As has become an annual tradition, Steve Purcell has sent along a heartwarming holiday image to brighten your day. This year he missed Christmas but sent along a new years card instead, featuring baby Max and an old sad Sam.
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As has become an annual tradition, Steve Purcell has sent along a heartwarming holiday image to brighten your day. This year he missed Christmas but sent along a new years card instead, featuring baby Max and an old sad Sam.
Twas the night before Christmas and all through Mojo, nothing was stirring, not even a hobo.
But enough about our sad lack of moving vagrants... it's time to announce the winner to our annual Christmas competition!
The results are in, the judges have been bribed and a decision has been made. It wasn't an easy conclusion to reach, but in the end I decided to pass on the free copy of Bone to Laura Abbott who sent us some amusing LucasArts Christmas carols plus an animation of Indy and Sophia under the mistletoe.
Even though the other entries were just as brilliant, Laura's cheeky confidence in submitting songs despite having no talent or vocal qualities warmed my heart and moved me
You can download the carols here and here, and read the lyrics here, and also gaze in wonder at a few of the other entries that we got that deserve very honourable mentions:
Merry Christmas!
Ronzo's been getting into the festive mood this year with his Christmas comic strip full of bitter feelings for all the unfairness and pain in this unhappy world. Now that?s the spirit!
Mr Grumpy Gamer also posted a link to some kind of Monkey Island techno thingymabob. I managed to download a snippet by pointing my browser this way and was mildly impressed as a result. I believe me eyebrow moved itself up my face a full centimetre. Anyway, I think it?s a real song that you can buy for real money, so go check it out! Or don?t.
And just a reminder that our Christmas competition ends tomorrow so you better get in all your last minute entries soon! All the contributions I?ve received so far have been of really great quality (even the singing!) but don?t be put off if you feel that you don?t have any skills; I don?t have any skills either. We can both die pointlessly in the gutter together.
Come back tomorrow evening, British time, when I?ll post some of the best entries for you to criticise and remark upon.
In case anyone is interested, the official Pirates of the Caribbean 2: *sigh* site has gone live. It's not really LucasArts news, but it's pirates and Johnny Depp is great, so shut up and go there.
Go to the gallery! You will see the Voodoo Swamp from MI2. Tia Dalma is the Voodoo Lady. Honest.
Source: Empire Online
Want to watch a great movie? Thinking about Narnia or King Kong? Well fuggedaboutit! JBRAA knows where it?s at ? with bloody Full Throttle cinema of course! Make the pop-corn and lock your children in the basement tonight as you settle down to watch Ben?s hilarious shenenigens in glorious windows-media-player-o-vision.
In other community news MJ has updated Nightlight Productions with more tasty morsels from his radio play shows! You can download the latest instalments of his Star Wars parody here. There are also rumours that Nightlight will have some very cool new shows for us next year, but ssh, you didn?t hear that from me.
A LucasArts Christmas Postcard is seen here, which is showing the company's move to the Presidio from Marin County. When inspecting it more closely, the postcard artwork is very similar to the art and characters that is seen on Lucasfilm.com's website.
I won't say anything about the lack of LucasArts adventure characters on the card, or even that it lacks snow and xmas hats. Write in the comments what film and game characters you can spot.
Also, if you are interested in seeing more christmas postcards from the past, then visit the toysrgus.com site.
Happy Holidays!
Gamespot has just put up a pretty good article that discusses why innovation in the games industry is met with so many problems. You are going to read this article because it mostly talks about Psychonauts and features comments from Schafer about the game's low sales and the challenges involved with pitching Double Fine's new game to publishers. The article as a whole is interesting, pretty sad, and worth checking out.
Further expanding its online distribution avenue for customers, Telltale announced in a press release today that it has teamed up with Big Fish Games to offer Out from Boneville as well as future Telltale titles. As the press release points out, this new outlet is in addition to Yahoo! Games, Direct-to-Drive, Trymedia Systems, Boonty, CNET, and the developer's own Telltale Now to expand the availability of Telltale's games and to hopefully reach an even bigger audience.
Read the whole thing here.
Well, sort of. Apparently a guy named Zach Quarles composed some early sample music for A Vampyre Story at some point. According to Bill Tiller, Zach may or may not be contributing music for the actual game, but that really shouldn't stop you from downloading the appealing montage that's available on this page.
Check out this new interview with Telltale CEO Dan Connors about the upcoming Sam & Max game. There isn't much in the way of earth-shattering new information, but as always it's worth a look.
Thanks to JBRAA for finding this.
Larry Holland's Totally Games, the makers of various awesome flying-type games for LucasArts (X-Wing, Secret Weapons) in years past, are still around and are currently developing a new game! They have teamed up with SEGA of America to develop some sort of action title for the PSP, possibly unrelated to flying. Additionally, they are expanding their Northern California game studio, and recruiting some new developers. What? Here's the entire press release
TOTALLY GAMES EXPANDING
Totally Games Expands With Announcement Of New PSP(TM) System Action Game in Development
NOVATO, CALIFORNIA (DECEMBER 7, 2005) Totally Games announced today plans to expand its Marin County, California studio with the announcement of a new game project signed with SEGA of America. The technically ambitious and imaginative project will recruit new staff - a move that reaffirms Totally Games' continuing commitment to be a world-class development studio. Lawrence Holland, President and Founder of Totally Games, is confident that growing its studio will allow it to follow-up its phenomenal success on games like the X-Wing series with even more outstanding games for both current and future consoles.
The newly signed PSP(TM) (PlayStation(R)Portable) system project features state of the art 3D graphics in a run and gun blast-a-thon for the PSP system, drawing its inspiration from such timeless arcade classics as Robotron and Smash TV. Players must navigate through expansive and exotic environments while blasting their way through hordes of rampaging monsters. This game will challenge players' reflexes and concentration like no other product on the PSP system.
Over the next month Totally Games will be posting a number of new job openings covering the gamut of skills and specialties necessary to create a top tier, "totally involving" game. Anyone looking for an opportunity to make a difference on a game project, to be a major contributor instead of a cog in a machine, and to work with an experienced team in a flexible, innovative, fun Marin County work environment should join Totally Games. It's a place where they can make great games and significantly develop their careers. Job seekers should check the TG job page at: http://www.totallygames.com/jobs/index.htm or contact hr@totallygames.com in confidence.
About TOTALLY GAMES
Totally Games is a highly respected independent electronic game design and development studio based in Marin County, California. With more than 20 years experience and numerous top selling, critically acclaimed titles to its credit, TG has helped drive the evolution and growth of electronic entertainment. Utilizing its wealth of experience, its staff of high caliber talent and its state of the art technology, Totally Games offers a unique combination of game development services on a wide range of platforms, including the PC, current and Next Gen game consoles, handheld game devices, and mobile phones. Totally Games? Web site is located at www.totallygames.com.
About SEGA
SEGA of America, Inc. is the American arm of Tokyo, Japan-based SEGA Corporation, a worldwide leader in interactive entertainment both inside and outside the home. The company develops, publishes and distributes interactive entertainment software products for a variety of hardware platforms including PC, wireless devices, and those manufactured by Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. SEGA of America?s Web site is located at www.SEGA.com.
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...Neat! Are we going to need one of those news category things for Larry soon?
Mojo hosted site The Dig Museum is actually up and running after months (years? years and years?) of ridiculous teaser content and other stuff like that.
Though most of the site is still "coming soon" they have a nice history writeup which was in part written by Bill Tiller, and some downloads.
Anyway, check it out. Been a while since we had a new hosted site!
Bill Tiller has recently made a news post to the Autumn Moon web site. It doesn't offer much in the way of actual news (Bill frequents the site's forum and I'd recommend those who want more frequent and up-to-date bits of info keep an eye on it), but as always there are interesting tidbits and he did post a cool new image of Mona's pal Froderick to the Gallery section, and he also says that more images are coming soon. Stay tuned next week when he may or may not update the news page again!
We've got a full version copy of Bone to give away to one lucky Mojo reader as part of our traditional Christmas competition?, courtesy of the lovely folks over at Telltale. Even if you?ve already bought the game (who hasn?t!?) it will still make the perfect present to someone this Christmas / Hanukkah / Celtic midwinter feast!
To be in with a chance to win this delicious prize all you have to do is make something that?s both Christmassy (or just wintry if you?re a non Christian barbarian!) and Mojo-ey (by which we mean related to Telltale, Autumn Moon, Double Fine or, er, LucasArts).
Here?s a few example ideas to get you going:
All contributions will be warmly welcomed ? even if you have no skill, we may give you the prize anyway! Probably not, actually, but you should still enter as we may publish the entries online and, well, it?s a bit of fun.
Send anything remotely to do with winter and Mojo this way, and remember that you can send in as much stuff as you like! The closing date is Christmas Eve, so get writing/drawing/making/knitting/baking now!
Update: even if you don't win you can still get 15% off the price of Bone this Christmas by entering "MOJOPROMO" into the Promo Code field accessible during the checkout process from the online store, or in the
splash screen of a downloaded game.
A brand new Psychonauts Bootcamp Bulletin has been sent out, asking for help in making Psychonauts look good. How can you assist in this noble quest? All you have to do is get yourself over to 1up's Best of 2005 voting arena and cast your finger upon the big button entitled "vote", ensuring that Psychonauts is first checked in every field ever.
If you weren't able to convince a friend to buy Psychonauts as part of the refer-a-friend program which ended a while back, you can also win a special t-shirt and electro-ball-thing by sending in a bit of fanfic-esque writing which could be used as Razputin's victory acceptance speech.
The official website's Bootcamp Bulletin area hasn't yet been updated, so peruse this mirror for now should you not be subscribed.
PS: No news about the international release is in the newsletter, other than telling us that there is no news! I'd hate for you to go in with your hopes undashed.
Remember Old Grandma Hardcore, AKA the coolest granny ever? Of course you do!
Well it just so happens that Tim Schafer sent her all this cool crap as thanks for completing Psychonauts. Now that's what I call a good Christmas present.
And speaking of presents, does anyone know what the deal is with the Psychonauts European release? It was originally supposed to be over here for November, but now the hot estimate seems to be February 2006. :~
The author of the Lucas Empire history "Droidmaker", Michael Rubin, has generously put Chapter 18 of his book up as a free pdf download on his blog.
Lucasfilm didn't launch its Games Group (later Lucasarts Entertainment) until years after the Computer Division was underway -- so it doesn't enter the story until Act III (Chapter 18). To satisfy the curiosity of games historians, I'm also adding a FREE CHAPTER 18 here, for download, to give you a taste of that late chapter. This chapter chronicles the rise and supremacy of Atari, and the deal with Lucasfilm that created the Games Group and so on.Go get it here... after you look at the Sam & Max goodness (see below) on Telltale's site, that is!
Some things might not be perfectly clear, and some characters apparently not introduced, but hell, you're 280 pages into the book at this point, and you have to expect you've missed a few things. Still, I think it can be followed.
Source: The Droidmaker Tour
If you were hoping that you wouldn't see any cool Sam & Max stuff today, then prepare to be disappointed.
First off is the offering of a Sam & Max T-shirt, which I don't even have to tell you you're going to buy right now, in large quantities. Also for sale are signed Sam & Max prints, one which features a large version of a special art called "Something's Not Right Here," the other featuring a large version of the Outlaws comic. They are both signed by Steve Purcell. (You might recall these being sold by the Gary Winnick co-founded Tantrum Entertainment a little over a year ago.)
And finally, the first of the promised series of serialized Sam & Max web comics by Purcell.
woot.
...by Christmas!
A big thanks to Goblin (who designed the awesome new logo), Paco Vink (whose Christmas wallpaper owns so much it hurts), Ado (whose Christmas card to the SCUMM Bar was vomited back up as a background) and Steve Purcell (whose old Sam & Max Christmas card hangs beneath our menu and makes us wet our pants if we'd worn any, or something)
Anyway, happy holidays. ;-*
Idle Thumbs reports that Shelley Day, who co-founded the companies Cavedog and Humungous Entertainment with Ron Gilbert, has been sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for forging bank documents in order to secure large loans. You might recall Day's name on the credits of some older LucasArts adventures; she served as producer on games like Loom, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis before venturing with Gilbert to start on their own. The District Judge has denied the request to defer the sentence until April so that Day could continue work on a potentially profitable in-development children's game (I'm not sure what developer she's currently part of).
Oops.
Source: Idle Thumbs
The Pirates of the Caribbean 2 trailer has recently made its way onto t?Internet and, whilst this may be old news to all you World of MI surfers out there, it was at least new to me when I accidentally stumbled across it on Google five minutes ago.
Anyway, go give it a watch if you?re interested. I certainly am ? it looks like it?ll be on a much grander scale than its predecessor, and that can only be a good thing.
And also it?s Monkey Island the movie by Ron Gilbert omg we?ll get to know the secret in this one I?m sure hah u sux!!11
Source: Google, I swear!
Hey, guess what? It?s totally the first of December! I don?t care if the fascist Mojo date system doesn?t acknowledge this fact ? it?s past midnight here and that?s all that matters.
Er, anyway. Plunder 3D has been updated with some very sexy looking new screenshots, including our first glimpse at the theatre and the chickens. And there?s also a small update on Goblin?s other site, Blood Island 3D; we get to see the crypt coffin and it?s looking just dandy.
Go have yourself a gander, y?all.