The International House of Mojo

So, what has Ronzo "Ron" Gilbert been up to since he hooked up with Double Fine? Apparently he has co-create the "Psychonauts Vault Viewer!" for iOS, together with Lee Petty.

This is exactly what it says it is: It's a vault viewer running either on your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. Which is, you know, really quite awesome, particularly since it features commentary from Scott Campbell and Tim Schafer.

And as it's free you're still only out $75!

Double Fine: All about Apple! (Jason: All about posting about this in the comments as he's too lazy to create a news post!)

Speaking of Double Fine, they've just introduced the "Brutal Legend Bundle Pack of Brütality" to their shop. For a mere $65 you get:

• A copy of the game in either Xbox 360 or Playstaion 3 platform
• The strategy guide
• The Brutal Legend 3/4 Raglan Tee
• Never before released promotional record
• 3 differnt Brutal Legend stickers
• 5 different Brutal Legend notecards
• Brutal Legend Onsie
• Mini-poster signed by Tim!
• Brutal Legend Zippo Lighter

Add the $10 you just spent on Psychonauts for the Mac and you're only $75 down!

Somewhere Jake from 2005 is celebrating passionately as Psychonauts now is available for the Mac, through Steam.

For $10!

Includes 35 achievements!

And cloud saves, WTF?

For heaven's sake, don't read this, go download and play it on your hip Air right now.

Over at Good Old Games.com they're giving away Broken Sword 1: Director's Cut away for free until October 1st (it's all legal -- something to do with the site reaching 6 million downloads). If you haven't played this game yet, and you like LucasArts adventure games, then I highly recommend you register with GOG.com (for free) and give the Director's Cut a go. At least download it before the 'free' part of this deal expires in a few days time. You can also download the game's excellent soundtrack as well.

The game can be downloaded here, and more information about the deal can be found here.

There's a new interview with Dean Burke, jack of all trades at Straandlooper Animation and one of the primary creative forces behind the Hector series, by our friends and sometimes lovers at Adventure Gamers. Discussed in the interview are all things Hector, including the working relationship with Telltale:

The most interesting tidbit for me was the fact that the original game was a bigger seller in the US than it was in the UK. Even disregarding the British flavor of the game's humour, does that ever happen with an adventure game?

The final episode of the Hector trilogy, Hector: Beyond Reasonable Doom, is now available for PC/Mac.

Source: Adventure Gamer

In The XIXth Cookchase Podcast, Gabriel, Roger, and Dan 'CookChase' discuss the news from the last week (a bit), but mainly spend the podcast with two features. The first is called 'Ye Cooke Chase' (also called Retro Cook Chase) in which we listen to an audio-cast cassette from our archives, made by old Mojo staff members discussing the news of that week. We want you, the listeners, to e-mail in with your guesses about what year we took that 'audio-cast' from. Send your thoughts to podcast[at]mixnmojo[dot]com.

Secondly, we go into another 'Impossible Sound Competition' (also known as 'What's that noise?') featuring two clips from LucasArts games. The first one we try to guess, but the second one is for you to guess (please send in your ideas to the same address). It's a tough one this week!

This is also our penultimate show for a while, and we've decided to go out with a bang (quite literally)... Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion to this week's EXPLOSIVE cliff-hanger!

Listen below, or go to our to download a higher quality copy. Listen to previous episodes here. Subscribe in iTunes here. Thanks to Roger 'Zaarin' Roger for editing and producing.

"I thought it would be funny, but I think you gave yourself brain damage."

Bioware and LucasArts have finally announced the release date for the MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic. It will launch on December 20th in North America and on the 22nd in Europe. People with submitted pre-order codes will be able to play the game at an earlier date, though how much earlier is still up in the air. The game will have a monthly subscription plan with a slightly reduced fee if you pay for 3 or 6 months in advance.

Source: swtor.com

And I'm less snide about it this time.

LucasArts creative director Clint Hocking has published another opinion piece for Edge. This one voices his concern for yearly sequels:

Not hard to agree with that which he opines, but, am I a jerk if my overall reaction to this piece is, "No duh?"

The project Hocking is working on at LucasArts at the moment remains unannounced.

Source: Edge Magazine

A new update has been released for the PC game Magicka. Ordinarily this would not be news, as Magicka is neither made by LucasArts nor widely considered to be an adventure game - but nevertheless, this update seems like a real treat for fans of old-school point and clicks because it introduces a Purple Tentacle skin for your "wizard". It is not yet known if this will make it easier for you to take over the world, but at the very least it will make your character appear smarter, more aggressive.

Source: Kotaku

In this week's Cook Chase Podcast: Gabriel, Roger and Peter (AKA SurplusGamer) discuss The Melee Island Half-life Map, Monkey Island 1 and 2 Special Edition Soundtracks, the Mixnmojo.com quotation at the back of the Combo Pack box-cover, and the new features of Double Fine's Trenched/Iron Brigade.

Also in this podcast is the exciting LIVE event inwhich Peter orders take-away food and eats it before our ears! This will surely net us some kind of internet radio award. As always, please send thoughts (to be discussed next week) to podcast[at]mixnmojo[dot]com.

Listen below, or go to our to download a higher quality copy. Listen to previous episodes here. Subscribe in iTunes here. Thanks to Roger 'Zaarin' Roger for editing and producing.

Issue 94 of UK-based magazine Retro Gamer sports a feature on Maniac Mansion, including thoughts from Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick. Check out the cover:

The physical issue can be ordered for £ 5.00 here, or you can grab it through iTunes for $4.99.

D'argh, and other assorted pirate noises, it's Talk Like a Pirate Day, and what better way to celebrate than to buy a bunch of Tales of Monkey Island stuff?

The PC/Mac versions of the game are flying out for a mere $9.99 until the 26th. Seeing you already own those versions, you might consider picking up each episode for the iPad for only $2.99. For heaven's sake, run and buy!

And with that, you can go back and talk like a pirate. Ahoy... And stuff.

Indiana Jones, pre-Facebook.

Just bought the Monkey Island: Special Edition Collection and find it cumbersome having to listen to the soundtracks through the launcher? bgbennyboy, of Quick & Easy fame, has slapped together the Monkey Island Music Extractor, which will let you rip the music and listen to it however and whenever you want!

Clicky!

Source: Quick & Easy Software

As part of a strategy to make money without actually doing anything, Lucasfilm has licensed out the Indiana Jones property to Zynga, the developer of Farmville, so that our years of waiting for the archaeologist to join the browser-based social gaming craze can finally draw to a close. According to Zygna, the fun will begin next month:

The specialness of this integration cannot be overstated. In the meantime, LucasArts is hiring up a storm for their internal projects, that is until Lucasfilm execs get wind that one of their divisions is producing something.

Source: Gamasutra

Reader vastcool has just informed us of his Lucasarts Adventurer blog over here where he's putting up scans of The Adventurer, the magazine which was included with North American releases of LucasArts games in the 1990s. So far he's posted issues 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 10, and 12.

Clicky!

Source: Lucasarts Adventurer blog

When questioned about this series, Telltale's only official comment was: "I'VE ABANDONED MY CHILD! I'VE ABANDONED MY BOYYYYYYYYY!"

And who could forget the fun that was had when we I loudly observed on the trimester one version of the Telltale forums that the shadows seen here weren't in the real game? Also, I'm in the market for a useless internet petition to convince Warner Bros. to hire Jared Emerson-Johnson to score the movies.

In this week's Cook Chase Podcast: the results are in from the 'Ultimate Mystery Sound Competition'. We also talk about Grim Fandango, a hot new game from LucasArts coming out in 1998; the likelihood that we'd get quoted on the new Monkey Island box; and play a new jingle sent in from a school choir (in the eighties). The following are links to items discussed:

• The Grim Fandango as an 'American painting' can be seen here (and the artist, Drew Northcott, also did one featuring Max from Sam & Max here, and one of Gordon Freeman as a Vincent Van Gough here, all for PC Gamer magazine).
• The Grim Fandango box redesign project can be seen here, on the Internet Archive (originally done 1999, archived 2005). The web-site also contains 'Meeting Minutes'.
• The Grim Fandango wide-screen video can be seen here. This is actually a more clever thing than we thought it was when recorded the podcast (more details were given on the Residual Forums, and you can also discuss the thing on our forums as well).
• Junaid's 'Sheeped Away' video can be watched here.

Thanks a lot to everyone who e-mailed in. Listen below, or go to our to download a higher quality copy. Listen to previous episodes here. Subscribe in iTunes here. Thanks to Roger 'Zaarin' Roger for editing and producing.

So you probably knew this, but I'll go ahead and point out that today is the release of the Monkey Island Special Edition retail combo for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. As a reminder, this is a European-only release. North Americans who don't care to wait for LucasArts to decide if Monkey Island is worth releasing in US stores will want to do what I did and import. HMV was my source.

As Zaarin pointed out in the previous post, we've got some reactions to the release stewing over in the forums. Apparently the "full commentary" is an elusive special feature, but there's a bonus track in the soundtrack. Boosh!

Thanks to forumer Threepwood4life we now have images of both the front and back of the cover of Friday's release of Monkey Island: Special Edition on disc in Europe! Mojo is apparently quoted on the back! (Why else do you think we posted them?)

Updated: Large image thanks to Alex IDV! Discuss this on our forums.

A little over a month ago, PC Gamer - the Global Authority on PC Games and Now Television - dedicated an article from its weekly column Crapshoot to the often-forgotten TV adaptation of LucasArts classic Maniac Mansion. Like a lot of Crapshoot articles, it's worth a read; unlike a lot of Crapshoot articles, it doesn't really cover what it wants to, due to technical difficulties covered in the article. But a Crapshoot is still a Crapshoot, so check it out.

Source: PC Gamer

This week's Cook Chase Podcast only had one item of news to discuss (at the time of recording), but still managed to be the longest yet, clocking in at a weighty twenty minutes! The reason? Gabriel asked Dan to talk about the Pirates of the Caribbean films, a franchise he loves more than a child of his own, and as a result Dan talked about the films for seven hours (later edited down).

We also have three new jingles, and discuss a HOT TOPIC -- whether the Pirates films have links to the Monkey Island games -- and introduce a new feature called 'What's That Noise?' (also called 'Guess That Sound') which includes a sound for you, the listener, to guess. Have a listen to the mystery noise in the podcast and then send in your ideas to podcast@mixnmojo.com. You may win a prize!

Listen below, or go to our to download a higher quality copy. Listen to previous episodes here. Subscribe in iTunes here. Thanks to Roger 'Zaarin' Roger for editing and producing.

Is this game shaping up to be something great or what?!

Having recently found I had too much time on my hands, I've been thinking about the various literary and cinematic inspirations which contributed to the story of LucasArts' science-fiction adventure The Dig. Now, the time has come to share my ruminations with loyal Mojo readers.

Of course, covering just the version of the game which we all played wasn't enough, so I've attempted to reconstruct, and then analyze, the influences on all three of The Dig's various designs.

When you read this article, you will...

SHUDDER at the thought of LucasArts taking adventure-game design ideas from Sierra!

LAUGH at the references to cheesy 1950s SF B-movies!

THRILL to the bits of Arthur C. Clarke's writing which were more or less copied straight into the game!

CRY when you read the convoluted allegory from art history which was a central metaphor driving an early version's plot!

Ah, that's enough yammering. Go read the damn thing already.