The International House of Mojo

Everyone's favorite not dead Monkey Island fan site World of MI has put up a pretty extensive interview with Steve Purcell. It covers pretty much Purcell's whole career, not just Sam & Max, and there's a number of anecdotes about his early time at The Star Wars Games Company that's sure to bring you glee.

Source: World of MI

Some Telltale employee just told us that a few new Great Cow Race MP3s have been released. So you should probably download them.

That's all I got.

Well, practically. Of course, there is no Monkey Island 5 in production, but there are no good games in production either. This has been on the cards for some time, but today it gets just that bit closer. What does this really mean for our once-favourite company?

Well, it can't be good. Games based on movies are almost as bad as movies based on games, and in my opinion this is ILM's way of saying to movie distributors: choose us instead of WETA and we'll make you a game too!

Which of course, makes their simply dynamite marketing department's life a lot easier.

Source: IGN

Once upon a time there was a web site called The SCUMM Bar which had a bunch of Monkey Island related stuff on it. It was kind of sweet, but then Gabez decided to close it down. Apparently there weren't enough goths reading it or something, I can't quite remember.

Anyway! Just before it closed, and we're talking about a day before or something, an ex-LucasArts employee sent me this "Escape from Monkey Island pizza orgy questionnaire" he filled out. The pizza orgies are where other LucasArts employees can chime in on fairly early playable builds of upcoming games. Or so I think, please correct me if I'm wrong. It's worth a read anyway, so make sure to check it out.

Almost. IGN wonders about the state of the adventure genre while turning to Schafer and the likes of Cyan Studios' Rand Miller for answers. For instance, what significance do puzzles, pacing, and action elements have in an adventure game? If you don't find anything particularly enlightening about the results, you can at least amuse yourself by mocking IGN's ability to both correctly and incorrectly spell Schafer's name throughout the article.

While waiting for the article's promised continuation, you can also join in on the (potentially) heated debate on the subject going on at the AG forums. Be sure to claim that any game above 320X200 resolution is by default not a true adventure.

As Jake points out, a trailer for The Great Cow Race, Telltale's latest cash cow, is up on filefront in a variety of sizes (large and small), so take your pick and give it a look, and then give it a second look, and then watch it over and over again, preferably until the cows come home. Holy cow is it great. It also does, in fact, feature cows so you might as well stop torturing yourself and download it before you have a cow.

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Last night the winners of the annual Game Developer Choice Awards were announced. If you shamefully hadn't kept up with this, our beloved Psychonauts received nominations in Character Design, Game Design, and Writing. Double Fine Productions was also nominated for best new studio (as was Telltale Games).

Well, Double Fine took home the awards for Writing and New Studio, and they sure looked happy about it! Check out the full awards list here and the Gamespot writeup over yonder. Hooray for Double Fine!

Steve Purcell's newest addition to the increasingly brilliant Sam & Max web comic has been posted! See it, won't you?

Telltale has also added two character animations to the Great Cow Race page, one of Thorn and the other of Barrelhaven Tavern regular Dirk.

So much news!

I've just noticed a piece of character concept art that is at least to my knowledge new pop up at the Autumn Moon gallery page: Baroness Vasilia Von Kieer! What a knock-out.

It seems that Telltale will be offering the soundtrack for The Great Cow Race online as they did with Out from Boneville, and this time they'll be making it available before the game's release over the course of a few weeks. They've put up three of the tracks already! So give it a listen and get a taste of what Mr. Emerson-Johnson has in store for us this round.

Gamespot has got five videos, the first look at The Great Cow Race in action, online right now. I'm off to check them out myself!

Update: They followed up with a nice preview and a handful of new screenshots.

Remember that great new background piece that was unveiled a few months ago? Well, the online magazine Mega Gaming has a screen from that scene with Mona in it. That's one hot (or at least warm) dame!

The site also has some never before seen character sketches and information that a demo of the game is being worked on to show to interested publishers, and it is expected to be ready in April. Who knows what that means, but let me be the first to assume: Something awesome.

What's that? You loved Bone: Out from Boneville, and just can't wait to get your hands on the sequel, Bone: The Great Cow Race? And you wouldn't mind spending an entire day focus testing it to iron out any remaining bugs and flow issues before its April release date?

Well, you're in luck: Telltale Games is currently looking for volunteers in the San Rafael area ? just north of the Golden Gate Bridge ? to play the hell out of the upcoming title on March 25th between 11am and 5pm.

Yes, that's right: this upcoming Saturday, you can sit amongst the denizens of Telltale Towers and experience the game before anybody else; the only catch is that you'll have to give the development team some juicy feedback!

If you're interested, get yourself over to this thread on Adventure Gamers started by Telltale's new community coordinator, who you may or may not have heard of before; send him a private message with your age, gender (??), location and history of adventure gaming to be considered.

Whilst the date of Mojo's birthday was lost after Spaff accidentally exploded his computer, the same is not true in the case of Razputin?s Domain, who are happily celebrating their first birthday last month today.

Also, also, part VIII of Lost Cause is up. Celebrate!

Check out the Autumn Moon Games site before they deirishfy it.

In other news, Bill Tiller was responsible for Escape from Monkey Island being rubbish. He is also "as high as a kite" :D

If you ever wanted him to design exclusive art for your web-site, now's the time to ask.

Well, mentions it is more like it. The folks at working-title have published a short interview with Tim discussing the aftermath of Psychonauts and The Future:

Are you impressed by the next-generation-consoles?

I finally managed to get hold of an XBOX 360 and I have to say yes. I mean, fancier graphics, yes of course. But the thing I?m really impressed by is more of the connectivity of the machine. I had no idea I?d enjoy downloading games, and playing my own music, and checking out my friend?s scores on Geometry War so much. But I do! I think it opens up a lot of exciting possibilites.

Read it all.

Today is the ship date for CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder, so it should be seen in stores within the week. Hilariously, the official site has never been posted and I've yet to see any real online promotion for the game on the part of the publisher. You've really got to hand it to the Ubisoft marketing department: They sure know how to generate hype!

Also today is the launch of the official web site of Bone: The Great Cow Race, officially due for release in April. The site features an overview of the game, several brand-spankin' new screenshots (does the game look excellent or what?), concept art, and general information (including some preview excerpts, one from a 1up preview we didn't catch) to whet your appetite. The Telltale forum for Cow Race has opened as well. Discuss!

Update: Gamespot has some higher-res versions of the screenshots.

Not to be outdone by Gamespot, Adventure Gamers has posted its own hands-on look at 3 Dimensions of Murder, and previewed the hell out of the game. Give the article a look so you can get all excited about its release this week.

Ever heard of Video Game Radio? Me neither, but episode 37, which you can download here, features an interview with Dan Connors, CEO of Telltale Games. Once downloaded, skip ahead to 54:30 (or perhaps straight to 59:00 for the Dan Connors part) to get to the stuff you care about. Dan the Man has some good stuff to say, including that Bone 2 will be out in April or late March, which is I believe the most specific date said yet besides simply "Spring." The whole interview part is definitely worth the listen. The rest of the show, well...the interview is great.

In what's the first real, substantive preview of the game (and no less than four days to release!), Gamespot has posted a positive hands-on look at 3 Dimensions of Murder. The article provides some details about how the interface works and the effects the new 3D engine has on the gameplay. They've also got 7 new screenshots to show off. It sure makes me want to go out and murder someone! Check it all out.

Page one of Attack of the LucasArts!

Just to reassure us that the folks at Autumn Moon are still alive and/or hard at work, they have updated their news page with a short list of links to various hype surrounding A Vampyre Story. I've got goosebumps already!

See it here.

Today working-title has published a new interview with Telltale Games about its products past, present, and future. Though there's little in the way of new information, there's the hint that we may get some more "casual" games (a la Telltale Texas Hold'em) between larger releases.

Hot on the heels of that Peter McConnell interview from a couple days ago is an interview with ex-LucasArts composer Michael Land over at Mixnmojo hosted site The Dig Museum.

Not surprisingly, the interview focuses largely on Land's work on the soundtrack to The Dig, going into the process of incorporating small samples of live Wagner recordings, and the retooling of the soundtrack for its audio CD release. Take a look.