The International House of Mojo

Here's some cuh-rayzee trivia: someone from Mixnmojo is kind of related to some guy who hates Twitter, and much to the chagrin of Jack Dorsey this guy is also related to the Russian mafia. So a blood bath starts and now we've sort of killed off the Russian mob.

So then elTee that Mixnmojoer vowed revenge, and in honour of this vow he bribed Destructoid into hosting a party. The idea is that you crash Twitter and bury it for good, while pretending that you're just trying to get Brutal Legend onto trending topics. Those lucky among you will also win some of those Brutal Legend statues, and one other guy takes him a slim PS3. It all depends on who does more fail whale killing.

All you gotta do is sign up, spam the service with #brutallegend tags and then hope you've avenged our mysterious Mixnmojoer. Make 'em pay.

Update: It's happening! Brutal Legend is a trending topic on Twitter! Go over there and contribute!

Update 2: OK, I lied about elTee being connected to the Russian mob. He isn't: they were a bit too violently sissy for him. He is now suing Mojo (for damages) and the Russian mob (for being a collection of wusses who will not continue to fund Mixnmojo. You may be happy to know that visiting the site will no longer contribute to drugs trafficking).

Source: Destructoid

People anxious to get their little hands on Brütal Legend will be pleased to discover that a demo will be released on PSN and 360 as early as September 17th. Tim Schafer had this to say:

Villagers have surround our offices with torches demanding the game, so we're releasing a demo and hope that this taste of metal will keep the mob at bay until Brütal Legend comes out.

Make no mistake, if you like legends, September and Rocktober have plenty to keep you satisfied. If you also like brütality, you should be doubly excited. And stay away from me.

Thanks to Destructoid for the heads-up.

Source: Destructoid

When he's not showing Dave Grossman how designing Monkey Island games is done or leaving critical comments under news posts, Jake spends his time as a contributing voice on the Idle Thumbs podcast, the latest episode of which is all about Brutal Legend's much ballyhooed but still somewhat mysterious multiplayer mode. Chris Remo and Nick Breckon had a chance to play some of the game's multiplayer and their (rather positive) impressions should be heard by you.

Some guy on Gamespot also got some hand-on time with Brutal Legend's multiplayer and wrote a preview about his discoveries, if you're interested in that as well.

Update by Tingler: IGN also have a preview of the multiplayer, complete with videos. Apparently it's an action-strategy arena where you can play Eddie, Ophelia or (gasp) Tim Curry's Doviculus commanding head-bangers, goths and demons respectively. Neat!

Bonus Update: Nick Breckon has posted written impressions of the multiplayer mode up on Shacknews.

So apart from making your life Most Excellent and providing food for orphans, it turns out Tim Schafer is something of a daredevil and moonlights as a one-man bomb disposal unit. The guy's got the concentration of an examination student and the fingers of a pianist. He now takes on that craziest of all manly challenges: the Rubik's cube. And not only that, he does it with Emily Ridgway reading to him a list of 108 songs. While being filmed. For the internet.

Man oh man I hope you're lifting weights and taking steroids as you read this because you've just been proven girly, sissy pants.

Source: MTV Multiplayer

Look, making a Mix CD is hard. I know - I've tried. Making a decent soundtrack is colossal. Making a soundtrack that's supposed to cover the entirety of metal while neither going stupid nor becoming a rundown of hits is something of a full-time job. But managing to do it, and do it with style is the kind of thing you put on your tombstone: "Here lies Jake, who made unbelievably cool soundtracks that rocked the world to its knees. And the world said it was good."

This is one of those soundtracks. Even counting the hair metal on there, the Brutal Legend soundtrack (at this point still incomplete, needing a couple of more songs plus the guaranteed brilliance of Peter McConnell's music), is going to be the best damn thing that happened to your ears since you discovered Sabbath. I mean, just look at this.

I'd like to thank several people: Tim Schafer, for making this possible, and Music Director Emily Ridgway for being the musical shizzle. All the lawyers and suits involved in making this happen get a shoutout as well.

In a pleasing turn of events it seems like the legal issues that have plagued the release of Brutal Legend are finally at an end.

Destructoid, via Industry Gamers reports that the legal dispute in which Activision moved to stop EA's release of Double Fine's game has now been settled.

In case you've forgotten, Activision were basically claiming they retained publishing rights from way back when they were the publisher - but then they stopped being the publisher and EA started being it instead and now after EA have done lots of lovely publicity for the game Activision decided that being the publisher seemed like a good idea after al--

Ahem. Sorry about that. Back to the news.

Yes. Anyway, it's all sorted out now, although the details of the settlement remain a deep dark secret, never to be revealed, although probably involving some sort of demonic ritual in which Double Fine had to sacrifice kittens in the name of Lord Activision.

Rocktober CONFIRMED.

Source: Destructoid

Wow, talk about extreme. What EA is doing with promoting Brutal Legend is the equivalent to...I can't even compare. Think of a Tingler-run Indy Fansite, and multiply that by a hundred.

Because anyone who manages to get bands as awesome as Dethklok and Mastodon to do a 34-date tour for them is a marketing god worth reckoning with. It's a good thing I don't get off on marketing genius because damn, damn and titty fish.

Source: EA

Although there hasn't been any real update, per say, I've noticed that some of today's write-ups have some interesting statements surrounding the legal dispute between Double Fine and Activision over Brutal Legend that weren't included in the Gamespot write-up. Regarding Activision's complaint that Double Fine's delays drove up the game's budget from $8 million to $15 million, for example, the developer says this:

The Tim Schafer-led San Francisco developer's response includes the allegation that these delays were due to changes Vivendi itself requested prior to the publisher's merger with Activision, like securing vocal talent such as Jack Black and expanding the single-player mode.

Additionally:

"Now that we've found a publisher and the game is getting sensational coverage, they want to stop its release," Double Fine COO Caroline Esmurdoc wrote in an official statement.

She added: "Double Fine's countersuit is a demonstration of our intention to fight for this game — Activision will not kill Brutal Legend.'"

That's from Gamasutra. And then there's a fascinating quote from Activision:

Activision said in a statement that Double Fine's claims are "meritless and, in fact, Activision has every intention of exercising its legal right as Brutal Legend's publisher to release the game."

That one from Washington Examiner. Make of all this what you will!

More Stirring by The Tingler: Apparently Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings developer A2M don't like Activision either. Don't blame them.

As you all know, after threatening to do so several months back, Activision sued Double Fine over the rights to Brutal Legend, which they maintain they still own. Today Gamespot reports that Double Fine has fought back with a countersuit, claiming that Activision is specifically trying to hurt the developer (whose existence depends on the game's successful launch) and of unlawful business practices. Interestingly, Double Fine states that Activision cancelled Brutal Legend after a failed attempt to convert the game into a Guitar Hero sequel:

While they may fight for a limited amount of shelf space and consumer dollars, the music-themed action game Brutal Legend and the rhythm game Guitar Hero don't compete in the same genre. However, Double Fine's suit says that Activision canceled the studio's game after an aborted attempt to convert it into a Guitar Hero sequel.

According to the report, the hearing for Activision's motion to prevent Brutal Legend's release is scheduled for July 30. For their part, EA maintains that the scheduled released date (Rocktober 13th for North America and Rocktober 16th for all other territories) is still on.

Want a model of Eddie Riggs to go alongside your Guybrush/LeChuck battle? Of course you do!

Only 1000 of these models are being made, and right now EA aren't revealing how you get one. They just say to keep an eye on the Twitter feed and the Brütal Legend website. Mysterious!

Trying to keep up with all the Brütal Legend-related news is like a goddamn marathon and I will submit it as a candidate for a future sport at the Olympics. Strangely, that's actually a very good thing.

Anyway: Brütal Thoughts With Jack Black IV is out, involving some nice axe-related gameplay at the end. And if you go see the movie Brüno (and I hear it's good), you'll see a certain trailer play before the main feature starts.

Every Monday on Twitter is a Metal Monday (#metalmonday), and every Wednesday is a Not Metal Wednesday (#notmetalwednesday), that day of the week where you can make even Limp Bizkit look like Black Sabbath.

And finally, a discussion with Music Director Emily Ridgway on The Music of Brütal Legend.

Here's something fun for the sane among you Tim Schafer fanatics: tomorrow, July 2nd, at 4PM BST (British Summer Time), you will get to submit some Brütal Legend/life and philosophy-related questions to Tim Schafer, courtesy of the nice chaps over at Eurogamer. Unfortunately for the crazier among you, there'll be a moderator who'll pick the questions that Mr. Schafer's asked.

It all goes down tomorrow, in this many hours (bookmark that site, it's incredibly useful). 100 Mojo Cookie Pirate points* to the first person who makes him laugh.

*points not actually worth anything, possibly non-existant.

Update: It's live! Don't forget to register and submit your questions! Go go go!

Source: Eurogamer

You should check-out this somewhat spoilerific Brütal Legend walkthrough, narrated by Tim Schafer.

Part One, Two.

Don't forget to submit your questions to Mr. Schafer in a few hours.

While it was never more than an ongoing rumour, the rumour about that rumour is that the Wii version of Brütal Legend has been cancelled due to quality and technical issues. Anyone who's ever played the PS2 version of Psychonauts should being saying "fair enough".

This is all according to Destructoid. Apparently the port was in development at EA's own studios, but that's a big "was" now.

I don't really mind this... as long as there's a PC version coming. Yes, I'm still banging that drum and I'll be doing it waaaay past Rocktober I suspect.

Source: Destructoid

It even has gameplay footage!

In related news: Schafer and crew say "Hi, thanks for joining the awesome Facebook group."

In unrelated news: If you browse the Mojo forums you'll notice that some of you awesome readers are posting the Monkey Island Q&A's Telltale are doing on their special Monkey Island forums/Facebook. I'd link but I can't find them right now, but either way you should check them out.

Want to see the final Brütal Legend cover art in hi-res? Then you'll want to be heading over to Kotaku.

Quite brütal, if I may be so bold. Let's just hope that Double Fine's second consecutive lack of explosions doesn't hurt them again.

There's been far too many Brütal Legend newsposts cropping around the globe (thanks EA!) for one website to cover it all. Mojo's been mostly keeping to the bigger news, but if you're a total Legend crack addict then the Community Tracker on Brutal! should do you good. It's run by a bunch of trained sea-monkeys, who are catching pretty much anything news-worthy and posting about it.

There's also been a lot of awards-related news and community-related stuff over at Twitter, posted by the Official Brütal Legend Twitter Bird. They've recently asked you lot to get their Facebook fans up to 1000, which you should do as it makes the page official. Go forth and show the mighty numbers of Mixnmojo*!

*Don't embarrass us. Join up. Everyone likes a metal head.

Update: O.M.G.! Ronnie James Dio (the guy who did this) has been dropped from the game. But you shouldn't let that break your heart, because he has been replaced by noneother than Tim Curry. Yes, that Tim Curry. He's not always Metal, but goddamn it's Tim Curry (he makes a hell of an evil cardinal too). You shut your mouth. As Tim Schafer has said:

"Ronnie James Dio is an amazing singer and truly one of the great figures of Metal, but as the character of Doviculus evolved, we realized that Tim Curry was a better fit for the part. Anyone who has seen his amazing performance as the Lord of Darkness in the movie Legend knows why we cast him in the role of Doviculus, Emperor of the Tainted Coil."

You listen to Tim Schafer, punk.

Brütal Legend just set a Guinness world record, for number of people air guitaring. I won't say anymore. This is all kinds of awesome.

Source: Brutal!

So we know what Ronzo thinks about the new and re-imagined Monkey Island games, and Dave Grossman is obviously the man behind TMI. But what does the third of the original Monkey Island design team think? You know... Tim Schafer... God.

Well, in a nice long interview with Joystiq, he says...

I'm excited that you can play the original one again. Dave is doing the new episodes, Dave Grossman. Other than Ron, there's probably no one else that should really be doing that. I'm really happy about that.

So there you go, you are allowed to like the games now. Read the whole interview as it's pretty entertaining.

ATMachine reports that Activision has taken the rather baffling step of suing Double Fine to stop the release of Brütal Legend. Eh, what?

Apparently Activision thinks it still has a valid contract to release the game -- which I'm pretty sure they said they had no plans on releasing -- and... It can be assumed they want some or all of the $15 million they claim to have invested in the game back, but really? Seriously?

What has the world come with, what with new Monkey Island games and EA looking to be the good guy?

Update: Tim Schafer: "Hey, if Activision liked it, then they should have put a ring on it. Oh great, now Beyoncé is going to sue me too."

Source: ATMachine