The International House of Mojo

It’s been a surprisingly vibrant year for Monkey Island fan games, but we can’t forget our history, so it’s nice timing that a complete playthrough of The Fate of Monkey Island has been uploaded to YouTube.

Too young to remember The Fate of Monkey Island? Built in 1999 (Footnote: Jesus Christ) by “Scurvyliver” using the then-ubiquitous Klik & Play game-making tool, it was considered the criterion example of fan games, mostly based on the following unique features:

• It got finished

One-a dem dere “sidequels,” the game takes place during the events of Monkey Island 2 and helps fill in some backstory for Curse by depicting what the monkeys had to go through when LeChuck went into the amusement park business. Yes, the game sees you playing not as Guybrush, but as a monkey named Squinky. (Spielberg would approve.)

The success of the game led Survyliver to embark on a more ambitious sequel, complete with a SCUMM-like interface, but progress was halted when LucasArts cried copyright infringement. Obviously, it wasn’t the best look for the studio, but it’s impressive that they could take some time out of not bug-testing Star Wars: Jedi Power Battles to fire off the cease-and-desist. The scandal even reached the awareness of print media:

While you can still download Fate (and for that matter, the abandoned sequel) and hope your modern operating system can fathom its charms, the following video may satisfy the requirements of those who wish to know their history without necessarily getting it stuck on their shoes.

Source: YouTube

So, this isn’t actually new content, but you may recall that as part of our “Secret History” series (Footnote: That would be our string of big retrospectives on each of the fourteen LucasArts adventure games, originally published on a sort of monthly basis from 2008-2010.), we often had developer interviews included as bonus material, located on one of the later pages.

Thereby integrated into those features rather than being standalone, they couldn’t be found under our Interviews category, leaving them repressed and poorly searchable. It’s been a longstanding black eye on the organizational integrity of our archive and raised hell for the literally millions of research students who rightly use Mojo as a primary source.

Well, thanks to our proprietary MojoDB technology that Remi’s been refining at a frightening pace, this stubborn shortcoming is now addressed, and all those interviews can be reached under, well, Interviews, rather than having to be dug for. Personally, I’m partial to The Passion of Bill Eaken (halfway down the page), in which the artist delighted us with his limited but not uneventful time [attempting to work] on The Curse of Monkey Island, but why not browse the newly comprehensive Interviews section to rediscover such gems yourself?

And that's because Harrison Ford made a special effort to praise the newest and shiniest Indy imitator, Troy Baker, for the voice actor's well-received performance in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

It all went down at the Game Awards a few days ago. You weren't cool enough to get an invitation, so let's set the coordinates on the Dial of Destiny...

If it's justice for Doug Lee you want...talk to Sternhart and Costa.

Source: Lucasfilm.com

The year is coming to a close, and so we’re opening the polls for you to vote for the good, the bad, and the ugly of 2024. Best game. Snarkiest updater. The usual.

To sweeten the pot, we are putting up three Double Fine LRG games and the coveted triangle box for one of you to win:

I mean, what?! Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle, and Full Throttle, all boxed up? The triangle?! And participating is easy:

First, sign up for a forum account unless you already have one.

Then, vote in one or more of the following polls. Each voted-for poll gives you another entry in the contest:

• Awesome-est Mojo Feature
• What Made You Excited for the Future
• Snarkiest Mojo Updater
• Game of the Year

We treat you so fine.

Restrictions apply, of course – no employee of The Mojo Corporation will be eligible for the prize (but vote anyway!) and yada yada yada. You know how all of that goes.

Good luck!

Look, Jason is making me post these, gimme a break.

“Again. You guys are wasting your Behind Mojo posts on the Slack.” - Jason

So, now that you know what they think, it’s time to read the Indiana Jones and the Great Circle review that counts: Ours.

Spoilers are kept to a minimum, and only some small details from the first part of what is a large game are revealed.

Vince Lee, whom even those practicing Star Wars ostracism probably know as the principal behind the pioneering Rebel Assault and its FMV engine, INSANE (leveraged also by such games as Full Throttle and Outlaws) is Daniel Albu’s latest subject:

While Remi is still waiting for ChatGPT to spin up that Mojo review (it takes a lot of quarters these days), everyone else in the world has registered their thoughts, and there does seem to be a consensus that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is the goods.

Accepting that as a given, I am pleased to see the property get the long-awaited comeback it has deserved after twenty-five baffling years serving an apparent agenda to strive for the ideal of being perfectly functional Tomb Raider/Uncharted knockoffs.

As you await the only judgment that Microsoft is worried about, you might care to follow the enthusiastic reaction on the forums or experience the superb soundtrack by the always dependable Gordy Haab. Walt Disney Records has made it available through Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and probably everywhere else you don’t prefer.

Double Fine is serious about keeping the Xbox Gear Shop fed, so they lovingly ran off some Brütal Legend pins:

It’s a fine way to celebrate the game’s fifteenth anniversary. As is our article on the subject if it (somehow) fell off your priority list.

Source: Xbox Gear Shop

You, and definitely not us, probably need to catch up on the two Tech Talk interviews since the session with Larry the O. First up is James ‘Purple’ Hamilton, playtester extraordinaire from LucasArts’ olden days:

Then there’s Elaine Marley herself, Alexandra Boyd, whose long-form chat with Cressup only awakened her appetite for streamed interviews rather than bedded it down.

We should also point out that Daniel’s past interviews with Mike Levine and Aric Wilmunder, which uncovered a number of new anecdotes about Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix, have done much to inspire a new article about the cancelled game by the folks at Time Extension.

Staying faithful to the theme of occasions gone unmarked, how about Steve Purcell busting out some hugely justifiable re-runs in honor of Thanksgiving, and now the yuletide season?

You may recall that Limited Run Games threw in a plush hamster as part of their big honking collector’s package for Day of the Tentacle Remastered, but do you really think hamster perfection happens in the first iteration? Literally millions of hamsters had to be rejected to achieve what wound up in the hands of over-salaried fanatics, and one of those valuable hamsters-that-weren't is now up for auction on eBay.

It's part of the annual Winter Fundraiser for the Video Game History Foundation, so don’t be motivated only by the fact that owning this prototype with marginally different colors is absolutely essential to any well-appointed home – know also that it’s downright conscientious as well.

Source: eBay

You might have noticed that for the last fourteen years or so (but who’s counting?), turning more than one page back on front page news led to Mojo generously pulling the totality of the news archive, leading to browser crashes and rumoredly the occasional homicide. It’s just the kind of unadvertised fun you don’t get from regular web sites, aimed at the flavorless mainstream.

Well, Remi decided that the fun’s over, so he just fixed it, which I’m guessing took all of eight seconds. It’s almost sad to reflect that Mojo is otherwise rock solid and literally devoid of issues to fix. What do we even have to chase now?

As mentioned in yesterday’s newsletter – you do subscribe to The Adventurer, don’t you? – Laura Cress sat down for a Q&A with Bill Tiller to talk A Vampire Story: A Bat’s Tale, AI in the gaming industry, etc.

Give it a watch like the libertine you surely are. (After you subscribe to The Adventurer.)

It's been a race car, a blimp, and a breakfast menu item, but this time they've really gone round the bend and saw fit to try to adapt Indiana Jones and the Great Circle into a video game.