The International House of Mojo

There's only one thing we at Mixnmojo like more than video games, and that is to dance. We also like sales.

Telltale are having a sale. There's new bundles, and free shipping for orders over $25. I'd like to stress the "free shipping" part, which you may not know to equal $0.00. Which is exactly what your brain is worth if you don't go with this; if you want to support adventure or story-driven games, anyways. It's worth mentioning that anyone who's subscribed to the Telltale Interloper gets an extra little deal. You can still sign-up and get in on it.

LucasArts are doing something on Steam. The "Early Holiday Sale" - is it an early holiday? I thought the year was almost over - will set you back a $49.99 for 16 games, which is 60% off the full price, saving you a whopping $77.85. That's almost 78, which is the average age of the writers on Mixnmojo.

Brutal Legend is going for, oh, less than $40 this Friday (America only). It's in celebration of Black Friday, which, according to the internet (and I quote), is "the day the United States was freed from the oppression of the British, and led into freedom and then betrayal by the leader of the rebellion, a turkey named Turkey[citation needed]." You can increase Double Fine money by buying from their store.

Steve Purcell has uploaded another two pieces of never-before-seen concept art from the scrapped Monkey Island animated movie. That conclusion being speculation on my part, of course.

Dave Grossman has added his annual entry into his Pumpkin House of Horrrors. Called "Death Panel," you can see by scrolling down to the bottom of the page. It's quite the doozy.

Grossman has apparently corrupted his coworkers as well, as the pumpkin cutting mayhem has extended to the Telltale office itself.

The current issue of Game Informer has a new interview with Ron Gilbert on the upcoming Deathspank. If you read it, tell us what's inside.

Electric Playground have an in-depth interview with Tim Schafer on Brutal Legend's multiplayer component.

In more important news, the total number of Monkey Island spoilers in this headline has been zero.

Update: Scans from Icebox. Thank you, Icebox!

Source: Twitter

Steve Purcell is now showing off on his blog his three initial concept sketches for the Tales of Monkey Island cover painting.

(Yes, we know this post is a week late. But here at Mojo we like to say that slow and steady wins the Cheese Squigglies.)

Interestingly, Purcell writes that he was never satisfied with his drawing of Elaine on the Secret of Monkey Island cover. In fact, his pencil layout drawing for the MI1 cover shows that he redrew Elaine, taping a cutout of her revised figure on top of the paper.

(And if you've never visited Purcell's blog, don't forget to check out all the posts under the Pirates label, which includes some character concept art he did for The Curse of Monkey Island, as well as storyboards for an "unidentified" pirate film.)

Source: Spudvision

Is this real?



Speculate.

Source: The Boss

You've got to check out this guy's Secret of Monkey Island tattoos. He posting the work-in-progress in this adventuregamers thread.

I just hope he gets a talking tattoo on his chest in due course. And that he updates Guybrush's haircut to look more like the Special Edition version, or the kids probably won't recognise him.

Source: Adventure Gamers

The Raider is reporting that the finished novelization of Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings has been cancelled.

The book [written by Indy veteran Rob MacGregor] and the game were originally scheduled to come out in June of 2008, simultaneously with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Both were pushed back to the fall of '08, then June '09 as the Indy operation underwent a shake-up.
After that, the game and book were pushed back yet another year to June of '10. But then the ambitious plans for a new Indy game platform were dropped, and the new video game was moved back to June '09.

What a debacle.

Source: The Raider

In his latest blog post, Steve Purcell provides some concept art for a Steam Mecha Max toy that was never made.

At one point I had talked to a company about making this toy. The top of the head would pop off revealing the little Captain Nemoesque Sam & Max pilots sporting goggles, top hats and ascots. Sadly it didn't happen but if I wish hard enough...

Crazy.

Update: Now Steve's got the same picture up in Mecha form, complete with a cockpit view. Enjoy!

This is only marginally relevant, but I figured I'd point it out anyway. Starting in 2005, around the time Telltale announced that it would make graphic adventure adaptions of the comic book license, Scholastic announced that it would be releasing colorized editions of each of the nine Bone books (essentially chronological collections each of about six of the total 55 issues) in six month intervals. A few weeks ago, the ninth and final book, Crown of Horns, was released in color, bringing the ambitious project to a successful finish.

Around the time all this began, there were some mumblings about Telltale doing some sort of cross-promotion with Scholastic, and indeed the seven month gap between the Out from Boneville and The Great Cow Race games seem to fit well with this idea. Obviously that never happened as the Bone game series was abandoned, presumably due to unspectacular sales and the desire to shift focus onto Sam & Max and other licenses (maybe there's hope for something involving the movie someday), but in any event if you're a Bone fan you'll definitely want to check out the colorization of the epic work, as the efforts are decidedly reverent and high quality (unlike say, some of those early Sam & Max color jobs...yikes).

Purcell's Sam & Max New Years greetings for 2009! Does this look familiar to you? If not, our bad!

Update by Kroms: A little something from Graham Annable.

They've been redecorating over at that other site and now they've launched a podcast where they thumb through (ho! ho!) games and stuff.

So if you've developed withdrawal symptoms while waiting for our second podcast, maybe this will help!

Yarrr!

Source: Grumpy Gamer

A reader named Jonathan from the Guild of Sculptors sent in this great work of Loom fan art: Bobbin Threadbare and Bishop Mandible have never looked so 3D and torso-less! Well, maybe Mandible. Great work!

Update: As "tenochtitlan" points out in the comments, these figures are apparently part of a complete chess set. I'd buy that for a dollar!

In honour of Gabez, Tim Schafer is now a father.

The staff of Mixnmojo send out congratulations and best wishes to Mr. Schafer. It's a girl!

Update: 2HB the real version is now complete as Mr. Graham Annable's son, James Oliver Annable, says "Hi" to the world.

Source: Double Fine Action News

So this is what he's up to when not writing news posts.

No, I'm not talking about the lame "video game" (those things will rot your brain, nerds), but rather the actual building block playsets. In other words, LEGOs. Following the excellent sets celebrating the original trilogy that were released this past December, the sets based on Crystal Skull (accidental premature descriptions of which provided some of the biggest officially-sanctioned spoilers for the film, oops) are now here.

Well, sorta. See, I don't think the sets are actually released until sometime in May, but while browsing Amazon for...weights...I found that three of the four Crystal Skull sets are listed as being in-stock. They are:

• Jungle Duel - See, it's like a duel, but in the jungle.
  
• River Chase - Indy and his friends chase down an unscrupulous river that attempts to evade capture.
  
• Jungle Cutter - Insert pseudo-witty comment here.
  

Apparently unavailable is the crème de la crème of the new sets, the Temple of the Crystal Skull, so I guess we have to wait for the actual release date to nab that one like the underprivileged saps we are.

Also, I don't know for confirmed fact those things are shipping, because my Mom won't let me buy them yet, but in the event that they are I figured JP resident LEGO fans would appreciate the heads up, probably.

As you may or may not know, today is Bicycle Day, the anniversary of Albert Hofmann's first intentional LSD trip 65 years ago.

"So what!" You cry.

You have almost got a point. But then I remind you that if it weren't for LSD then Steve Jobs would never have invented the computer, and there would be no such thing as Monkey Island. Apart from that song 'Monkey Island' by the 13th Floor Elevators - which, of course, wouldn't exist without LSD either.

Bonus LucasArts-related fact: Tim Schafer actually forced the Double Fine staff to work overtime to finish his drug-em-up action/adventure game Psychonauts a day early so that it could be released on Bicycle Day instead of his original release date, the marijuana-based April 20th.

So we have learned that LSD is marvellous, and the future will know it to be so thanks to people like you.