The International House of Mojo

Gamespot UK has awarded EMI "Adventure game of the year 2000" beating out Devil Inside, Blair Witch Vol. 1, and In Cold Blood.

As polished, accomplished and gorgeous to look at as a golden pile of pieces of eight, Escape hoisted the Jolly Roger and confirmed that predictions of the adventure genre's death were entirely premature.

Hooray for Adventures!

Source: p40dixie

A bit late in the day, but the Unofficial Sam & Max has updated for Christmas with a special front page as well as a new interview with Sam & Max themselves, believed to be previously unpublished for unknown reasons.

EscapeMI.com have announced their end of the year contest. Entrants must battle it out to win one of 3 copies of Grim Fandango.

From now until January 1st, 2001, we are accepting entries for Monkey Island 5 introductions. We want this contest to be a fun way to end Escape from Monkey Island and begin thinking of Monkey Island 5.

Entries must be 200-300 words long and submitted from their page. Head over to EscapeMI.com for more info!

Still not sure whether you want to buy Escape from Monkey Island or not? Well, I've compiled a list of reviews for ya!
Our own review will be arriving shortly.

- SharkyGames
- Gamers.com
- Gamevisons
- Gamesfirst
- Game Over
- T-break
- PC Gamer UK

There you go. Enjoy!

Interactive Fiction have posted an interesting article on EMI's puzzles. They talk about the evolution of puzzles, where some of EMI's puzzles went wrong, and why the rest were good.

There is more to Escape from Monkey Island than gratuitous references to earlier games in the series or the sight of Guybrush Threepwood in a pirate bathing suit; namely, hard puzzles that are reminiscent of an earlier age in adventure games.

To read the article, head on over to Interactive Fiction

Source: ZeroXcape

Escapemi.com sent me some blurb:

"EscapeMI.com would like to announce the first draft of the unoffical story line for Monkey Island 5 has been posted. (Note: this is 100% fan fiction.) If you are interested in seeing a compiled copy of the original forum postings, then check out ACT I. If you are interested in working on the unoffical plot line for ACT II, head over to the forums!

Before you read ACT I, just remember that twenty plus monkey island fans can have an adverse affect on Guybrush. You'll find that the majority of ACT I has Guybrush in various dream worlds.

Many thanks to Guybrush UK for starting this EscapeMI.com project."

Mike Stemmle and Sean Clark, project leaders on Escape from Monkey Island, have been interviewed by The Clearly Unofficial EFMI Site. This time they discuss their work on EMI, fan reactions, and the future. Here's a snippet:

What we thought would be the hardest problem was getting the look of the game right. It had to be somewhat consistent with the 2D Monkeys, and yet evolve to take advantage of 3D. The art team did such a great job with this, it truly was painless for us. It just happened. That being said, they did put in a lot of effort, and we tried several approaches, but their instincts and abilities made the impossible easy.

Click here for the full interview! (Yes, there is a spoiler or two.)

As if the other 50 EMI contests weren't enough, Gamespot UK is giving away 5 copies of Escape From Monkey Island. The contest is here . Good luck.

GameSpot has interviewed ex-LEC'er Tim Schafer, asking questions about his new game production company "Double Fine," and of course his next game (for those of you who are reading this and don't know who Tim Schafer is (shame on you), he was the project lead for Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango). Unfortunately the publisher of this upcoming console game hasn't announced it yet so Tim's answers are rather vague, but it's still worth reading to see what he's been up to since he left LucasArts.

Looking at a Next Generation Magazine at the grocery store, I saw it had a small bit on Tim Schafer's new company. His studio is Double Fine Productions and consists of six former LucasArts employees. Their goal is to release an adventure game for a console by 2002.

For news on the project as it comes, you can look at their
website. No Details are availible yet, but stay tuned. Also see the Adventuregamer story.

Source: Next Generation

This is the Spanish translation of mercatfat's eariler post about a Spanish MI walkthrough...

Para los altavoces espa?oles, hay un walkthrough espa?ol de la EMI en la Monkey Island Argentina, un fansite espa?ol del mono del MI.

For all you people that can only read Spainish (If so, how can you read this? Err, anyway), there's a Spainish EMI walkthrough at Monkey Island Argentina, a spanish MI fansite.

*WARNING!* Contains Spoilers!

Source: Adventure Gamer

Computer gaming site The Outer Edge has posted their review of EMI. This review differs from many of the EMI reviews we've seen because the reviewer didn't play the first three games. Don't let that make you rule it out as a worthless read, though. It really makes it pretty interesting, as he concentrates more on how it worked as a free standing game than how well it stacked up against others in the series. Go take a look. Disagree? Leave a comment!

Oh yeah: I suppose it's rather assumed at this point, but the review's screenshots are pretty spoiler-rich (but you don't have to look at them if you don't want to).

Marek at Adventure Gamer has started another EMI petition. Yes yes yet another petition, but this one is making a decent, realistic request: asking LucasArts to port EMI to a popular console system. With LucasArts' current strong comittment to next-generation consoles an EMI console port seems very likely.

The MI Monkey Center has put up a feature titled "The 10 Best Monkey Island Sites." It takes a look, not suprisingly, at what they consider the top 10 Monkey Island sites, providing a brief description of each as well as a "what's good" and "what's not so good" about each site. A good introduction to some of the lesser known, but worthwhile, Monkey Island sites, as well as some "old favorites." Take a look.

Adventure Gamer has posted the first of two reviews of Escape from Monkey Island. The first review, by Peter Silk, gives EMI 4 out of 5 stars. Here's the summary of his review:

Pros: Good story, GREAT visuals and sound, some of the finest puzzles i've played.
Cons: Story may irritate some purists, EVIL bugs, some control glitches.

Just Adventure has finally reviewed Escape from Monkey Island (here) and given it some quite unfavorable markings. I personally take their reviews with a grain of salt (they gave Monkey Island 2 a C+!!!!!), so make what you will of their grade.

"And the answer is Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4, Rocky 4, Jaws 4, and Escape from Monkey Island."

"Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4, Rocky 4, Jaws 4, and Escape from Monkey Island," repeats the assistant.

Karnak glares at the source of the echo, "May a plague of locusts feast upon your wooden leg." He tears open and blows into the end of the envelope. After removing and unfolding the sheet of paper inside, he then reads aloud, "And the question is, name four sequels that should be forgotten."

If you do not find the above to be riotously funny, then you surely will want to avoid a game in which I found the title to be eerily prophetic, for the longer I played, the more I could not wait to Escape from Monkey Island.

Source: Just Adventure

The Clearly Unnoficial EMI site has posted a second page of their characters section.

Guybrush Threepwood
Guybrush starts off EFMI running a legal errand for his wife, Elaine Marley. However, it soon develops into a devious plot involving Australians, monkeys and the Ultimate Insult. Plus he tends to get beaten up by Mrs. Threepwood. A lot.

There is now a summary of almost all the characters in the game, a great guide to all the crazy character creations from the minds of Mike and Sean.

There is a review of Escape From Monkey Island over at Gamedata.com they also have posted a walkthrough and solutions to all puzzles (monkey kombat etc) in French. Useful for our European buddies (usefull country for Beer runs eh Brits?)
I'm going to quote it now.. but I have no idea what it means:

La s?rie Monkey IslandTM reste sans doute l?exemple qui illustre le mieux cette d?marche rigoureuse. Alors que le passage ? la 3D aurait pu se faire depuis longtemps, Lucas Arts a pr?f?r? continuer ? d?velopper les aventures de Guybrush dans un univers 2D, jusque l? tr?s bien adapt? ? ce genre de jeu.

Something about how they prefer 2d games or something? well anyways I hope those of you who are French enjoy this. (oh and Canadian aswell..etc...)

Oh while we are at it. There is a similar German feature at Gbase.ch

LucasArts have released the first patch for Escape from Monkey Island. The patch fixes a whole bunch of stuff (dont read them if you fear spoilers) including some 3d card issues.

You can download the file from LucasArts Support or Mixnmojo (1.2mb)