The International House of Mojo

Everyone's favourite (or near favourite) ex-LucasArts game developers Telltale Games have just made live their long promised Discussion Forum, despite web-programmer Troy's broken toes.

So now you don't need to feel shoehorned into responding to the blog-of-the-moment, you can discuss just whatever it may be that's on your mind.

Oh, and you can now buy Telltale merchandise to assist the cause.

Source: Telltale Games

In a press release sent out today it was revealed that Ubisoft has signed a licensing deal with LucasArts to develop games based on the Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith movie. The title will be available on the Sony's PSP, Nintendo DS, and Game Boy Advance - and will launch in conjunction with the movie in Spring 2005.

"Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith will be the video game that every handheld gaming fan on the planet will enjoy playing - including those of the epic Star Wars series," said Alain Corre, Ubisoft's managing director for Europe, Middle East and Asia. "This ultimate Jedi action game will astound gamers using the new handheld technology from Sony's PSP and the Nintendo DS. As always, it's a pleasure to pursue our partnership with LucasArts, particularly with such a hot license."

Source: Company News Group

As we speak the long-awaited 3 level mod demo of the LucasArts FPS classic Dark Forces (using the Jedi Academy engine) is being uploaded ready for public release on lucasfiles.com.

Check out the mod's official website for more information and screenshots.

Edit: The demo is now available for download right here at lucasfiles.com.

Source: Dark Forces Mod

Everone's new favourite developer with no actual releases yet, Telltale Games, has just been interviewed at Total Video Games. While those charting every move these ex-LucasArts employees make may find little new information, any news is good news.

"In general I?m excited about recent developments in the adventure genre, the merger of cool licenses with the point and click mechanic makes total sense. The mechanic is so elegantly simple and accessible; it?s a great way to introduce the mass audience to the genre and gaming in general. There is also this feeling of, lets stop complaining about the state of adventure games and instead let?s solve the freakin problem.

Check out the full interview with Tellale's Dan Connors.

Source: Total Video Games

How do you know you've been at this too long? When sites in your network that actually bother to keep track of their age announce that today is their seventh birthday!

On that note, happy seventh birthday to World of Monkey Island! To celebrate this huge amount of years being online and active, they've posted five new pages to Paco Vink's Monkey Island 1 comic. Go check it out and wish them well at World of MI!

Over at Idle Thumbs we've got part 1 of a lengthy sit-down interview conducted with Ron Gilbert (erm, who as you hopefully know is the creator of Monkey Island). Does he answer "The Question" (which you hopefully know is, "What is the real secret of Monkey Island?")? No, can't say that he does, but we managed to talk about some interesting stuff. Take a look at Part 1 today, and check back Wednesday for the second part.

With video love! Possibly smelly Mojo old-timer Netmonkey has pointed me to the Psychonauts videos page over at GameSpy, which contains yet another set of videos from the game. Here at the Mojo we advise against watching more than a little bit of this video content unless you really want to spoil the surprises throughout the game.

Netmonkey also pointed out that GameSpy has a Psychonauts box art mockup on their Psychonauts page, but since its based around some pretty old production art from the Microsoft Psychonauts site (plus the stated fact that the box art would have at least two explosions and we're holding him to that), I doubt it's the final artwork.

The ScummVM team has issued a call to arms, in the form of a fun friendly contest. If you're a web designer with too much time on your hands, the ScummVM folks are looking to you to redesign the ScummVM.org website. The full details are here, but keep in mind that "the main focus should be on an easy, noticeable and uncrowded navigation system." As any newbie who's tried to grab the lastest version, or find an FAQ knows, this is definitely a problem with their current site.

The deadline is October 21st, so get going! I know this community has some pretty accomplished web designers, and therefore I expect to see some really cool results.

Prizes will be awarded to the winner, though nobody has told me what they are yet. Probably because I'm supposed be at least partially supplying them and haven't come up with any yet.

The excellent music site LucasArts Soundtracks has been ordered by LucasArts to take down all content relating to Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

Specifically, the soundtracks now removed were from:

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine

Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Star Wars: Force Commander

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron II - Rogue Leader

Star Wars: Rogue Squadron III - Rebel Strike

Star Wars: Dark Forces

Apparently, this is due to the fact that LucasArts only licensed the rights to use the movie music in these games, and doesn't want to risk upsetting the other copyright holders.

It's worth noting that all of the game soundtracks not related to those two franchises are still available. Still, this is pretty sad news to hear.

9

Link copied!

Time for more of that wave, you know, The Wave.

Psychonauts gameplay videos, previews, and interviews with Tim Schafer have littered a good percentage of the Internet today. If you weren't interested in Psychonauts before because there wasn't enough information for you to bother, now's your chance to get informed, and excited about the Excellent Game.

I'll break it down in easy to reference "Unsorted List" form:

• Gamespot has a great, lengthy preview up of the game, featuring actual descriptions of Psychonauts' gameplay, a tour through the first level, and more.
  
• Also on Gamespot are a bunch of videos, including an interview with Tim Schafer, the game's opening cutscene, and of course the game's official trailer, which we mentioned over the weekend.
  
• Over at the always suspect IGN is a heaping helping of gameplay videos which will surely entertain on first viewing, but rapidly turn into spoilers under any semblence of careful examination. You have been warned.

Surely there's more than this floating around the Internet today, but that should more than occupy the broadband-able for the next day or so. If you find anything else interesting of course leave it in the comments, and if you haven't yet taken a look at Psychonauts.com, now's as good a time as any.

Over at Adventure Gamers is a new article about the new adventure developer that's all the rage, Telltale Games. Formed by some key members of the ex-Sam & Max Freelance Police team, Telltale games is out to make their own twist on the episodic adventure game, in the classic story-driven style of LucasArts. Take a look for more.

Big News! Though the Playstation 2 announcement was the beginning, it seems as if the aformentioned wave is upon us. Psychonauts.com sports a new full on redesign, full of things to poke around and look at.

There's freaky new screenshots, a news page with news thats actually about the game, a page for "new recruits" to sign up to gain access to the grey matter page, which contains get a most important bit...

The brand new Psychonauts trailer, featuring all sorts of characters and dialogue and artwork and gameplay and... New Psychonauts trailer! Go take a look. Also I don't know what that fake Beetlejuice music is about. It doesn't sound like music from the game. But whatever, the trailer is awesome and you're obligated to go look at it now.

Go sign up and poke around. Woot.

Note: You're best off getting the large version of the MPEG format trailer, as it's bigger than either of the QuickTime formats, brighter, and only 20 megs more. They seemed to have some funkiness encoding the QT versions.

Gamespot has a brief Q&A with Dan Connors of Telltale Games, the new adventure game company formed from some key members of the Sam & Max Freelance Police team. What does Gamespot say about Telltale?

But what about the question on everyone's mind--is a new Sam and Max title coming? Although Telltale Games hasn't specifically said anything, the upcoming first press release from the company does reference the game three times, then ends by saying that Telltale is currently "in the design phase on a well-loved license." Could it be? We'll just have to wait and see what Telltale Games has up their sleeves.

And here's a quick question from the Q&A:

GS: How do you see your approach affecting the overall health of the genre? IOW, what will you bring to the genre that may have been missing?

DC: Telltale is all about story telling and character. Kevin Bruner, our CTO, is a huge fan of Infocom games because of their ability to immerse a player in an unfolding story. The work he has done since then, including a major stint on Grim Fandango, has continued to inspire that vision. It's very easy, as an adventure game developer, to focus on just wiring the puzzles and making them work. At Telltale, our focus is on filling out the world and story around the puzzles. I definitely agree with Steven Spielberg when he points to interactive storytelling as a place for huge growth in the industry.

Take a look at the whole article over at Gamespot. I'm sure we'll be hearing more about Telltale in the near future. For those who haven't taken a look, it's also worth checking out the Telltale Blog on their recently redone website.

Source: Idle Forums