The International House of Mojo

After several years of independent pre-production on their highly anticipated adventure title, A Vampyre Story, Autumn Moon has finally signed a deal with a publisher, which is awesome! There's no details or formal press release just yet. "Soon," they say. But the point is that the game is officially picked up and will enter production in the not-too-distant future. Rejoice-worthy news indeed.

Our top secret sources inform us that the publisher probably isn't positioned in Germany.

Gamasutra had a little chat with Ron Gilbert about what he's been up to. Ron shares his thoughts about the industry, where its heading, and how it might be improved. There's some discussion about the title he's shopping around, but expectedly there are no new details. Anyway, the interview is good and two pages long, so give it a look-see.

Update: Woah! Apparently a single Ron interview isn't enough for one day! Check out this Gamespot interview with him that is also available as a podcast!

Though this isn't at all LucasArts (or Double Fine or Telltale or whatever) related, it may be of interest to Mojo readers!

A new commercial 2D point and click adventure game, made by fans of the "old classics," is on it's way and the demo's just come out. The game is called Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman's Mine. The title's definitely a bit silly but the game is worth checking out, not only because it's a 2D point and click clearly harkening back to days of old when graphic adventures ruled the earth, but because people are saying it's good and fun.

The game is definitely flavored a bit more Sierra than LucasArts, but it's oozing retro adventure game like few other titles manage to achieve. Check out the box art! It looks like it's just landed here from 15 years ago (in a good way).

You can grab the game's demo from over at Adventure Gamers, or you can visit the official Al Emmo website here.

On my daily trawl across the internet looking for information about Johnny Depp Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest I came across this great report on the premiere of the movie.

What makes this one so cool? This video. It's Johnny Depp riding the updated Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, and you get to see some of the cool new animatics they've come up with. And, so that I can pass this off as Mojo news, you get to see the dog/jail/bone scene which is in the original Pirates movie, and some game LucasArts made back in the day. Day of the Tentacle or something.

Anyway the movie is out in like two weeks so clear your schedules and prepare for another elTee debunking of the "they ripped off Monkey Island!" forum thread. 5000 words? You got it.

(Although, I think this time there seem to be a hell of a lot more similarities than last time, and I'm not the only one - but then again I was the first one to go all mental saying that it would be Monkey Island: The Movie last time - until I actually saw the movie. Here, educate yourself.)

Source: IESB.net

Comic Book Resources has published a short article / interview with Steve Purcell regarding the forthcoming Sam & Max games plus other plans around the franchise;

And while fans might see the new "Sam & Max" video game and web strips as portents of things to come, Purcell reminds fans that there are no plans for a "Sam & Max" revival. "I'm not going to start doing comics for a living any time soon. I'd like to continue the web strip and collect that into a book. I'd like to someday finish the unfinished story I have in my drawer and I'd like to re-release the old comics for people who were never able to get them. If I ever did a 'Sam & Max' series again I'd only do it for an older audience. Although the show we did made the best of having to skew younger, I think 'Sam & Max' works better when they're a bit more unwholesome.

Read the whole article here.

Steve will also be attending the San Diego Comic Con in July. Check the Telltale Games site for more info.

Source: Comic Book Resources

Yep, exactely what it says -- the new version of ScummVM, the app that lets you easily run those old LEC adventures, is now available. Other than some fixes and minor upgrades you can now also run The Legend of Kyrandia and The Feeble Files with it. Sweet.

The best radio parody of the best Star Wars film ever has reached its end with part ten of Lost Cause: There?s Still No Hope!

You can listen to all of the parts of the series here, and give feedback to Nightlight Productions over at their forums. Also, look out for more LucasArts related radio plays coming soon!

Here is a Telltale interview about the Bone games from Adventure Island that, yes, may be a month old, but I bet it's new to you. And you know, I don't think we've ever really given the Dank online comic the coverage that we probably should have, so let's start now at a nice round number: The 17th Edition is up!

You've probably read Tim's post from last week, asking fans to spam the Microsoft emulation team until they add Psychonauts to the XBOX 360 backwards compatibility list. You've also probably noticed that it actually got quite a bit of attention, and that some response emails have been interpreted as proof that the game is actually being worked on. Assuming the "Emulation Ninjas" don't send this sort of reply to every game request, it's pretty cool to think that Double Fine managed to get their game supported by stirring a rabid fan email campaign.

DJG, Mojo's php coder from fairer times, snuck in during the night and fixed our forum tracker in the sidebar there to the right. So now, finally, you can once again keep track of all of the action and intrigue of Mojo's forums without actually having to visit them. Woo!

Jim Ward says: "well at least it was completed on time and in budget"

LucasArts big cheese Jim Ward recently told UK's MCV that business practices as recently seen by EA are inexcuseable.

"There's an attitude in this industry that says in order to make a great game, it takes whatever time it takes and it takes whatever money it takes, and that 'that's okay," Ward claimed. "Well it's not okay ? it's wrong. It's not okay in other entertainment businesses. In other businesses it's big trouble... When you have EA failing to bring Superman out with the movie, that's inexcusable. Moving games like Medal of Honor and Godfather out of the fourth quarter -? that's the old way of thinking and you can't do that any more... We've adopted new philosophies at LucasArts which, frankly, the whole industry should adopt. We make kick-ass games, but on time and on budget. Failure on any one of those three points is failure for the project. We are very serious about that strategy and we're able to deliver on it. As a result we're successful on a revenue and a bottom line basis."

Yes, it all makes perfect sense from a marketing standpoint, just so long as buggy, unfinished games aren't being foistered on the public.

Source: MCV

Concerns from fans that the new Sam & Max interface will be "too minimalist" are exacerbated by the latest screenshot from Telltale:

...In page three

GameSetWatch has published a short Sam & Max related interview, where senior designer Dave Grossman lets out some golden nuggets about the upcoming game. Like:

Interface-wise, expect a wise interface ? guffaw, guffaw, oh, I couldn?t resist, though I?m sure we?re all wishing I did. The games use an intuitive and fairly minimal point-and-click style interface, with an inventory and a few other whistles to support things like driving Sam and Max?s extremely cool car, shooting, and other mayhem. Cranium required, but for the most part you can leave your reflexes at the door.

For more, check out the interview. And oh, the new Telltale newsletter is out, but you all knew that.

Anything retro is apparently the hippest thing in pop-culture now, as is proven by this Monkey Island YTMND video. Called "Stan Sells EVERYTHING to Guybrush," the animation is set to Weird Al's "Hardware Store" and is, as this AG.com thread suggests probably best enjoyed while hopped up on something. It is also ranked #4 at YTMND for June, with more than 160,000 views. Yikes.

Check it out, alongside the Stan Sells NOTHING to Guybrush and Stan Sells EVERYTHING to Guybrush - The Game spin-offs.

Issue one hundred and sixty-nine (??) of PC Zone is out in the UK, and contains much that will be of interest to readers of the Mojo.

Like, for instance, their belated Bone review! Sixty seven per cent they gave it, though it should be noted that their rating system is more harsh than most; fifty per cent is average, not mediocre, and a score of sixty seven is thus not embarrassing in the least. In fact, Dreamfall got the very same score on the opposite page.

Also included is a piece about the LucasArts logo, though writer Will Porter seems to have been overcome with nostalgia before he?d had a chance to say anything meaningful. Marry me!

Oh, and before I forget: the most interesting piece of news from the magazine! Psychonauts won "funniest game ever" with a landslide victory. Check out their forum post and have your say with a vote.



Also: Telltale's CSI game was given 62%, and is reportedly at number 12 on the sales charts.

Maybe it's old news. I'm sure some of you out there are already aware of this secret little FTP site loitering out the back of the LucasArts servers. So this news item is for the rest of us!

And what's in this FTP site you may ask? Ohh, only (by the looks of the filenames, I haven't personally downloaded and tested them yet);

Slideshows (these appear to simply be in-game images for press) of Rebel Assault, Full Throttle, The Dig, and Dark Forces.

Demos of Escape from Monkey Island, Afterlife, TIE Fighter, Loom, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Indiana Jones' Desktop Adventures, Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max, X-Wing, Yoda Stories, Outlaws, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, Shadows of the Empire, Mysteries of the Sith, and Curse of Monkey Island.

But wait. There's more...

For you neglected Mac owners;

Demos of Afterlife, Dark Forces, Racer, Sam & Max and X-Wing.

Of course you may need scummVM and / or DOSbox or VDMsound (if you don't know of them, try google) to get some of the older demos to behave on newer computers, but there's something there for everyone over this weekend, surely?

What? You want to rape and pillage the LucasArts' FTP server even further? Well, OK then, just this once. Here are some in-game movies you can download. Now, be off with you! Yarrr!

Oh, and big thanks to Vengance1003 from the Jedi Council Games Forum for the tipoff.

Source: Vengance1003