The International House of Mojo

There's a new Monkey Island game out, abbreviated as IWWHIIWWHITOMIROTPG. It's in sparkling retro two dimensionality, and will cost you a whopping $0.00 (translating to £0.00).

Someone - and I don't know who, so please step forward and announce yourself - Reader Snader emailed me about this remake of the original Maniac Mansion, inevitably made in the official language of adventure gaming, German. The game's status was recently updated from "announced" to "nearly complete". Read all about it.

So, enjoy. Or don't. Whatever you choose. You could just check out this eerily accurate representation of Europe's relationship with Monkey Island.

When I was four I lived in America for a year, before returning to England. My stay in America included a trip to Disney World and the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. I was so inspired that I wrote a short story about it a few years later (I was about six), only I changed some of the details of the original.

"Why just the pirates of the Caribbean?" I thought. "Much more impressive to make it the Pirates of America."

"And why should the pirates be the heroes? Much better to follow the good guys, the English" (I was quite racist when I was younger).

The result stands before us:



The script appears to be written in Anglo-Saxon. A transcription runs thus:

The Sowders of Einlad.

One day there wher sum solders they wher cold The Solders of Enlad. the names wher Jon Chip Dog Willf and Tim Tom Gabriel and Mark. they wher goto have a whor an gets the pirats of ameraker. the solders had milians and farsns of dums gold and hudruds of siver quawts cups neckdiees brawtes.

chapeh two on the solders of Enlud. bay two they are haveing the wher hoo will win!

wac UP SPLLOS AHHHH.... BANG

we won the wor we won! the wor

On the back is taped the top of a cardboard shoebox, and the following words, written in the same handwriting:

Try a different nickname

(Im) I (neeld) need a short top
you - type a name with:

• 8 characters or less
  letters or numbers
  No spaces or punctuation

The meaning of the last part is lost to me now.

I've found that two kinds of people who read Mixnmojo: those who wish they were bunnies, and those like me who wish they were dogs. So you will be happy to know that I've been trying to find out when Sam and Max Season Three is released, so that we may have fulfill our wish of being dogs again; here's a mix of rumors, speculation, and fact.

I think that Season Three will launch in either December of this year, or January 2009 2010. There's a small rumor going around that Chuck Jordan is leading the project, and that Mike Stemmle is working on an episode (four, if some article I can't find again Giygas found again was correct). We know that Telltale are looking for a new IP to launch in May/June (citation needed; but I'm paraphrasing Dan Connors), and are, in the meantime, working on something.

It wasn't unreasonable to conclude it was Sam and Max. I didn't want to post my admittedly weak speculation until I had some confirmation; Dan Connors confirmed (see 8:30, although the entire interview is worth watching).

I should remind you that they'll be dropping the point-n-click interface of Seasons One and Two, and instead will be adapting something else. Possibly click-n-drag?

So there you go. Speculation, rumor, speculation, reported. I feel like I should be on Fox News. Anyways, you're probably excited and so am I; even if you're not, remember that Mixnmojo is the Citizen Kane of speculation. Or the Citizen Kane of being Fox News. And that people who claim to hate things really feel otherwise, like self-hating Jews or internalized homophobes. So if you hate Sam and Max, I can only assume you hate-but-actually-like bunnies, because you couldn't be one when you were always limited to playing as Sam. So much for wish fulfillment. Are you a self-hating bunny lover? I implore you look at this photo and relax. We can both put our dog/bunny differences aside and look at the photo. I can relax looking at the girl, whereas you can relax looking at the bunny.

In order to get you even more excited for the finale of Tales of Monkey Island, Telltale has assembled a pulse-pounding, three minute "Story So Far" trailer, currently hosted exclusively by Game Trailers. A point of interest is that in clips featuring the undead LeChuck from the first episode, his lines have been re-recorded with Earl Boen.

In other Monkey Island voice actor news, the Tales of MI Blog has scored an interview with Alexandra Boyd, voice of Elaine in TMI, CMI, and the recent remake of the original game. Apparently she's been recording all of her work from London as she's moved out of LA since the CMI days. This and other tidbits can be discovered by reading the full interview.

There's only one thing we at Mixnmojo like more than video games, and that is to dance. We also like sales.

Telltale are having a sale. There's new bundles, and free shipping for orders over $25. I'd like to stress the "free shipping" part, which you may not know to equal $0.00. Which is exactly what your brain is worth if you don't go with this; if you want to support adventure or story-driven games, anyways. It's worth mentioning that anyone who's subscribed to the Telltale Interloper gets an extra little deal. You can still sign-up and get in on it.

LucasArts are doing something on Steam. The "Early Holiday Sale" - is it an early holiday? I thought the year was almost over - will set you back a $49.99 for 16 games, which is 60% off the full price, saving you a whopping $77.85. That's almost 78, which is the average age of the writers on Mixnmojo.

Brutal Legend is going for, oh, less than $40 this Friday (America only). It's in celebration of Black Friday, which, according to the internet (and I quote), is "the day the United States was freed from the oppression of the British, and led into freedom and then betrayal by the leader of the rebellion, a turkey named Turkey[citation needed]." You can increase Double Fine money by buying from their store.

Now that 2015 has come and almost gone, you may be left wondering what to clamor for with Monkey Island 5 almost complete. A new Monkey game? Not necessary. You may be shocked: after SMI:SE and TMI, someone announced IWWHIIWWHITOMIROTPG, "almost 95% complete". The grumpier among you will be happy to note that it's in 2D. And dark.

And speaking of Tales, Telltale have re-cut and added footage to this here recently updated fan trailer (much to said fan's delight), adding in stuff from Chapter 5 (so, spoilers), and (I kid you not) re-recording the relevant lines from Chapter One with that dude who appeared in Chapter Four. Spoilers: I'm talking about Earl Boen.

Finally, some insane people are doing a Monkey Island animated movie, which Steve Purcell is not doing concept art for. If you think you could lend a hand, go for it.

Dtp entertainment has released a new teaser for Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island.

This is I believe the first available sample of the English voice work, and judging from the above trailer, which tells us little else, this area was well done.

Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island is currently available in Germany, and will expand to other territories with full English voices in early 2010. Between this and Tales, 'tis a fine time to be a fan of swashbucklin' graphic adventures, and in both cases brought to you by LEC veterans.

Update by Zaarin: You may be interested in this here totally unrelated, but awesome, tribute to Monkey Island by Miquel Montllo.

Just when you think Steve Purcell can't dig up a piece of concept art for the scrapped Monkey Island movie that can top the last, he goes and pulls a stunt like this.

Telltale released their latest CSI game, Deadly Intent on October 27th 2009.

It seems that Jason must have played the game before he was tragically lost in 199 AD, because we found a review of Deadly Intent chiselled onto the side of Hadrian's Wall.

Long a mystery to historians, its significance is unveiled for the first time, transcribed in article form on this web-site.

Pandemic Studios, who developed Battlefront, Battlefront II, Mercenaries and Clone Wars (2002) for LEC before being absorbed along with Bioware by EA has been shut down:

Electronic Arts has confirmed rumours regarding the closure of Mercenaries and Saboteur developer Pandemic Studios.

The majority of the Los Angeles-based studio’s 200 staff have been let go, including founders Josh Resnick, Andrew Goldman and Greg Borrud, who served as president, CEO and vice president of product development respectively, the publisher told Joystiq.

This makes for a sucky situation for all those developers, and a fuzzy situation as far as who is developing the elusive Battlefront III. In 2006, the game's development was associated with UK studio Free Radical Design before it too closed its doors.

Following that, the game was said to be transferred to the hands of Rebellion, developer of the two handheld entries in the series, Renegade Squadron and, earlier this month, Elite Squadron. It was later suggested though that the company was only working on a PS2 port of the game, and that the franchise's original developer Pandemic was back at the wheel. That Pandemic would have been developing for LEC despite being owned by EA isn't out of the question given that LEC is partnering with Bioware for The Old Republic.

Of course, that's all moot now. I wonder who's next on the list?

It's official, Rise of the Pirate God will be coming to your poxed computers next month. December 8th to be exact.

Update by Kroms: You can now buy individual chapters off the Telltale store. Also, notice the "Tales of Monkey Island Season One". One. Like the number preceding five in 2015.

Tim Schafer will be appearing on Kotaku Talk Radio in a little under two hours (or whatever this clock tells you when you click it). To quote:

We expect a high volume of calls during this show, so it's probably a good idea to start calling in to (347) 857-3782 the second we kick the show off at 1 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday. Remember, you can always use Skype to call a land line if you're international or local.

Good luck to everyone wanting to get a call in. Thanks to Giygas, who mentioned this ages ago, and Custard, who told me just now.

While we regrettably didn't commit to following the voluminous and quality coverage of this game as comprehensively as it deserved, today is the shipping date for Lego Indiana Jones II: The Adventure Continues, as you may know from some of the charming commercials for it that I at least have been seeing on TV.

In addition to containing levels from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the game also sports new levels from the original trilogy distinct from those of the first game. Most attractively, the game features a full fledged level builder and a rather promising co-op mode that looks to be a substantial improvement over the already fun The Original Adventures.

Developed by Traveller's Tales and published by LucasArts, the game is available for PC, Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo DS, and PSP. Grab it while it's hot or risk betraying Shiva.

Steve Purcell has uploaded another two pieces of never-before-seen concept art from the scrapped Monkey Island animated movie. That conclusion being speculation on my part, of course.

While the outlook of a third Bone game hasn't been exactly promising since, oh, early 2006, it's always a shame to have to read something like this:

DEN: What about some of the other franchises, I know you have announced the next Sam and Max, but what about future installments of Bone, or Strong Bad?

DG: There won’t be any more Bone games, our agreement ended. But Strong Bad, we liked working with the Brothers Chap. We worked very closely with them.

I guess if the Bone movie ever leaves the conceptual phase there's a possibility that the tides could change, but for now it's looking like the Bone cousins are stuck in the Valley evermore, at least as told within a Telltale game.

Resident music (and poster) maestro Laserschwert has pointed out to me that the Brütal Legend Soundtrack is now available to download... but it's not the licensed song list, it's Peter McConnell's Original Score for the game, plus 'Girlfriend' by Kabbage Boy (yay!).

It's available from most versions of Amazon (UK, US, German) and is also in the iTunes Store.

It may be incomplete as it "only" seems to be 39 minutes long, but it's also only $8.99/£7.99, so I think you can afford that... can't you?

Update by Remster: For those of you already paying for eMusic, you can download it for 12 credits. A good deal for sure.

As reported by Nintendo Life, the Wii's Virtual Console service now boasts Super Nintendo's "Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures" a side scrolling action game, not unlike the previously added Super Star Wars series.

[LucasArts] gave Factor 5, most well-known for their Turrican games on SNES and Mega Drive exclusive rights to develop a game based on all three movies in the Indiana Jones trilogy. We don't know what led them to this choice, but it was definitely the right one, as Indy's Greatest Adventures still live up to its name as one of his best action-based games.

Check Nintendo Life for their review of the game.

Also, as a side note, Wiiware in Europe / Australasia now has demos for some games, with US no doubt following close behind, so hopefully we'll see some Mojo-friendly titles being demoed on Wiiware in the future.

This is the second-to-last update about Tales of Monkey Island remixes. If you want to be featured, now's the time to send them in. Because MojoMail is a little bit unreliable, you can also join the forums and send me a private message.

Reader robearth sent-in this very interesting and original remix of the main theme. It's pretty great.

This insane person continues to be very resourceful and very original, and has added Chapter Two's "Swordfight Theme" to her his list of remixes (Youtube, MP3 download), as well as Rapp Scallion's theme from MI2 (Youtube, MP3 download). You can get her his complete remixes here.

Tell me if I've missed anything!

Here are mega suites of the Chapter Two and Chapter Four soundtracks, compiled and strung together by Telltale forumer Trenchfoot. Should you want to extract your own tracks, our resident monkeys can give you the keys to bgbennyboy's Telltale Music Extractor. Click here to beg the monkeys for the keys.

As a follow-up to the Monkey Island 2 Special Edition speculation in the previous news post, Laserschwert thought it would be pertinent to share the following quote from the published Monkey Island article in Retro Gamer:

As for the future, that will depend on how the current projects perform. But with The Secret of Monkey Island topping the Steam and XBLA charts, and Tales proving to be Telltale's most popular game in its history, we're confident that the story hasn't finished yet. Monkey Island 2 Special Edition is inevitable, and we're told by our friends at LucasArts that next March might be a special month for fans.

So then.

As observed in this Telltale forum thread, Monkey Island graces the cover of Issue 70 of UK magazine Retro Gamer. Included is an eight page retrospective of the series complete with new interviews with Ron Gilbert, Dave Grossman, and Steve Purcell. Awesome.

But that's not the end of the news. The same thread contains the following post of boundless intrigue by our own Laserschwert, whom Retro Gamer contacted for the use of his cleaned-up version of the MI2 cover:

Interesting side note: The Retro Gamer guys told me that when they went to get the okay from LucasArts to use the MI2-artwork, LucasArts was actually concerned about that, because - as the put it - "they haven't released Monkey Island 2 yet". Sounds like it's going to get a definite re-relase... question is: will it be an SE?

Hopefully (depending on your school of thought on this), that's the slip-up on LEC's part that it sounds like, and we can expect a special edition of LeChuck's Revenge on the horizon.

Not that we've been particularly diligent with keeping tabs on all the great TMI coverage, but you might also want to check out this informative interview with Mike Stemmle.

Autumn Moon's Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island will have its English release published by UK-based Mamba Games. The company's latest press release cites Ghost Pirates as a member of their 2010 line-up, but no date more specific than that is offered. Regardless, we can all rest assured that the English version of Bill Tiller's latest creation is on its way.

Double Fine are teaming up with the insane roadies at Mishka NYC to create a pair of Brütal Legend-themed T-shirts which are possibly the most awesome clothing-related things ever seen ever.

Look upon Mishka's works, ye mighty, and despair... for you can't buy them. They're for competition purposes only, with Kotaku (in the link) suggesting they'll be one of those offering them. The game's Twitter should also be another good place to look.

Don't bother entering though, Kroms will beat us all to them.

Still, like me, eagerly awaiting the English version of Ghost Pirates? Why not kill some time by heading over to the AME Blog and read Bill Tiller weighing in on his company's second release:

I was looking at my new iPhone today, a birthday present from my family, and I saw an email about Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island coming out in Germany today. I am so happy it finally made the shelves. If someone over in Germany could take a picture of it on the shelves I would appreciate it. I want to congratulate my awesome team for all the hard work they put into it.

I also heard there was a new trailer, but that some people didn't like the FMV animation. To meet our deadline I decided that we should focus on the programming and in game animation, and if we had to make cuts we would do it in the FMVs (full motion videos). The FMVs only make up 15 minutes of a ten hour game. I was talking with Ron Gilbert one day and he said “cut scenes are the least important part of an adventure game," and that I should "keep them to a minimum and focus on the game. Players are just going to skip them anyway.” Coming from a background in traditional character animation I was a bit bummed to hear that, but I reluctantly agreed that what he said made sense, so that is what we did. Not to say all the in game animations are perfect but we definitely put more time and effort on those.

Also we learned a lot from making our first game, A Vampyre Story. We improved the in game dialog, voice acting, the puzzles, the programming and scripting. Although not perfect, Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island is, in my opinion, a much more ambitious and improved product over our first one. I hope you agree.

Kinda lame that he is as in the dark as we are about the game's release and availability details. Hopefully hard news on the English version comes soon, and hopefully we start hearing about A Vampyre Story 2: A Bat's Tale again now that Ghost Pirates is (partially) out the door.

So apparently there's this The Art of Brütal Legend coffee-table book, which is coming out in December if Amazon.com is to be believed.

Go get your pre-order on. Or wait for it to be released. The choice... is yours.

Thanks to elTee on IRC for the tip!

To celebrate Zombies Ate My Neighbors arriving on Virtual Console, we sent intrepid adventurer Jason Harang back in time to 1993, the year of the game's release, to find out more.

Only later did we realise that he had been accidentally sent to 199 AD, which, even by our confused reckoning, is some way out.

As a result, Jason is regrettably locked forever in the stubborn clutches of time. Before being consigned to this terrible fate, he did, however, write us a review of Zombies, which was mostly the point in sending him to the past in the first instance.

Run over to the LucasArts Workshop blog to witness some deleted dialogue from The Secret of Monkey Island, discovered by the Special Edition team. I mean really. Stop reading this. Go there. Now. Who would have thought Meathook was a misogynic?!

Conversationally: Should these extra lines have been included in the SE?

That excellent Guybrush vs. LeChuck statue by Symbiote Studios (creators of that excellent Sam & Max statue) that's been teased for the past few months is now finally shipping from the LucasArts company store. So if you hate $90 but love high-caliber and official Monkey Island collectibles, here's your chance to be one of the 1000 owners!

And get me one while you're at it.

Update: Symbiote is offering a deal when ordering from their web site: buy the Monkey Island statue and get the Sam & Max one 50% off. Tempting.

Autumn Moon Entertainment have today released their second game, Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island. In Germany, I mean. The game had Curse of Monkey Island background artist and A Vampyre Story creator Bill Tiller at the helm, and was developed by his company Autumn Moon Entertainment. It follows a trio of ghosts trying to regain their human form. You can buy it from here for €37, or a little cheaper from Amazon.de. Don't know cheaper for how long, though. If a game doesn't sell or is old enough the price goes up, so keep that in mind.

Unfortunately, the game has been released with neither English voices nor subtitles. But there's a new trailer on the website, as well as the complete soundtrack available for download seven tracks available for streaming.

An announcement on an English version is forthcoming. In the meantime, comments from anyone who bought the game are appreciated.

jp update: The german version is confirmed to have english subtitles... but it looks like you need to do a little poking around with the game files to enable them.

The third episode of Telltale's Wallace and Gromit's Grand Adventures is free for one week, starting today, in celebration of the 20th anniversay of Wallace and Gromit's debut (meaning the offer ends Monday, November 9th, 12pm PST). My dad summed-up potential reaction when he said: "Man, I feel so old."

The series as a whole is going for $20 this week. Any purchase of the game will mean £1, or almost $1.60, donated by Telltale to one of two charities: the UK's Wallace and Gromit Children's Foundation, or the United States's Penny Arcade Child's Play.

Muzzled! was directed by Sean Vanaman, who you may know as the writer of Chapter Three of Tales of Monkey Island, Lair of the Leviathan. From what I can tell, Muzzled! seems to be the best of the lot. I wanted to consult the fourth review written by our W&G critic, Zaarin, to compare but couldn't, because - to my shock and horror - he had not written one.

Update: Anyone here a little short on cash should be happy as well, since every completed Telltale series is going for $20 this weekend, till Monday, November 9th, 12 PM (PST). For anyone out there who has not played the new Sam and Max games, or Strong Bad: now's your chance.

(Special thanks to Giygas, who mentioned this before but, because I couldn't verify it when the store was temporarily inaccessible, did not get any credit. Thanks again!)

Good Old Games is now selling the PC version of the Most Excellent Game Psychonauts for a measly $9.99 (or £6). The game was Double Fine's first release, directed by Tim Schafer and written by Tim and Erik Wolpaw, Old Man Murray co-writer and future writer of Portal (their future, not ours).

Although, in order to maximize Double Fine money, you should try buying it from the Double Fine Shop, which is also selling signed copies of Brutal Legend.

Finally, I wanted to point you to this excellent interview Tim did with Tom Chick. I've linked to it before, and I'll link to it again: although, do beware of spoilers, since there's plenty of them even before the all-caps SPOILERS tag. I think I'll start doing something like that, now, when I put the warning labels on the inside of the pills bottles in my drug rehab volunteer work. Thanks, guys.

Better late than never! It's time to get out your guitars for the International House of Mojo's Brutal Legend Mojocast©!

In typical Mojo style, however, Brutal Legend was not discussed. We didn't want to let this ruin a perfectly good podcast, and fortunately there's a new episode of Tales of Monkey Island available, so the guys focused on that instead.

As we've sent The Tingler to explore new Mojo opportunities in the land of China, Jason and Peter are joined this time by our resident Tim Schafer/Heavy Metal expert Karim (otherwise known as Kroms.) The bad news for kroms is that we hired him to analyse Ozzy Osbourne's contribution to Brutal Legend, and as he refused to do this, he will not be getting paid for his time.

Nevertheless, enjoy the Mojocast my friends!

Alex Riviello at Chud loves Tim's stories, but hates his gameplay mechanics. He suggests Tim leave game developing behind and turn his talents to movies and/or novels.

No one ever plays a Schafer game for their rewarding and exciting gameplay but it seems like he's taking his work in a much more twitch-based direction, which unfortunately conflicts with his strengths as a writer of stories.

You can read it all right here. What do you think, are Tim's games as much fun to play as they are to unravel the story?

Update by Kroms: Yahtzee (from The Escapist) writes that Tim's worlds seem to be consistently great, but the gameplay, stretching all the way back to Day of the Tentacle, hasn't been. Tom Chick offers Tim some similar questions in this spectacular interview, and Tim responds. Beware that there are some serious Brutal Legend spoilers in there, even before the all-caps SPOILERS warning. I'm not kidding.