The International House of Mojo

So as not to interfere with the Sam & Max Episode 2 announcement, there has been a soft launch of the revamped BONE games.

If you already have purchased the games in their previous form, it's a free upgrade. And if you've played Culture Shock and now have a hankering for more Telltale goodness, well you can download a demo version, or the full thing right here.

Here's what's new in the Director's Cut version;

We're really excited about releasing updated versions of the first two Bone games. Both games now support multiple resolutions, and there are some other little technical kinks that we have been able to work out. Content wise, there's a great new opening cutscene in Boneville that I think everyone's going to really like. We also have re-recorded Thorn and updated her model to look like the one from Cow Race (which we liked better).

Other than that there are little touches here and there in both games where we added new lines or sound effects or other small things to make the story flow more smoothly. Jeff Smith (Bone creator) is really happy with the results, and so am I.
- Heather Lee, Telltale Games.

So, what are you waiting for?.

PS: Thanks to Udvarnoky for the tipoff on the Telltale Forums.

Source: Telltale Games

Why are you reading this when you could be checking out a trailer and screenshots for the new Sam & Max episode, "Situation Comedy." I could editorialize and say that it looks sweet, but you don't want to hear that. Run and laugh!

It would seem I am the only person with the sense of devotion, or the free time, to update Mojo.

Gametap recently added two titles from each of Humongous Entertainment's old graphic adventure game series for children, Pajama Sam, Freddi Fish and Putt-Putt, to their library. As you already know, Humongous Entertainment was the successful (and now defunct) kids game company that Ron Gilbert founded some years back. Their point 'n click adventures used a form of the SCUMM engine (hence their compatibility with SCUMMVM), and some of the earlier Pajama Sam titles were worked on by none other than Dave Grossman. The general consensus on the series seems to be that the earlier ones were great, and the later ones (not published by Humongous) less so.

But you all knew that. I however haven't played more than a bit of one of the games long ago, and so can't comment on their quality or the chronological position of the installments that Gametap is offering, but if you have Gametap you should obviously play them. I think these are the earlier ones from each license. Someone with actual facts or sufficient knowledge of these titles should correct me in the comments. Anywho, here's the list:

Pajama Sam's Sockworks
Pajama Sam Games To Play On Any Day
Freddi Fish and Luther's Water Worries
Freddi Fish And The Case Of The Missing Kelp Seeds
Putt-Putt Travels Through Time
Putt-Putt Joins the Circus


Update: More Humongous titles have been added to Gametap's library.

When it comes to most LucasArts news, it's preferable to let other, more interested sites do the work for us. 1up noticed that in a recent Next-Generation interview with LucasArts (specifically Nancy MacIntyre, VP of global sales and marketing), they more or less reveal their intentions to eventually make a third Knights of the Old Republic installment:

We've also got Star Wars franchises like Knights of the Old Republic ... that we will not leave behind. It's very important to us that we grow those franchises.

Neither Obsidian nor other potential developers for the title are named, but the interview is not devoid of further interesting quotes:

We feel like it's really important to make each Star Wars game an event, she explains. "Our fans want a logical progression of the Star Wars story line, so we are committed to only two Star Wars experiences a year.

Which sounds good for their future catalogue's variety, but recall LucasArts' plan for less overall releases per year, and you may not be left with assurance that the ratio of Star Wars games to original games will dramatically change. Still though, it's not all bad news out of LucasArts anymore and there's the ever present glimmer of hope for original IP (that we might care about) in the company's future.

Thanks to Scummbuddy for the tipoff.

Telltale has put up three more awesome music tracks from Sam & Max: Season 1 for download. They include the opening music, the Soda Poppers theme, and as a nice treat, a track from the upcoming episode 2. Give them a listen!

And unless there's some sort of mixup, the third track reveals the second episode's title: Situation: Comedy.

The Autumn Moon and Telltale discussions were both held and are now over, so why not go and read them now if you weren't able to take part? The Autumn Moon chat's here and the Telltale one would be in this vicinity.

Well, it seems that once again our shared disdain for a game we've never played hasn't exactly translated into equally scathing reviews. After all the game's title implies a promise of at least a single thrill, and the decent reviews that Thrillville (which came out, by the way) has been getting at places like Gamespot (which compares the game's presentation to Psychonauts) and IGN suggest that a minimum of that much may have been delivered.

So! We were all a bunch of morons and there may be worse things to spend $40 on than Thrillville. We can probably still pick on Traxion though.

:~

It's that time of year again! No, not Thanksgiving. The thing that matters. The highly anticipated second annual Adventure Developers Online Conference hosted by Adventure-Europe. If you don't remember last year's, it's an open forum chat with adventure game developers. And like last year, Autumn Moon Entertainment and Telltale Games will be there for your insightful queries. The event will be held next week, so check the time blocks of all the companies you want answers from.

And don't forget you can check out the results of the 2005 chat here.

If you've read the latest Telltale newsletter (which you have, seeing as you're subscribed to it and all), you know that newly updated versions of the Bone games are so close to release that they can't even give us a date yet. Besides scalable resolutions, the games will now include additional "lines and cutscenes," a less bad Thorn model in Out from Boneville, and re-recorded voice for the same character in the same game (by the Cow Race actress).

Regarding the dialogue, it was apparently written by Smith himself and possibly Heather. Is it just more lines from the comic or entirely new writing? Either way, it's pretty cool that the digital nature of the games' distribution allows for this kind of postmortem expansion, not just for the tech but, it would seem, for the story as well!

But, wait, does this mean that the bitter fan schisms that result from multiple versions of the same film will also occur with Telltale's games? Will "purists" insist on only playing the "theatrical cut" of Bone, with the original actors and unaltered scenes? Gran'ma Ben shoots first!

And hey, check out the nice Sam & Max banner that Jake put up! Doesn't it make you want to buy the game a second time?

You know what they say about slow news days - you've got to spend them digging up old Eurogamer video interviews with Jim Ward so that you can make unfair remarks about his rehearsed games industry sermons. And what kind of dickweed would I be to disregard They?

Check out Part 1 and if you're a compulsive completist, Part 2 of such an interview with Czar Ward from August. He doesn't say much that he hasn't told us before: how it's inexcusable for games to get delayed, how the company has moved "far beyond" being just a Star Wars company, etc. There's also some possibly (but probably not) unseen clips from Thrillville and Indy (which hopefully won't suck) thrown in. Still though, I'm almost positive this hasn't been mentioned before, and our negligence is your wasted quarter hour.

In Telltale news, yet another update of the Bone games is being released in the near future which is hinted to be more substantial than the previous one was. Who knows? Jeff Smith, maybe.

For a long time now there have been reports that Ubisoft's Bulgarian studio will be porting Telltale's CSI game over to the PS2. The port itself is 100% real, the problem is I've never been able to find agreeance on the release date. I've seen everything from "first half of 2007" to sometime this month. I'll let you know when I've got something official.

Also I noticed that the PC version has gotten a price drop and you can get it at Amazon for $17.98, which is a nice deal.

Hey, turns out we missed a Tim Schafer interview on Gamespot, and I thought it was worth mentioning anyway because of how good it is. Read Tim's thoughts on Psychonauts on Steam, digital distribution, and, briefly, the new game. He doesn't mention it being multiplayer, but it totally is.

Update by Gabez: Also on the subject of slightly late news: Psychonauts gets on a list for the best games you've probably never played before. :~

The sexually beguiling folks behind G-Wie-Gorilla have put up a two-part interview with Steve Purcell and Dave Grossman. The topic, as you might have guessed, is Sam & Max, and the interview contains dazzling revelations that you frankly can't afford to remain ignorant of. Here's a scrumptious sample that describes Purcell's involvement with Season 1:

Peter Clausen: Could you describe your input in the game?

Steve Purcell: I tried to be involved early on in the story process. I would go out to dinner with the Daves (Grossman and Bogan), Brendan Fergusan, and sometimes Dan Connors would join us to block out the stories in bold strokes. We bang around ideas of what the broad beats are. I give some input on the artwork and when I have time I try to contribute some character designs or review Dave Bogan's concepts. I had a few thoughts about the music references and have been really happy to hear how Jared Emerson-Johnson is developing the score. Dave Grossman has sent over script pages which are a dream to review and actually not very easy to find places that need tweaking.

The rest of the interview can be found here. You can't prove I'm not lying unless you click on it.

Update: There's also a Q&A with Dave Grossman and Brendan Ferguson here. Thanks JP!

In a new interview at Cubed?, Autumn Moon's Bill Tiller reveals some of the company's forthcoming plans.

Given the furore over the throwaway Wii comments Telltale Games made a month or two back, it will be interesting to see what kind of commotion this statement causes;

The Nintendo Wii controller interface is definitely unique and fun. I could definitely see where we could do some innovative GUI and interactivity and puzzles. I think the Wii is the next step in gaming and I'm really excited by it. Again, I can?t make any promises, but we do have plans to pursue and research the possibility of making a version of A Vampyre Story on the Wii.

Lots of info on the company, their current plans and the progress of A Vampyre Story in the full interview.

Source: Cubed?

You might have noticed that for the past day or so you couldn't access the news archive for that Mojo research paper you're working on. We also couldn't update the news, which is only fair seeing as technical woes prevented us from covering the North American release as well. In any event, Culture Shock is out for everyone and it's awesome. In fact, there was really no loss seeing as if you were here that meant you couldn't have been playing the Sam & Max which you already bought and paid for, and if that's the case, well then I'm glad there was nothing new for you to see.

The night before, Telltale posted some awesome Halloween-themed entries for their Sam & Max giveaway contest. There's some really great stuff there, and for their efforts everyone received a free copy of the game. JP in particular apparently skipped work and ignored his wife for several days to accomplish this work of LEGO art. He and the other three lucky winners will be getting Season 1, and hopefully some sleep.

Aaand, page ten of Purcell's webcomic is totally up, and totally awesome.

So is Tim's game multiplayer or what!??

You've all probably been too busy playing Sam & Max to notice that 1UP has gotten some information about Double Fine's new game. And it is -- drum roll -- a multiplayer action game! Maybe. Allegedly. Possibly.

See, they don't have any actual true information to base it one, so read and judge for yourself.

Two new pieces of character concept art have appeared on the Autumn Moon gallery page: Monsignor Calvin and Shannon O'Dougherty: The Banshee (??). Bill also professes his love for Halloween in a lengthy writeup.

And Happy Halloween everyone!