Jones 5 is currently being recorded, and John Williams got permission to play a piece for a live audience at The Hollywood Bowl. A rogue cell phone then did what it must. Enjoy “Helena’s Theme,” which belongs to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character:

And let me round up a few items while I’m here by pointing out that the Willow series was recently previewed by Entertainment Weekly. Meanwhile, The Dig gets its turn being rotated into the Prime Gaming catalog. Nice to see they’re getting to seemingly every last one.

Source: YouTube

DREAMM was originally intended as an emulator for the DOS-based SCUMM games, but Aaron just couldn't abide a missing title, so he walked one last barefooted mile in broken glass, emulating just enough Win32 to support The Curse of Monkey Island.

Without promising anything, it seems he's being plagued with another itch:

As you may recall 4,794 days ago, the year was 2009 and Laserschwert had completed a wonderful interview (news post) and separate review about The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition music. The interview was of Jesse Harlin, the composer for the Special Edition release. Along with our hint at a hopeful "official" digital release of that soundtrack (just checked; not quite ready yet) also came with the tease of a Bonus Track known only as "Xxxxxx Xxxxxxx".

Little did we know how clever the Mojo readers were with word puzzles years before we would let them prove that daily (Mojole) that it would be quickly figured out that the cypher solution could only be referring to a "Maniac Mansion" track. And although the Monkey Island Special Edition Soundtrack would make its way online, the Maniac Mansion Bonus track did not.

Yoda-yoda-yoda, it's now March 2022 and a Monkey Island 1 Special Edition Soundtrack CD mysteriously appears on eBay, containing the Bonus Track. A winning bid is declared and the CD is not heard of again. Until today.

So come take a listen to an official LucasArts take at a Maniac Mansion updated theme by Jesse Harlin and join in discussion with other Maniac Mansion music aficionados; Ed-Heads I believe they are called. This track was made with love and at a time when it very likely had to be made in secret, with the hope of pushing upper-management to consider making Maniac Mansion Deluxe Maniac Mansion Remastered.

Source: YouTube

Though the geography of the Edison mansion makes about as much sense as the Overlook Hotel when you try to diagram it out, the principles of sound engineering haven’t stopped amusing attempts at visualizing some parody of a floor plan. Take, for example, this loose stab at the impossible from the game’s Nintendo Power preview back in the fall of 1990:

Well, it looks like you’ll be seeing another attempt to map the mansion, along with the overworlds to 35 or so other NES games. It’s all part of the upcoming book Video Game Maps: NES & Famicom: Greatest Hits Edition, which appear to be a curated version of a larger book. Here’s a promotional tweet that shows Maniac Mansion made the cut:

Pre-order the book here.

Source: Retro Game Books

It seems like everyone and their cousin are doing video retrospectives of the Monkey Island games these days (not Mojo, of course—we don’t know how that kind of witchcraft works). Alanah Pearce has taken it to the next level with writing101: 30 Years of Writing Video Games - Tim Schafer | Video Game Writing 101 where (according to Eurogamer) Tim had this to say:

I admittedly have not watched the video, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.

And, hey, at least we were able to preserve some of the “lost” dialogue.

Source: Eurogamer

Show your love for the Fatherland and enjoy Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, available on Prime Gaming as part of the August batch of titles:

It doesn't make up for cancelling Truth Seekers, but I suppose Amazon accidentally knows what it's doing now and again.

Source: Prime Gaming

It's all in this tweet:

The correct answer is clearly "monkey6.exe", but I can be a good sport and carry on the fiction of democracy by encouraging you to cast a vote yourself.

Source: Twitter

So this showed up on Twitter:

I dunno anything about DeathCharger, but these offerings look rather bootleggy to me, and Laserschwert seems to think that some of this stuff is derived from restoration work of his (thx, Jan), and faulty old versions at that.

On the other hand, history tells us that merchandise which is shamelessly fan-sourced doesn't necessarily mean it isn't authorized, and here we have a Lucasfilm employee promoting it, so it's hard to know what to think.

For my money, the only item of interest here is the recreation of the vintage long-sleeved T-shirt that few mortals have had an opportunity to own since 1991, so it'll be interesting to hear how well those came out. And can we do the Maniac Mansion one next?

Source: DeathCharger

The British quiz show "The Chase" had a Monkey Island question the other night, and someone on Twitter has the proof:

Source: Twitter

If you’re not paying attention to samandmax.co.uk, you’re decidedly not part of the cool crowd. The site’s latest feature is an interview with voice actor Chuck Kourouklis, a recurring cast presence in the Telltale catalog. His more notable roles were Mr. Norrington in Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse and the Ferryman to the pirate crossroads in Tales of Monkey Island.

Read his recollections in full, and look forward to re-experiencing his Sam & Max performance in higher quality whenever Skunkape can get that Season 3 remaster to you.

And speaking of Sam & Max voice actors, let me quickly work in this month-old tweet of a fan’s happy run-in with Bill Farmer, the original Sam and parenthetically the voice of Goofy.

Source: samandmax.co.uk

Twitch hostess extraordinaire Cressup is continuing to notch her belt with sensational long-form interviews. This time her subject is your lawful Guybrush and internet friend Dominic Armato, who so badly wants to share more about Return to Monkey Island than he's allowed to, but the sheer enthusiam he gives off is sales hype enough. Watch and be delighted.

Source: Cressup

This is a rather momentous year, and was shaping up to be that way before we came down with an aggravated case of Return to Monkey Island. That announcement would have been enough to dine out on through December 31st, but you might recall that we were already celebrating the 25th anniversary of The Curse of Monkey Island*, the third and in some respects most influential Monkey Island game.

And while we can’t speak for how you were celebrating it, we were doing it the Mojo way: By kidnapping Jonathan Ackley and Larry Ahern, trapping them in a giant bottle, foisting 600 questions on them to answer in longhand, and occasionally reminding them that air holes are for closers. The end result is right here for your discerning entertainment. If Lucasfilm doesn’t see fit to give this game a remaster, you know who not to blame.

*Not to mention Mixnmojo itself, as the fan scene and CMI are very much joined at the hip in that babymaking heyday of early internet access that was the mid-to-late-90s.

If you’ve been following Aaron’s DREAMM page or forum thread, you may have been keeping up with the various beta builds of DREAMM he’s been regularly unleashing to your testing efforts. Well, he’s now reached the milestone of the final beta release, which means it’s the last call for you to submit issues before Version 1.0 is minted.

So do your part: download the current version, dust off your Hebrew version of Loom, and report your findings. Put this thing through its paces for mankind’s benefit.

Source: DREAMM Page

”Sometimes dead is better.” There are far less accurate ways of summing up the general community reaction to the cancellation of Full Throttle: Hell on Eyes Wheels back in 2003. It was quite the contrast with the martyrdom Sam & Max: Freelance Police enjoyed when it met its fate six months later.

Still, the axed sequel remains the subject of some fascination, however morbid, and now the tide has washed up further material to masticate on. Forumgoer “Radogol” points us to the YouTube channel of one Evan Hanley, who uploaded two unfinished cutscenes from the game, never before seen:

Any judgment of these clips should take into account that we’re looking at a far from finished glimpse at a PS2-era game. (Accounting for all of that, though: Good grief.) It’s a rare discovery, and hopefully not the last -- this isn't something Evan was likely to have just stumbled on while cleaning out the sock drawer.

If you’re finding yourself a junkie for more Full Throttle 2 information in the meantime, a decent recap of the game’s development can be found at Lucasdelirium, while Mojo’s own account is recorded around this chapter and verse of our titillating, clothbound memoir.

Source: Mojo Forums

It seems that in conjunction with the Switch release of Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, the powers that be have made the laudable decision to release its soundtrack as well. As of June 8th, you can find it on a bunch of the usual storefronts and subscription services such as Amazon, Apple Music, and Spotify. But no Bandcamp, for some stupid reason.

The game’s soundtrack was the fantastic work of Mark Griskey, a prolific veteran who was an internal LEC composer in the early-to-mid 2000s. Though most of his credits during this time were Star Wars related, he also scored Gladius and Sam & Max: Freelance Police. Not that you’ve heard the latter.

It’s more noteworthy than it ought to be that a LucasArts soundtrack should see official release. When Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012, all of the music the studio owned (encompassing the scores to movies and games alike) ultimately wound up under Walt Disney Records. What this means if you’re, say, Limited Run Games, is that licensing a LucasArts game and a LucasArts game soundtrack are two totally distinct (read: unfeasible) processes of red tape machete'ing, which is why your no-brainer idea that albums should have been included among the extras in some of those over-the-top collectors editions never actually happened.

So anyway, this is cool, and needs to be highlighted. Plus, I figured I’d do Lucasfilm a solid by drawing attention away from the fact that the game is apparently broken as hell on Switch. I mean, sounds like KOTOR II to me?

Source: Disney Music Licensing

When community mainstay and poster restoration maven Laserschwert isn't scouring the globe for ever-better sources to feed his scanner, he's trying to sell you on the potential of AI upscaling technology.

You might have caught his case for training such tools on the barely-in-need-of-remastering CMI, a taste of the future which was enough to challenge an orthodoxy or two. Further beliefs may be shaken in the wake of his latest proof of concept, which tackles Sam & Max Hit the Road:

More examples can be found in the forum thread (at the above link) he made elaborating on this experiment.

While I personally am frightened, triggered and dehumanized by the very concept of imitation brush strokes and machine-learned artwork (not to mention the horseless carriages that the kids are into these days), I have to admit I'd have preferred these results over what the Day of the Tentacle remaster achieved (and which in turn I found way more desirable than the no doubt well-meaning efforts of the Monkey Island special editions), and it's not a bad punt on an approach to such a project if the reason Disney is holding back is on the basis that it shouldn't exceed the cost of a 12oz. soda.

So betray your values, knuckle under in the presence of The Algorithm and behold what dispassionate 1s and 0s can accomplish when put to work on the true issues of the day.

Source: The Forums