The International House of Mojo

If you've bothered to keep up with Germany-based adventure developer/publisher Bad Brain Entertainment since they failed to revive Sam & Max: Freelance Police and parted with Autumn Moon Entertainment, discontinuing production on their A Vampyre Story, you might have noticed the CEO blog among the site's new features. In it adventure game savior Wolfgang Kierdorf is in the process of writing a multiple part blog entry discussing the history of Bad Brain. So far he's revealed a few unnecessary details about his inital connection with Autumn Moon and his attempts to acquire the Sam & Max 2 code. Future tidbits may or may not be revealed in the next few entries, so keep an eye out if you've got nothing better to do.

Top Mojo reader Scummbuddy has noticed that Autumn Moon Entertainment now have a general news page. Actually, this is probably really old, but whatever. It's news to me and that's all that matters.

Anyway, it's worth keeping an eye on that page because it'll probably be updated more and more from now on. Actually, probably not, but it's worth checking anyway just because Bill Tiller is cool.

Update: the news page itself isn't new, but it has been recently updated so go take a look!

I've just released a new version of Psychonauts Explorer - the tool that allows you to rip resources such as music/voices/textures from the game.

New in this version:

• The xbox audio codec is no longer needed. Audio files are now dumped to normal wav files.
• Big improvements in sound ripping. All audio in the pc version now plays correctly as does 99% of the audio in the xbox version.
• You can now view/save the artwork and textures from each level. (Look inside the .ppf level files).
• Bugfixes relating to the xbox version

Get it here.

Because we love stealing stuff from PC Zone, we?ve illegally scanned another article that?s in issue 159 of the excellent UK gaming mag - a look at Sam & Max 2 and why it was cancelled. No link to Mojo was given (probably because we keep scanning their stuff and putting it up on the net) but the Zone gang did ask Deus Ex Machina for some comments, because, you know, Ron Gilbert has totally been involved with every adventure game ever. Just kidding, we love you really Ronzo!

Anyway, they also asked ?doctor? Wolfgang Von Brent about Bad Brain?s blundering moves, though unfortunately they don?t make fun of him. Mike Stemmle actually says some interesting stuff, though: ?I?ve kinda blocked [the cancellation] out, like memories of ritual Satanic abuse?, he sighs, hopefully not speaking from experience. The article also reveals the painful statistic that the game was 90% finished when it was cancelled, a fact that embarrasses LucasArts even further. Unfortunately the Golden Guy in his ivory tower was unavailable for comment, but there have been reports that Jim Ward has been seen laughing manically from his helicopter made out of money.

You ever wondered why we have adverts on this site? Well, it?s to make money of course. Every time you visit us the big companies pay us vast fortunes because they want you, our glorious readers, to buy their products. All this money (and we?re talking gold and silver here) gets put into a big fat fund which we use for important excursions like, you know, e3 and stalking Ron Gilbert. Anyway, this year all the wonderful money went to me and I took it all in a big suitcase with a dollar sign on it to Crete to have a whizzy-jolly time. It was all in the name of research, though; I was really reviewing Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.

Found out how I got along on my holiday research trip here!

And incidentally, our thumbnail generator is broken because, as Remi puts it, of those "God damn LFN Nazis" - so you?ll just have to make do with broken images whilst I go for a fly in Ron Gilbert's old plane (bought of off him with Mojo funds, naturally)

Back in ?99 LucasArts had a stab at getting onto the action adventure bandwagon and cashing in on the Lara Croft craze with Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. Now, six years later, we review it. And if you?ve played the game then don?t forgot to drop a comment or two for good measure. Wic-chu!

Ok, so it takes a little - a lot - of goodwill to come to that conclusion from this Gamasutra interview, but anyway... This is what Steve Purcell has to say:

Would I get back into games? Sure. The [Sam & Max] license is back in in my hands now so we'll see what happens in the near future.

So we'll see, I guess. Check out Gamasutra for more.

Telltale has updated the Bone location section with the Hot Springs. Make sure to check out the screenshots of Thorn too; Telltale has done a great job at recreating the facial expressions from the comic.

And, uh, as for what's up with the dates... Who knows... Just party like it's 2004 for a bit.

Apparently we had some downtime during a server move. Imagine that. Is it over? Well, I don't know, but I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.

Anyway! Jake Udvarnoky apparently found these little animations while we were down. Witness previously un-seen scenes from Sam & Max: Freelance Police including a dance-off, butt shaving and a view of the town.

Go watch. Then weep.

Long-term readers may remember that last year I wrote an article called Evolve or Die over at the good old SCUMM Bar, about how adventure games should change to have more action and RPG elements in them. Well now I've written a follow-up to said article about how other games like shooters and strategy games could do with the puzzles and character/plot emphasis of the adventure genre - in other words, why more games should be like Psychonauts.

My argument is probably illogical and poorly thought out, but at least it wasn't written when I was drunk on tea and doesn't contain quite as many wanking references as my Star Wars reviews. Read the whole damn thing here, and don?t forget to drop a few comments with your own opinions.

Wa-hey, it looks like Telltale Games has posted the long awaited (?) Bone trailer which seems to consist mostly of cut-scenes (?) from the game. More importantly, you get the chance to hear the voice actors, and see the animation in full swing. My first impression is that they've managed to capture the spirit of the comics just fine. Yours may vary.

Go look!

Udvarnoky (by way of UK Gamer Man at Ron Gilbert's Grumpy Gamer Blog has posted in the mojo forums about an in depth article recalling the development of Maniac Mansion recently posted at Edge Online Magazine

Bad horror movies, Gilbert identifies, were the game?s spiritual origin. ?Gary and I tried to pull every clich? we could think of into the game and really make fun of the genre. Everyone in it was a stereotype. A little known fact is that most of the characters in the game are based on real people Gary and I know, but I?m not saying who for fear of reprisals.? Consider it a necessary breach of the journalist code, then, that when we reveal that Razor was inspired by Winnick?s girlfriend and that Dr Fred?s deviant nurse wife Edna was based on Gilbert?s mother, we also withhold the source of that information, saving that person the inconvenience of joining a witness protection programme even though we may now have to do so ourselves.

You'll be rushing off immediately to read the whole article, won't you?

Ron Gilbert reports at Grumpy Gamer on the fate of the children's game company he founded after leaving LucasArts, Humongous Entertainment;

In preparation for shutting down Humongous Entertainment, Atari laid off all but a handful of people wrapping up a project. I'm sure it is an event that will go largely unnoticed in the gaming press, after all, it's just kid's games.

In some ways I consider Humongous to be my greatest achievement, and also my greatest failure.

Goodbye Putt-Putt, Pajama Sam, Freddi Fish & friends...

Source: Grumpy Gamer

Fatten up the paycheck that is. In the ongoing dispute over voice actors rights to get residuals for their VO work in games, some programmers are starting to feel they should get their share of the pie.

"Why should we pay actors royalties when programmers and artists don't (get any)?" asked game designer and programmer Ron Gilbert. "Hollywood is driven by the 'points' that everyone gets, (but) the games industry is not. It's a very different economic model."

For more, go to Wired.

A Reuters story titled "Video game makers seek more fun" is currently making the rounds on different news services. Not surprisingly it's all about how un-fun a lot of games are these days, and features some interesting tidbits from Ron Gilbert.

Ron Gilbert, an independent game designer, said he is trying to create less expensive games that can be completed in four hours, which is about one-tenth the time of many games today. Gilbert said he is in the process of shopping story-based adventure games to publishers.

"When you spend all day at work, the last thing you want to do is go home and become frustrated by video games," Gilbert said. "There is a gigantic group of people who want easy-to-play games."

Make of this what you will.

After a three month gap, a new version of ScummVM has been released. ScummVM 0.7.1 deals mostly with bugfixes and can be downloaded here.

Looks like our friends over at Telltale Games are expanding their horizon, at least if the news post from the sexy beast known as Adventure Gamers is anything to go by. A new game called Ankh is apparently being developed by deck13 and Telltale, and you can see a preview of it over at Adventure-Archiv.

It's sort of unclear what role Telltale is playing in the development, though Adventure Gamers speculates that it might be as an advisor. Make sure you check out the Ankh preview; it's "a sure thing that they are aiming at the Monkey Island-community" with it. So you might like it.

Source: Adventure Gamers

According to a new interview with Telltale CEO Dan Connors at Computer Games magazine the first Bone game is slated for a Fall (3rd Quarter 2005) release. Also a bit more is revealed about any divergence between comic and game storywise;

Dan Connors - We plan on executing the story as it is told in the comics. There will be added interactivity and we will take some license, but we are trying to stay true to the comic... For our first design meeting we just sat down and started walking through the compendium. The first book "Out From Boneville" just seemed the perfect size for our first game. It's a good introduction to the characters and the world, and has plenty of elements that make for interesting gameplay. Going forward into the rest of the story we will take the same approach

Source: Computer Games magazine

Yikes, March 3rd. It's been that long. Everyone might want to remove their caps and observe a moment of silence for Freelance Police.

To be honest, we think you'd be better off in your mourning by rounding up some friends and playing a celebratory game of Fizzball, but sulking on our forum is okay too.

Or, alternatively, if you don't feel like sulking or Fizzball, stop by the quiz-filled and fun-ridden Freelance Police Memorial thread on our forum, care of "The Tingler." Enticing, no?

Over at Adventure Gamers, Marek has done a nice Q&A with Graham Annable, the Creative Director at Telltale, giving us an early textual glimpse at their upcoming point and click adventure series, Bone.

Bone offers a lot to Telltale and adventure games in general. The strong characters and storyline of the comic are very much in sync with the kinds of worlds and experiences that Telltale is interested in creating. The story is an epic tale, somewhat in the vein of Lord of the Rings but infused with a lot of humor and steeped in an artistic style reminiscent of Walt Kelly?s Pogo.

Yep, it will indeed be a graphic adventure game. The interface and engine will be of the point and click variety.

Read the rest of this great interview over at Adventure Gamers.