The International House of Mojo

Part of being old is that you stop keeping track of all the various subscription services that are out there, looking to convert your wallet into a trough for corporate snouts. At a certain point you just stop paying attention and focus yearningly on the oblivion you're galloping toward.

So I'm not feeling particularly remorseful about the fact that I've never heard of Nitro Games, a service available as a $10 upgrade to the Discord app. But it is my duty to inform you that six LEC games have been added to the service:

• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
• Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
• Star Wars: Republic Commando
• The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

A decent but sort of random smattering of games, if you ask me. But if you're a Nitro subscriber, get gaming, I suppose.

Source: VentureBeat

Some sad news is making the rounds today, reporting the death of programmer Stephen Ash, a veteran of LucasArts, Double Fine, Ion Storm Dallas, Factor 5 and his most permanent home, id Software.

Ash's career at LucasArts included work on Grim Fandango, and like a number of developers on the Grim team, he was one of the earliest employees of Double Fine, where he developed the physics system for Psychonauts. Tim acknowledged his contribution and passing in the following tweet:

Source: Gamasutra

Because the world needs more Star Wars movies, and Disney apparently has burned through original content, it is now sinking its grubby white gloves into the seminal Knights of the Old Republic. I mean, I assume it’s seminal—had I played through it further than the first ten minutes, I might have more of an opinions.

The film is set to be written by Laeta Kalogridis, co-writer of Battle Angle: Alita, and Mojo will follow the development with the type of vigor usually reserved for Willow.

Source: BMD

GOG delisting Telltale is one thing, but Steam's another. In another instance of "We don't know when it'll be back, if ever," Telltale's Tales from the Borderlands is no longer available to buy on Steam.

I still have a hard time believing Telltale is gone, sometimes. Don't you?

Source: Steam

Another shovelful of soil on Telltale Games's grave: GOG.com will be delisting their remaining games on Monday; Tales of Monkey Island is already gone. Sam and Max, Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, Puzzle Agent, the Telltale-published Hector: Badge of Carnage, Batman, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Wolf Among Us, and Tales from the Borderlands will be following suit.

It is unclear when—or if—any of the games will be returning to the platform.

To quote GOG, "Sadly, we need to inform you that, due to company’s closure, all the remaining Telltale titles will be delisted from our catalog on Monday, May 27, 10am UTC."

Purchased games shall remain in your library.

If you're feeling wistful, listen to Mojo discuss Telltale's closure. You can buy the games here.

Source: GOG

Psychonauts 2 excitement is building, and E3 looks to be the epicenter for some long-awaited information on the title. During the conference, we'll see Jack Black (courtesy of his Jablinski Games YouTube series) and Tim demo the game, and the final release date -- set for this year -- should also be revealed.

Additionally, Rad, which to this quasi-reporter-ish looks almost as exciting, has an official release date of August 20th.

Thanks to Jason for kindly letting me post this on his behalf.

Source: Dual Shockers

The documentary is out, we have whined about it not being comprehensive enough, and Jason has put pen to paper, as he is wont to do: Read his review of Telltale: The Human Stories Behind The Games, and then run and check out our podcast for the real goods.

Always nice to see Humongous get some love. The good folks over at Vice have put together a lovely history of the studio that brought SCUMM to kids with the likes of Pajama Sam, Freddi Fish and Putt Putt. The article contains new quotes from Ron as well as Humongous designer Tami Borowick, so do check it out.

And don't forget that the old Humongous titles are readily available these days, just like all the other SCUMM games, now that I mention it. And no matter how jaded you've become about this world we live in, that's a pretty rad thing.

Source: Vice

Speaking of Nicolas Deneschau: He has taken it upon himself to post all the images from the thankfully cancelled Curse of Monkey Island movie, which (I believe) were bundled with the Special Edition DVD. See them all right here, and hopefully we'll never have to talk about that carwreck of an idea again. (Fair is fair, though: the art looks fantastic.)

Les mysteres de Monkey Island: à l'abordage des pirates! will be releasing by publisher Third Editions.

Written by self-professed "LucasArts archaeologist" Nicolas Deneschau, the book features interviews with the likes of Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer, Dave Grossman, Larry Ahern, and Steve Purcell. Or, well, the author says he talked to them. It's hard to tell, since Deneschau's English is adorably incomprehensible at times.

Excitingly, Purcell furnished the book with a beautiful new cover and Ahern, co-lead on Curse of Monkey Island, penned the preface.

The author said the book would be publishing on May 31, though only in French; us English speakers will have to make some noise for Third Editions to publish it. The Amazon.fr listing, on the other hand, puts the release date at June 21 and features a different cover.

Source: Twitter

Look, I don't know what this is all about. el "LucasTones" Tee came running in, screaming about a new Monkey Island poster by Steve Purcell, and that it's for sale right here. That page turned out to be in French, so I'm out beyond that.

elTee mumbled something about some French book about the making of The Secret of Monkey Island, and that's where the painting is from, but, really, who cares? You can get a poster by Steve Purcell, and that's more than you deserve. Run and spend €40, cold, hard, cash right now.

Update! Doug "Mojo 9" Tabacco brings word of an English language ordering page.

Noclip's documentary Telltale: The Human Stories Behind the Games is out today. As per the fear Jason voiced in the original news post two weeks ago, the documentary is indeed myopic, pretending that pre-Walking Dead Telltale wasn't a thing.

This is partially because of the format of the documentary, which has interview subjects candidly discuss life during their time at Telltale, and most (if not all) of these came on board after the switch.

It's an interesting watch, and one which will take on some more significance once/if the full story of Telltale's collapse emerges. Watch it here:

Source: YouTube

The tenth anniversary of A Vampyre Story came and went this past fall with little incident. As you may know, Bill Tiller's planned gothic saga has been in limbo due to frustrating rights issues - while Bill owns the IP itself, the distribution rights to the original game and its long-stalled sequel have been tied up with German-based publisher Crimson Cow Games.

But judging by the update Bill posted to the AVS Facebook page today, the Denver boot is finally off Mona de Lafitte:

It's unclear if the rights have simply reverted to Bill or if a blood sacrifice was involved to make this happen. We look forward to covering the quest to get AVS2 funded and back on track. In the meantime, it's always a good day when an IP and its creator are reunited. Congratulations, Bill!

Our thanks to reader Threepwood4life for bringing this to our attention and in the process bravely outing himself as a person who reads Facebook.

Source: AVS Facebook page

Some of you may have had little to no luck subscribing to the MojoCast through Apple Podcasts, after we unceremoniously were kicked out from the directory by who we can only assume was Tim Cook himself. After an arbitration period, we can now happily announce that Mojo Legal has managed to negotiate our way back in, and you can once again subscribe to our casts. And that's about it.

“Mojo does what Idle Thumbs don't.” -AlfredJ

I mean, it's from The Onion, but seeing things are slow, why not take three minutes and check out their exclusive preview of Psychonauts 2's legal disclaimer screen?

Like I said, slow times. Mojo is still investigating if rumors of Jason getting a haircut hold any truth. We will be back with more.

With a full coup to turn Mixnmojo into an Indiana Jones fansite underway, we've not had time to post about an ongoing Star Wars sale on GOG. Once the mortal enemy of LucasArts adventure games everywhere, a number of these Star Wars games are now considered classics, including Knights of the Old Republic and LEGO: Star Wars. Hell, even I've been tempted.

Speaking of Star Wars....

It's worth noting that actor Peter Mayhew passed away earlier this week. I don't know much about Mayhew, except that he played Chewbecca in four of the six George Lucas Star Wars films and was a "Chewbecca consultant" in Solo, but his Reddit account paints the portrait of a very kind man, which is a worthy legacy. Our condolences to his loved ones.

Source: GOG

Jason, Zaarin, and myself got together sometime last year and recorded a tearful, in-depth* good-bye to Telltale, in the third episode of People With Unrelated Accents, "Toldtale." We reminisc about everything from Texas Hold 'em to The Walking Dead and even some of the games released in the later years. Run and listen to the MP3, or subscribe for continuous fun:

• RSS
• iTunes
• Google Play
• Stitcher

* The podcast is neither tearful nor in-depth.

Disclaimer by Jason: Though I haven't listened to this, I should acknowledge that my side of the conversation was accidentally recorded through an internal laptop mic, hence the awful fidelity. Apologies, and it will not happen again, until it does.

As pointed out earlier, we may be getting a Willow television series for the upcoming Disney+ streaming service.  Though it sounds far from a lock, Ron Howard says that his Solo cohort Jon Kasdan, freshly deposed from Indiana Jones 5, has a pitch for the series and that the talks with Disney have gotten "serious".  Here's the full quote from Opie:

A Willow series makes a degree of sense, and apparently Lucas was toying with the idea of an animated show fifteen years back, getting as far along as some concept art. There's also just the "Why not?" factor, given that everything else is getting revived. If Star Wars can justify eight more spinoff trilogies, don't tell me you can't throw Warwick Davis a bone and greenlight some new Willow content after thirty years.

Kasdan is as good a choice for adapter as any, for all I know, but I hope SCTV vet Bob Dolman is invited back to the universe. While there isn't a consensus that Willow's strengths outweigh its weaknesses, the endearing quirkiness it offered in moments surely occupies the former category, and I have a hunch about where it came from.

And so Mojo finds another project to desperately cleave to after Psychonauts 2 comes out.

Source: io9

Mojo never really did much to cover the new cinematic Star Wars trilogy or its assorted spinoffs, because who gives a damn, it’s not Willow there are countless better online destinations that offer exhaustive and up-to-the-minute coverage of that juvenile nonsense, which to our refined tastes lacks the understated dignity of Kevin Pollack in front of a green screen.

”Teh Mooj” is about the underdogs, and bizarre though it might sound, the Indiana Jones franchise kinda qualifies. Indy has always taken a backseat to Star Wars in both the cinematic and interactive mediums, and with a final installment of the “original recipe” series (meaning, movies that star Harrison Ford and are directed by Steven Spielberg) possibly in the cards, we’re going to try to follow the production as closely as other sites will track the pulse-pounding progress of Episode XIXVV, or whatever installment of that shabby Princess of Mars knockoff we’re on.

Having made that declaration, let’s play catch-up on Indy 5’s sluggish development. In the first eight years after Crystal Skull was released to glowing reviews by Gabez and The Tingler, Lucas and Spielberg made about as much progress on a fifth film as LucasArts did with not dying. In 2016, the film was formally announced with David Koepp as screenwriter and a release date of July 19th, 2019. During the two years Koepp was on the project, the release date was pushed back (to July 10th, 2020), but he indicated that progress was going well. This seemed to be supported by Spielberg who, while promoting Ready Player One in the spring of last year, indicated that he would commence shooting on Indy 5 in the UK in April 2019.

Alas, they were all just pulling our leg the whole time. In June 2018, it was reported that Koepp was out and Jonathan Kasdan (son of Lawrence Kasdan and the screenwriter for Solo: A Star Wars Story) was in for what amounted to a total reset, and with that the release date was kicked further down the road to July 9th, 2021. Spielberg consequently swapped out Indy 5 for his long-gestating remake of West Side Story as his next project, and he is currently prepping it for a shoot that begins next month. Indy 5, if they ever get a script written (and why should we expect eleven years to be long enough for that?) will directly follow.

Too bad they don’t appear to be any closer to delivering that screenplay. The latest rumor is that Kasdan has been shown the door, and scriptwriting duties have been transferred yet again, this time to Disney favorite Dan Fogelman (Cars, Tangled, and the television series This Is Us), for whom the stakes are pretty high when you consider Harrison Ford’s penchant for flying his private plane underwater without a seatbelt.

But the best part is what Kasdan is now working on instead of Indy 5. You guessed it: he and Ron Howard are pitching a Willow television series for the upcoming Disney+ service. It may sound like I’m making this up, but it’s all quite true, completely vindicating my controversial but retrospectively prescient tilt of Mojo toward all things Willow. I knew which way the wind was blowing, fans.

And so, this news post has come full circle. *kisses fingers*

Source: MakingStarWars.net

@Nicozilla_FR brings word that a Monkey Island Monopoly game exists. Sure, it’s obviously “unofficial,” but then, does anyone with its ownership of the franchise even know Monkey Island exists anymore? We say no. (And odds are Hasbro would be the ones to get their underwear in a twist over it, anyway.) Go check the game out on Facebook—sorry!—where you can also learn a Risk edition is on its way.

Source: @Nicozilla_FR

In late May, Noclip will be releasing a documentary on Telltale Games, conducted via interviews with former developers and interspersed with shots of both the old office and the post-Walking Dead-mania new one. It's called Telltale: The Human Stories Behind the Games; the trailer has a very US west coast feel to it (or so this non-American thinks):

It's probably the kind of thing Mojo would make if we had a penny.

Source: Noclip