The International House of Mojo

Mojo is on some sort of roll - we just can't stop writing articles! Well, Remi can't, as he's just filed a review for Psychonauts. What does he have to say for himself?

I know many of you will not take the time to read this review, and I honestly can't say I blame you. We've been covering Psychonauts for so long that you probably have already made up your mind about getting the game or not. In fact, I bet most of you will just glance up at the score, snicker "I knew it" sarcastically, and go on with your lives. And I'm ok with that.

But don't let that stop you. Read it anyway!

Ok, so probably not, but tonight is the night of the Secret of Monkey Island play at Hammond High School in the Baltimore, MD area. The Baltimore Sun has a nice little write-up of it, including some of the history of getting permission to set the play up and what not.

The show will be on at 6:30 tonight and tickets are $5, so make sure to check it out if you live close by.

Autumn Moon Entertainment have yet again updated their A Vampyre Story gallery. This time you can witness the Mortus Monster^TM who may or may not look slightly similar to Frankenstein. Worth a look-see, as always.

I forgot to book an appointment at the LucasArts booth for this year's E3. So yeah. Don't know how excited anyone around here is about Battlefront 2 anyway, but it's still kind of funny to me that it completely slipped my mind. No LucasArts booth photo gallery this year I guess. Sorry!

Also worth noting: this post marks Mojo's first mention of Battlefront 2.

Or rather, team Los Angeles has won this part of the Psycho-Portal madness by solving the final question about two seconds before any other city did. There will be a different phase called the Brain Tumbler Sweepstakes where the real prizes will be given out. This is, presumably, a random drawing of sort among registrants of the Psychoportals website. LA team members will get bonus entries for winning, though (woo!). Here's the official word:

In the end, we're all winners here. So, check back here on Thursday, April 28th. We'll have some information on how you can receive some great Psychonauts propaganda including t-shirts, posters and demos. Some of you may end up with a free copy of the game! Once again, thanks for playing in the Psycho-Portal Challenge? we'll see you on the 28th!

Oh, and also: Oblongata. Depending on where you live, that is.

If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the news page at GameSpot, there's a chart with a list of the top-selling games for last week. I'm making you look at this because under the 'US Console Sales' category, one can plainly see that the Explicated Semaphore Psychonauts is charted at #10 for the week of April 18th through April 24th. Hooray! These statistics are based on sales at EBGames.com, but hopefully this is is a sign of good things for Raz and co. across the board.

In a somewhat related story, it appears that the PC version of Psychonauts is finally shipping, for real.

Source: Idle Forums

Illustrious UK gaming magazine PC Zone have reviewed Telltale?s Texas Hold?em in their latest issue. Here?s what they had to say:

"Indeed, the real draw here is the quartet of quirky characters, none of which would look out of place in a triple-A LucasArts adventure... The closest you?ll ever get to Sam & Max 2... Insubstantial as it is, the charm here is irresistible."

This came with their patented Indie Game of the Month award, and an overall score of 75%. Not bad at all!

Smack-dab on the mainpage of G4TV, there's a Video interview of Tim Schafer, once again, on the subject of the Exasperated Scimitar Psychonauts. Wha??

Oh yes! Majesco has released patches fixing bugs in both the PC demo and PC retail versions of Psychonauts. You can grab the patch files here. It doesn't seem like the PC version of Psychonauts is actually in stores yet, but when it is, you know where to go if you run into a funky bug. More on this can be found in Majesco's troubleshooting forum.

Also: If you haven't downloaded the PC demo yet, Majesco is offering an updated version of the demo which already has the patch applied, so you should probably get it from them. To get the pre-patched demo visit Psychonauts.com, go to the Gray Matter section, and start downloading. Note: you probably have to register to get it.

So, The Announcement has come at last: Double Fine has opened a company store. Or, more specifically, a company Shop, containing tons and tons of goodies for you to buy. Most importantly: the Psychonauts soundtrack by Peter McConnell, and Psychonauts, the game, for all 3 platforms, available for shipping to a gigantic unfathomably long list of countries.

But there's more: Basically any clothing item or accessory you could ever desire has been stylishly adorned with the Two-Headed Baby, or some sort of Psychonauts-ish thing. Shirts, hoodies, posters, artwork, postcards, floaty pens, stickers, patches: it is good.<:MORENEWS:> From the mouth of Tim Schafer:

Is there any part of your life that wouldn't be better with the official Double Fine Two-headed Baby slapped on it, sewn to it, or zipped all around it? We have things in this store to keep you warm, to make beautiful music, to write with, to wear tightly and attract mates... Basically, to help you find love and happiness in this world.

And we also have the Excellent Game Psychonauts in many, many forms. If you steal a credit card with a high enough limit, you could buy enough copies to play it simultaneously on every appliance in your house, except for your toaster. Or Gamecube.

So, why are you still here? Go buy things.

What probably is the first major league review (with all respect to Play, OXM and Playboy) of Psychonauts is in from GameSpot. The result? A very respectable 8.8 score for the Xbox and 8.4 for the PC.

It doesn't get a whole lot more mainstream than GameSpot, and it might come as a pleasant surprise to many that they give such a high score to a rather off-the-beaten-path game.

Look at those happy people.

Is it out today? Probably not, but we updated the news anyway.

Those who poke around the Internet a bit or read gaming magazines might have read about the "i am 8 bit" gallery showing of a bunch of videogame-inspired art, which opens tomorrow evening in LA.

What you may not have noticed is that Sam & Max creator Steve Purcell has a piece in the show, themed around the classic game Sinistar (if you're unfamiliar with Sinistar you can play the game here on Shockwave.com). Steve Purcell was nice enough to send us a picture of the painting for those of us who can't make it to the show.

For those who will be in southern California in the next month, the show definitely looks worthwhile. i am 8 bit runs April 19th through May 20th, at Gallery Ninteen Eighty Eight, 7020 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, CA.

Bgbennyboy of Quick & Easy fame has developed a Psychonauts Audio Ripper, which -- you guessed it -- rips audio from the game Psychonauts. Set it to work on either the Xbox or PC demo and you?ll have Razputin and Co.?s vocals playing on your iPod in no time.

Get the ripper here, and read up on all the necessary information in this thread.

Diligent readers in the Mojo forums have decoded what is probably a clue on Double Fine Action News about the pant-crappingly cool announcement coming Tuesday. Posted on the Double Fine news page late Friday:

Now, here is another clue about the exciting ANNOUNCEMENT that I will be making soon:

Foist celery upon abdomen!

The Mojo forumites assumed it was probably an anagram and went to work. Some potential decodings tossed around include:

Doublefine try some on a PC
Doublefine stop on my acre
A mercy, Doublefine's on top
Yet more Doublefine on PCs
Doublefine art pony comes
Post Doublefine car money
Doublefine: No ESP. Cry moat.

But finally, stumbled upon by readers TyraaRayne and ThorsonWelles, comes the answer most people are leaning towards for the exciting pant-crap announcement set to hit Double Fine's website on Tuesday:

"Double Fine company store."

The mental madness of the Psychoportals contest begins Saturday, April 16 (Tomorrow, or today depending on where you are)! Better sign up now for your chance to win some entirely not-crap prizes and probably have some amount of fun in the process. Good luck to everyone involved!

Get your magic pants ready, because something is up at Double Fine.

When you read this announcement, not only will you crap your pants, but you will crap your neighbors pants. You will crap your neighbor's pants so hard, that your neighbor will have to repaint his whole house. But he will be laughing the whole time because this announcement is as good as a million pairs of pants.

What is it? Who knows, but lots of communal pant crapping works into it somehow. Is this related to the recent Double Fine hiring news, or is it something about Psychonauts, or is it both? We'll find out -- and crap our pants -- soon.

Update: Double Fine have left some clues on their site. Apparently it?s going to cost money, be something that we can "mess with" and be out this Tuesday (the same day Psychonauts is released). Let the speculations commence!

Update: (by Jake) I wonder who posted that last update. It wasn't me. I wonder if the announcement is Psychonauts?

Gabzo update: Er, I wonder who posted that last update too. It wasn?t me! Anyway, Double Fine Action News has been updated once more with another teaser. Is the announcement just Psychonauts, or is something else planned? Who knows, but it's fun trying to guess! Well, it kills time before the game release anyway. Oh, and while I?m here I might as well mention that the illustrious Benzo has ripped the Psychonauts demo music. Check it out here.

Now that Psychonauts is days away (or weeks away, in the case of the PS2 port) from being out the door and in the hands of gamers everywhere, is Double Fine Productions already starting to fiddle with their next project? It sure looks like it! They have recently posted three job listings on game industry site Gamasutra - it seems Double Fine is looking for a Senior Producer and a Senior Technical Artist.

Most curiously, though, is their posting in search of a Network Programmer - someone to "architect the company?s next-generation networking infrastructure, define programming policies and guidelines for the creation of networking-compatible software, and develop a networking system for online play."

What is up over there? Will we learn anything at E3? Discuss!

If you, like me, haven't been able to play the Psychonauts demo because of its rather steep hardware requirements you'll be happy to know that the Official Xbox Magazine is now in stores. It includes both the playable demo and the fabled 9.5 review.

Of course, it does also cost $9.99 so it might be a steep price seeing that the game will be out next week.

Or it might just be worth the price. I think it is, anyway. ?

If you can leave that excellent demo alone for a few minutes, you could always pop on over to Locker Gnome to read their new interview with Telltale Games CEO Dan Connors.

Dan: It?s obvious that story telling in games is on everyone?s mind in the development world. Coming out of GDC its all anybody is talking about. To me this is good news for adventure game fans, because it means companies are going to focus their technologies on better storytelling. As a result, I think there will be elements from adventure games introduced into more games and greatly enhanced. At the same time some elements from adventure games will go the way of first person jumping puzzles... I think every adventure game person will readily admit, that using every item with every thing to get past a puzzle, and move through the story, is seldom fun. So in trying to solve that, and make the genre more accessible, I think you will see interfaces and puzzles continue to be more straightforward and less complex.

Those who have been following Telltale since they formed from the defunct Sam & Max team will know most of this stuff already, but it's still worth a look.

Source: Locker Gnome

Razputin.net have recently interviewed Tim Schafer, esteemed creator of Psychonauts. Here?s a quote:

"I don?t think genres matter. I think quality matters. It doesn?t matter what type of game you?re making, what specific collection of formal rules you are following, what label people put on your game. All that matters is whether it?s a good game or not."

Amen to that, sister. You can check out the whole interview here, and be sure to keep checking Razputin.net over the next few weeks, as they?ve got more cool stuff planned.

Want to get a taste of Tim Schafer's new game Psychonauts? The PC demo is now available for download! It's a whopping 468 megs, but their download site is pretty fast. The demo includes a look at sliver of Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, and the inside of camp counselor Coach Oleander's mind. Where can you get it?

• Fileshack (Registration required)
• Gamespot (Registration required)
• FileRush (No registration, but BitTorrent is required)
• 3DGamers (No registration, http or BitTorrent available)
• FilePlanet (Bluh.)
• Gamers Hell (No registration, http download)
• Games Domain (No registration, http download)

The demo is about 470 megs. Also, for the curious, the full PC version of the game will be shipping on 5 CD's.

Update: Autumn Moon has issued a press release about the break as well. Click Read More for the details.

It looks like Bill Tiller's company Autumn Moon Entertainment and their upcoming game A Vampyre Story won't be published by adventure funding upstart Bad Brain Entertainment after all, as the two companies have decided to go their separate ways. The announcement was pretty short and to the point:<:MORENEWS:>

We are very sorry about the way things turned out to be, but we have to look forward. BBE and Bill Tiller decided to quit the deal because we couldn't come to an agreement on various topics and Bill Tiller want's to handle publishing quite different from what BBE's way would have been.

We wish Bill Tiller and his team all the best on A Vampyre Story and hope that they will soon be founding Autumn Moon Entertainment and find a more fitting publisher for their game and their way to work.

Many fans won't find this too surprising, as Bad Brain - once seen as a potential financial godsend to the adventure game community - has time and again misled or confused fans with messages on their website, most notably with claims about reviving Sam & Max Freelance Police that went nowhere, a promise of a Vampyre Story demo that was never going to exist, and insinuations that Bad Brain was going to charge fans to view concept art from their upcoming titles.

That said, it's apparently all water under the bridge now. We wish both Autumn Moon and Bad Brain the best wherever their separate paths take them.

Autumn Moon has also sent out a press release about the break. Here it is:

Autumn Moon and Bad Brain Part Ways

(Encinitas, CA) Autumn Moon Entertainment (AME) announced that the company has terminated its relationship with Bad Brain Entertainment, a new entrant in the Video Game publishing business based in Germany. AME is currently working on its launch title, A Vampyre Story. AME is composed of former Lucas Arts employees and committed to reviving the adventure genre of game for which Lucas was once known.

?While it is unfortunate and a setback that we were unable to come to terms with Bad Brain, we remain committed to bring AVS (A Vampyre Story) to market as we believe that there is a strong fan-base for this type of game world wide and we love working on this type of game? says Mike Kirchoff, Director of Business Development for Autumn Moon.

Autumn Moon?s CEO, Bill Tiller, added that ?Bad Brain?s enthusiasm and shared dedication to this genre attracted us to them and we are certain that they will grow into a great company in the future, but at this point we have elected to seek a publisher elsewhere. We are happy that our title has brought attention to Bad Brain and appreciate their efforts thus far in promoting the game, but we feel it is time to move on.?

While the ending of this relationship introduces a delay in the production of A Vampyre Story, Autumn Moon expressed they are dedicated to bringing this title to market. Autumn Moon also points to articles worldwide that have shown enthusiasm for the title and the game?s designation as the ?Most Anticipated Adventure Game? by The Inventory as evidence of the market potential both for this title and the Adventure Genre.

Mr. Kirchoff added ?this change in plans may have a hidden benefit as well, we (AME) believe that this genre a game has a huge potential in portable market, such as Sony?s Playstation Portable, where the style of gameplay and technology would appear to be an ideal match and this change allows us the potential to explore this opportunity.?

... because Psychonauts is totally done.
(Except for the PS2 version but don't ruin this for him)

You should congratulate them, via the Double Fine Info Line.

Coming in under the radar, a new Star Wars videogame / toy hybrid; The Star Wars Saga Edition Lightsaber Battle Game. It's some sort of console thing you plug into your TV and slash your way through Star Wars baddies with a wireless lightsaber.<:MORENEWS:>

Plug the training droid into your TV or VCR and you?re ready to begin.

Innovative wireless technology lets your lightsaber interact with your TV screen. Move it and slah it in different ways to defeat enemies ? and shield yourself. Learn powerful new moves as you prove your worthiness as a Jedi Knight! (etc)

Sounds rather intriguing. Anyone has the pleasure (?) of playing this yet? And can it be long before we see a Monkey Island: MONKEY KOMBAT toy in a similar style?

Oh, yeah, And Battlefront 2 was announced in some magazine. Expect a Lucasarts 'new game announcement' for it at E3.

Source: Hasbro

From this recent press release, it sounds like Majesco will be going all out when it comes to marketing Psychonauts to the masses. Considering terms like "multimillion dollar" and "comprehensive publicity campaign" are being bandied about throughout the release, it sounds like they might be serious about actually selling copies of the game.<:MORENEWS:>

According to the press release, across the US we should be seeing a "humorous national TV campaign," print advertising in national mass-market and gaming magazines, a "two week national radio campaign in the top 10 markets," continued appearances in that college game tour thing, and a bunch more stuff, including placement of Psychonauts in those in-store demo Xboxen for the month of May.

Of course, the Psychoportals team challenge and sweepstakes is going to begin as well, with possible Psychonauts related events occurring in different participating cities across the US. In addition to the Psychoportals action, the press release mentions "Psychonauts street teams" in the cities as well, so watch out for roving packs of local hipsters sporting oversize welding goggles, or something? Surely it will be cool whatever it is.

Considering many fans like to cite a perceived lack of marketing push from LucasArts as one of the reasons Grim Fandango didn't sell super well with the gaming mainstream (whether that's real or not), this huge rollout from Majesco should help put those worries to rest this time around.

In a recent press release largely concerned with Psychonauts' marketing rollout, Majesco also confirmed on the down-low that the PlayStation2 port of the excellent game has slipped to "late spring." Though the Xbox and PC ports are still set to go on April 19th, all three versions were originally announced to launch on that date.

Some subscribers to Official Xbox Magazine are starting to receive the May issue (it hits US newsstands around April 15th).

The May issue of Official Xbox Magazine is notable for two reasons: 1) They review the excellent game Psychonauts and rate it a super impressive 9.5! Woot. Oh, and 2) the May issue of OXM contains a playable demo of Psychonauts on the coverdisc. So, get ready for that!

On their continuing quest for the awesome, Telltale Games has issued a sort of challenge to their fan community: Properly work together to interview Telltale. The rules were laid out in a forum post by Telltale gameplay designer Heather Logas:

Amongst yourselves choose a moderator for this project. I don't care how you do it, it's completely up to you. I would recommend someone who works well with others. Use the bulletin board to discuss which questions you would like to ask. They could be about anything related to Telltale and our staff members, Bone, Hold Em, Dank, donuts -- anything.

You get 20 questions. (Multi-part questions will be disqualified). Once you are satisfied, the moderator is in charge of making sure the questions are what everyone is expecting and then posting them.

So if you've got a burning question for Telltale, now's your chance to join in the interview assembly process and (if everyone likes it) get it asked. Online Community managers of the world take note: these guys know what's up.

The actual challenge might first start on April 16th, but you can already sign up today for The Ultimate Brain Tumbler Sweepstakes. And yes, that's what PsychoPortals is all about.

It looks like this is for Americans only, where the participants will have to align themselves to one out of ten cities. Each city represents a team, and the team-members will work together to solve ten puzzles. The team that finishes the challenge first will get entries to the sweepstake for all its members.

Apparently something presumably related to Psychonauts will happen at some time or another in the selected cities. So keep an eye out on Psycho Portals for psycho fun.

Apparently, this month's issue of the Official Playstation Magazine includes a PS2 demo of the Excellent Sawfish Psychonauts. Fans of this console should really check it out! I'm guessing that the demo will cover the introduction to Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, as well as the Basic Braining level, but who knows! The existence of this demo is unverified right now, but probably true; we just heard about it from some guy. Also allegedly on the OPM disk is a demo for the Star Wars: Episode III game. Sawfish?

Update: It appears that there's only a demo video of Psychonauts in OPM, nothing playable. Sorry everyone!

Source: GodzillaX8

Mr. Bill Tiller has given us another exclusive character concept art, this time of Madame Strigoi, Knower of All Things Better Left Unknown (and Lottery Numbers). The Gypsy teacher for Mona, she knows all about vampires and gives Mona a vampire manual called Vampires for Dummies. Yikes!

To editorialize it seems a lot of what we see (both art and humor) from A Vampyre Story is very much in the style of Curse of Monkey Island, which might not be too surprising all things considered. I picture it being A Good Thing for a lot of old LEC fans though.

Also, despite rumors, the game will not be demoed at E3 this time around.

It looks like something has already popped up on Psychoportals.com, that mysterious domain name we told you about earlier. "Registration begins April 5th!" the site proudly announces, so presumably we should all visit again on that date to be in with a chance to win that "fabulous entertainment system." Whether the site will be anything more than a competition hub remains to be seen, but we?ll keep you posted.

In a predictable announcement, the staff of LucasArts news site The International House of Mojo have revealed that, once again, they have no wily april fools joke up their sleeve with which to entertain their readers.

"Sorry about that, we blow," said the entire staff. "But wasn't it awesome that one time like four years ago when we actually tried?"

The staff is of course referring to that one good April Fools joke from 2002 they can't stop talking about, when they fooled like one guy (Murray Mint) and possibly confused a Dutchman. "Those were good times," the staff reminisced, "Everybody loved that joke so much that we think it's probably worth wheeling out every single year."

"I think Jake is maybe under the impression that the Monkey 5 thing is a tad funnier than it really is," conceeded Metallus, webmaster of Tim Fandango, or was it Razputin.net, or was it Idle Thumbs? "Because let's be honest here, nothing can top 'The International House of Xbox.' LOL."

"You guys need to shut up because I hate you," said Gabez, maybe. "Also games need to evolve or die," he added for no reason.