The International House of Mojo

Michael Nusair has informed us of his new Day of the Tentacle online comic strip. The comic features art and characters straight out of the LucasArts adventure game classic. Be sure to stop by and read it at this location.

A new interview with Leisure Suit Larry creator Al Lowe has been conducted by Adventure-Treff. As you all know but probably shouldn't, Leisure Suit Larry was a comedy series of sexually raunchy adventure games released by Sierra. Although the Larry series never had any involvement with LucasArts, Al Lowe does discuss his current views with the company during the interview. Here's a quote:

A-T: Let's talk about LucasArts. Do you like their adventures?

Al: I used to. The Monkey Island games are some of my all-time favorites. But lately, what they call adventure doesn't sit with what I consider to be adventure.

Read the full interview for another LucasArts-related question.

Source: Adventure Gamers

In today's announcement of the Game Critics Awards: Best of E3 2002, Psychonauts deservingly earned the award for Best Original Game. Here's a quote from one of the many critics who loved the preview for this upcoming title:

Tim Schafer is a man so creative that we?re almost inclined to kick him out of the gaming industry. Why? The bottom line is that he makes everyone else?s games look so damn derivative.

How true. Big congrats to Tim Schafer, the Psychonauts team, Double Fine Productions, and hell, even Microsoft for a great job!

More GameSpot madness: GameSpot has put up their regular GameSpotting article, where each member of their site's staff sounds off on a random issue. This time around there are two relevant (only one on purpose) articles.

The first talks about how 2002 is seeing the revivals of numerous "dead" genres, like RTS and adventure games. The second one, though, is classic:

About a month or so ago, I was having a conversation with a few people about the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at the various Disney theme parks and how cool it would be to get out of the boat and start pretending that you're one of the pirates. Then it suddenly dawned on me that just about every really good video game has some reference to pirates, whether it's one of the actual scurvy dogs or a ship.

Sounds like the words of one particular R. Gilbert (thanks SCUMM Bar), and the notion that spawned the most piratey games of all time. Oddly enough, the article doesn't mention Monkey Island at all. It does mention Mario 3, though, so it's okay.

GameSpot has released a reader's choice Top Ten List for Best Voice Acting. LucasArts deservingly won several spots on the list for its superior voice talent. Full Throttle placed fifth on the list, Curse and Escape From Monkey Island share the number three spot (hey, is that really fair that they have to share!?), and Grim Fandango lands at number two. Here's a quote from the article concerning Monkey Island's voice acting:

In a word: Guybrush Threepwood. (OK, OK, two words.) I mean, Dominic Armato just rules both Curse and Escape. And he's complemented by some of the finest voice actors around, too. LeChuck kicks butt. Murray the talking skull pronounces doom upon us all. And Elaine is one independent woman in both Curse and Escape (with a different voice in each game). And after only two lines of dialogue, Dominic Armato is Guybrush Threepwood. It's incredible.

Well said. Even Loom gained some special recognition at the beginning of the article. Be sure to read the full list, and thanks to Debbie Ervin for the heads up!

Sometimes things go wrong and the day just owns you. Seems like something like that was up at LucasArts yesterday, as the E3 "game trailer mix" video, along with the rest of Friday's update, came out in the middle of the night. Regardless, the E3 game montage video is up in two different sizes at LucasArts.com.

Of special note are the first bits of direct-feed video from Full Throttle II and RTX Red Rock, though all the footage looks pretty nice! Music... possibly questionable.

The E3 page also contains the good press and awards that each new LEC game got at the show this year.

Also of note in the Friday update is the beginning of LucasArts' 20th Anniversary celebration. The zaniness starts June 20th with "a special video celebrating the LucasArts logo animations through the years."

It occured to us earlier today that we've never (to my knowledge) uploaded a version of the crazy E3 Psychonauts teaser video with a working soundtrack. If you haven't seen it yet with audio, you've seriously missed out, and need to get this immediately! Here is the file:

Psychonauts Trailer - AVI 23.4 MB

It's recommended that you right click the link and choose "Save As..." to prevent it from messing up. Also, apologies if the server is slow for anyone.

For those who still don't know, Psychonauts is the latest game from the creator of Grim Fandango and Full Throttle, Tim Schafer, and his new company Double Fine Productions. You can read our first impressions of Psychonauts here.

There have been many reports in the past few months that Disney is in the process of turning its favorite theme park rides into feature length films. This was confirmed when production The Country Bears began, which is based on a ride of the same name. Word is that there's also a Haunted Mansion movie in the planning stages.

What does this have to do with LucasArts? Nothing directly, but Pirates of the Caribbean is said to be heading to the big screen as well. In case you don't know, this particular theme park ride was the major inspiration for Ron Gilbert to create The Secret of Monkey Island. <:MORENEWS:>

According to this article from Movies.com, Jerry Bruckheimer of Pearl Harbor and Con Air fame (shudder) will produce this picture that may star Johnny Depp. The plot is said to "involve a daring rescue from a crew of pirates and the reversal of a terrible curse."

Similarly, this article from Upcomingmovies.com reports that the curse mentioned may lead to the movie taking place in modern times with the pirates somehow immortal or stuck in time. In March, Variety reported that the Shrek screenwriters were brought in to give the movie a "more supernatural spin."

The release date is scheduled around the summer of 2003, but who knows what will change in between now in then. It's been a good while since we've had a old fashion pirate movie, which used to be a staple of the industry. However, it will be interesting to see how this movie will resemble Monkey Island in terms of curses, ghost pirates, and the like. Thanks to Scurvyliver for the website links!

By the way, don't confuse this movie with Treasure Planet, an upcoming Disney sci-fi animated film based on Treasure Island. They are two different projects.

Remember those old rumors that Ron Gilbert was dead? Oh, you don't? Forget I said anything then, but do check out our new interview with the man himself. In the interview, Ron discusses his new company, Dave Grossman's drink of choice, the intended fate of Wally in Monkey Island 2, and more! Give it a read.

Followers of Paco Vink's popular Monkey Island 1 comic will be pleased to know that he's published a new page, bringing the number of completed ones to 13. Check it out at World of MI.

No, Adventure Developer isn't dead. The site, which creates a community among developers of fan-made adventure games, has been suffering from some Mojo-esque problems like server issues and domain registration mishaps.

However, you can temporarily find Adventure Developer at www.adventuredevelopers.com. None of the hosted sites are operational, but you can read news and leave comments in the meantime. Go on, it'll help fill the void.

Trapezoid, the pulsating brain behind the infamous Animutations, has created another LucasArts-related fan song. This one is called "Monkey Brain Soup for the Soul" and features rockin' remixes of various themes from Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. I highly recommend checking this one out, so download it here!

LucasArts.com continues its long string of Friday updates, this time giving some attention to RTX Red Rock. The product spotlight for this new Hal Barwood title has been updated to include five new concept art images. The new art includes some mine drilling items and a tough-looking woman that may lead to some jealousy from IRIS. Check it out.

This week's poll on LucasArts.com closed with interesting results. The poll asked LucasArts website visitors which game genre they preferred. Unexpectedly, adventure games won the poll with 26% followed by RPG's at 18%. Does this mean that adventure games aren't dead after all? Does it mean that LucasArts should focus more original titles in this genre? Or does it mean absolutely nothing at all? Don't ask me, I just work here.

In a thrift store far, far away, our own Andrew "telarium" Langley obtained a perfect condition original box for The Secret of Monkey Island with the original 5.25 inch floppy disks.

Inside the box, telarium found something very interesting from Lucasfilm Games. What was it? Why, you'll have to read our new article to find out as telarium asks the question, "How well does LucasArts REALLY support their old games?"

Well, maybe not everybody. Or maybe so, it's hard to say. Anyway, GameSpot has ranked this future Tim Schafer title #4 on its "Top Xbox Games" E3 list. As you may know, we kind of snuck in to the GameSpot private preview of this title, but it's nice to see that they were also able to recognize the potential of this game. Here's a glimpse:

With the abundance of games blaring at us from all corners of the E3 show floor, it takes something special to stand out. Psychonauts caught our attention because of its quirky gameplay and unique premise.

Be sure to check out their view on this game.

GameSpot has taken its crack at the long string of Best of E3 awards. This time, LucasArts grabbed more recognition as Star Wars Galaxies earned the #3 spot in "Top PC Games" as well as #8 in the "Top 10 Overall Best in Show" category.

However, this time Gladius earned some recognition as well in the "Honorable Mentions" section. Here's a quote:

Gladius is a game about gladiator combat and promises to be a deep, character-driven game with plenty of variety and lots of depth. It reminds me a lot of one of my PlayStation favorites, Final Fantasy Tactics--and I can only hope that Gladius has a similarly rewarding story and equally sophisticated mechanics. The flat, empty environments in which the battles take place seem a little simple, but it looks like the actual gameplay will be plenty complex. It's great to see LucasArts branching out again like it did in the old days. Hey, how about a sequel to Outlaws?

Good point. Check out GameSpot.com for more.

CNET.com has posted their E3 best of show awards. Again, Star Wars Galaxies was recognized, winning the award for "Most Anticipated of 2002." Star Wars: The Clone Wars was also recognized as a runner up for the "Dark Horse" award while Knights of the Old Republic was runner up for "Best in Show."

This isn't directly related to LucasArts or Star Wars, but Tim Schafer's new game Psychonauts was runner up for "Best Bet Before Next E3." Congrats to everyone who got the great free press! Unless you bribed somebody. In which case, shame on you.

Clint Bajakian, music composer of many classic LucasArts titles, has been interviewed by GameSpy. The interview discusses Clint's background, his time at LucasArts, the composing process, and discusses working with a real orchestra for a recent project

Additionally, our own hosted site iMuse Island chimes in with some additional information involving Clint's use of a live orchestra. "The title Clint is speaking about here," the site maintains, "should be Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb, which has been announced in the meantime. This sounds really exciting! A new, original Indiana Jones score performed by a real orchestra!"

While we haven't been able to confirm this yet, hopefully we will know more in the future. Check out this great interview and then stop by iMuse Island for the allegedly inside scoop.

In case you have no idea what that headline means, (and why would you?) Mojo Network Site The World of Monkey Island has posted a short Q&A with LucasArts' head of PR, Tom Sarris. Since WMI could not actually make E3, they asked Marek of AdventureGamers to ask the questions on their behalf. Here's a clip:

1. Is it possible that we will see a Monkey Island 5 in the future or have you definitely closed the book on that franchise?

They are definately going to make Monkey Island 5 since it is their most popular franchise. However, we shouldn't expect it in the near future.

Check out the full Q&A over at The World of Monkey Island!