The International House of Mojo

If you thought that J?rn and Vogel were impressive then get a load of this: a hardcore gaming granny who plays Psychonauts (and just about every other game ever)! Check out her blog, this video showing her controlling Razputin in hospital and this video introducing her 1337 skills. It?s impressive (and hilarious) stuff.

But if you just can?t get enough of J?rn and Vogel then JBRAA has been awesome and uploaded some more uber adventure gaming frenzies onto Mojo Art. Go check them out here and watch in awed amazement. In fact, whilst we?re on the subject check out Pure Pwnage too. It doesn?t have anything to do with LucasArts, but it is damn funny.

To all hardcore gamers out there: Mojo salutes you.

And on an unrelated but no less significant note, MJ has update Nightlight Productions with part three of his side-splitting Star Wars radio parody. Go give it a listen!

Source: KingCheez

Hey guess what? Tim Schafer?s totally working on a new game!

The news isn?t really that surprising seeing as he?s finished with Psychonauts and it?s kind of his job to make games, but, still, it?s good to have the news confirmed. Action style.

Oh, and Tim?s also getting married to "a lady", but the details of the wedding are so secret that not even the highly trained elite Mojo spies know anything about it. But it?s cool news anyway.

It?s celebration time!

With Psychonauts finally reaching Europe in November, Edge has posted a short q&a with Tim Schafer. The closest we come to groundbreaking news is that his next project is currently in the "prototyping and design" phase. That could be a good thing. (Even more importantly, he's an Arrested Development fan!)

For something completely unrelated: is that a Secret of Monkey Island box on the new Star Wars Episode III DVD? elTee thinks he saw one in the cabinet behind George Lucas during the interviews before the deleted scenes. Cue the conspiracy theories.

Well... It's yellow. At least you'll see it on the shelves.

Apparently the PC version is also on DVD which is kind of cool.

I've just released a new version of Psychonauts Explorer - the tool that allows you to rip resources such as music/voices/textures from the game.

New in this version:

• The xbox audio codec is no longer needed. Audio files are now dumped to normal wav files.
• Big improvements in sound ripping. All audio in the pc version now plays correctly as does 99% of the audio in the xbox version.
• You can now view/save the artwork and textures from each level. (Look inside the .ppf level files).
• Bugfixes relating to the xbox version

Get it here.

As you'll find detailed in the latest official Psychonauts newsletter, there's a rad promotion underway until September 24th which allows you to receive rare Psychonauts goodies for totally free by simply scanning and sending in a friends' Psychonauts receipt.

Walk around town donning your very own Whispering Rock t-shirt. Perhaps you'd prefer the miniature Psychonauts themed plasma ball. Whichever you choose, you'll get an additional deck of Psychonauts playing cards along with it. Check out all the hard details here.

PS: Those of you plotting to send in your own receipts will be saddened to hear that this offer is only valid for new receipts!

So Psychonauts finally has a confirmed publisher in Europe: THQ. A release date has yet to be confirmed, though The Schafer is thinking it might be this fall. Here's hoping the game will make a bigger splash in Europe than it did in the US.

If you can remember what happened yesterday, you might recall something about a Psychonauts story in Game Developer. Well lo and behold, the article is out in the wild and can be read by one and all.

A good read it is too; the postmortem is almost painfully honest at times. Who knows how long it'll be online, so go read the article now. And should it disappear, well, there might be other ways to get a hold of it.

Late breaking news: You can read the whole thing without a subscription over on this site.

Game Developer, a "leading U.S. trade publication for the video game industry," is featuring Psychonauts on the cover of its current issue.

Word has it that there will be some new, possibly juicy (but probably not), information in there. This is what Gamasutra had to say:

The cover feature for the August 2005 issue is a postmortem of Double Fine's warped action platform title Psychonauts. which went through two publishers and four years of cinched belts before seeing the light of day. What holds a development team together when the game they're making is literally straining toward psychosis? Game Developer strives to find out.

There has been some discussion on the forums about what happened to the captain's promised Psychonauts cameo. Well, it turns out that the captain's part was, in a shocking development, cut!

Mystery solved, and at least these guys made it.

Double Fine Productions celebrates its fifth year in existence today, and you can too by going over there and sending them your warm feelings. Go ahead, it will make you feel good inside.

Buy another copy of Psychonauts while you're at it.

EDIT: The Double Fine Action News celebrates by adding THREE special new comics, and by offering in the company store, your own, OMG, hand knitted two-headed baby doll!!!!!11 And it's only $150. Are you kidding me? Go there now and buy fifty of them!

Amidst bad earning reports and other impressive sounding stock... things... it probably comes as little surprise to see Majesco CEO Carl Yankowski leaving ship.

In an interview with the Associated Press, [Janco Partners analyst Mike] Hickey said Majesco has failed to market its games properly, leaving a critical winner like Psychonauts floundering on shelves. "For them not to make that anything more than an underground title is unfortunate," Hickey said. "This could have been a home run for them."

More over at IGN.

GameSpy has taken it upon themselves to count down the Top 25 Xbox Games of All-Time, and quite a few familiar games made the list. LucasArts got three games in:

#23 LEGO Star Wars (Ok, so that's not LEC)
#19 Mercenaries
#2 Knights of the Old Republic

A pleasant surprise was seeing Psychonauts hitting #14. Hopefully this will make more people actually go buy the game. If you don't you're a tool. ?

Bgbennyboy, of Quick and Easy fame, has released a new program of awesomeness for you to download - Psychonauts Explorer. Having used his magic fingers on the game, the result of his love-filled labours is this impressive list of features:

Opens lots of different files from the game! It can also dump those files, whatever that means!

It can preview images and then rip them for your wallpaper related pleasure!

You can apply filters to images! No using Photoshop for you!

You can extract and save music and speech! (But buy the soundtrack anyway!)

...And much much more!

Coming soon: Psychonauts Quick and Easy, for when the game refuses to run on Windows 3000 machines.

1

Link copied!

Looks like Psychonauts isn't doing all too well saleswise. According to GameSpot Majesco shares fell by 15% due to "lackluster sales of Psychonauts and Advent Rising," which they apparently spent "millions" on promoting.

Too bad, but that's how it goes I guess.

Any of you out there looking to get your hands on the PS2 version of Psychonauts, Majesco just sent out a reminder that the game has shipped to stores, meaning you should be seeing it trickle into retailers over the coming week.

They also included a little quote from Official Playstation Magazine, which gave the game 9 out of 10: "Psychonauts is hands-down the most refreshing, must-play, re-invention of the platform action game since at least the first Ratchet & Clank."

You wouldn't think it from reading Mojo the last week, but things are actually happening out there. Like!

Double Fine is hiring. In fact, a bunch of different jobs were posted to their website last week. Does this mean a new project is in production? Who knows, but one can assume that something must be going on. Make sure to check out the Action Comics too, recently they've been updated almost daily.

IGN has posted a Psychonauts PS2 preview. No shocking new details are revealed, but worth a look anyway.

LucasArts is committing to support all new platforms. Does this mean we'll see the new Indy game on the Xbox360, PS2, and Revolution? It certainly sounds like it, though who knows what it'll mean for the PC.

Looks like Majesco did well this financial quarter, and they've cited Psychonauts sales (woo!) and their TV plug-in retro arcade controller things as two major reasons why. Gamespot reports:

Majesco Entertainment today reported an almost $3 million increase in sales recorded for the quarter ending April 30, 2005. Citing the release of the Tim Schafer-designed Psychonauts (for the Xbox, released just 10 days before books closed on the quarter) as well as brisk sales of the $19.95 TV Arcade product line of plug-and-play games, the company took its quarter-on-quarter financials from a net loss of $49 million last year to a profit of $189,000 this year.

Good to hear Majesco listing Psychonauts as one of the reasons they had a good quarter. Many fans were (and still are) wondering what Psychonauts is doing sales-wise, after receiving a few different mixed signals. Sounds like Majesco is happy enough, whatever's going on number-wise.

Razputin's Domain reports that the people at Amazon are dirty liars, and that the European release date of Psychonauts is indeed some time in Q4 2005. So yes, it might be released six months after the US version. I'm sure it'll make a nice Christmas present though.

Also, a rather bitter Shanty reports that the Double Fine Shop now offers a free DVD containing all the cut-scenes from the excellent game free of charge with all $50+ orders. Hey, can't beat that can you?

PC Psychonauts players might want to grab the newly released patch, updating Psychonauts to version 1.02. What's in the new patch? Mostly camera stuff:

1) The user may now disable smart camera hints that direct the camera towards specific targets.

2) The user may now disable camera altitude dampening, which will make the mouse more responsive in pitching the camera.

Hopefully that cleans up the last remaining issues some PC players were having with the camera system. A bunch of other bugs and little issues were squashed as well. Get the patch here, or from your favorite file download site of choice (where that is is up to you).

Also (awesome), Mojo has been linked from the sidebar of Double Fine Action News. Woo!