The International House of Mojo

As pointed out by clone2727 in the Mojo forum, LucasArts trashed all the old game minisites during the recent site redevelopment. The web designers appear to be listening to the fans' requests to restore (some of) them, and have asked for feedback in this LucasArts forum thread.

You can see some of the older minisites linked here on archive.org and some of the newer ones by clicking through to the 'official site' from these links. The ones with lots of flash don't appear to have been saved fully, rendering many of the archived ones useless.

Source: clone2727

According to Kotaku, LucasArts is readying a new non-Star Wars shooter, set in a future East Coast vs. West Coast US civil war. Crips / Bloods?

The first- and third-person shooter features some nifty land deformation schtick courtesy of an advancement in weapons technology. Players will be armed with grenades that can transform the landscape to their advantage, whether it be to establish cover or to reach new heights on a particular level, you'll literally reshape the battlefield. Each splintered faction will also have access to firearms that deploy mines that travel beneath the surface at rocket speeds [carried by sharks? - jp-30] to take out enemies and carve out craters. Expect plenty of flying rocks.

Looks as if LucasArts is trying to launch a new Mercenaries style franchise in the wake of it losing the rights to Mercenaries 2.

Source: Kotaku

A month or so ago gaming sites reported that Zombies Ate My Neighbors received a rating on the ESRB web site, which is usually a dead giveaway that a game will be appearing on Nintendo's Virtual Console service in the near (or not so near) future. (Mojo of course knew about this news at the time but consciously chose to break it now because we prefer being fashionably late.)

For those who don't remember or who have never played this LucasArts gem from 1993, it was a top-down two player game for SNES and Genesis that had you ridding suburban neighborhoods, malls, Egyptian tombs, etc. of the living dead with water guns and weedeaters. The game was a hoot and a half (and even featured an unlockable Day of the Tentacle stage!) and I suggest all Wii owners give it a whirl once it shows up for download. There's a reason it still has a loyal fanbase, you know.

Also, while the game was published by Konami, I hope this is a sign that future LucasArts developed titles might show up on the service at some point. There was a rather cool NES port of Maniac Mansion and the not-half-bad Shadows of the Empire for N64 among others that would make nice additions to the VC library. Fingers futilely crossed!

Update: Tragically, it would seem that the intel was mistaken, as Zombies Ate My Neighbors is no longer listed on the ESRB site. For those who need something to hope for though, know that Konami (the game's publisher) and Jaleco (the NES Maniac Mansion publisher) have previously had their games added to the Virtual Console, so it's not 100% impossible. Just don't hold your breath.

Hooked Gamers scored itself a peek at the upcoming Indiana Jones game for the Xbox 360 and PS3. The preview doesn't contain any new information that I can see, and all the screenshots look familiar, but give it a look anyway!

Source: Hooked Gamers

Taken from the TT Games website; TT Games is supporting British charity Red Nose Day by offering a special secret cheat code for LEGO Star Wars II (on PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, PC and Gamecube).

It puts red noses on all the characters in the game ? from Han Solo to the Emperor. See classic Star Wars scenes as you?ve never imagined them!



All they ask is that you make a donation to the charity, of any amount you can afford, suggested donation is ?1.

See here for more details

Source: TT Games

The upcoming Star Wars FPS, originally scheduled for this November, has been delayed until Spring 2008. Just last month the same thing happened to the new Indiana Jones game, only here there's no movie that can be used as an excuse. It's almost as if, gasp, the game is actually delayed, for the same reason other games are!

Sounds pretty reasonable to me. After all, isn't it better to release a game that's late but quality than timely but buggy? I mean to me the only way something like this would make you look bad is if you publicly slammed every developer who did the same or something.

You may recall last year Mojo reported that the Lucas Animation studio in Singapore was being expanded to include a handheld gaming division.

Today Develop revealed that the first game from the studio will be... a Star Wars title!

LucasArts is working on a handheld game based on its new Clone Wars CG TV show, and its sister production studio at Lucasfilm Singapore has been expanded to handle the development. The game will be the first internally developed handheld title for LucasArts...

Industry veteran Feargus Carroll is taking the reigns at the studio as project lead, bringing with him over 12 years of production experience earnt at the likes of Psygnosis, Infogrames and Electronic Arts. His more recent titles include Freedom Fighters, Black & White 2 and Battlefield: Modern Combat. Meanwhile the production's lead artist role will be filled by Matt Aldrich, former EA Vancouver art director.

Source: Develop

The LucasArts classics line that we reported being released in the UK last December has made its way (with a slight cover-art variation to accomodate the classification labels) to Australia and New Zealand.

The games run straight from the CD, no installation necessary, and run in Win 98SE, ME, 2000 and XP. There is a graphics filter applied on the SCUMM games to soften the jaggies.

Titles in this series include;

- Sam & Max Hit the Road
- Full Throttle
- The Dig
- Grim Fandango
- The Curse of Monkey Island
- Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight + Mysteries of the Sith
- Star Wars Episode 1 Racer

NZ based Gaming store GamePlanet is selling them for NZ$15 (US$10.50) and yes, they do ship internationally.

It seems that the LucasLegal team are up in arms that people using the site digg.com could be getting it confused with a 12 year old point and click adventure game. They have opposed the request by Digg to trademark its name.

"THE DIGG mark is confusingly similar in sound, meaning, and appearance to the Opposer's THE DIG mark," reads the LucasFilm Notice of Opposition document filed last month in San Francisco. "The Applicant's registration and use of the DIGG Mark would likely create confusion, mistake, or deception in the minds of prospective purchasers as to the origin or source of the Opposer's Goods associated with THE DIG Mark."

The source of this story is here on Slippery Brick. You may be able to read the legal papers directly here at U.S. Patent and Trademark Office site, though the link appears down at present. The link was provided by Forbes.com.

Source: Slippery Brick

Cubed3 News is reporting a rare treat in store for attendees of this year's Game Developers Conference;

Fans of video game sound and music are in for a very special treat during this year's GDC event with the highly regarded Video Games Live music show bringing the industry event to a close with a series of top musical names in the business.

[Including] a rare special acoustic performance by the original LucasArts composers performing a medley of classics including Monkey Island, Outlaws and Grim Fandango

The GDC is on March 5-9 in San Francisco. GDC website is here for more general info.

Source: Cubed3

I was checking out the newfangled LucasArts site and got to reading through the "About LucasArts" page. Check out this portion:

In 2008, Indiana Jones whips back into gaming. The completely original, film-quality story told with direction from George Lucas pits the man in the fedora in an epic story of biblical proportions.

No doubt this is so that it can coincide with the new film, which is slated to release on May 22 of the same year.

The LucasArts website has been given a complete redesign. Looks snazzy, but heaven help anyone on dialup connections. Congratulations to Mojo, who now owns the colour purple exclusively (ignoring the LucasArts store, which is yet to be reskinned).

Also as part of the relaunch, the minisite for the forthcoming in-house produced Star Wars title "Force Unleashed" is now up.

Source: LucasArts

The guys behind the forthcoming fangame Zak McKracken Between Time and Space delayed their game's release until early 2007 because the lead developer took a pilgrimage to California to meet original Zak McKraken writer / programmer David Fox and get his blessing.

Kind of like climbing the sacred mountain to commune with the gods before descending with a new dispensation for mankind. Or something like that.

If you can read German, then this account of the pilgrimage will be more meaningful. The rest of us can just look at the lovely photos.

Source: zak2.org

I hate to be the bringer of bad news, so I'll do it quickly: Traxion has been canceled. Luckily this means we don't have to add it to our games database from where it was conspicously missing.

Now let's have a moment of silence.

Source: GameInformer

Over on the Adventure Gamers forums, Stain has posted that there is a new line of LucasArts reissues being sold under the Lucas Classic Line banner. These include many of the old adventures that have long been out of print, including The Dig, Full Throttle, Sam & Max Hit The Road, Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, Monkey Islands 3 & 4.

No official word yet, but one would expect the games to ship with an XP compatible launcher.

Source: Stain

Gamasutra has started transcribing archival podcasts for reasons best known only to them. In the latest to be converted to the written word, we have a 2004 GDC speech by Bioware's Casey Hudson "Creating a Monster RPG: The Light and the Dark Side of Development on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic".

...and so I give you the KotOR work breakdown. It's basically showing that we spent 90 man-years developing KotOR. It's also kind of interesting to look at the way the breakdown was. We spent a lot of time on the art. We spent 28 man-years doing the art. So a huge amount of art-content went into KotOR, and a tremendous amount of programming too. And this was even given that we are leveraging the technology that we've developed previously. And even though the game was very story-based and is really about the story, we spent less time on the design part, 14 man-years versus 16 on the animation side. Because we had 76 cut-scenes, and hundreds and hundreds of character actions for the choreographed combat, and it was all hand-animated. So a huge amount of work went into that.

Many more interesting tidbits on the creation and development of the original KOTOR an the link above. Meatbags.

Source: Gamasutra

When it comes to most LucasArts news, it's preferable to let other, more interested sites do the work for us. 1up noticed that in a recent Next-Generation interview with LucasArts (specifically Nancy MacIntyre, VP of global sales and marketing), they more or less reveal their intentions to eventually make a third Knights of the Old Republic installment:

We've also got Star Wars franchises like Knights of the Old Republic ... that we will not leave behind. It's very important to us that we grow those franchises.

Neither Obsidian nor other potential developers for the title are named, but the interview is not devoid of further interesting quotes:

We feel like it's really important to make each Star Wars game an event, she explains. "Our fans want a logical progression of the Star Wars story line, so we are committed to only two Star Wars experiences a year.

Which sounds good for their future catalogue's variety, but recall LucasArts' plan for less overall releases per year, and you may not be left with assurance that the ratio of Star Wars games to original games will dramatically change. Still though, it's not all bad news out of LucasArts anymore and there's the ever present glimmer of hope for original IP (that we might care about) in the company's future.

Thanks to Scummbuddy for the tipoff.

Well, it seems that once again our shared disdain for a game we've never played hasn't exactly translated into equally scathing reviews. After all the game's title implies a promise of at least a single thrill, and the decent reviews that Thrillville (which came out, by the way) has been getting at places like Gamespot (which compares the game's presentation to Psychonauts) and IGN suggest that a minimum of that much may have been delivered.

So! We were all a bunch of morons and there may be worse things to spend $40 on than Thrillville. We can probably still pick on Traxion though.

:~

You know what they say about slow news days - you've got to spend them digging up old Eurogamer video interviews with Jim Ward so that you can make unfair remarks about his rehearsed games industry sermons. And what kind of dickweed would I be to disregard They?

Check out Part 1 and if you're a compulsive completist, Part 2 of such an interview with Czar Ward from August. He doesn't say much that he hasn't told us before: how it's inexcusable for games to get delayed, how the company has moved "far beyond" being just a Star Wars company, etc. There's also some possibly (but probably not) unseen clips from Thrillville and Indy (which hopefully won't suck) thrown in. Still though, I'm almost positive this hasn't been mentioned before, and our negligence is your wasted quarter hour.

In Telltale news, yet another update of the Bone games is being released in the near future which is hinted to be more substantial than the previous one was. Who knows? Jeff Smith, maybe.

Those crazy folks over at Overclocked Remix.org have been making great remixes of classic computer game music for years, but save for a few Monkey Island 1 and 2 projects the number of LucasArts games represented has been tantalisingly scarce. That is, until today!

Well, actually, I made that sound like there have been ten or so LucasArts mp3s added, which isn't the case - but there has been one, and it's from Day of the Tentacle!

Yes, 'The Great Tentacle Pianist' by Mazedude is the file you're looking for. Described by the site:

At just under two and a half minutes, it comes off as more of a soundtrack/sketch piece - the type of piece that would accompany the introduction of a quirky character in a Tim Burton film - than a full-fledged overture, but it's still substantive enough to say something, and develop while doing so.

So what are you waiting for?

Source: OC Remix