The International House of Mojo

About a week ago another Zak 2 fan game has shown up online. Except it's not a new one, it's in fact the original one which was hosted on AdventureGamer.com a while back. They've put up a video trailer for the game, but it looks nothing like the excellent 2D cartoon art featured everywhere else on their site. The video is all 3D and live-action actors.

The biggest question that I'd like answered but couldn't figure out is: is there any connection between this Zak II fan game, and the other one hosted at Zak2.org? If anyone knows of any connection (besides them both being Zak McKracken fan sequels. shh.), please leave a comment.

Daniel Wishart, webmaster of LucasTones, sends word that he is hard at work to get the site finished, and it is near completion.

However, due to a change in policy by his logo service, he is now only able to send custom logos to people in the United Kingdom. He's got a long list of e-mail requests from the US and Europe, and he is sorry to be unable to process those requests at this time.

bgbennyboy has released version 3.0 of LEC Quick and Easy, a utility that lets you run old LucasArts graphic adventures with original sound functionality. This new version adds support for The Dig, Monkey Island 1, and has fixes for various other issues. Of course, like always, you must have VDMSound installed for this to work. Enjoy!

I saw on Shacknews that Korean game developer Phantagram is working on a sequel to Cavedog's RTS game "Total Annihilation," due out in 2004.

Cavedog was a game company started by Ron Gilbert a few years back. I believe it was sister companies with Gilbert's Humongous Entertainment, creators of kids games Putt Putt and Pajama Sam. It's 100% unlikely that Gilbert has anything to do with Total Annihilation 2, though.

Source: Shacknews

bgbennyboy has created version 2.5 of his Quick and Easy tool, which can be downloaded here. Quick and Easy is a tool that lets you play many of the old LucasArts adventure games under Windows 2000, Windows NT, or Windows XP with full sound.

In this version, the lockups have been fixed for Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and the saving issues have been resolved for Day of the Tentacle. Please note that you must have VDMSound installed for this to work.

A JediKnightII.net forum regular has made an unofficial botfile for the stormtrooper Quake 3 model. For those that don't know what this means, it will allow you to play against the stormtrooper while offline.

You can pick it up here (updated with correct file format), and start fragging these Imperial jerks like the good rebels we all know you are. For those new to Q3A, you must put this in the baseq3 directory to use it in the game.

Gamespot has published an article dealing with the controversial topic known as Abandonware. As we probably all know, Abandonware is the term used to describe games, etc., that are no longer supported by the company that made them. Some people believe that means that they should be freely distributed.

A great deal of LucasArts games are considered to be abandonware, it is hard to still find let alone buy some of their older games. Enter Tim schafer (amongst some other developers) to comment on this issue:

"Personally, I'd rather my old games were stolen and played for free than forgotten about..."

...and then goes on to say:

"Most of the game makers aren't living off the revenue from those old games anymore. Most of the creative teams behind all those games have long since left the companies that published them, so there's no way the people who deserve to are still making royalties off them. So go ahead--steal this game! Spread the love!"

The article does take a good look at the subject at hand and gets some interesting view points accross. I suggest you go read it!

Source: Huz

The Official LucasArts Website has established a new contest that is sure to wet the appetite of you wanna-be (oops, we mean "aspiring") game makers. Simply create a mission for the game Star Wars? Galactic Battlegrounds? with the scenario editing tools and then submit it to LucasArts by April 3rd.

If you win, your level will be included on the upcoming expansion disc Clone Campaigns?. Plus, you'll get $50 worth of credit at the LucasArts store. There will be four grand prize winners as well as four runners-up. For the details, please visit this page here.

Game File Formats have done it again! They have programmed a PAK Explorer for the recently released Star Wars Starfighter. PAK files are the archive files which hold all the raw data for the game.

Just to remind you folks, this page also has tools such as a background image viewer for Escape from Monkey Island and Music extractors for Grim Fandango.

That's right, Adventure Developer, the pride of the Mixnmojo network, is back online after overcoming some technical troubles. With many amateur adventures making the news these days, we're very glad to have them back!

Tonight to round off all the Starwars news, we have a nice download for you boys and girls. Bgbennyboy has created a quick fix to get LucasArts adventures working in WinNT, Win2k and WinXP. The file is 80kb and uses VDMSound. So far supported games are:

Fate of Atlantis (White Label talkie cd version)
Last Crusade (White Label cd version)
DOTT (While Label talkie cd version)
Full Throttle (Original cd version)
Sam and Max (White label talkie cd version)
Monkey Island 2 (White Label cd version)

There are some untested games, but you should read the attached readme for more information. I have been unable to test this fix because right now one of my CD drives won't close and the other one won't open! So we would appreciate some feedback on this. Remember, its not supported by LEC. That's all folks!

An old friend of mine emailed me out of the blue to point out that I hadn't mentioned the version of ScummVM for pocket PC's. You can now play all your favourite games while commuting or pretending to test pocket PC games at work. I myself would never ever pretend to test a game while playing an entiretly different one... honest guv.

Update: In the tradition of ScummVM threads I'll update to point out that there is also a Macintosh version of ScummVM under development for MacOS X. Apparently there is a second Mac port underway by the author of SCUMM Explorer, but it doesn't have a website. - Jake

Source: old friend: Steven Mileham!

Rum Rogerz sent me some almost scary, but kinda cool fangame news today: "Night of the Hermit" is a game in which you play Herman Toothrot of Monkey Island Fame. Here's the Blurb:

It's been eight years since that pesky Guybrush left my Island, I've used up all of my money from that game and things started looking down. Until one day, i've received a message in a bottle, it said my great grandpa died and left me with a big mansion in a little place called Badger island, somewhere in the Caribbeans. I was overjoyed!, finally, a way for me to start life anew, so i packed my bags, and left my beloved hut on Monkey Island (TM) to claim my airloom...

Apparently, it turns out that messages in bottles take ages, so by the time he gets to his mansion, it's been taken over and turned into a sleezy motel where I'm sure all kinda of chaos will ensue. The idea is of course, to claim back your mansion. Go here and read allll about it and it's lurvely talkie version (not to mention, of course, download and play it)!

While Mojo was away on, erm, vacation, a new SCUMM tool has taken the fan community by storm. ScummVM, a free and open source application, allows you to run the old LucasArts adventure games on various operating systems. For example, you can run Day of the Tentacle on WindowsXP with full sound support! Of course, there are still bugs to work out and some people may find it a bit user-unfriendly, but it's certainly worth checking out. Go to the website for downloads and to see what games are supported.

Update: I've just noticed that there is even a Dreamcast port under development! It currently only plays the DOTT demo, but hopefully soon we will be able to play our favourite adventures on Our favourite Sega. - Spaff

Update: Another port is being worked on, this time for the ever classic Amiga. As far as I recall LEC stopped making their games for the Amiga after Monkey2. Anyone know better? and while we're at it, any other ports we should know about? Thanks Remi O - Spaff

ALOLA? Whats that you say? Why, it's A Lesson on Legal Anarchy. Still confused? Well, just you wait and see. All I can say now is that it involves Purple Tentacles, Monkeys, The Clash, United States Trademarks and The Big Guy. Yeah you heard me, George Lucas himself.

Thats all I'm going to reveal at this point, but rest assured, it's gonna be somethin' ELSE!

Adventure Developer is proud to announce the start of Tiller Techniques. the First edition is, if i may say so AWESOME, (and if anyone else says so it "OWNS"). Anyway its ready, and online here. As always, send in your samples for the chance to have it critiqued by the man himself!

A few days ago EuroGamer put up an article titled The Death of the Celebrity Studio talking about whats happening to the large numbers of game companies from the mid 90's started and operated by 'celebrity game designers.' The article mostly focuses on ION Storm, founded by former id Software employee John Romero, but it spends a decent amount of time on Ron Gilbert's company, Cavedog. Go read.

Source: Shacknews

CGW's print edition has run an article about LucasArts-related fan games, mostly centered around Narrative's MI fan games which were shut down a little over a year ago, and the 2 larger projects, IndyProject and Zak 2. You can read the story here.

Hopefully some time in the (near?) future, we'll hear more about LEC's stance on fan games. With their parent company LucasFilm's highly open stance on fan films, let us hope that the news will be good.

Source: IndyProject

To cooincide with Bill Tiller's E3 appearance, Adventure Developer in conjunction with the International House of Mojo would like to introduce "Tiller Techniques". An exclusive new feature to help you guys with you art for your Amataeur Games. Some of Bill Tiller's past credits include Lead Artist for the Dig, designer and director for the background art in Curse of Monkey Island he also went on to lead the art team for Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine.
Check out the details at Adventuredeveloper.com and read the first installment here

Here's some interesting news for all you developers and pocket pc owners out there. PocketAdventures, is an adventure game system for the Pocket PC under development by Kaiton Buitendijk. Two versions are now being developed, the first being "an easy SCUMM adventure system, for games like Monkey Island, Fate of Atlantis, Day of the Tentacle etc. There are just 40 commands to use." The second is "a jscript powered GAPI/Sprite engine."