The International House of Mojo

Telltale Games has sent out a press release which includes pretty much no new information what-so-ever, but hey... Here it is anyway. <:MORENEWS:>

Telltale Announces Bone PC Game Title

Game based on the popular comic book recently re-launched in full-color by Scholastic.

SAN RAFAEL, CA, February 21, 2005 ? Cartoon Books and Telltale, today announced that Jeff Smith's comic masterpiece Bone is coming to a computer near you. Long a popular independent comic, the award winning Bone was described by Publishers Weekly as ?Charming, character driven fantasy with an elegant design and masterful storytelling.? And now Telltale, a company that takes you to the worlds where characters like Bone play and invites you to play with them, will be creating new episodes for PC gaming.

"Detailed rich characters and incredibly immersive story telling are everything to us," said Telltale's CEO Dan Connors. "We are proud that Jeff Smith and Cartoon Books have decided that we are the best partners to bring Bone to life in a series of PC games. The Bone world has so much texture and depth and combines a unique blend of superb adventure, mystery and humor ? it is a great first license for Telltale."

"We are very impressed with the work the Telltale team has done in the past. We?re confident they can bring the fun and adventure of the Bone story to life. Bone has been a big hit with comic book lovers everywhere and reaching the PC market will allow even more people to boldly go where no Bone has gone before." commented Cartoon Books' publisher, Vijaya Iyer.

Bone is also the flagship title for Scholastic's new graphic novel imprint Graphix, which launched in February. "We are thrilled to launch our exciting new imprint with this adventurous, funny and unforgettable series" added Jean Feiwel, Scholastic's publisher and editor in chief, "Scholastic's unique distribution network of bookstores, school book clubs and book fairs will send Bone out to a vast, new multi-generational audience." Telltale Games will compliment this with their first Bone PC episode.

In the current climate of highly successful comic book franchises, Telltale, Scholastic and Cartoon Books expect to work closely together over the coming months to make 2005 Bone's most successful year.

More information about the game can be found at www.telltalegames.com.

This is the first in a series of announcements from Telltale; stay tuned.

We're assuming the game will be episodic, and from the look of the game's webpage, the first part will be based on "Out from Boneville". The book was recently re-colored and re-issued by Scholastic, and is really quite good. In fact, if you really want to get to know Bone you should possibly check out Bone: One Volume Edition, a 1,300 compilation containing all the adventures of the Bone cousins.

Telltale Games, the group of independent ex-LucasArts gamemakers descended from the Sam & Max Freelance Police team, have announced their first adventure title - Bone, based on the popular comic book series.<:MORENEWS:>

Lost in the desert and dying of thirst, the Bone cousins are separated by an angry swarm of locusts. Now Fone Bone, armed only with a mysterious map and his well-loved copy of Moby Dick, searches a strange valley to try and find his lost relatives. Along the way he will come face to face with its unusual denizens and begin to be drawn into the greater intrigues that surround the valley.

Telltale Games brings you all the humor, charm and mystery of Jeff Smith's acclaimed comic book series Bone. Fans of the comic and adventure gamers alike will find a new home in the valley, as they explore familiar locations and interact with its residents in this character driven adventure.

The Telltale site offers a tiny bit more about Bone in the form of one heavily cropped screenshot, and some art from the comics. What exactly is Bone, the comic book? Well, here are a couple of helpful pages from the Bone website dedicated to a rough outline of the plot of the comics, and the characters involved!

Though I don't know much about the world of Bone, the characters, setting, and universe (episodic adventurous tales laced with comedy, clever scenarios etc) sound very fitting for Telltale. We wish them the best of luck, and will of course be following the developments of Bone closely.


Update: From the short description and image posted by Telltale it appears that the game will be based on the latest Bone comicbook called "Out from Boneville".

G4, the TV channel dedicated to gaming, has a program called Cinematech which will run a show on cancelled games tonight. Why should you care? Apparently LucasArts own Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels and Sam & Max: Freelance Police will be featured products, and who knows - some dirt might surface. (Doubtful as that is.)

So tonight, 7pm, G4. We'd gladly accept any videos captured from the show, so leave a message if you have a chance to record it.

Update: This has been confirmed to be a hoax.

Rumors have been circulating the Internet in the last day or so about LucasArts resurrecting of the first few Monkey Island games for the Nintendo DS handheld system. Started by this thread on the Gamespot forums, the prospect of using the DS's touchscreen to control these classic point and click games has put some adventure fans in a tizzy.

While the idea of official handheld ports of MI games is an exciting one (and we'll be looking into this a bit more, just in case), close examination of this rumor makes the whole thing look a little shaky...<:MORENEWS:>

First off, looking through the thread in question, any and all "information" brought to light, be it leaked press info, leaked letters from LucasArts, screenshots of online stores showing copies of MI:DS that were "only up fir a bit and are down now," and of course the actual leaked DS screenshots themselves, all originate from the same user, Flamming. Within the thread no other users bring information to the table. One user with one post backs up one thing he said, but that's it.

Second, the initial post that starts it all claims to have a quote from the official NGC magazine. The eyebrow of doubt is raised, however, when the alleged article quotes Tom Sarris as a representitive from LucasArts. Tom Sarris used to be the Public Relations director at LEC, true, but he stepped down almost a year and a half ago. It's doubtful that a year and a half ago Tom Sarris was giving quotes to official Nintendo magazines about unannounced ports of Curse of Monkey Island for unannounced handheld platforms. The second thing that makes that article seem a bit shady is the fact that, upon reading these Gamespot forum rumors, the journalists over at Computer & Video Games have gone out of their way to ask the editor of NGC magazine if they'd be running an upcoming article about Monkey Island DS ports, to which he replied "Not that I'm aware of."

To the left there, is a screenshot posted by Flamming in the thread. While this and a handful of other screens might be seen by some easily excitable fans as "definitive evidence," looking closely at the areas where they differ from actual CMI screenshots shows that they could very easily just be Photoshop jobs. The "verb coin" interface is not sitting on top of a decorative pile of coins and other loot in the chest, but is instead sitting on top of a pile of scaled down clones of the same verb coin artwork. And the new added divider between the coin interface and the inventory has a bad tiling effect as if done with a lot of cutting and pasting, or use of Photoshop's Clone Tool.

There are a couple other things about this rumor that made me scratch my head a little bit. For instance, the screenshot allegedly taken from dvdboxoffice.com shows Curse of Monkey Island appearing in their Nintendo DS store (the game was of course "taken down" from the store moments after the screenshot was taken), but for some reason, even though Curse of Monkey Island has had final box art for eight years now, the dvdboxoffice.com screenshot uses placeholder artwork from CMI's opening cutscene for the box art instead.

Basically, this whole thing seems like a very nicely executed hoax by an excited fan. That said, we'll try to harass some people to find out more, if at all possible. Whether or not this particular instance is a hoax or not, the idea in general of seeing the old SCUMM games ported to the Nintendo DS is a pretty appealing one.

Members of Club Bad-Brain are now able to see three pages of storyboards from Autumn Moon Entertainment's forthcoming adventure A Vampyre Story.

Be warned: storyboards are a pretty rough and early phase in the production process (so don't expect mind-blowing full production quality), but you will be introduced to the character, "Baron Shrowdy Von Kieffer." And the storyboards make for a nice item for those crazy Adventure Game collectors out there.

Club Bad-Brain is open for free membership until the end of February, so best sign-up now before they start charging.

Source: Bad Brain

The folks over at Adventure Developers have published two parts of an article titled "The Cold Hotspot: A critique of the state of adventure games," with a third part to come soon. It's a long but interesting read, and part one and two can be found here and here, respectively. Here's a quote:<:MORENEWS:>

"The adventure game is not sacred or written in stone and needs to own up to it! There, I said it. Sue me, but you'll be doing so more out of spiteful denial than charges of defamation. The truth is, the adventure game genre, as we all know it, has long been suffering from obscurity, lack of progress, sheer banality, isolation (surprise!), and, simply, from the garden variety of dullness."

Harsh words indeed, but you've got to admit, they've got a point.

Like I said last summer, adventure games have to evolve... or die.

Some of you may or may not have enjoyed the slightly LucasArts-adventure-y Runaway from Pendulo Studios. The game had quite a few references to classic adventure games, and this seems to be carried over to the game's sequel, imaginatively titled Runaway 2.

Adventure Gamers has posted a few new screenshots from the game, and particularly this one may interest some Curse of Monkey Island fans. The ponytail is a particularly sexy touch.

Source: Adventure Gamers

Six months after saying that a new version would be released 'sometime in the next month' ScummVM Quick And Easy 1.4.0 is out.

The new version introduces many new features including: game filters - to display only games of a particular type, a frontend for the extra scummvm tools - so you can compress various datafiles without having to use the command line, and options galore - so you can tweak and change the program to suit your own preferences.

The full list of changes is huge so its best to read this thread for an explanation of the most important ones.

Top fan-boy Sven has sculptured some of his favourite LucasArts characters out of clay. So far he's completed a sexy looking bust of Guybrush Threepwood, and is working on one of Bernard from Day of the Tentacle. "Next one will be Elaine", remarked creator Sven, "and I will post some snapshots of the different stages".

Sounds good to us. Keep updated on the process via this thread, or by visiting Sven's web-site, gamecharacters.de.

Bad Brain Entertainment has updated their A Vampyre Story page, listing some of the developers who (I assume) will work on the game. Actually, it might have been updated for a while, I just recently noticed. Anywhoo:

The team (USA):
Idea & characters: Bill Tiller
Director: Bill Tiller
Technical Director: Gary Brubaker
Lead Designer: Reed Knight
Lead Animator: TBA
Character Designer: Paul Mica
Story Boards: Anson Jew
Sound and Music: Brooks White
Concept and Background Artist: Bill Eaken
3D Artists: Dan Colon, Livia Knight

Do these names sound familiar? Most of the dudes come from the Curse of Monkey Island team, and some have worked on games like The Fate of Atlantis, Sam & Max Hit The Road, The Dig, and The Secret of Monkey Island. These are, in other words, quite some credentials.

Get those stalking shoes on; February will be a Tim Schafer month of pandemonium!

First, and you're probably too late for this, he will be speaking at the 2005 D.I.C.E. Summit about "the importance of risk-taking in the creative development of games." D.I.C.E. is apparently the hipper version of the GDC (Game Developer Conference) and it'll end today.

Fret not however, NoMan has let us know that the Tim will also speak at Cogswell College (somewhere in Silicon Valley) on February 12th. This is a "campus event", and I have no idea if it's open to the public, though I'm guessing it won't be too hard to get in regardless. Cogswell apparently is all about "animation, digital motion picture, and videogames, providing a bachelors in art (BA) or science (BS) in these fields".

Oh, and you can still pre-order Psychonauts, as the banner up there might be a testament to.

Several internet forums are abuzz today with news of a story on Aventura y C?a that indicates negotiotiations between Bad-Brain and LucasArts for the (we assume) unfinished Sam & Max 2 code have come to a close.

While the cynics and fan-boys have differing opinions as to what exactly this "end of negotiations" means, there are indications that all will be revealed by Bad-Brain in the next day or so.

Let's hope we don't have to solve some sort of word-play puzzle on the Bad-Brain site to reveal the outcome of the talks.

Edit by ATMachine: According to the Bad Brain website, negotiations with LucasArts for the rights to the cancelled Sam and Max Freelance Police have failed.

Some members of the adventure community will no doubt be disappointed. Others among it, however, have suspected this was likely, saying that no matter what happened Bad Brain would get free publicity from all this.

The company site reports that talks are still underway with Steve Purcell (probably about making an all-new Sam and Max game). Still, fans of the series would do well to be wary.

Source: Aventura y C

Some might have seen Trunks' comment about this in an earlier news post, and we can now confirm it: one of the news tickers in a Mercenaries cut-scene reads "Omaha, NE: Cancellation of 'Sam & Max' causes prison riot; National Guard called in to quell uprising."

Mercenaries was of course announced just after the cancellation of Sam & Max: Freelance Police, much to the wrath of Mojo and its readers. Still, seems like kind of a strange thing to put in a cut-scene, seeing that LucasArts has quietly removed the press release regarding the cancellation.

Many of you know Steve Purcell as the creator of Sam & Max, but did you know that before Sam & Max Hit the Road, he worked at LucasArts doing a lot of in-game art (including drawing many of the 2D sprite characters and animations in the old games like Guybrush in Monkey Island 1 and 2, concept art, as well as background artwork)? He also painted many of the well known classic LucasArts box covers, including the first two Monkey Island covers, Zak McKracken's cover, and a bunch more that I can't remember.

Most everyone familiar with the box art to Monkey Island 2 puts it pretty high on their vaguely existent internal list of most awesome game artwork, including me, so I was pretty pleased when these two digital photos showed up from Steve Purcell this evening, with a note:


"I had these images of two of the paintings I did for LEC packages. I thought some of the folks that follow the old games might like to see them in this non-package format."

So yes, he has the front cover of Monkey Island 2 and that Edison family portrait from the back of Maniac Mansion hanging somewhere in his house.

Because benny is too lazy to mention it here, I guess I will. Some dudes have re-created a version of the Maniac Mansion intro. They've done a pretty damn good job, and should be downloaded, y'know, if you want and stuff.

Apparently the file is in MPEG2 format, so play it with your DVD software or other compatible programs.

Just in time for Christmas, the ScummVM team has put out a new version of their popular utility which allows many classic adventures to work on modern systems. The new ScummVM (version 0.7.0) is available for download here - just grab the ScummVM edition for your system of choice from the "release binaries" section.

New in this version is preliminary support for 26 kids point and click adventures from Humongous Entertainment (Putt Putt, Pajama Sam, etc, many of which were created by Ron Gilbert and written by Dave Grossman), smooth background scrolling for Full Throttle, The Dig, and Curse of Monkey Island, broader audio compression support, and native support for Mac LucasArts games (in past versions Mac users had to run a converter utility before playing, now the games work right off the original disc).

If that isn't enough news, the ScummVM team is also pleased to announce that they're giving their website a long-awaited makeover, now that the winner of their website design contest has been decided.

For more information on ScummVM, as well as free (legal!) downloadable copies of classic adventures Beneath a Steel Sky and Flight of the Amazon Queen, visit ScummVM.org.

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.

Despite Earth's so-so opinion of the G4 gaming TV station, you have to like them a little more when they do an offbeat live interpretation of the bar confrontation scene from Full Throttle.* Check it out, in high or low quality Windows Media format. Thanks to Greg from LucasFiles for pointing this out.

* Even if it's not all that funny.

This hasn't happened for a while, but its also the closest thing to a Mojo news update that you are gonna get.

In the Red corner, weighing in at 1 million pounds, the dragon-esqe comedy adversary of Mario - BOWSER!!!

And in the blue corner, weighing in at a puny amount of pounds, the wannabe-pirate governor-in-law of M?l?e Island GUYBRUSH THREEPWOOD!!!!

Who is the best game character? Who would win in a fight to the death? Why isn't Guybrush in Smash Bros. M?l?e (island)? For God's sake go and vote for Guybrush and defend your honour. (because he is losing...)

ScummVM 0.6.1 had a couple of nasty bugs some of you may have noticed. Well, they went and fixed them with ScumMVM 0.6.1b. Whether you noticed problems or not, you should probably go grab the new one.