The International House of Mojo

ScummVM is the project that aims to re-create the engines used in adventure games (and, since this year's Google Summer of Code, role-playing games) so they can be played on systems ranging from Windows, Mac, and Linux to iOS, Android, and even consoles such as Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, and Wii.

Right before a major release they do a public testing phase for new and improved games, which helps them iron out any remaining bugs. This testing cycle includes two new games: Myst (and Myst: Masterpiece Edition) and U.F.O.s (also known as Gnap). There also have been a lot of improvements in the SCI engine as of late, so they are also testing Conquests of the Longbow, Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist, King's Quest V, King's Quest VI, Quest for Glory 1 VGA, Quest for Glory 3, Space Quest 1 VGA, and Space Quest 4. Other games that have seen recent improvements and are undergoing testing include Beneath a Steel Sky, the Commodore-64 version of Maniac Mansion, Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Rose Tattoo, and Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel.

So, if you have any of those games, play them through in a daily build of ScummVM on your platform of choice, and report any bugs you find at the new and improved ScummVM bug tracker. Then tell the team about your experience, and any bugs you filed (or if you didn't spot any bugs at all) in this thread on the ScummVM forum.

I'm back from PAX East. I'll post about my experience at the show in a bit, but for now, I'll catch up on some of the releases that have happened lately.

The Walking Dead: Michonne, the miniseries by Telltale Games that reveals what happened to the character of Michonne during the period when she left the group in the comics after the events of All Out War, is now complete, with yesterday's release of episode 3.

Also receiving its third episode yesterday was King's Quest, the official ninth game in the series, by The Odd Gentlemen. This episode, Once Upon A Climb, tells the story of how Graham saved his future wife Valanice, who is also Gwyndolyn's grandmother.

We have awful news to share today as audio veteran Jory Prum has passed away. Since 1999, Jory has been credited on innumerable titles published by LucasArts, Telltale, and Double Fine in a broad scope of sound design, recording, and engineering capacities.

Those of you who follow Jory's colleagues on Twitter may know that he was involved in a bad motorcycle accident last month from which he sadly did not recover. You can read the statement from his parents as well as heartfelt remembrances from some of his colleagues - including Julian Kwasneski - here. It appears to be one of many articles published in tribute of Jory today.

While we may not have known him personally, any reader of this site will be familiar with games to which Jory Prum made a vital contribution. It's hard to imagine titles where sound design could be less trivial than the sort he worked on while wearing any number of hats. The reason we celebrate the best of these games as timeless is because good stories endure, and Jory's work - far from merely a technical supplement - serviced those stories. Our condolences to his friends and family.

Source: Designing Sound

Firewatch is now out for Windows, Mac, and Linux on Steam and PlayStation 4 on PSN.

I've played through the first day, and it's lovely so far. We'll have a review up on it soon (so within the next year or so in Mojo Time™).

Campo Santo updated their blog with news that their debut game, Firewatch, is now available to pre-order on Steam. It's currently available for a pre-order discount of 10% off it's usual price of $20. It can also be purchased at Steam in a bundle with the soundtrack, also for 10% off.

It will be released for Windows, Mac, Linux, and PlayStation 4 on February 9. PlayStation Plus members will be able to purchase it on PlayStation 4 on launch day for 10% off as well!

Okay, so you hardly needed Mojo do learn this bit of bad news, now a week old, but we should acknowledge the passing of heavy metal icon "Lemmy" Kilmister.

Other sites have done better than we ever could at attempting to put Lemmy's larger metal career in perspective, but we'll always remember him for his performance as the bass-playing Kill Master from Double Fine's Brütal Legend.

Those Symbiote Studios keychains that were released at the San Diego Comic Con are no longer Comic Con exclusive. You can now pick them up at Amazon for $10 each.

Get your Sam keychain here and your Max keychain here.

This news is a day late for Halloween, but we here at Mojo prefer to think of it as a day early for the Day of the Dead.

Graham Annable, former art director at LucasArts and Telltale, and Oscar nominated film director, has released a new Grickle short. You probably know Grickle best as the source for Telltale's Puzzle Agent series, but the shorts are awesome and worth checking out as well. The newest short, The Webb is the longest Grickle short created to date. Enjoy it by watching the video linked below, or watching the video directly in YouTube by clicking this link.

Dave Grossman's annual gnarling of a hapless pumpkin continues. Visit the Pumpkin House of Horrors and scroll down for this year's entry, "Tooth Decay."

They build cages for people like you, Dave.

Source: The Pumpkin House of Horrors

For awhile it seemed like Telltale's excellent re-release of the excellent Sam & Max compendium Surfin' the Highway had gone out-of-print and had joined the original 1995 printing as a regrettably elusive comic book gem synonymous with eBay gougers and gnashing of teeth.

We're happy to report that this isn't the case! The collection is available at its reasonable original list price ($19.99) courtesy of the Cartoon Art Museum, a lovely institution with whom former Telltale marketing guru Joel Dreskin is known to collaborate. He was involved, for instance, with the Sam & Max exhibit that was set up at the physical museum for the characters' 25th anniversary.

You want more? The museum is also selling a holiday card set which includes one of Purcell's Sam & Max classics. So go buy cool stuff and support the museum in the process. Surfin' the Highway is the Christmas gift your mom secretly wants but was too afraid to ask for. She shook me awake to tell me so. Cut her a break!

Source: Cartoon Art Museum

Double Fine's former COO, Justin Bailey, founded a new crowdfunding site focused solely on video games, entitled Fig.

Fig is different in the other crowdfunding sites, in that not only is it focused on just video game projects, but that it will have expert curation, so only a few projects will be showcased at once to prevent over saturation. It will also allow both crowdfunding and the ability for investors to invest in the project as well. So, the fact that investors are involved in these projects is known up front.

Even though Justin Bailey is no longer with Double Fine, Tim Schafer is on the board of directors, along with Feargus Urquhart and Brian Fargo. The only project on the service right now is Outer Wilds, which is currently at 118,000 of it's $125,000 goal with 3 days left to go.

Sad news today as we learn that character actor Irwin Keyes has passed away at the age of 63. Check IMDB for a list of the actor's many credits, the most famous probably being his roles as bodyguard Hugo Mojelewski on "The Jeffersons" as well as the inhaler-dependent assassin Wheezy Joe in the Coen Brothers’ Intolerable Cruelty.

Here at Mojo though, he will always be remembered as the voice of Bruno the Bigfoot, whose rescue is the primary concern of the 1993 classic adventure game Sam & Max Hit the Road.

Source: The AV Club

I always try to do a news post of Mojo related tidbits after our downtime. This one's going to be a long one. At least, with the new server, it'll likely be the last.

Christian Adam has found a solution to allow the people who have graphics hardware below the requirements of Grim Fandango Remastered to play the game in classic mode.

Double Fine is making games in conjunction with Adult Swim Games, as well as Zoink Games.

On the subject of Double Fine, Massive Chalice went out of early access and received it's full release, and Iron Brigade has had Game for Windows Live replaced with Steamworks, fixing matchmaking. The latter was possible thanks to the fact that Double Fine has regained the rights to Iron Brigade from Microsoft.

At E3, it was revealed that ex-Mojoer and former Telltale developer extraordinaire, Jake Rodkin's company Campo Santo will have the console debut of their first game Firewatch on PS4. It is also going to be released on PC, Mac, and Linux. No release date has been set, but Campo Santo is aiming for release by the end of 2015.

Telltale is making a three episode miniseries that will be DLC for The Walking Dead: Season Two called The Walking Dead: Michonne, set during the period of the comics when Michonne is absent from the group. They also finally showed a little bit of what their Minecraft: Story Mode will look like.

Lucasfilm is working on a fully interactive 3D virtual Star Wars world, via their ILM experience lab.

Humongous Entertainment games are starting to make their way to GOG.com. The Pajama Sam series made its way to the service earlier this month.

The co-creator of Maniac Mansion and Thimbleweed Park, Gary Winnick, had his best selling comic, Bad Dreams, released in trade paperback format on the 17th of June.

While we're on the subject of Thimbleweed Park, be sure to check out the Thimbleweed Park development blog, as lots of good inside information about the development process of that game is being posted regularly.

The GOG and Steam releases of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream included an enhanced version of the soundtrack.

With the help of ScummVM developers, two fans by the names of SirAlastor and Alpheon, went through the game and found all the music cues, and Alpheon posted instructions tto change the music from the included soundtrack to tracks that ScummVM would read, so the music could be played within the game itself. He also posted a video showing the enhanced music in action, compared to the music from the original game, which you can view embedded below or here if the embedding doesn't work for you. The difference is quite striking.

Oxenfree has been announced by Night School Studio, a game development studio founded by Telltale and Disney alumni. It is described as "a supernatural teen thriller about a group of friends who unwittingly open a ghostly rift. Players control Alex, who brings her new stepbrother Jonas to an overnight party gone wrong off the coast of their hometown."

You can view the trailer embedded below, and if the Mojo embedding doesn't work for you, you can see the video here.

If you're on Instagram, you probably should follow Seinfeld2000 for many reasons. One of which is this picture…

Now imagine a Michael Land version of the Seinfeld theme, and ask yourself how that crossover could go wrong!

The Humble Star Wars Bundle is going on. Pay what you want for Knights of the Old Republic, Jedi Academy, and Dark Forces. There are also 6 other Star Wars games if you pay $12 or more: Empire at War: Gold Pack, The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition, The Force Unleashed II, Battlefront II, Knights of the Old Republic II, and Republic Commando. The site says that there's more yet to be announced.

If Star Wars isn't your thing, the Humble Weekly Bundle is an adventure bundle this week. Pay whatever you like for Detective Grimoire, Broken Sword 1 & 2, and The Whispered World Special Edition. If you pay more than the average, you'll also get The Detail: Episode 1, A Golden Wake, and Cognition: Game of the Year Edition. If you pay $10 or more, you'll also get Broken Sword 5.

Graham Annable, former lead animator at LucasArts and former creative director at Telltale Games, has been nominated for an oscar for Best Animated Picture for The Boxtrolls, which he co-directed with Anthony Stacchi, the concept artist for the cancelled animated film, The Curse of Monkey Island.

We at Mojo wish them both luck, which they won't need because The Boxtrolls was awesome.

ResidualVM, the interpreter for playing Grim Fandango and Myst III on modern platforms, has been updated with a bug fix release. Version 0.2.1 fixes a crash when using subtitles in the Polish version of Myst III. In addition, a new port has been added. In addition to Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Amiga OS 4, ResidualVM is now available on SGI IRIX workstations.

We've already told you about the crazy Disney World motion-sensor card-collecting treasure hunt game known as Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom, being that it was worked on by CMI bigwigs Jonathan Ackley and Larry Ahern and all.

But now their work is being covered by Fortune, so you can finally take it seriously. Ackley gets interviewed as part of an examination of this growing ambition theme parks seem to be having to become video games. And you'd never forgive me if I kept it secret.

Source: Fortune