The International House of Mojo

If you've ever wondered what would happen if Tim Schafer had to face-off with a robot bear using a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle, today's your lucky day.

A whole bunch-of other designers had to face-off with said bear as well, three of which are LucasArts+ (Mike Stemmle, Steve Purcell and Ronzo).

Source: Joystiq

If you've recently wandered over to the placeholder page for brutallegend.net, you may have noticed a few changes. Most importantly, the site now purports to launch in "early March" and now has a name: "Brutal! The Legendary Fan Site."

So keep your eye on it. Whatever it is Thrik's up to, it's sure to be Brutal.

(As Jason has knocked poor Ronno's new game's publisher's deal announcement off the top, I think Tim can safely have his own news post again)

Double Fine have released a new game, people! Play it here! Ace, ain't it? Who cares about that one with Jack Black as a hippie?

Adventure Treff, in usual awesome fasion, have decided to provide a video series of footage from Games Convention 2007 (remember that?!). In Part Four there's an interview with Bill Tiller around the 9:00 minute mark, as well as some brief, awkward stalking of Tim Schafer near the beginning. In the interview (which is in English) Bill Tiller elaborates a bit on the "idea icon" that was borrowed from Brian Moriarty's version of The Dig and employed in A Vampyre Story. He says other things too, so check out the whole video.

Thanks to basti007 from the Adventure Gamers forums for the tipoff.

Source: Adventure-Treff

Double Fine are running a competition to design a Christmas tree decoration. Send in a photo, and if you win, then you get to post the decoration off for it to live in the Double Fine office thereafter forever. And you also get a prize!

More -- much much more -- on the web-site.

In what is a gloriously lovely early Christmas present from the folks at GameTap, PC owning Double Fine fans who mysteriously don't own at least two copies of The Excellent Game Psychonauts can now play the entire game for free until December 31st! If you are a member of that minority or just fancy playing said Excellent Game again, head over to this address now!

It all seems quite easy, and unlike the paid games such as Sam & Max it looks as if this wonderful freebie isn't just confined to the Americas, so anyone in the world can now access The Excellent Game. For free. Woo!

Update by Jason: Moreover, let's say you want the PC version of Psychonauts boxed, but don't want to pay anywhere near an appropriate price for it. Amazon's got you covered by selling the game for a measly $7.97. If you haven't played this game by now, you truly ought to be ashamed of yourself.

This is actually relatively old news, but since I don't keep up with 360 headlines as much as someone who owns the console, I feel I deserve forgiveness. Microsoft is soon to add a feature to the Xbox 360 that will allow users to download original Xbox games to the console for the price of $15 apiece.

Among the first batch of games, available December 4th, is a little gem called Psychonauts. It's hard to imagine that anyone can excuse themselves from having never played the game at this point.

Do you remember the days when there seemed to be new Monkey Island fan music released every day, created through a labour of love by budding musicians? Of course you do, and you loved them. A good piece of fan music almost magically manages to induce both nostalgia and the enjoyment of something new.

Those days have made a short-lived return with the release of some Psychonauts fan music that's appeared on OverClocked ReMix, a site that has routinely hosted great fan music for all manner of games over the years. Yes, there're even a Monkey Island section.

The fan music in question is primarily a remix of the background to the Sasha's Mind level, but also works some of the main Psychonauts theme into there. Cool stuff!

Playboy magazine held a pretty sweet interview with Tim Schafer of which checking out is encouraged. Although the questions were apparently asked before Br?tal Legend was announced, the article is pretty lengthy and has some good stuff. Good stuff, man.

You might be tempted to turn off your computer and go to sleep after all that reading, but if you do you'll miss this second, even longer interview with Tim by the guys at IGN Australia. Let's take a look at what's going on in there:

IGN AU: Are you worried about the ESRB at all?

Tim Schafer: Oh I'm not worried about them at all. They're going to hate it. I mean, mostly we're just making it to our own personal tastes. I mean, I feel, personally, that you can't make a game with a broad axe in it and not have a decapitation. I feel almost like, that would be a bug. Technically speaking. But I think if you do it with a sense of humour, and you do it over the top, I think it's still kind of light hearted. On the medieval battlefield, chopping someone's head off with an axe is different than beating a hooker to death with a pipe, y'know... I think that fantasy violence can be done in a way that feels - it sounds strange to think that chopping someone's head off can be light hearted, but I think it can be done, as any Monty Python fan would know.

There's also a bunch of new screenshots and concept art scattered throughout so you'd pretty much have to be a huge idiot to not already be there.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun have gotten themselves an interview with Valve writer Erik Wolpaw, who it transpires actually worked for Double Fine not too long ago. Not only that, but he was the (a?) story/dialogue writer for Psychonauts alongside ol' Tim Schafer.

Although the majority of the interview is about Valve and their newly released Orange Box, he does talk about his experience at Double Fine for a few paragraphs. And that's good enough for a Mojo post, right? Of course it is.

"Anyway, the best thing about working with Tim was that I could completely trust his instincts. If I wrote something, and then Tim thought it wasn?t that strong, I didn?t have to waste any time agonizing over whether he was wrong because he was right. He?s like a big comedy safety net."

Read that interview.

Personally I'm doubtful as to whether this means anything, but if a site as big as CVG jumps to this conclusion then we're duty-bound to report it. Even if there's a minimal chance it may be true, it's still a chance.

Since Br?tal Legend's official announcement on Double Fine's site their long awaited Projects Page also went up... with a little surprise. Under the fully-available Br?tal Legend project site is a banner for Psychonauts, but instead of being available as the game is it's merely 'Coming Soon'.

CVG have leapt to the conclusion that this might mean a new Psychonauts-based project in the works, if so most likely a port of the game for the DS, PSP or the Wii. We here at Mojo would love this to be true - more Psychonauts means more good in the world - but we're a bit skeptical of CVG's deduction. It's most likely just a Psychonauts-branded version of the site like the Br?tal Legend project page. Still, wouldn't it be great if it were true?

Update by Jason: As if it was really necessary, Tim Schafer debunked the rumors and confirmed that the "Coming Soon" image was simply for a new Psychonauts product page.

Sierra has launched their Br?tal Legend page. Highlights include a higher res version of the trailer and a screenshots gallery, but it all rocks.

Update: Not to mention Double Fine itself has put up its own page!

Update plus update minus zero: As pointed out by Thunderpeel, Tim has written his thoughts on the matter up on the Double Fine news page, including the tidbit that you can pre-order the game here in an hour.

Update Six Six Six by The Tingler: Now available to pre-order from GameStop (hey, the 360 version might work on European consoles). Worth it for the T-Shirt... and what's this? Don't know how accurate GS's info is, but they've got the release date down as 11/03/08! That's only 5 months from now! Woo! ... Oh, wait, it's the stupid American way of writing dates, isn't it? So it's actually coming out 3rd November 2008. Which is a waaaay off and will undoubtedly slip. Sob.

That's all.

Update: If you're worried this might be pulled down any minute now, you can download it from GameTrailers as of now.

The Escapist online magazine has just posted a new interview with Tim Schafer. Unfortunately there isn't any mention of Br?tal Legend or indeed any game beyond Psychonauts, but Psychonauts is still an Excellent Game too remember? Here's a clip:

"During the pitching (and re-pitching) of Psychonauts, the word "creative" was oftentimes said as a slur. "People would just kinda be like, 'Oh, it's very creative.' And it really seemed like the more you could make your game seem more like something else or more derivative of something else, the more comfortable they would be with it."

It's only a short interview, but quite interesting. There's definitely info in there I didn't know about before. Check it out.

And if you enjoyed that, why not check The Escapist's resident pessimist Yahtzee's entertaining review of the Excellent Game, if you haven't already.

The scans are here!

Check them out at the Double Fine forums. And then buy the magazine, if you can.

Does the game look good? Shit yes.

Details from the scans include:

Online multiplayer

Third person action adventure with an RPG flavour

One large world peppered with a variety of missions

Jack Black as Riggs the protagonist - and a sneeze of heavy metal rock stars playing other characters and contributing music

Story centers around Riggs in the Rock & Roll universe (rather like Halloween-land in The Nightmare Before Christmas, but centered on music) - and not a journey from heaven to hell as previously rumored.

Due for release on the PS3 and Xbox 360 - no word on a PC port.

Jake Rodkin confirmed as "Little Daddy" who follows Riggs around and offers helpful comments on game design. Remi Olsen has so far not been contacted with the offer of a role.

Source: black_sheep

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Brian Crecente from Kotaku was sent a mystery music record today that contained the following poem on its sleeve:

Since the beginning of time 'twas written in stone, that the mystery to The Age of Metal would surface from the unknown. As the recipient of the ancient tools within, you have the power to unlock this riddle with a simple spin.

Rock must run through your veins, else solving this puzzle will be met with head pains. With primeval secrets at your fingertips, you possess the gift to propagate the fidelity from your mortal lips.

Escape the clutches of convention and let yourself travel to another dimension. Find your destiny and protect your soul, but for now it is time to Rock 'N Roll."

Crecente urges readers to help him work out the lyrics in this video. I myself find them almost as hard to decipher as one of Dingy?s songs, but here goes:

"Oh yeah:
We are the sheath of black yeah
We explode the night year
To every moment of the night
Trip on us: let us twist and turn
The night gets divine
We are the sin of the shark yeah...
Let?s explode the ark yeah"

BUT ? and here's the ticket ? if you keep watching the video past the UPS lady, Crecente plays the record backwards and you can distinctly hear:

"Br?tal Legends Coming Soon"

Either that or: "Brandy Leeking on the moon." One thing we can be sure of is that it is Jack Black singing. This has been confirmed by our resident Rock expert, Remi Olsen, and is therefore scientific fact.

Update: IGN got sent one too although those lazy swines didn't get so far as bothering to record it so we could hear it or anything. Apparently though they checked with FedEx and the record & player was sent by Vivendi/Sierra, publishers of the new DF game...

Source: DeadKyle

If you know what's good for you.

One hundred dollars* to the first person who scans in the preview for us.

* money paid in Monkey Bucks^TM

Update by The Tingler: Ok, I'm getting worried I might have to eat my scepticism soon.

Source: Idle Thumbs forums

Mojo-er numble has pointed out that NeoGAF are conducting an interview with Tim Schafer;

NeoGAF will be interviewing Tim Schafer of Double Fine Productions, and we need your help. This is your chance to ask those burning questions about Tim and his accomplishments in the video game industry.

Apparently it takes around 2-4 weeks to gain posting rights when signing up at NeoGAF, so numble has kindly offered to consider questions left by Mojoers in the comments below and post them on your behalf.

Br?tal Legend. Yes, that's an umlaut, and yes that is a title Double Fine has filed a US trademark application for. There are some more, not overly surprising, info over at Gamestop, though little to reveal what the game is, you know, about. The Mojo still takes the highly unconfirmed rumor (which Gamestop apparently picked up from us) with more than a grain of salt.

So yeah, we'll see.

When Double Fine launched its snazzy new web site recently, there was an enticing "Minigames" section that was decorated by a less enticing "Coming soon" message.

But today, the company has released its first minigame: the instant-classic Epic Fighter, based on the characters and universe of Razmig Mavlian's equally epic Epic Saga Action Comic. With an extensive array of selectable characters, an art style that makes Psychonauts look stale, and an impeccable combat system, this is a game that's unlikely to be dethroned as the Greatest Thing Ever in the foreseeable future.