The International House of Mojo

Welcome to 2008 everyone! And to anyone in the past: There are no flying cars yet.

To make this a legitimate news post, I will say that in 10 days Sam & Max 202: Moai Better Blues will be available from Telltale's site!

A long standing tradition in Norway has been to tell all your friends (in this case, you, dear readers) if anything important is happening in 10 days. It has nothing to do with me wanting to try out the news system for the first time. Not at all. Remster will be along shortly to confirm this and if he tells you anything else, he's obviously a filthy liar.

Now back to the celebrations. Move along.

I hope that you all had a good 2007, and best of luck for 2008.

I've put up some scattered thoughts about the last year, as well as wishes for next year, and the results of our reader polls.

I hope you'll stick with us in 2008.

Onwards!

The World of Monkey Island has gone the way of The SCUMM Bar and the Dodo ? and has ceased communication on the news page. Dalixam, Paco and all the crew kept a mighty fine web-site for ten years, and I think the decision to let the site sleep (at least until Monkey Island 5!!1) is a fair one.

And so the year ends with, as Dalixam rightly puts it, "the end of an era." Let the World of Monkey Island people know your thoughts by commenting on their news post.

And then there was one.

As with last year, we've started a series of voting polls in the forum, asking YOU about the events of the past twelve months. The questions so far are:

Best Sam & Max Episode

Best alternative title for Indy IV.

Your view of 2007

Best Review Best Feature

Best Interview

Best Headline

Best News Post

Best -- or most interesting -- news story

Most Wanted for 2008

2007 was the year that...

Best Mojo banter

Best Behind Mojo

Most likely to be promoted

...but more will be added soon.

You need to register with our forums to be able to vote, but it only takes one second, and you can use your account for the whole of Lucas Forums and message away with Remi, Jake and the whole team! We're all on Lucasforums, messaging our souls away! Come join us.

Oh, and one more thing: all of the results will be going into a review of the year, just like we did for 2006.

Update: more questions have been added, and we've also got a new header for our forums. If it's still loading the old images for you, just hit Ctrl F5.

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After making its debut at The Pumpkin Post, Autumn Moon has now put their wonderful Christmas card up on their blog, just for you!

Speaking of The Pumpkin Post, you may have noticed that it is now a Mojo hosted site! Did you know that being a Mojo hosted site affords you many super-secret benefits that include free money and drugs? Why not get in on the action by making some new hosted sites, which are way too few in number these days!

Gametap has put their own trailer for Sam & Max 202 up on "Gametap TV" - a service that is available both within their client and on their web site here. Head on over to the Game Trailers section and look for the clip for Moai Better Blues (it's currently the last one). Possible spoilers, but it seemed pretty innocuous to me.

Can someone shut John Walker from PC Gamer UK up? Or at least get him to stop reviewing the Sam & Max games? His rampant bitterness is really getting on my nerves.

Yes, I realise anyone who criticises something I love is going to annoy me, but Mr Walker isn't merely saying "sorry, I don't like this" he's taking delight in being the archetypal moody "I hate everything" critic. See Anton Ego in Pixar's Ratatouille if you don't know what I mean. I've read bad reviews of the games before, such as in PCZone, but none of those reviews seem to come from as big a humourless grump as this guy.

In the most recent issue he reviewed Ice Station Santa and Season One. He basically spat on them. He grudgingly admitted that Abe Lincoln Must Die! was the best, but it seemed to cause him actual pain to do so.

Look at my Season One review again. I had a hell of a lot of negatives about it, yet one thing stood out - these games are funny. Fine, sometimes the jokes fall flat, but I still found them utterly hilarious for the most part. Certainly as much as Hit The Road. Reading his reviews John Walker seems certain that no one could possibly find these games funny.

He takes offence at some of the low-brow humour, and mentions (in his oh-so-humourous way) that no one could find topics like cancer or suicide funny. The writers of South Park and Monty Python would probably disagree.

Yes, I also realise it's wrong to criticise someone else's opinion. But for God's sake man, lighten up! Just because you don't find something funny doesn't mean no one else will!

And PC Gamer, get someone else to review the Sam & Max games! Someone who might actually laugh now and again!

And that's my two cents. Sorry about that. He just got me very angry, that's all.

In what is arguably among the top ten Insecticide previews you're likely to read today, Hooked Gamers took a close look at Crackpot's debut title, which is still scheduled for release in February (that'd be the DS version). I can't believe I have to tell you twice.

We'll be having a jolly whizzy party over at the #monkey-island chat room, and we've invited Bill Tiller to join in with the festivities!

If you haven't visited #monkey-island yet, it's very easy to get there and star chatting. Just download mIRC and connect to #monkey-island on the Gamesurge server.

The chat will officially begin at 8pm GMT Saturday 29th (so this Saturday) -- but please come early if you want to! We'll be playing games and chatting about the year, and when Bill Tiller arrives it'll be a great opportunity to talk to him about whatever you want -- A Vampyre Story (out early 2008), his work on Monkey Island, or the weather.

Look forward to seeing you all in our Mojo new year festive chat!

Happy Holidays from The International House of Mojo! (yes, that card's all my own work! And if a guy called 'Steve Purcell' turns up I'm not in)

The team here at Mojo are all hard at work (cough) at making 2008 an even better year for gaming than 2007, and that was pretty darn special! More details in the New Year!

Merry Xmas Everyone!

Gamespot recently ran an article detailing the arduous and often weep-inducing process of pitching a video game to publishers. You'll probably find the article as a whole an interesting read, but among the developers who share their thoughts on the subject is Ron Gilbert, who I think made Loom or something, so give it a look!

A recent thread on the official Autumn Moon forums sure seems to indicate so! With the art side of A Vampyre Story completed the team has already begun work on the sequel. The less Christmas for Draxsylvania, the more for us.

The post, made by an unknown team member, also suggests that you check out the Autumn Moon site before Christmas day. So you're going to do that, aren't you?

As is tradition around this time, Steve Purcell has created some Christmas-y Sam & Max artwork for us fans. You can check it out at the bottom of the latest Telltale newsletter (web site version available here) and then you can go download one of hi-res versions of the art that Jake supplies here.

Update: Grab them all from this blog entry.

Bonus Update! The above-linked blog also contains a downloadable MP3 of the Friendly Demon Song from Ice Station Santa.

In case playing through the game's not enough for ya, Telltale have released a machinny... makinama... mcnugget... short game film thing based on Sam & Max: Ice Station Santa, although there are a number of differences particularly with the Three Spirits. And I say short, it's actually about 20 minutes!

See it at GameTrailers now, although Telltale promise it will be up in some other form on their website soon. UPDATE: Ahh, there we go!

"God **** us, every one!"

You will notice this news item (as I have done) by glancing at our community headlines, but I think that this deserves its own news post anyway: I am of course talking about the Monkey Island Wiki started by those hot studs at the World of Monkey Island.

Ron Gilbert actually created the idea of a Monkey Island wiki back in the 1992, and it was going to involve people mailing each other back and forth, each time changing text files stored on floppy disks. But it was never to be!

Luckily, we live in 2007 soon-to-be 2008, and can make full use of the Monkey Island Wiki. It takes seconds to edit and browse the entries, so get to it now!

A whole slew of new Insecticide screens from both versions of the game have been spreading across the internet over the past few weeks. If you haven't caught them yourself yet, why not check them all out in the world-renowned Mojo gallery where they were added after being unequivocally stolen provided to us by Gamecock Media's PR department?

I should also mention that the game's official web site received another design overhaul somewhat recently.

Ron's lovely blog at Grumpy Gamer has a YouTube video of a recent interview with the Monkey Master for a German videogaming show - although don't panic, it's in English (and there's a nice shot of the Mix 'N' Mojo wheel too!).

A lot of stuff we've heard before but some interesting stuff came out - particularly Ronny G's statement that working with LucasArts to make another Monkey Island game "is not outside the realm of extreme possibility". Personally I just enjoyed the presenter shouting "What is the Secret?!" down the phone in anguish.

Oh, and there's some hints as to Ron's next project. He describes it as "kind of an adventure melded with a Diablo-style role-playing game", which he's apparently making with the help of Double Fine. Well, a desk at Double Fine at least. It's a comedy, and going to be Telltale-style episodic too (although he does mention "pitching it to publishers", which I thought was the whole reason NOT to be episodic).

Check it out! (Although being honest the main reason I'm posting this is to see the Xmas version of the Ron Gilbert News avatar)

Source: Grumpy Gamer

The latest news is this: Remi Olsen is greedily having another birthday, even though he had his last one only a year ago! It was on the same day as well: this man works like clockwork! I'm on fire with all these birthday jokes!

But seriously, the Mojo team all pitted together and bought Remi a really nice, expensive birthday cake. Remi then reviewed the cake on his web-site and gave it a 3 thumbs down rating, stating that the "frosting was too frosty and the filling was too filling."

Happy birthday anyway, Remi!

Source: Facebook

You like the Indy IV poster by Drew Struzan so much you want to marry it, huh? Then good news! The Star Wars Shop has it available now!

Blu-Tack it to your wall and pretend that Indy and a Giant Skull actually want to hang out with you!

While you're at it, buy the T-Shirt too! C'mon guys, we all know if we don't buy all this stuff and support LucasFilm we'll never get those Star Wars Prequel Special Editions (with 10% more Jar-Jar) we've always wanted!

Want to relive the first Monkey Island game without playing the actual game? Well, now you can, thanks to this fan made movie!

As promised, Telltale has put up their mini-site for Moai Better Blues including a plot synopsis, some screenshots, and the trailer. Also, the slightly revamped Season 2 page reveals the titles of episodes 203 and 204 - Night of the Raving Dead and Chariots of the Dogs respectively, with the finale being kept under wraps.

See it all now!

And it is Moai Better Blues. The episode will see Sam and Max headed to the tropics to stop and/or cause some improbable mayhem on Easter Island. Telltale's going to have all the expected info for the game up on their site tomorrow, but for now check out the episode's hilarious trailer at 1up or GameVideos, depending on how you roll.

Moai Better Blues is going to be on Gametap on January 10th and Telltale's site January 11th, so try not to find yourself in a fatal car crash until at least a few days after that.

There's a new poster for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Maze now up, starring Harrison Ford, Shia LaBeouf and Richard O'Brien.

See the new extremely cool poster here. It's by famous LucasFilm (and LucasArts) poster (and cover) artist Drew Struzan, which is enough to make me form a sizeable drool puddle under my chair.

I'm guessing this is a teaser poster as it just features Indy and a skull (wonder if it's called Murray?), but it's still great.

After cruelly skipping a review of Lego Star Wars II, Mojo makes up for lost time and reviews both games in one neat package called Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga for that spangly hard-to-get toy called the Nintendo Wii. What is it with me and reviewing previously released and reviewed games in one big collection? Check out the review and then unleash your Wiimotes on a terrified battle droid.

Oh, and there's a special guest in this review. No, it's not Gabez.

Double Fine are running a competition to design a Christmas tree decoration. Send in a photo, and if you win, then you get to post the decoration off for it to live in the Double Fine office thereafter forever. And you also get a prize!

More -- much much more -- on the web-site.

Shout Factory head honcho Brian Ward has announced in the Telltale forums that the Sam & Max TV Series DVDs have gone gold and been sent to production.

Well, gang... It's a bittersweet announcement to make, but Sam & Max: Freelance Police!!! The Complete Series is officially done. We shipped off the master DLTs from which the discs will be pressed this morning and the artwork shipped last Friday.

Expect it to hit stores (both retail and internet) in March with an SRP of $29.99. It's three discs, the first of which will contain the 13 episodes and the last disc will be the bonus disc...

Full details and cover art can be seen here at TV Shows on DVD.

Source: Telltale Foums

Yes, there's another new trailer for Insecticide up at GameTrailers. Check it out right here. It's also arguably the best so far.

It shows the DS version (up close for once), and shows actual adventure-gaming moments including touch-screen dialogue options and how 'detectiving' will work with the dual screens.

It also reveals that the release date (for the DS version at least) has now changed to 12th February.

Yep. Originally George Lucas predicted that the first teaser trailer for the film would be out "around Thanksgiving," and more recently that has changed to"before Christmas." But now it seems Lucasfilm/Paramount has decided to keep the trailer to itself until the Superbowl, giving the first Crystal Skull footage the exposure of the most watched TV event of the year for the marginal cost of $6 million, likely paid for with Freelance Police's marketing budget.

More here.

Source: Wild About Movies Blog

... if you're within driving distance of Telltale, that is. Over on the Telltale forums, Emily has dropped this note:

We'll be holding a playtest this Saturday in our office. If you are in the San Rafael area and would like to participate, please send an email to feedback@telltalegames.com with "playtest" (or something equally obvious) in the subject line.

Pizza will be there, as usual. And the game, too.

Northern Californians unite, and descend on Telltale's office this weekend.

In what can only be described as shocking news, everybody, the two publishing giants Vivendi and Activision have announced that they are to merge, creating a serious competitor to the all-dominating Electronic Arts.

No news as yet how this will affect games slated to be published by either company, such as Ghostbusters or Br?tal Legend. CVG however are optimistic that this merger will persuade both the new Activision Blizzard (adios Sierra, we'll miss you) and EA to focus more on original titles then rely on games they release every sodding year.

Update: This FAQ from CVG makes it seem like we've got nothing to worry about. Specifically:

Q: Will the release schedules for any Blizzard games be impacted?
A: No, the transaction will not have any impact on our games, our day-to-day operations, or our release timelines.

Although a lot of the FAQ seems to focus on Blizzard, it looks likely that no games will be affected by the move. Let's hope that it will give Br?tal Legend
more of a chance at being successful... and coming out on PC.