The International House of Mojo

What happens when Mojo hosted site owners fly the nest after their sites are destroyed in server crashes? Why, they make adventure games, of course!

Matt, who you may remember as the author of that excellent Monkey Island guide we once hosted, created an adventure game called "What makes you tick?" It has an imaginative art style, and plenty of the old LucasArts style humour ? but the best thing is, it?s free! Go grab it here, and tell Matt what you thought of it on our forums.

The game engine was also designed by another old Mojoer, Greg "I designed the End of the Line" MacWilliam, author of another excellent Mojo site.

In other news, there?s only one week left for the competition ? keep sending those fan entries in, for a chance to win!

If you have already sent me something, and didn?t get a confirmation response, it means that I didn?t receive your e-mail. Post a comment and I?ll fix my face.

P.S. This image is, as they say, "the win."

If you haven?t been posting on our forums, what have you been doing? Rowing? Walking? Dancing? I think not.

There are two threads that might be of special interest to you, if you haven?t already seen them. The first is about a proposed Secret of Monkey Island remake, with updated 3D backgrounds. You can view some of said backgrounds at the designer's web-site.

Secondly, it?s worth noting that bgbennyboy is looking for feedback for his Quick and Easy software. He wants to know if people have experienced any technical problems with LucasArts games, especially on Windows Vista, Windows XP 64 or Windows Vista 64. Report your finding and help his work, over on this thread.

Nightlight Productions have posted part two of Beneath Monkey Island! This week, Guybrush and Carl (the Swordmaster of Jambalaya Island) have to recruit a crew in order to sale to Monkey Island and steal a monkey idol. Can they find anyone insane enough to join them? Find out by listening here!

The first part of the excellent Tierra De Los Muertos has also been reposted, and if you haven?t already heard that series, now?s a good chance to start listening.

In other news, we haven?t had a Monkey Island 5 rumour for a while, so why not read take this one? And have a piece of Monkey Island fan music (by Olli Suoranta) while you?re at it. Thanks to The World of Monkey Island for the news.

And speaking of The World of Monkey Island: Steve Purcell recently sent them concept art from something that was definitely not a cancelled Monkey Island movie (honest). Check the images out here - needless to say, they look scurvy inducing.

Forget At World?s End ? there?s really only one pirate film you need to see this weekend!

Mojo reader ScummBuddy (who also filmed the Monkey Island play) has uploaded a student film he made, based on Tim Powers' novel On Stranger Tides ? a novel that was an influence on both Pirates of the Caribbean and the Secret of Monkey Island.

You can see it here, on Youtube.

The film makes interesting use of sound and colour, and does a good job of keeping tension throughout. It?s worth watching even if you haven?t read the book.

Update: By the powers! The gnarled talons of Hollywood, no doubt acting on a tip-off from LucasArts, have taken the video off Youtube. Apparently having it on there would have taken away a studio's profits when they eventually decide to turn the novel into a film (or something).

Source: Scummbuddy

Nighlight Productions, the site with all the Star Wars and Grim Fandango Tierra De Los Meurtos radio plays, has relaunched today sporting a fresh new design and the continued promise of real content coming soon (honestly!)

Metallus is the man behind the design, which looks very nice, and, he tells me, is all done with cutting edge web 2.0 CSS. Just look at that source code ? nay so much as a <tr> or <td> in sight!

Hopefully we?ll be listening to some new Nightlight content soon. Keep your ears peeled.

In the mean-time, you can always listen to an excellent Curse of Monkey Island radio play from the Waterpipe theatre, which I forgot to post about here previously. (Source: World of MI.

Also on the topic of stuff I forgot to post about before: this interview with Bill Tiller is very cool, and new to at least me.

Also also: I found a visual history of LeChuck whilst aimlessly googling my life away, which you might be interested to look at. Update: that page is part of ATMachine's LucasArts Miscellany site, which for some reason I had missed seeing previously. It's impressive stuff!

You know what's delicious? Cookies biscuits! And what makes them even more yummy is when they?re baked in the shape of two-headed babies. Kudos to Charlotte for that, who baked away for the University of Wales' Women In Games Conference last month.



In other university news, Linda dv Fliert is doing a study on fan-communities (especially the Monkey Island one), for the University of Amsterdam. If anyone could spare the time to answer some of her questions, I?m sure that she would find it very useful.

A version of Scumm VM has been made for the Nintendo Gamecube, meaning that you can play old LucasArts on your TV. Whilst sitting down. On a sofa! What?s next? A Wii port? Maybe! (Source: World of Monkey Island)

A guy called "El-Nino" completed Maniac Mansion in only 9 minutes 14 seconds! This prompted the following set of interesting recollections of the game's development from Ronzo.

LucasArts have employed a new lawyer, who is wanting to sue ScummVM again (probably). Read all about it. (Source: clone2727)

The Legend of Monkey Island's forums got spammed to smithereens. Go there to read posts about "Johnny Depp lesbian strip!" "Pamela Anderson in nylons!" and "What will Guybrush eat in MI5?" before Blondebeard updates the forum software and blocks the spammers.

Captain Dread has dusted off the cobwebs of LucasRadio, opening it to the public once again! It?s a 24 hour Internet radio station playing music from adventure games, from early LucasArts to Telltale. To listen, point a program link Winamp to this address.

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Link copied!

Don?t cry, little Mojo reader: now you can vote in a 2006 reader survey! There are currently four six eight nine ten questions, but more can be added if people post suggestions. Vote and enjoy; tell all your friends; voting closes on New Year's Day! Polls so far:

• Best game (or episode ? ?) of 2006
• Best Mojo hosted site
• Top Mojo headline of 2006
• Biggest Mojo news story in 2006
• Most awaited thingey of 2007
• Mojo updater most likely to get fired in 2007
  
• Best company
  
• Favourite 2006 promise
  
• Unlikliest game to be released in 2007
• Most wanted comeback for 2007

El Poll Diablo says "It is your duty as a citizen to vote!" Polls are closed! Happy new year!

Bonus end of year nostalgic thing: JBRAA has uploaded 25 old Mojo features from olden times! Take a look here.

Seeing requests for these old articles I got the urge to finally bring back the ones I had, and quick, even if it meant presenting them in very crude, yet readable form. I have here for you over 25 features from the past. Some of them are:

• Mojo Visits LucasArts and The Ranch
• The International House of Mojo - E3 2001
• Mixnmojo Visits Double Fine Productions
• Cooking With Spaff
• Mixnmojo at E3 2002
• Return to Double Fine
• Fun with Editors Day '02
• Escape from Monkey Island Playstation 2 Release Party
• Cooking With Spaff #2
• Mixnmojo Presents: E3 2003
• Embarrasing E3 photo gallery (2003)

Legolas813 at Adventuregamers.com has posted in the forums that GameTap's animation channel is going to have the old Sam & Max cartoon series available soon.

Just saw a lengthy video trailer for the Freelance Police cartoon series on Gametap. It will be premiering on the Gametap Animation Channel on September 28! I sent some feedback a few weeks ago saying I would love to see Freelance Police on Gametap, but I never thought it would really happen.

Nice cross promotional activity. Now, if only GameTap were available to the world outside of the USA...

Update: Legolas 813 has more info after trying to seek some clarification from GameTap support. Read his new AdventureGamers post here.

Source: Legolas813

It's typical - you wait around for years for some new Monkey Island music and then loads comes along at once.

Firstly we have a cover of the Phatt Island music by a band called Neskimos, discovered by MorteTheSkull on the Monkey Island forums.

They're a metal band, and that might be a little heavy and distorted for your taste (plus it's live so the quality isn't as good as it could be) but I think it's pretty good! The track will apparently appear in studio recording form on their upcoming album "NESkimo Brutality."

Whilst I was revealing this news to the fan community, however, Zaarin told me that Press Play on Tape (a 'Commodore 64 Revival Band') had been quietly touring the globe playing Monkey Island tunes themselves. I went to their website to investigate, where I found a video of the band playing the Monkey Island theme and LeChuck theme in London.

But wait! There's more! Over at Amiga Remix Zaarin unearthed yet more Monkey Island covers by PPOT.

We are surely spoiling you! Go download you fools, before father time catches up with you.

Source: LucasForums

The best radio parody of the best Star Wars film ever has reached its end with part ten of Lost Cause: There?s Still No Hope!

You can listen to all of the parts of the series here, and give feedback to Nightlight Productions over at their forums. Also, look out for more LucasArts related radio plays coming soon!

Listen up, kids: the Plunder 3D web-site has been updated with a bunch of new stuff! New screenshots, new downloads, a new design, a new forum, a new teaser trailer, a new... well, you get the idea. Just head on over there and enjoy!

Whilst the date of Mojo's birthday was lost after Spaff accidentally exploded his computer, the same is not true in the case of Razputin?s Domain, who are happily celebrating their first birthday last month today.

Also, also, part VIII of Lost Cause is up. Celebrate!

Good news everybody! Lost Cause won a couple of highly prestigious awards. To be precise, it won two!

And whilst I?m on the subject of community events, I thought I?d mention a rumour reported by The Department of Death: seems that an anonymous tipster e-mailed the web-master about Grim Fandango 2 being in the works. There?s almost certainly no truth in the claim, but it's always fun to speculate anyway.

I got a bit lazy over Christmas and did nothing but eat mince pies and watch Arrested Development. I now have to pay for liposuction.

But in other news, Jennifer Calapuno built a statue of purple tentacle... out of snow!! See it here.

And I noticed the other day that the Double Fine store was selling Christmas cards. I completely missed that. How did I miss that?

But don't cry too hard because word is that there will soon be character based clothing for you to buy and wrap your thin gangly limbs in! Take a look at the news and cheeky hints here.

And someone e-mailed me about this. It has Tim Schafer in it so it must be awesome.

Seeing that some of you may not be reading our forums, you may very well have missed this piece of fan music. In fact, it's more than music; in the video you can see an obviously Ritalin popped-up w3sp playing nusic from the Monkey Island games on a piano. And it's pretty great.

So go download!

Spaff, or whomever was using his ICQ client, thinks you should know about this page from Something Awful's most recent Photoshop Phriday.

Happy New Year.

In case anyone is interested, the official Pirates of the Caribbean 2: *sigh* site has gone live. It's not really LucasArts news, but it's pirates and Johnny Depp is great, so shut up and go there.

Go to the gallery! You will see the Voodoo Swamp from MI2. Tia Dalma is the Voodoo Lady. Honest.

Source: Empire Online

Want to watch a great movie? Thinking about Narnia or King Kong? Well fuggedaboutit! JBRAA knows where it?s at ? with bloody Full Throttle cinema of course! Make the pop-corn and lock your children in the basement tonight as you settle down to watch Ben?s hilarious shenenigens in glorious windows-media-player-o-vision. Now in scurvy inducing 3D!

In other community news MJ has updated Nightlight Productions with more tasty morsels from his radio play shows! You can download the latest instalments of his Star Wars parody here. There are also rumours that Nightlight will have some very cool new shows for us next year, but ssh, you didn?t hear that from me.