We keep digging through the archive, this time stumbling across our #monkey-island IRC chats with Ron and Dom.
All I can do is apologize.
Articles
Rock Paper Shotgun continues its annual "Top 100 PC Games of All-Time" shenanigans. Last week, Tales from the Borderlands came at #93, Return to Monkey Island made it to a respectable #85, and Knights of the Old Republic was at #79.
Now the second half of that list is out. Interesting choices all-around, with Firewatch at #39 and The Walking Dead: Season One hitting #22. (Honourable mention to Half-Life: Alyx, which some Mojo graduates worked on as part of the subsumed Campo Santo.)
Source: Rock Paper Shotgun
Some of you may remember Jake and Marius’ stream of the two original Monkey Islands—we documented the first one right here Now, they’re doing it again, albeit with SeMI.
That’s tomorrow (Saturday), 11am PT/8pm CEST. Be there—the cool kids are sure to be.
Our trip down the old and dusty interview caverns continues. This time we’ve pulled seven of 'em out of the vault and combined them into one “Curse of Monkey Island Retro Interview Bonanza.” Some pre-launch, some post. They’re the type of texts that probably will be taught in universities for decades to come.
Sincere apologies for the lack of any pictures. In the early aughts, we were more concerned about the page loading on a modem than anything. Now read.
If you thought the infatuation wouldn’t last, well... In a sense you were right: It has turned into actual love.
Rock Paper Shotgun has released its top 100 PC games of all time and ReMI proudly occupies #85. Not bad, seeing the game hasn’t even reached a year in age.
The original Monkey Island piratical point 'n' click adventure was, and is, a cultural touchstone for many – including me. What joy, then, to get a new entry in the series by the original creators, starring many of the original cast, as Guybrush looks back on an old adventure? But Return isn't just for nostalgic fans. The 2D art is absolutely gorgeous, the hint system is an unbelievable work of genius, and the story is sweet and relatable without being indulgent. It's the point and click adventure to play if you think you don't like the genre.
Which is a good reminder to download the game for iOS and/or Android.
Other Mojo-related games on there: Tales From The Borderlands hits a deserved #93 and Star Wars: The Knights Of The Old Republic sits on #79. The top 50 will presumably be released soon.
As part of our current merger with The SCUMM Bar—thanks in no small part to expert negotiations by the CEO 
—we have resurrected a highly informative interview with Bill Tiller. For the CMI fan amongst you, it’s a must read and likely what Kubrick had in mind when he filmed 2001.
We didn’t quite plan this retro week, but more to come tomorrow!
Long-time readers may remember all the excitement surrounding the infamous Monkey Island 2-demo hack. Within the source, cut dialogue was found, different scenes were revealed, and music was extracted.
This was all in 2003, and some may have forgotten all that was uncovered. Thus, we decided to not only revisit it, but also update it with newer findings. And, as a bonus, we converted the MIDI music to MP3s. That’s just the service we provide.
Give Monkey Island 2: The Demo Examination
a read, and you may or may not learn a little about what never was.
Update! A couple of more factoids have been added. Also, a few more musical cues were provided by Zaarin, albeit in OGG format: Only the best for my precious MT-32 >:
So, we’ve made the rounds after Xwitter fell out of favor: Instagram, Threads, even YouTube Shorts. None of them were for us. And while our Mastodon presence will remain, we have decided to take matters into our own hands: Today M soft launches.
This is a social network that has it all: Properly embedded images and videos; threading that actually works; a conversational structure. How can we achieve these things other social networks can only dream of? The secret lies in our artisanal technology stack: Mid-90s-era forums.
Yes, M is built on our existing forums. It is a forum, just with some slight alterations. M is where we post the type of short-form articles we used to post on the sosh: “Mojo Scene of the Day” is already going. “Your Daily Watch is a new thing. Much more to come over the next few days: Rumor has it Thrik is firing up his meme machine. M is short-form Mojo, in other words. Microblogging. You get the idea.
Currently, only Mojo can start topics, but we welcome everyone to join in the conversation (screw you Bluesky). Welcome to M, by Mojo. (Footnote: We actually own MbyMojo.com—don’t accuse us of spending those Patreon funds willy-nilly.)
Mojo’s German bureau chief, Marius, has just finished an impromptu Twitch playthrough of the first part of The Secret of Monkey Island. Dubbed A walk through monochrome Mêlée Island on the Atari ST
you can stream it here:
Of note is his platform of choice: An OG Atari ST with monochrome graphics and three channels of bleeps. Presumably, it’s not something many have witnessed, so now is your chance.
Update! Marius has YouTube-d up a highlight reel and gave us a controversial statement: The Secret of Monkey Island is really good.
I wish I liked it, but...
Feel free to read my spoiler-free-ish thoughts on Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island: The Journey to Mêlée Island. And feel free to disagree. Or agree. I feel how I feel; that’s just how it is.
On the eve of the Monkey Island-themed Sea of Thieves expansion, Rare has released a spoilerific deep dive into the game:
What is there to say, really? I’m still uncertain about this whole SeMI thing, but there is no doubt that the team is showing downright reverence for Monkey Island. So whatever my personal opinion may be, I can already say I respect their dedication.
Download the game tomorrow and decide for yourself how it all stacks up.
(Oh, and the Voodoo-theme woodwind deserves a chef’s kiss.)
I’m sure some (or many) are on the fence about this whole Sea of Thieves thing, and if getting the game just for another taste of Monkey Island isn’t your “thing,” you always got this.
Almost five minutes of a Mêlée Island walkthrough. Hey, if all you were interested in was seeing the island in full 3D, this at least is something.
For the rest of us, the expansion is two days away.
Update! Hey, there’s an interview, too!
As is often the case, I have not watched this before posting it here. But there is no way this video...
... is not interesting. Land, McConnell, and Bajakian chatting for almost two hours? Just do yourself a favor and watch the thing. (I’m planning on doing myself the same favor as soon as I can.)
Let’s just get to it shall we: First, SeMI keeps expanding its own name: With the first part now having a title, we got Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island: The Journey to Mêlée Island. Two more episodes to go—this first one releases next week.
And as the video above reveals, there’s a lot of Monkey Island swag coming to the game, too. You even get a quick musical snippet from the MCU (Monkey Island Cinematic Universe) so the video is worth a gander even if you don’t care about the crossover.
Speaking of swag: As mentioned by Sopa on the forums, more Sam & Max action figures are being made available from Boss Fight Studios.
The reference material:
Once they hit 750 backers the production begins. Be prepared to shell out $80 for each figure.
Got five minutes to spare? You could do worse than spend them watching this mini-tribute to the infamous The Secret of Monkey Island stump joke.
Sure, there are some oddities—if you’re going to use art from our LucasArts' Secret History #12: The Curse of Monkey Island
article, at least credit Paco Vink—but hey... A fun watch all the same.
As expected, Return to Monkey Island is set to release on iOS and Android. On July 27, you can perform yet another act of penance for that copy of The Secret of Monkey Island you pirated by tossing $10 to Apple or Google. Or both. Here’s the trailer.
And speaking of mobile: Mojo has yet again gone social, this time on Threads. That’s right. We’re all about the 'gram. For now. (Email us a Bluesky invite if you want even more of us!)
So, that’s @internationalhouseofmojo for the only social account you’ll ever need. We’ll see if it sticks.
Hey, psst, want a book recommendation? We asked pretty much every writer and designer who’s worked on a LucasArts, Telltale, Terrible Toybox, Double Fine, Autumn Moon, etc. game on here for good recent reads, then added a few of our own. (Every writer, that is, except Chris Purvis, Sean Clark, and Brendan Q Ferguson, whom we couldn’t find. We assume they’re mythical creatures now, living off the grid, somewhere in the northern wilderness, swept up in starlight.)
Some people never got back to us (understandably), and some said they would but hadn’t by the time the article went up (also understandably), but we’ll happily (to crib video game dev parlance) patch in any updates to the article should they reach out. (Sincerely, we'd love that. Unlike, say, Jim Ward, the brows being furrowed over here aren't over silly things like deadlines, but books. And I don't joke when I say we reached-out to all the designers/writers.)
Video game documentary filmmakers Noclip have somehow acquired themselves a lot of boxes of tapes (remember those?) that they're now digitising—a decade's worth of video game history, mostly feature and BTS material, that was apparently headed for a landfill from the GameSpot vault. Among the initial batch of unearthed videos is this behind-closed doors demo of Knights of the Old Republic, from E3 2001 (remember E3?).
Noclip's Danny O'Dwyer explains more here:
One wonders at the mid-2000s gems they'll unearth from the Psychonauts, Telltale, and Special Edition days. Wonders and—if one were there and remembers the clammy awkwardness of game press events of the era—probably prays against.
Source: Noclip Games History Archive