The International House of Mojo

Today is a day of exciting releases. The first is of course the long awaited finale of The Devil's Playhouse (check out our review!) The game is apparently not quite out to season's subscribers, but it should be available before the night's through, Pacific Standard Time, so keep an eye either on your inbox or your Telltale account page. Hopefully, Kroms can refrain from flaunting his access to review copies to too many of you before then.

The second big release today is the North American retail version of Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island, almost a year after its initial release in Germany. The hand-painted pirate adventure game by Bill Tiller and his well-treated minions got an English release in the UK early this year and has been available worldwide in various digital outlets for almost as long, but today it can finally be found boxed and on store shelves in the United States and Canada. It's retailing for only $19.99, too, so you should probably show us that you're smarter than you look and order it from a place like Gamestop or Amazon (where the price is currently slashed at a ridiculous $10.86).

On the subject of Autumn Moon, you're running out of hours to submit your winning entry for the Pumpkin Post site redesign contest. Hopefully you didn't blow this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity which, not taken, would surely haunt you throughout your adult life until it is violently and mercifully syncopated by the cold grip of Death.

Anyway. Happy Monday, all!

Update: Capn_Nacho reports that The City That Dares Not Sleep is now available to season subscribers. Rev those downloads!

It’s been a long time coming, but we’re at last here at the finale of arguably the greatest series Telltale has yet produced. The Devil’s Playhouse will be revealed, characters will return, assumptions will be shattered, and shockles will be shocked. With four excellent episodes behind them, will the last one screw it all up or will it be a fitting conclusion to an epic storyline? Read on to find out! Or, y’know, play the damn thing. [spoilers for previous episodes, but no spoilers for this episode follow]

Keep Reading

The latest episode of Gamespot's On the Spot show features demos of both DeathSpank 2 and Costume Quest. Woah!

Source: Gamespot

GameTrailers TV is teasing something Telltale related today (12:30 EST on SPIKE), and look likely to reveal some "very special guest stars" in the game.

From Geoff Keighley's Twitter feed: There is speculation on the Telltale Forums that some of the Back to the Future voice talent may have been cast and is going to be revealed, though something related to Sam & Max s03e05 makes more sense.

Update: The teaser has aired, you can view it here.



It is some kind of crossover game, and the teaser features four silhouettes, looking like Max, a Team Fortress Heavy, Strong Bad and Tycho from Penny Arcade.

And they're all holding cards, as can be seen in this full resolution screencapture.

So, this title will be revealed in full at PAX next week.

Source: Twitter

Telltale, like all the cool kids, will be at the Penny Arcade Expo next week. Members of the Sam & Max team and Grickle/Puzzle Agent creator Graham Annable will be on hand to answer questions, including "when's Puzzle Agent Episode 2 coming out?" I hope.

There will be Back To The Future news at last, with Telltale bringing along "an actual DeLorean Time Machine" apparently. They'll be travelling back to March 2004 and try to set right what once went wrong presumably. Or am I thinking of Quantum Leap?

And yes, as you deduced from the story title there will be "a surprise game announcement" there too. Tales of Monkey Island Season Two? Puzzle Agent Part Two? Another Pilot Program game? Who knows?!

So check it out. Bill Tiller has another portion of whatever background he's working on for whatever adventure game Autumn Moon hasn't yet announced up on Twitter, and it's the image of a dragon-shaped weather vane. Well? Does this help any of you solve the riddle of: what the hell is this awesome game about?

In other news, Mark Darin had an interview, mostly Puzzle Agent related, with Finnish game site KonsoliFIN. For those of us not Finnish, an English transcript has been posted over on the Adventure Gamers forums.

There are a couple of new interviews out in the wilderness, shedding further light on the dark, bleak, brown Unreal-powered slaughterfest that is Double Fine's Costume Quest*. The first is at GameTrailers, the second is at 1UP. Watch, and be afraid!

• Wait, scratch all that, I'm thinking of Gears of War.

EDIT: And there's a nice written preview up at IGN too.

Telltale have a new designer at their joint, and his name is Straw. First name, JD. He's big and strong and possibly a she. I'm not sure. How will I know? How can I ever know? I can't know, because JD is first name-less, bio-less and, as far as I can tell, not even real. But I really, really love that name "JD Straw". It sounds like the kind of man (or woman) who could punch you, finish your drink and then flip a coin to the bartender as an apology. So, say hi to JD Straw! Hi!

Source: Telltale Games

"The City That Dares Not Sleep," the fifth and final episode of Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse, is coming out on August 30th, and if you weren't already anticipating it you surely will be after watching the splendiferous trailer, which Gamespot is exclusively presenting at the moment. In the meantime, Telltale is offering some sort of deal on the Sam & Max seasons that none of you care about because you loyally bought them all on day one.

Source: Telltale

There's a vote and general discussion up on IGN right now regarding where people stand on a new Indiana Jones movie. As I write this the vote's currently well in favour of Indy 5, with around 70% of people voting 'yay'.

Well, do you want a new Indiana Jones film?

Source: IGN

What? It has only been, what? A month since it was released? Now shut up and read the damn thing right here!

There were almost 20 years between Ron Gilbert's last two games; this time it will be two months.

GameSpot reports that Thongs of Virtue will be released on XBLA and PSN next month, September 21 and 22 respectively. Word has it the sequel, which was developed pretty much at the same time as the first game (remember it was supposed to be released episodically), will sport more of a sci-fi-like setting and have more varied quests. Add to that new multiplayer options and more varied weapons... Well, it actually looks like a true sequel.

Look for our belated DeathSpank review later today and start getting excited for more Ronzo fun!

Source: GameSpot

Some tireless Telltale forumites have noticed that the ESRB rating summary page for "The City That Dares Not Sleep," the upcoming finale to Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse, exposes some mild plot elements and gives away a few jokes to justify the "Everyone 10+" classification bestowed by the ratings board.

This isn't the first time the ESRB or synonymous entities have given us our first details on a game, and it surely won't be the last. Read at your own risk.

Source: ESRB.com

Gamespot has a small image of the cover art for the US retail release of Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island, coming your way August 30th. Check it out if interested.

Source: Gamestop

The Escapist magazine looks at the rise, fall, and rise of adventure games. The latter it attributes predominantly to Telltale games.
In other Telltale news, they've employed Alan Johnson, formerly of 1Up, as their new Community Manager after Metallus' David E's recent resignation.

Source: The Escapist

Is Deathspank getting a sequel already? It seems so, as Xbox360Achievements have today noticed a dozen leaked achievments, totalling 200 points, under a game called Deathspank: TOV.

Let me explain: Xbox Live Arcade titles are handed 200 gamerpoints to give out; add-ons are awarded an extra 50 points. This brings the total to 250 points, suggesting that Deathspank: TOV will be an all-new game.

The achievements list things such as a pirate ship (Scurvyville?), evil nuns and two endings. At the time of writing, there seems to be no indication that Ron Gilbert is involved in the game.

What does "TOV" mean? The Orphaned Vendors? Who knows? Who will ever know? You, that's who. More (spoilerly) stuff here.

Source: Xbox 360 Achievments

The trailer for Double Fine's latest game, Costume Quest, is now available for viewing.

What do we think? It looks great! And even better for the fact that it isn't out on PC. No sarcasm! Keep it up, Double Fine - and all other developers. Muahahaha!

Watch it now.

Source: Kotaku

The Edge magazine has a lovely retrospective article online regarding the making of Maniac Mansion.

And while you're here, you might enjoy this Monkey Island comic. Take a look at some of the background objects too...

Thanks to Ron Gilbert's twitter feed for both tipoffs.

Source: The Edge

UK multiformat gaming magazine GamesTM is one of my favourite reads, and always has great Retro articles. They are also great fans of the LucasArts adventures and often have some sort of feature on them.

Like Issue 98, which should hopefully be still in the shops, which has a big feature on The Curse of Monkey Island to rival even their great Fate of Atlantis article (anyone got a link for that?). Being out of the UK right now I can't read it, but I'm told it's very in-depth, with lots of photos and a huge interview with project leader and friend of Mojo Larry Ahern.

Go buy! And report back to us with your findings!

Just when you think every bit of Monkey Island 2 concept art has been accounted for, Steve Purcell smacks you in the face with a bit of much-needed education, this time in the form of a pencil sketch of Woodtick's exterior.

The art obviously underwent some major changes before it made it to its final form, but that's Woodtick alright.

Source: Spudvision

Kotaku has posted a rumour that LucasArts are up to their old tricks. With the arrival of a new President, the tradition is that LucasArts have to cancel a lot of promising-looking games and axe a lot of staff. The Circle of LEC may be coming round again.

According to Kotaku's unnamed sources at the studio, new president Paul Meegan has cancelled the in-production Force Unleashed III, will let a lot of TFU2's staff go when that comes out this October, and has put another unnamed project (possibly fish-related) on hold.... Which would be quite a feat after what happened the last time a Force Unleashed game shipped.

Just to make him Meegan seem completely insane and contradictory, after this in-house scrubbing and axeing session, this quote is the most worrying:
This would mean that, if true, a Tales of Monkey Island Season Two would not be happening.

Let's hope that these rumours prove untrue. After the departure of Darrell Rodriguez, many executives and Haden Blackman however, I wouldn't be surprised if there was truth in here.

Source: Kotaku

You may recall that at the beginning of the summer, hosted site The Pumpkin Post, the best gosh-durn Autumn Moon blog this side of the Mississippi, made an offer you couldn't refuse without being declared: "an idiot." In exchange for cooking up a new Wordpress design for the site, you could win, well, what it says here:

The August 31st deadline is getting inexorably closer with each passing moment, so quit picking your nose and get your head in the game. If you need a refresher, the full list of rules can be found here.

Source: The Pumpkin Post

The Republic Commandos are coming back at long last... but not the long-mooted sequel to the game, sadly. They'll be appearing in The Clone Wars instead when Season 3 debuts on September 17th.

While this is good news for fans of the characters, as Republic Commando is one of the best and most unique Star Wars games ever released I'm still annoyed there's no sequel incoming. Yet.

It's also a bit salt-in-the-wound that they appear in The Clone Wars, since the run of well-received Republic Commando novels by Karen Traviss (the most recent being Imperial Commando: 501st) was cancelled because the cartoon's last season totally contradicted the series' depiction of the planet Mandalore - even though George Lucas has whole paid departments to make sure this never happens.

Feel free to shout "NERD!" now.

Source: IGN

Jeff Smith had a spotlight panel at this year's Comic-Con, and Comic Book Resources has the write-up. Here's the tiny bit that was mentioned about the upcoming Bone feature film.

Check out the whole article if you want to read more on Jeff Smith's various projects and nothing about the Telltale games.

Source: Comic Book Resources

Word is out that Telltale have been working on another CSI Game "CSI: Fatal Conspiracy".

You can view the website here.

It will be interesting to see the upgrades to the Telltale engine in action, given the anticipation of the Back to the Future & Jurassic Park games.

Source: Telltale Games

Back To The Future is getting a re-release in cinemas. It will be back in selected movie theaters this October. There's a poster.

Hmm? How is this related to LucasArts games you say? Article 121 of Mojo Law states that "All news stories must be related to LucasArts, former key employees or studios created by said key employees directly or indirectly via community efforts, fangames etc, with the exception of Back To The Future news because it's the greatest movie ever made and everyone should hear about anything to do with it as it's just so awesome."

Oh, and there's a Telltale game coming out based on it too. This year. October perhaps, wild guess?

Source: Empire

Ex-LucasArts President Darrell Rodriguez, who made a sudden and unexpected departure from the company a few months ago after just one year as President, has now joined casual gaming company Republic of Fun on their Board of Directors (is that a job?).

We wish Mr Rodriguez the best of luck in his new position, and we wish he could've stayed with LucasArts longer. Under him LucasArts re-released many of their classics, remade Monkey Island 1 and 2, gave Monkey Island 5 to Telltale, and made their first original title in years with Lucidity.

MTV Multiplayer wrangled Tim Schafer and Tasha Harris to talk about the recently announced Costume Quest, which Pixar alumnus Harris is project leading. Most interesting is the way the four upcoming games from Double Fine came about, in an experiment dubbed "Amnesia Fortnight."

More great stuff, including the influences on Costume Quest, can be found in the full article, so go read it - the life you save may be your own.

Source: MTV Multiplayer

Gamasutra reports that the PSP version of The Force Unleashed II has been canceled, presumably over the mathematical concerns of attempting to profit off a user base of seventeen. Or maybe the port just blew? I don't know, but I'm guessing most of you weren't even aware that there was to be a PSP version.

All other versions of the game, which include Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo DS, Wii and PC, remain on track for a Fall release. The sales of the original game suggest that something on the order of 7 million folks consider that to be an event of some magnitude.

Source: Gamasutra

If you didn't know already, there are FOUR Double Fine games in the pipeline, all digital download titles. We already know about Costume Quest, the adventure/RPG out this October and just revealed today, but now THQ has announced that they will be publishing another one of the Big Four DF Games.

The second title will be "a third-person adventure game scheduled to be released in early 2011" (from the press release). Now, we all know what publishers call "adventure" we call "action adventure" so I wouldn't get my hopes up in that particularly regard... however, I am personally predicting that something Psychonauts-based will be part of one of these four games.

The bad news is that both titles will only be available on Xbox Live and Playstation Network. For many that's not an issue, but for others that's a No Play Zone. Sigh.

Source: MarketWatch

This here is the very first preview written about Costume Quest, the Halloween-themed Double Fine follow-up to last year's Brutal Legend. It's the first of four games Double Fine are currently working-on, and is being headed by former Pixar animator Tasha Harris, who you may know as a webcomic artist who has gone deep, deep undercover as herself.

Here's a preview - if you will - of the preview:
Spicy! Like pumpkins. Special thanks to the indispensable Pinchpenny for alerting us to this here news. Christmas has come early. Or it's Ramadan in this country I live in. Either way, I'm excited.

Source: UGO

What could be the first detail about Double Fine's next game - their follow-up to Brutal Legend - has been revealed. It's a trademark finding, spotted by this Tumblr guy, and hints that the game is called "Costume Quest". Same guy (girl?) also noted that LucasArts filed a trademark registratin for something called "Bounty Hunter",

My highly-sought analysis is this: the Double Fine game is probably about deciding what costume to wear each morning before going to work, and probably satisfies every gamer's wish to be a clown; and the LucasArts "Bounty Hunter" game isn't about chocolate. Click here to re-read everything I just wrote.

Source: Tumblr

Gamespot reports that LucasArts has recently hired Clint Hocking, who served as Creative Director at Ubisoft Montreal (where he contributed to Far Cry 2 and the Splinter Cell series) and will now serve the same role on an unannounced game at the Star Wars studio.

Who knows what the mystery game will turn out to be, although I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that it isn't Handsome Halibut.

Source: Gamespot

It is interesting to note that Lucasfilm still occasionally waves Cease and Desist letters around: in July they wrote to a company that makjes highly dangerous portable lasers.

According to Lucasfilm, said laser "is designed to look like a lightsaber from Star Wars."

The latest news is that Lucasfilm have retracted the Cease and Desist, because, apparently, "the media and public has come to realize that Lucasfilm would never endorse or license a highly dangerous product such as your Arctic Pro Laser."

You can read the original cease and desist letter here (via). Thanks to Narrative for the news tip.

Source: Narrativer/Gizmodo

Cyrus writes: “Although Toonstruck is not a LucasArts game, I feel it deserves coverage on Mixnmojo because... this is really important news. Keith Arem, one of the developers of Toonstruck who currently owns the rights to it, is planning to release the full version of Toonstruck which would include the unreleased second part, known as Toonstruck 2. But since the game was a commercial failure, he needs "tremendous fan support" to justify its release and raise funding.”

So put aside your coffee and croissant and help out in this worthy adventure genre cause! Here are the details:

• Mr Arem’s original letter.

• A growing petition of 5,000 signatures.

• A Facebook group and a Twitter page.

You can also discuss the issues in our forums.

The man known as "Stéfan" has recently compeleted an epic project: photgraphing stormtroopers from Star Wars in different situations for every day of the year.

The whole 365 shot collection can be seen here, and for easier browsing Wildammo have posted some of the best ones here.

This feature has totally been moved here.

Junkboy at "Pixelation" has mocked up retro screenshots of modern games for Swedish gaming magazines, including one featuring a point-and-click style Brütal Legend.

Head on over to the gallery to check out all the other 'demakes'.

Source: Pixelation

Meteor Mess 3D aims to recreate the whole of Maniac Mansion in 3D, along with new graphical details and gameplay improvements. The project began in 2008 and already has a playable demo available at vampyregames.de.

The team describe it as “a fan project for fans and for those who have probably never played Maniac Mansion at all," as well as it being "a hommage to LucasArts for making this pearl."

Maniac Mansion was released by Lucasfilm Games in 1987, and is widely considered a pioneering classic in the adventure game genre.

Keep Reading

squidkidd, who previously entered a talent competition by playing the Star Wars theme on bagpipes on a unicylce, has recently thanked Mixnmojo readers for voting for him (even though he came second place).

How does squidkidd thank people? By using mere words? Certainly not: unicyle bagpiping is the only language he speaks -- and this time he speaks it with the Monkey Island theme and bonus trumpet!