Last time we checked in, Paco Vink's Monkey Island comic was up to page 36, but he's since put out five more pages, taking us through the kidnapping of Elaine and up to meeting Meathook, and insulting him a bit. You can check it out at World of Monkey Island.
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Last time we checked in, Paco Vink's Monkey Island comic was up to page 36, but he's since put out five more pages, taking us through the kidnapping of Elaine and up to meeting Meathook, and insulting him a bit. You can check it out at World of Monkey Island.
After years of waiting, the community finally has an outlet for online gaming again in the form of the Monkey Island Gaming Clan. Overcoming the problems experienced by previous clans (it exists) the MIGC aims to "tend to all your Monkey Island gaming needs!"
What are you waiting for? join up now.
Over at the World of Monkey Island, you can view page 36 of Paco Vink's comic adaptation of The Secret of Monkey Island. Tomorrow also marks the three year anniversary of the comic. That's a long time.
World of MI webmaster Dalixam pointed out that, even though Paco's average for the past 3 years has been basically "a page a month," he may be showing signs of speeding up, so hopefully Guybrush will get off Melee Island? before 2005 is over. Take a look over at World of MI.
Okay let's be honest here, how many of you noticed it was gone in the first place? For shame.
Anyway, the excellent Grim Fandango Network is back online with a new design care of Thrik, and you should all go check it out. Hopefully it will get you in the mood to go and replay the excellent Grim Fandango again. That's a good game.
Over at the Quick & Easy site, Benny has finished up his maniacal week of utility releases. Among the tools released include new launcher utilities for Curse of Monkey Island, Escape from Monkey Island, and Grim Fandango, which ajust your DirectX settings, let you run the games in different video modes, and automatically patch them for you.
Benny also released new and updated versions of crazier stuff for people who really like to tinker and dig down into the resource files of the old SCUMM games. The complete list of utilities (html lifted from the Scumm Bar) are:
Day 1: EMI Launcher 1.0
Day 2: EMI Background Viewer 1.1
Day 3: Resource File Creator/Dumper 1.1
Day 4: Grim Fandango Launcher 1.0
Day 5: Index File Reader 1.2
Day 6: CMI Launcher 2.0
Day 7: ScummVM Q&E 1.3.6
Benny promises a larger update to ScummVM Quick & Easy is in the works and will be released... sometime. For now, visit the Quick & Easy utilities site for more information about the new programs. They're all really handy so don't do something rash and lazy like not checking them out.
Who'd have thought? A new hosted site! Much like Dansky's (neglected) MicroXel Arts gallery site, the ever-present Paco Vink has started his own personal page on The Mojo, featuring a lot of art of his you probably haven't see before. Paco is of course the co-webmaster of The World of Monkey Island and the artist behind its popular comic adaptation of Monkey Island 1, but on Pacomania you'll find a lot more than MI fan art. Enjoy.
Endy of the ScummVM team posted a note in our forums letting everyone know that a new version of ScummVM is out.
The new release contains mostly bug fixes (including fixing the bulk of the sound problems in Curse of Monkey Island, Full Throttle, and The Dig), as well as adds support for 64-bit processors. You should go download the latest version today. Don't know what ScummVM is? Ask in the comments and someone will explain.
The venerable bgbennyboy and his "Quick & Easy" series of LucasArts game utilities are due for a major update. Fortunately, that's what they'll be getting next week, as Benny launches the first ever "Quick & Easy Week."
Starting this coming Monday, he'll be posting a decent update to every utility in the Q&E suite, and good times will be had by all. Everyone is welcome to attend. Punch will be served.
Over at the Scumm Bar today is a new editorial by their webmaster, Gabez. In the story, titled "An open letter to LucasArts," Gabez tries to trace a line through many of LEC's past anti-fan actions, from the shuttering of ShawArts in the late 90s up through recent events like legal threats to ScummVM and the cancellation of Sam & Max 2.
He also manages to work Monkey Island 5 in there, if that somehow makes the story more enticing to you. After reading that article it's a wonder anyone's left around here at all. ... Er you are still here, right? Hello?
Now that everyone has finally realized that we are far too disorganizied and lazy to put up our old articles with any amount of speed, other people are doing our work for us! Over at the hosted site Mojo Art you can catch many classic Mixnmojo moments in photo form, including the three trips to Double Fine, the two LEC press day invasions, the visit to LucasArts central, and more. Check it out, engross yourself in the supreme dorkiness, and love.
Over at the AGS website, an AGS gamemaker, "LucasFan Games," has put up a really nice 256 color remake of Maniac Mansion. The game doesn't offer a new visual style or anything - it still has the full spirit of the original 16 (and 8?) color versions, just slightly more colorful and with a less annoying interface. If you haven't played Maniac Mansion because you were put off by its archaic interface or dated colors, now's your chance to put things right. Thanks to skullkid in the forums for the tip.
Update: For more about the team behind this remake, check here. You might spot a couple Mojo readers of yore in there.
Do you have dreams of being a games journalist? Well, Mark Donald the editor of the UK's best selling PC games magazine PC Gamer UK has written an open letter to the good folk of the internet asking for their help.
It is as follows...<:MORENEWS:>
Hello,
This is an open letter to anyone who's interested in videogames writing or having the unique achievements of their gaming community aired to a wider audience.
My simple view is that news-stand games magazines and large sections of the gaming community have gradually drifted apart.
As editor of PC Gamer in the UK, it is painfully apparent to me that while the magazine does a reasonable job of fulfilling its review/preview functions, it does not adequately reflect the incredible diversity of culture and invention that now characterises the PC community online.
I'd like you to help us put that to rights. Games mags are constructed by small, tight-knit teams. In-house expertise is broad enough to cope with retail gaming, but the available resources are unable to cover the far-flung corners of gaming that now exist. That's partly why magazines have failed to keep pace with their communities.
In order to cover these communities properly, PC Gamer needs their representatives to help us out. I regularly read web-published articles which I think are easily good enough to appear in a magazine. But the writer may never have considered that opportunity. Perhaps they didn't think a games mag was an appropriate place for such an article. Perhaps they didn't think it was good enough. Whatever the reason, I'd like you to consider submitting your articles to PC Gamer.
What kind of articles are we looking for? Anything. Anything that you could imagine yourself, as a gamer, opening a magazine and being interested in. I'm trying to create a magazine that communicates the incredible experiences gamers have. A magazine that reports on the amazing transformations that dedicated communities have wrought upon the games they love. I think such a magazine would print articles about the destruction of Kerafyrm The Sleeper in Everquest. It would report on the morphing of games like Grand Prix Legends and Interstate 82. It could relate the tale of a dramatic duel in Jedi Knight 2 or cover the phenomenon of swoop bike races in Star Wars Galaxies. Anything at all. Single-player gaming, multi-player gaming, modding, MUDs, indy games. The building of the Space Station in There, the development of unique in-game body language. A well-argued opinion piece on the state of videogame interfaces. Crazy antics on stunt servers or a simple essay on how a game stirred an individual's emotions. Anything which says something fascinating about game culture. The only rules are it's got to be about games, and, if it's not about PC's then the article has to be applicable to the universal gamer. PC Gamer is not a console mag.
Articles can be of any length. And PC Gamer will pay for articles published. I can't promise to say yes to everything, but I am open to all ideas. And if you don't want to write but know of a vibrant gaming community we should cover then tip us off. We've recently been mailed by people involved with Trespasser, Grand Prix Legends and Interstate 82.
I hope this letter is not seen as a threat to some of the excellent websites that I regularly visit. Publication of an article in PC Gamer does not prevent its subsequent use elsewhere. Moreover, PC Gamer is not big enough to absorb the entire community's output. But if you have an article at your fingertips that deserves a wider audience then let us know.
Best regards,
Mark Donald
Editor, PC Gamer (UK edition)
Britain's Best-Selling PC Games Magazine
mark.donald@futurenet.co.uk
So start writing, folks!
Everybody rejoice, a new ScummVM is here, and it is full of classic adventurey goodness. Who needs Sam & Max 2 anyway, eh? We've got all these other games that LucasArts decided to actually publish instead of unceremoniously can, so we might as well enjoy them properly with our modern computers and up-to-date operating systems.
New LucasArts stuff in the latest ScummVM release:<:MORENEWS:>
- Full Throttle is now actually supported, including the Old Mine Road fighting sequences, and the destruction derby sequence.
- The original, really blocky and ugly versions of Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken are now properly supported. This means that you can now play the version of Maniac Mansion that was included with Day of the Tentacle. However, you can't play it from within DOTT yet, you have to add it to ScummVM as a separate game.
Lately, major ScummVM releases have included bonuses, and this release is no different. As a special treat, the classic adventure game Flight of the Amazon Queen has been released as freeware, and is fully supported by the new versions of ScummVM. So, if you've been looking for something to fill the hole left by the loss of Sam & Max 2, want a new classic graphic adventure to get your hands on, or if you just loved the original and haven't played it forever, get it today.
Download the ScummVM 0.6.0 release binary for your operating system of choice, as well as the games Flight of the Amazon Queen, and Beneath a Steel Sky from the ScummVM downloads page.
If you don't know what ScummVM is, read more at the official website, or have someone in the comments explain it to you, because I've repeated it here enough times already.
Source: ScummVM.org
Captain Mystery has returned to the Scumm Bar, and has had a change of heart. If you don't remember his previous editorials, thats okay, but just remember that he has decided his sole purpose in life is to piss off fanboys with a combination of well thought out ideas, and crude name-calling. That's why it may be a bit jarring, especially to Haggis, to see his latest story is titled, "An Attempt To Contradict Myself Without Saying So: Why Jumping On The Fan Bandwagon Might Not Be Such A Bad Idea."
LEC has come under a lot of flak from the dork armies for some time now, under accusations it sold out to the Star Wars franchise. As I?ve said, I didn?t much care, because we still got promised a few original games. But your latest move is foolish in the extreme. Instead of restoring a good chunk of consumers? goodwill by releasing Sam & Max, you?ve gone in entirely the opposite direction.Check out the whole article at the Scumm Bar. (This is for real the last post about this sort of thing. You can't go and not update about a Captain Mystery story, you know.)
Page 29 of Paco Vink's amazing comic adaptation of Monkey Island 1 has appeared online today for all to enjoy. If you missed the comic somehow (its been going on for about two years now), you might want to start here.
Community outrage over the Sam and Max 2 cancellation continues. Let's take a look at what you might have missed over the weekend in the wild world of angry fan uprisings...<:MORENEWS:>
Several online petitions have sprung up, the most noteworthy being this one. It has gained over 8,700 signatures at the time of this writing and is the most active petition over at www.PetitionOnline.com. Oddly enough, the third most active petition on the site is also for Sam and Max 2.
While we at Mixnmojo feel that writing an e-mail to LucasArts is a far more effective way to let the company know your feelings, signing a petition doesn't hurt either. Just don't get your hopes up.
Adventure Gamers has published an excellent editorial on the subject of Sam and Max 2 and re-published its review of the original game. As usual, we recommend reading what they have to say, since their stuff is, for lack of a better word, fantabulous.
Also, in the new LucasArts Technical Support Forums, it seems that most of the support is of the moral variety. A thread sprang up over the weekend with more than 100 posts expressing their feelings about the cancellation. The replies to this thread far exceeded any of the other discussions you would find on the site. Not surprisingly, the entire thread was deleted this morning by the forum administrators.
Sure, none of this will probably bring the game back... but hey, screw 'em.
A quick note from Jake: Just to let everyone know, barring any major announcements from LucasArts, this is really going to be the last of our "Save Sam & Max 2" coverage. We think everyone's got the message by now who's going to.
Bgbennyboy's let me know that a new version of his ScummVM Quick & Easy is out, sporting some new features and squashing some bugs. For those who don't know, ScummVM Q&E is a handy utility for users of ScummVM designed to make it easier to set up and configure your classic LucasArts games.
The new version of ScummVM Q&E can, in addition to checking for new versions of ScummVM, check for new versions of itself, and can automatically update the game compatibility list, so you'll always stay somewhat up to date on how well your favorite games are supported. It does other stuff, too. Download it at Quick & Easy.
In the tradition of the unwarranted digging that was done to the Monkey Island 2 demo, the quick and easy bgbennyboy has done the same to the Full Throttle demo. If you ever wanted to know what bits of Full Throttle looked like while they were still in the midst of making it, now's your chance. Check that link for wacky placeholder hijinks including Ben trying to convince you that he's on his bike while he's actually just walking around alone, and very convincing descriptions of film transition effects not yet completed. Only funny.
In other obsessive fanboy tinkering news, the always reliable ATMachine has mocked up some fake screenshots that illustrate what The Dig might have looked like had it shipped in one of its two or three prior incarnations (The Dig had a notoriously long development process starting back around the days of the first Monkey Island, and went through two or three (or four?) game designers before the actual game shipped). Take a look.
LFNetwork's got a new network satellite for all you kids who are excited for LucasArts' and Pandemic Studios' upcoming title, Star Wars: Battlefront. It's called, well, SWBattlefront.Net, and...err...you should visit it right now...for news and game info, as well as miscellaneous rumor-mongering on their new discussion forums. SWBattlefront.Net!! (!!!!)
The Soundtrack Site got a nice update yesterday, including a Day of the Tentacle soundtrack, Fate of Atlantis, Sam & Max, and DOTT CD covers, and some design changes throughout the site. Check it out.