The International House of Mojo

The Truth Will Be Revealed... Soon.

Last chance to send in your thoughts on Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders! Post them here... before it's too late!

Home of gaming essays galore, The Escapist magazine has posted a loving look at the continued appeal of The Secret of Monkey Island. If someone told me this guy handed it in as University coursework, I would believe them.

Finished? Good, then carry on to the our next news post by the lovable Jason. That's far more important.

(say that headline like this)

Okay, there have been a few scraps of news floating about the internet over the weekend, but we couldn't report on them because we were dead. Now we're freshly unearthed, let's get up to speed:

• Deck13 Interactive have released an English demo for Jack Keane, their next adventure after Ankh (the LucasArts-inspired game that Telltale helped out with and we cruelly overlooked). It seems to be a cross between Indiana Jones and Monkey Island, and if they pull that off it'll surely be great. The game's due out March 7th in Europe and April in the US, and Mojo will review it this time. Honest. Oh, and if their website is a bit slow, get the demo here instead.
  
• As jp-30 helpfully pointed out on our Lego Indiana Jones forum thread, there's a new preview for the game at MTV.com. You can play the Raiders monkey in the DS version!
  
• And if you want to keep track of all the Lego Indy previews to date, IndyJones.net now has a very nice Previews page, part of a massive update to the site I've started. I'll do a proper news post here when they're finished.
  
• Liked the Indy Trailer but thought it could be more old-school? This fan trailer's worth a look!

Anyone else got any others?

Still not sure whether to get the latest Sam & Max episode? Then perhaps our review can help you make up your mind!

Zaarin stayed up all night playing episode three, tapping his thoughts mechnically onto a typewriter, then sending them by carrier pigeon to Castle Mojostein. After he had finished, he had but one request: "brrraaainss."

The eagerly awaited Lego Indiana Jones has been previewed by the UK's Edge Magazine, and we've got a juicy taste right here.

For me though, the most interesting fact revealed is the full title: Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures. Now this is obviously so people don't feel short-changed when the buy it in June and discover it doesn't have any Crystal Skulls in it (although I'm prepared to bet there'll be a Bonus Level set then), but does this mean there might be a Lego Indy II somehow?

Update: Screenshots has been added. Groovy.

In the never-ending quest to keep our readers fully in the loop about upcoming exciting games, Mojo today brings you an exciting giganto-interview with Larry Ahern and Michael Levine at Crackpot Entertainment!

Now that the LucasArts-born team at Crackpot have nearly finished their eagerly-awaited first game Insecticide for PC and Nintendo DS, we thought it'd be a great time to ask them one or two (or quite a few) questions.

Disclaimer: Michael and Larry are not actually flies.

Additional: If that's not enough Insecticide for you, there's a really good preview of the DS version at DS Fanboy that really gets a good feel for how the game is going to play.

Now that you've done all that, isn't it about time you pre-ordered? Those art-books are still available, y'know.

Cutting straight to the chase - Bill Tiller has updated the Autumn Moon Blog page with their current status.

It's mostly to do with the new staff members joining the team, but there is a quick encouraging paragraph about A Vampyre Story:

I want to give you all an update on what we are doing and give you some news. First, we are frantically working on all the bug fixes and scripting for AVS1. No firm release date yet but we are getting close and I'm thrilled with the progress.

Interesting how he refers to the game as AVS1, even though I know we've known that sequels are a dead cert. Anyway, I'm excited! And you should be too - A Vampyre Story is nearly here!

Pardon the mess... it's all those brain donors.

If you were to click here or look over to the right you will see the thing we at Mojo have been dying to show you for about a month now - some awesome art by Dan Lee! While that in itself is really enough to cover us for any new content for at least a year or so, we decided to make an article to go along with the art - the promised Maniac Mansion extravaganza that kicks off Mojo's new articles series, "LucasArts' Secret History."

The article contains a brand-spanking new review for the game, as well as some hopefully time-wasting bonus material we were able to scrounge up. Hope you guys like it! And remember, we'll be doing this for every LucasArts adventure game down the line on a (probably) monthly basis. Think of it as episodic articles - we're just like Telltale, only more furry and less 3D.

Next month we'll be doing Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, and like last time I encourage all of you to prepare by playing the game again, or for the first time. C'mon, you get to shred a goldfish in a garbage disposal. What kind of fool wouldn't want to play a game that let's you do that?

Game Informer, which you'll remember also gave us the first look at Br?tal Legend, has now turned its magic eye to look at Lego Indiana Jones.

If you're in the United States of America, then the magazine should already be available at newstands. Inside are four pages of new screenshots and information, some of which has been divulged by the cheery elves at The Raider.net.

It looks pretty sweet!

Update: Scans of the article in question are now up on TheRaider.net's message forum. One interesting point is that unlike Lego Star Wars, all the guns in the game will have limited ammo - so much like in Emperor's Tomb Indy will be doing more brawling than shooting. Cool! Brawling with Lego!

I have a few pieces of miscellaneous news that I'd like to share with you, my internet babies.

• n0n4m3 from #monkey-island (irc.gamesurge.net ? join now!) has been busy hatching some Monkey Island t-shirts that you can see here, here and here. And there. They're very nice looking, and show what you can do with a few simple images and some plain t-shirts.


• I was doing a Google image search for A Vampyre Story the other day and came across this image from 2007's Halloween. It's great the way that Mona's clutching Leo's shoulders -- and I hadn't seen it before. Leo is a radio talk show host who works upstairs in the Autumn Moon cottage (as we learnt from this interview at The Pumpkin Post)


• Speaking of The Pumpkin Post: they reported that Gamers Hell have new screenshots of A Vampyre Story to be seen (with your eyes) over this way.


• Speaking of A Vampyre Story and therefore by extension Bill Tiller -- Bill Tiller e-mailed me months ago with a screenshot of the Lucky Charms web-site (presented below) that shows clouds very similar to the famous curly ones in the last two Monkey Island games. Just a coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not! You can still see the curly clouds on the web-site (which incidentally heavily implies that you should go take some exercise if you spent more than a few minutes on the site -- pretty damn cheeky if you ask me!)
  


• On the subject of food companies possibly being influenced by LucasArts+ games: "gamekill" on the Telltale forums noticed that a free sticker pack bares more than a passing resemblance to Max.


• Lastly, Zaarin (who is incidentally the latest addition to our 'staff' -- hello!) updated his long running hosted site, SoundFont Island, renaming it Soundtrack Island. Old content is being re-uploaded, but there's already a lot of very nice music. The site has a new design by ME (except someone else did the clouds and logo -- Zaar, plz edit this to make me sound less idiotic).

---------------------------------------
"Edition", my arse!
Detypoed!

--Zaarin

That's right, ScummVM 0.11.0 is out! Couldn't get your favorite adventure game working with the previous version? Maybe now you can!

Classics like I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, and Elvira 1 and 2 are now supported and there's also an iPhone port available for all you wannabe hipsters out there.

After an soul-destroying wait of what must have been almost minutes, the Telltale website's back up and they've brought more joy to the world!

Yes, Sam & Max: Moai Better Blues is now available to download! Do the hula in celebration! I know I am! Then play the game, of course.

Update by Jason: You just beat me! Anyway, be sure to check out some new reviews, the much awaited Season 2 upgrade offer, and of course the official Moai Better Blues walkthrough, complete with pictures!

The time is up, the Final Countdown done, and thankfully I have a wonderful announcement to make - elTee's plausible suggestion was wrong. Pinch me.

In fact, the even more impossible has happened. Check out Grumpy Gamer first, then come back.

Yes, that's right. Unless Ron Gilbert is seriously messing with our innocence gullible minds, he's got a new publisher for his Adventure/RPG game! That new publisher is Hothead Games, who are also publishing the upcoming Penny Arcade Adventures game On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One that Ronny G is acting as advisor for.

The new game is (again, unless we're being totally messed with) DeathSpank: Episode I - Orphans of Justice, so presumably it's gonna be episodic. The game's described by Ron Nee Gee as "the perfect melding of a Monkey Island style adventure game with the wicked RPG game play of Diablo". There's already a temporary website up for the game up here.

Guess we need to update that 'Untitled Ron Gilbert Project' game in the database...



UPDATE: No joke, it's Official now. Yay!

Source: Grumpy Gamer

Adventure Treff, in usual awesome fasion, have decided to provide a video series of footage from Games Convention 2007 (remember that?!). In Part Four there's an interview with Bill Tiller around the 9:00 minute mark, as well as some brief, awkward stalking of Tim Schafer near the beginning. In the interview (which is in English) Bill Tiller elaborates a bit on the "idea icon" that was borrowed from Brian Moriarty's version of The Dig and employed in A Vampyre Story. He says other things too, so check out the whole video.

Thanks to basti007 from the Adventure Gamers forums for the tipoff.

Source: Adventure-Treff

Gamespot recently ran an article detailing the arduous and often weep-inducing process of pitching a video game to publishers. You'll probably find the article as a whole an interesting read, but among the developers who share their thoughts on the subject is Ron Gilbert, who I think made Loom or something, so give it a look!

In case playing through the game's not enough for ya, Telltale have released a machinny... makinama... mcnugget... short game film thing based on Sam & Max: Ice Station Santa, although there are a number of differences particularly with the Three Spirits. And I say short, it's actually about 20 minutes!

See it at GameTrailers now, although Telltale promise it will be up in some other form on their website soon. UPDATE: Ahh, there we go!

"God **** us, every one!"

Ron's lovely blog at Grumpy Gamer has a YouTube video of a recent interview with the Monkey Master for a German videogaming show - although don't panic, it's in English (and there's a nice shot of the Mix 'N' Mojo wheel too!).

A lot of stuff we've heard before but some interesting stuff came out - particularly Ronny G's statement that working with LucasArts to make another Monkey Island game "is not outside the realm of extreme possibility". Personally I just enjoyed the presenter shouting "What is the Secret?!" down the phone in anguish.

Oh, and there's some hints as to Ron's next project. He describes it as "kind of an adventure melded with a Diablo-style role-playing game", which he's apparently making with the help of Double Fine. Well, a desk at Double Fine at least. It's a comedy, and going to be Telltale-style episodic too (although he does mention "pitching it to publishers", which I thought was the whole reason NOT to be episodic).

Check it out! (Although being honest the main reason I'm posting this is to see the Xmas version of the Ron Gilbert News avatar)

Source: Grumpy Gamer

Want to relive the first Monkey Island game without playing the actual game? Well, now you can, thanks to this fan made movie!

Adventure Europe, that web site that you kind of don't hate, is hosting its third annual Adventure Developers Online Conference. For those who haven't checked this out in the past it's basically a forum where certain adventure developers are given a subforum where fans can ask them questions during scheduled time blocks - full schedule here.

The Mojo-relevant participants are Autumn Moon (whose timeblock starts like, right now, so go talk to Bill Tiller) and Noah Falstein, who's going to be there to discuss Mata Hari on Friday between 17:00 - 19:00 GMT. Also on Saturday all the forums will be re-opened for some final discussions by any developers who elect to come back. You might also want to check out the discussions from 2006 and 2005, in which Telltale had also participated. So yeah.

Kotaku have burped up an old interview with Larry Ahern and Jonathan Ackley, the husband and wife genius team behind the classic adventure game from the days of Yore, The Curse of Monkey Island. Kotaku have added a narrative gloss to the interview in the style of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Also in the news this week: Dominic Armadillo, voice of Guybrush Threepwood, had his birthday on Sunday. Many happy returns!

Source: World of Warcraft, or whatever