The International House of Mojo

Bill Tiller must be making headway on that A Vampyre Story 2 demo he mentioned at the beginning of the year. Over on his Instagram page, he shared some background art from the long-stalled game and the following caption.

What publisher could afford not to pick this up? Bad Brain, thy redemption arc is nigh.

Source: Bill Tiller's Instagram

News post for a slow week: Writer Simon Parkin's podcast My Perfect Console has guests pick five games for a perfect console, discussing these games as well as their careers. Each episode's about an hour.

One Dominic Armato joined Parkin about a month ago for an interview (episode 31), and one Erik Wolpaw (who co-wrote the first Psychonauts) joined previously (episode 13). Both episodes are good and representative of the show as a whole.

Listen to them on Apple Podcasts, Acast, Spotify, etc. It's been a staple of my low intensity cardio days, although fair warning that the podcast does make you want to go out and play video games afterwards.

It’s no secret that, despite Mojo’s bandwagon-spurning affection for the movie, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ended up being a massive box office face-plant for Disney. Since the studio long ago stopped granting me gross point participation in their feature films, I am happy to report no personal financial impact, but it does raise the question of the fate of whatever MachineGames is working on.

Hypothetically, one should have nothing to do with the other, but having already noticed a certain deafening silence around the Indy game despite its two-and-a-half-years-ago origins, one feels justified in growing a bit jaded.

Today, you can breathe a sigh of relief. In a new interview with Bethesda big shot Todd Howard, the game is given an official status of, erm, “midway.”

Of course, they say such things about Beyond Good and Evil 2 about every fifteen years, but hey, let’s be optimistic.

Source: British GQ

”The Quest for Guybrush” as it is called:

2023 continues to belt out its remastered games, with this week's flavour being 1995's Star Wars: Dark Forces. Check the reveal trailer here:

The remaster is being handled by Nightdive Studios, who recently released a "benchmark" quality remaster with Quake II. It's releasing on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and Steam, promised to be in 4K and 120 FPS (FPS in this context means "the new 'omg gr@phics!!!'").

Dark Forces is an FPS that has you blasting through Star Destroyers, Coruscant, and a yacht as a guy with the overtly sci-fi fantasy name "Kyle". Kyle's job? To "battle every man and machine the Imperial Forces can muster" in order to stop the rise of "a doomsday army - one that, if finished, will become the final cog in the Empire's arsenal of terror and domination."

I think the original trilogy answered this tantalising "will they/won't they" (as in "will they/won't they singlehandedly destroy every man and machine the Imperial Army can muster, or will it show up in the movies?"), but I doubt you're signing-up for this for story, anyway.

More info as it becomes available.

The Internet is, well, the Internet, and it's increasingly stupid and full of crackpots, but I've been secretly fascinated for years by one person who thought Monkey Island was an analogy for the US invasion of Vietnam. I learned about it from this Chris Purvis interview that Mojo recently excavated, which I read before playing Monkey Island 2. It coloured my playthrough and...well, I've always wondered what the hell the connection was. Is it because there's a Monkey Island in Vietnam? Whatever happened to that person, anyway? Are they roaming the streets of San Francisco, forgotten and ignored? Writing kitchen sink plays which are secret, impenetrable analogies of the Falklands War? Are they on a wild goose chase in Italy, attempting to crack the Da Vinci Code? Where are you, Vietnam person? What did you see?

Ron’s next game—presumably the one that goes by A Little Something on Wikipedia—has been revealed just a little bit more...

Sounds like it could be a fun little something to me!

As we reported earlier in the summer, Bill Tiller teamed up with the publisher Zoom-Platform to get A Vampyre Story in fighting shape for newer machines during a self-imposed hiatus from digital storefronts. The title has relaunched on Steam at a discounted price and armed with various updates, which you can find laid out here.

The occasion was seen as grounds to relaunch the long-kaput Autumn Moon web site, complete with a refreshed logo:

Could this signal a new lease on life for the label? Who knows, but in the meantime you gonna want that TruCoat them emotes, whatever those might be.

Source: Autumn Moon

If you frequent our forums—and why wouldn’t you?!—you will have seen this thread from bot-meister JP LeBreton. Entitled “a comprehensive collection of all LucasArts background art (1987-2000),” his current project is... Well, let the man describe it himself:

Read the whole thread for more, or, if you’re more of the passive type, go check out the bot that posts the backgrounds to Mastodon: LucasArts Places. While we can’t confirm elTee broke down in tears after seeing this EGA scene, odds seem good that it happened.

Looking for more passive entertainment? We post a daily screenshot both to Mastodon and M. And even ol' SCUMM Bar has gotten in on the fun: Follow @scummbar for a daily Monkey Island scene. (“More to come,” we have been told.)

Remember in 2003, when all the Domino bricks started falling, and we learned that, yes, a Monkey Island movie was in production at some point? In 2013, we published a short article about it on The SCUMM Bar, and it has now resurfaced here on Mojo.

In 2021, Polygon published its own story with a lot more official-ish information, of course, but it never really caught the zeitgeist angle quite as vividly. So, go read and relive the movie that thank god never was.

Over to Marius:

Want to relive the Monkey Island 2 commentary tracks without the hassle of playing the game or dealing with YouTube? Mojo got you covered with our new Commentary Browser. Thirty-one tracks, all at your fingertips, right here!

Usual caveats apply: Minimal beta testing, may not work on your device, etc.

Rumor has it the CEO is already working on expanding this with his favorite game, Day of the Tentacle, so stay tuned.

As some of you already know, we made a startling discovery last week: By all accounts, Stan and Elaine had a serious thing going in The Secret of Monkey Island before—or until?—Guybrush showed up.

To further dive into this fundamental plot twist, we sent our software architect department into the depths of the two first games and their discovery... Well, let’s just say that Return now is fully and wholly explained.

Make your own conclusions from rock-solid proof that never was run and edited through multiple pieces of software.

Hey, the demo doesn’t lie.

To be clear, this is absolutely canon, as proven: