The International House of Mojo

While it isn't directly related to LucasArts, you graphic adventure fans may find this interesting. Tony Tough and the Night of Roasted Moths, a traditional point n' click 2D game that has been compared to the old LucasArts SCUMM titles, recently went gold and will be in stores just in time for Halloween. If you miss the old fasion days of 2D graphic adventures, this new title could help give you a fix. Here's the game's tagline:

What do alien abductions, a depressed clown, a pirate's secret diary, and a purple tapir have in common? Find out with the small-time detective in a grown-up adventure of stolen sweets and salty humor!

Stop by the official website for screenshots, a trailer (in Italian), and information on pre-orders. And hey, look at that! Three adventure game updates in a row!

Source: Adventure Gamers

The World of Monkey Island has posted page 17 of Paco Vink's The Secret of Monkey Island comic book adaption. If you haven't been keeping up with this, the comic is drawn in a Curse of Monkey Island vein with a bit of Paco's own artistic style mixed in. It's really worth reading, so go here! Now!

Did you know that there was once a book written about LucasArts' graphic adventures? It seems to be true. While looking around Amazon.com, I discovered that there was a book released by Prima Publishing (or did they mean Prima Games?) in 1993 entitled The Lucasarts Adventure Game Book: The Scumm of the Earth. Naturally, the book is out of print, but if anyone has any information on it, please feel free to share!

bgbennyboy of LEC Quick & Easy fame has made a new tool to help ease the headaches caused by recent operating systems. The tool is a modified Curse of Monkey Island Launcher that has two new important features.

One, it allows you to change the level of directsound acceleration, which fixes the problem of video cutscenes running too fast in Windows 2000 and XP. The new launcher also has the ability to play CMI in windowed mode, which is very cool but can be a bit unstable.

Thanks to people like bgbennyboy, we can continue to play our favorite graphic adventures despite the lack of support from LucasArts... but business is business, I suppose.

Update: It seems LucasArts did support this problem somewhat.

Source: The SCUMM Bar

Dave Grossman, the co-writer on The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, and co-project leader on Day of the Tentacle, has released his first book for adults. It's called Ode to the Stuff in the Sink, a collection of humorous guy poetry written and illustrated by Dave himself. You can only purchase the book though his website Phrenopolis.com, and at only $9, it's a steal! We will be publishing an article/review about the book soon, so keep an eye out for that as well. Go on, support the arts and buy the book!

Double Fine Action News has been updated in a seemingly desperate attempt to fill a programmer position at the company. So, if you got the skillz and would like to move to San Francisco and work for the Tim Schafer, check this out. Plus, as a job perk, you would get to play with the rats at night.

LucasArts.com updated its site last Friday like always, but since we were passed out all weekend, we're only getting around to mentioning it now. First of all, you can view a new game trailer for Bounty Hunter in some kind of weird .exe file. The trailer is quite impressive and shows off some very cool ingame action. On the educational side, you can look at the history behind Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb. Following that, there is a new screenshot from Gladius. And finally, check out this Full Throttle concept art under the 20th Anniversary site. Fun, no?

Have you checked LucasArts.com today? No? What kind of fan are you? Well if you did, you'd notice that the Gladius product spotlight has been updated with additions to the FAQ as well as information on weapons, helmets, and shields used in the game.

And with that, Mixnmojo is saved from another day of no updates. Thank you, Gladius!

Fridays mean more updates at LucasArts.com. You can check out the usual things like new screenshots for XBox Jedi Outcast, a character profile for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and a new screenshot from Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb that just screams, "Hello! I am looking at a giant JPEG in the distance."

But in more interesting news, check out this background art scan from The Dig, which continues the LucasArts 20th Anniversary celebration. It brings back fond memories of sawing off the arm of a German scientist.

Hot on the heels of the last batch of shots, we've got seven new pictures from the upcoming Psychonauts. As usual, for those of you who don't know, Psychonauts is the new game from Tim Schafer (creator of Full Throttle and Grim Fandango) and gang at their new game studio, Double Fine Productions. Read our preview of Psychonauts here.

These shots are primarily from an excellent story about Psychonauts and life at Double Fine that ran in a recent issue of XBox Nation magazine, now reprinted here digitally. If you get the chance you should definitely pick up the current XBN, as their article reads like a good version of our Double Fine story.

Anyway, click and enjoy. (Unless you're trying to stay spoiler-free, of course. If so, don't click, and start squinting now so you can't see the thumbnails.) These are some nice ones.

Another Friday has come and gone, meaning there has been another LucasArts.com update. The Clone Wars product spotlight has several new goodies, although none of them are terribly interesting. In Bounty Hunter news, you can now view the ILM-animated intro cutscene over at StarWars.com. There is also a new Bounty Hunter screenshot here, demonstrating how you can pick up some optional bounties in the game to earn extra cash (or credits or whatever.) And last but not least, you can look at some pretty cool new concept art at the RTX Red Rock product spotlight. Weeee!

Even though voice actor Doug Lee has portrayed Indy in Fate of Atlantis and Infernal Machine, it was not publically known if he would return to play the same character in The Emperor's Tomb. We even asked several LucasArts employees about this at the summer press event, and none of them were able to provide an answer. However, Lee's credit page on The Internet Movie Database indicates that Lee will return to voice Dr. Jones in the new game. Of course, who knows just how reliable IMDb actually is, since it also claims that Hal Barwood is directing the title.

The SCUMM Bar staff has put up another brilliant section on the site: Interactive Islands. This section features and has shots of virtually every location on every island in the entire Monkey Island series.

Warning: May cause mild to intense nostalgia. Please consult a physician before viewing.

HomeLAN Fed has a nice Q&A with Jim Tso of LucasArts about Indiana Jones And The Emperor's Tomb. I'll just copy this text straight from Shacknews as it saves precious time:

Q&As are about picking The Collective (Deep Space Nine, Buffy for the Xbox) as developer, why the game is coming out on multiple platforms, the settings in the game, how combat will be handled and why this game will be more action than adventure, among other things.

HomeLAN - What was the genesis behind the actual storyline for the game?


Jim Tso - We wanted to take Indy someplace that hadn't been explored in previous movies or games. The Far East seemed like a natural choice. From there, it was easy to pick 1930's China as the location since it offered so many opportunities for gameplay and storytelling.

Indiana Jones And The Emperor's Tomb will be released some time next year... maybe.

In addition to our previous report that the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb may be facing a delay, new evidence has emerged. boeffl points out that the official Emperor's Tomb website now lists the release date as spring 2003. This would contradict the original release date of fall 2002. We'll just have to wait and see what the official word from LucasArts will be.

Blow out the candles and wack that pi?ata, because it's time to celebrate. ScummVM, the fan-made tool that allows you to play LucasArts SCUMM adventure games on Windows and a variety of other operating systems, is celebrating its first birthday this Tuesday, September 17th. Stop by the Birthday Forum or the #scummvm chatroom on irc.freenode.net to wish the developers a happy birthday.

In what can only be describe as the most exciting news ever, the Double Fine offices have captured a mouse and have taken a picture of it here. Will the rats unite to rescue their captured furry friend? Will the enslaved mouse reveal the location of his hidden base and seal the fate of all Double Fine rodents? Will our hero ever complete his game on time and under budget? Stay tuned.

Well, not exactly. An accidental fire broke out on the set of Disney's upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean movie. The damage to the set will cost about $350,000 (or $525,000 as some sites are now reporting) and will delay production a few days. See, this is what happens when you mix pirates with curses.

Ever wondered what the connection is between Tim Schafer's Double Fine Productions and the recording artist P!nk? Then read the latest news over at DoubleFine.com to answer these burning questions. Time to get this party started.

Okay, I'll make this short and sweet so people don't get tired of seeing us repeat this. Adventure Developers has published Adventure Game Tip Number 4, which gives design advice from Bill Tiller and Larry Ahern. Be sure to keep and eye on this page for the remaining 17 helpful tips in the coming weeks, as this is probably the last time we'll draw attention to it. After all, we wouldn't want to become too predictable!