The International House of Mojo

Quick note here: Two forums in the community have been redesigned. You will look at them immediately.

Firstly, radio-drama maker Nightlight Productions has a new layout for its hosted forum. It could really use some love from the community. :)

Secondly, the Full Throttle forum (home to fans of the Kickstand and Polecats Lounge) got a makeover as well, and could also use some new visitors.

Visit!

LFNetwork graphic designer TheJackal has whipped up a nice new design for the latest board to be featured at LucasForums: LEC's 20th Anniversary! This new section contains several forums for discussing current titles, classics, and future releases from LEC, as well as a forum for giving LEC some feedback (careful, they might read it). Check it out!

For the 4th of July celebration, CaliGirl has posted mini interviews with Gaming Companies [Activision, iD, Westwood, to name a few], Clans, Known Gamers, and most importantly of course, Web Gurus. In the web gurus category is LFNetwork's Big Daddy, Don "Aristotle" McPartland. Check it out @ CaliGirl.net

The LucasForums.com domain name is back working again, which means the forums are once again in their proper place. You can get to Mixnmojo's forums by going to forums.mixnmojo.com, or by clicking the "Forums" tab in the navigation bar at the top of the site.

This message was posted by LFNetwork administrator Aristotle on JediKnightii.net, and is being reposted here.

Just a quick note, that next week this site and the LFNetwork as a whole will be getting some server upgrades to deal with the major increase in traffic we've experienced this past month, network wide. The release of Ep. II brought in a whole new group of LucasArts gaming enthusiasts, and we have to adjust accordingly. We currently have 3 full servers for the network, but we'll be adding and upgrading over the next week to meet the new demands, including making sure we can serve all your File Download demands. Thanks for your patience.

Hopefully the return of the notorious Mojo Downtime will go away again once we get the upgraded servers under control. Apologies to all.

Well, seeing as the Mixnmojo Community section is still being worked on (honest), I'll update about a couple of things going on in the realm of Mojo hosted sites and whatnot. I should have gotten to this post sooner, but sometimes real life issues get the best of people. But enough excuses, here's the news:

LucasTones has been updated with some new MP3 mixes of LucasArts tunes (found on the projects page). There is also word of more logos, ringtones, and an article coming to the site within the next week or so.

MonkeyGames Entertainment is back with a great new layout by netmonkey, as well as some new projects in development. Also be sure to stop by the MonkeyGames forum and leave some feedback!

Lastly, for those of you still reluctant to visit our message board, we've added some new community forums that you really ought to check out:

• Dig Discussion: Dig@mixnmojo.com's forum for discussing anything related to LEC's spacey adventure.
• SCUMM Hacking Community: Get advice from the gurus on ripping, compatibility issues, or anything else related to the SCUMM engine!
• LucasTones Forum: Give feedback on the site or request ringtones here!
• The Monkey Island Clan Community Forum: Like action games? Like Monkey Island? Want join a clan of fellow MI fans? Well, look no further!
• Full Throttle Discussion: Chat with your fellow Polecats about the LucasArts classic, or it's upcoming sequel.

Needless to say, there's a lot more going on in the mojo community than what is covered in this post, and I'm sure that I'm neglecting a few sites. That said, I encourage you all to visit some sites around the LF Network that you may not have been to before, because there is a lot to discover!

LFNetwork site LucasGames has relaunched its main site with a whole new look and tons of new content. Make sure to check out their E3 section where they have exclusive coverage on the games shown off by LEC.

As a special treat, they snagged an interview with LEC president Simon Jeffery! Their questions go in a different direction than the Mojo interview so if you read ours, make sure to read this one as well for info about the general operations of LucasArts. Here's a clip:

LFN: Since this is the 20th Anniversary of the company, what type of celebration can fans expect?

Simon: Great Question! We are going to be doing some stuff on our website over the summer. I don?t want to give away too much now. We kind of kick off our own internal celebration next week. We have a company meeting that is purely about the 20th anniversary.

Last night, Mixnmojo had the privilege of attending a private screening hosted by LucasArts. The event, which was attended by a wide variety of industry professionals and media, began with a slide show demonstrating some LucasArts trivia. Of course, we knew all the answers, despite all the trivia being Star Wars related. The large theater was virtually filled to capacity, and there were a few familiar faces scattered around the room. We saw Tom Sarris, being his usual friendly self, and Tim Schafer was at the screening, which was a pleasant surprise.<:MORENEWS:>

Simon Jeffrey, president of LucasArts, started off the show by talking about the current focus of the company. ?At a time when the industry is standardizing,? Simon began, ?we?re aiming to go back to our roots. Highly creative, original, edgy, and thought provoking games.? After discussing the critical success of last year?s E3 lineup, he reflected on the challenges ahead. ?Our positioning is somewhat in conflict with itself in that we are striving for innovation and creative achievement, while at the same time managing one of the biggest intellectual properties in gaming.?

So what about original gaming? ?We?re showcasing eight games at E3 this year,? Simon continued. ?Four Star Wars games, and four games that aren?t Star Wars. This marks our return to original gaming; part of our legacy, part of our heritage.?

The highlight of the show for Mixnmojo was hearing the crowd reaction to different games mentioned by Jeffery. While the other games were met with half-hearted clapping, once it was revealed that Ben from Full Throttle was returning in a sequel, the crowd erupted with applause. We were then treated to projected game trailers on the movie screen for each of the new titles. Some trailers ended with enthusiastic responses from the audience, while others resulted in quiet reflection.

After the 10-minute presentation, the Episode II screening began. The crowd wasn?t nearly as enthusiastic about the movie as they were the game trailers, but it?s likely that everyone at the screening has already seen the movie. Of course, it didn?t help that the sound broke near the beginning of the movie. Oops.

We?ll be at E3 all day today and tomorrow, so expect more news directly from Los Angeles soon.

I'd like to welcome aboard the newest LFNetwork affiliate, StarWarsKnights.com! They've officially opened today, with a great design and a dedicated staff of Star Wars nuts! The site focuses on the upcoming BioWare/LucasArts console release, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Check out the site, and be sure to stop by their forums.

DarthMaulUK, of GalacticBattles.com, has a copy of the upcoming Clone Campaigns expansion pack for Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, that he will be giving away in a competition. Find out the details on this thread!

I'm very happy to report that the one formerly known as Captain Dread (and currently known as MetaFox) has returned to take over the best on-line Grim Fandango fan club ever, the Lost Souls Alliance.

Some of you "old school" Grim Fandango fans will remember that Dread took charge of this site back in 1999, and ran it for about a year before he left the LucasArts community. He's back now, and has also brought back his LucasArts fan site MegaMonkey, which covers many LEC titles. It's great to have him back.

JediKnightII.net has interviewed Mike Stemmle, LEC game designer and writer, who wrote the script to Jedi Outcast. Mojo readers probably better know Stemmle for his work as co-game designer of both Sam & Max Hit the Road and Escape from Monkey Island, and programmer on Fate of Atlantis.

The JKII interview is pretty amusing, as Stemmle rarely gives a straight answer. Sounds like he enjoyed writing JKII though.

Yes it's been very slack from my end recently, but its time to get that sorted. I need all the hosted / network sites out there to email me so I can make sure I have the correct contact address for you.

In the email please make sure you list anything you need such as the banner code. When I think I have everyone listed I will send out a letter with all the relevant information on living at mixnmojo.

The unfinished sections of Mojo will also be completed in this period of what we like to call 'Mojo Smackdown' (that is unless something insane happens to me... again)

Just letting you know that LucasForums, the host of Mojo's forums, is in the middle of a server move, so some posts may be lost, and it may be up and down for the first half of today.

Hopefully, though, when this move is finished, the hours of downtime and MySQL errors which we've been seeing will be gone for good!

Update: The forums are all moved and working, so unless your ISP hasn't switched the domain info to the new server, you should be able to go post crazy!

I just got back from a crazy long day at LucasArts. Fellow LFN members Chris (ChrisC3po), Don (Aristotle) and Michael (ZeroXcape) went in for some business-y (but exciting) meetings, and then got subjected to the grand circle tour and then some.

If you were wondering (which you probably are not, thank you very much) we played a couple upcoming games, including a venerable upcoming FPS, and it has definitely lived up to the hype.

Also saw some new super-duper secret stuff coming down the pipe that might actually excite this jaded pack of fans that we call Mojo. Thanks to Tom Sarris for taking us around, we're eternally greatful. You could even say it made us glad.

GalacticBattles.com, thanks to LucasArts, has an exclusive video going "behind the scenes" of Galactic Battlegrounds. They've only published the first part, dealing with the thinking behind the art of the game, but apparently more will follow.

Those not interested in Battlegrounds or Star Wars at a whole should watch it for the exclusive LEC content: a sneak peek at a LucasArts cubicle, computer screen, and art binder!

The Grim Fandango Network is sporting a new redesign by official Mojo Network Slave, Metallus. The new design (their fourth revision) features a php script based backend and quick access to hot forum threads.

Also, GFN has picked up three new sites: The Grim Mausoleum, The Rusty Anchor, and Grim Fandango World. Some of them seem to still be setting up, but they're worth checking out at least with the intent of visiting them again soon.

There have been a number of people asking about what this "LF Network" business is. By now, most people have a pretty good idea, but for those who are still in the dark, the official LFN site is now up and running, so check it out.

As some of you might have noticed already, the majority of hosted sites on LFNetwork are back and fully functioning since the server move. However, there were a few that did not come back online as quickly as the rest.

While some are still offline, I'm glad to announce that two large sites have returned. The veteran LEC gaming site LucasGames.com is back online, as is Escapemi.com, LG's haven for Monkey Island fans.

Hopefully we'll see the rest of the sites around the LEC community returning soon.