The International House of Mojo

You're only a month and change away from a new Indiana Jones movie, but if a video game is more your speed, you're going to want to find a comfortable chair. Though announced at the start of 2021, word on the upcoming Indy console title (Footnote: Though certainly targeting Xbox, it isn't clear yet whether it will be exclusive to it.) by MachineGames/Bethesda/Microsoft/Exxon has been almost entirely absent, which doesn't bode well for any hopes that it is particularly far along, even now.

But you can always hope that the Xbox Games Showcase, scheduled for June 11th, will offer some new info. With Dial of Destiny in theaters later that month and Indy promotional dollars being at peak expenditure, it would be a tactical time to refresh the public's awareness of the project, though even if that comes to pass it would be wise not to anticipate an imminent release date. Ah, for the days when Ronzo, David Fox and Noah Falstein could turn around an Indy game in seven months.

Daniel Albu continues to expand his labyrinthine warehouse of LucasArts developer interviews with Noah Falstein. The preposterously prolific game designer more than justifies the two-hour chat, and naturally where his LucasArts tenure is concerned he is pumped for insights on the Indiana Jones graphic adventures as well as The Dig.

Look, we barely use the pit of despair known as Twitter these days, and I’m not sure any of us have a Facebook account. Therefore, it’s barely our fault we missed this little Steve Purcell nugget:

As the image indicates, it was posted over at Sam & Max Funhouse, a domain that mercilessly redirects to Facebook. Mojo’s critical stance: That art deserves better.

In “no duh” news, it seems that the U.S. is getting a widespread, if fleeting, re-release of Raiders of the Lost Ark to properly set the table for Dial of Destiny. You’ll wanna check your local showtimes for information accurate to your area, but it’s looking like all the big chains (AMC, Regal, Cinemark) are participating and will run the movie on Sunday, June 4th and Wednesday, June 7th. Hopefully the presentation is the real deal (a DCP) and not any of that simulcast nonsense.

No word on any of the sequels getting the big screen treatment, though you can always pester your local art house. Failing that, the UHDs that came out two years ago are rather fantastic for all your marathoning needs. The glorious reds of Temple of Doom have never been more vulgar.

In other Indy news, a new still has been shared from Dial. It shows Indy next to a character named Teddy (Ethann Isidore), who will it seems do some sidekicking during the oft-glimpsed Tangier section of the movie.

Not literally (that we know of), but he is once again doing a fireside chat, this time for “LudoNarraCon 2023”:

I’m not seeing the actual date for Ron’s talk on the official page, but going by his Mastodon post, it will take place on the opening day. Presumably, this is what the meaning of “May the 4th be with you” is.

Here’s one we forgot to mention, at least until we dropped it in The Adventurer: A remaster of the Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo soundtrack (Footnote: Incorrectly we put “world” in the newsletter—Putt-Putt never reached those types of lofty achievements.) has hit Bandcamp. Courtesy of The Fat Man and Team Fat, $10 gets you both MP3 and FLAC downloads which is a good deal by most any definition. Run and buy.

This has been a long time coming. Little girl me would have gone crazy for this in 1992.

A hacker named Ryan Souders, aka HonkeyKong, has released a patch for Maniac Mansion for the Nintendo Entertainment System that allows it to have real mouse support through the SNES Mouse via a Super Nintendo Entertainment System to Nintendo Entertainment System controller adapter.

The project's Romhacking page mentions this patch is for the North American NTSC release of Maniac Mansion. So, hamsters in the microwaves are in, but classical statues are out. The project's forum thread states this patch also works with the prototype version.

No word on whether the hamster cruelty-free European PAL version or the censorship-free prototype version is, or will be, supported, but I'll keep you posted (or most likely Jason will since I'm as common as the Nintendo PlayStation around here nowadays).

Oh, FYI, HonkeyKong made a Shadowgate mouse hack too.

Total Film Magazine will have a cover story on Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny in their upcoming issue, hitting newsstands April 27th. To promote it, they’ve revealed two nifty magazine covers (one for subscribers, another for the off-the-shelf version) and two new production stills from the movie:

Not sure if there’s going to be an online version of the article or if you’re gonna be dependent on illegal scans (not that it would kill you to do the right thing, of course), so we’ll just have to see how the week plays out.

How does four hours with Bill sound to you, other than that it’s about fifteen fewer than you’d like? Daniel Albu is here with his latest developer interview, and with it the remainder of your day is sorted out. And yes, A Vampyre Story 2 gets a status report.

In the end, it was fifteen days of downtime for the forums, which you’d think this community could weather standing on their heads after we’d let them rot for several years. But movingly enough, some of you genuinely seemed to miss what you didn’t have, as evidenced by your concerned messages and bricks thrown through the windows of zaarin’s home.

All of which is to say the boards are repaired, or anyway on a failure hiatus. So make with the Mojole crowing and Dial of Destiny trailer commentary like the last two weeks were just a bad dream. And have a thought for zaarin, who had to brave unspeakable depths of silliness to get the jalopy coughing out its signature blue smoke once again.

We have the uncomfortable duty to remind you that Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, which was inevitably invited to the Limited Run dance, is available for pre-order through Sunday and no longer. Owning Zak McKracken boxed has until now been the exclusive privilege of billionaires. Thanks to Limited Run, you now merely have to be fabulously wealthy:

Embrace your inner German and pre-order now.

That’s Bajakian, Land, and McConnell to you.

We knew it existed, and after we dropped some vague threats in the previous GDC video thread, Sushi intervened, and gave us the link to the Monkey Island composers GDC talk: Find it here—I’ll skip the video embed this time, as it doesn’t have much of a shelf life.

This is the good stuff, but you already knew that, and it’s one facet of Return to Monkey Island we haven’t heard too many details about. Until now. And there are tons of 'em. Run and read! (And thanks, Sushi!)

Mojo asked and GDC answered: Jenn Sandercock’s ReMI has made its way online. And to save you the click, here it is.

I haven’t had the chance to watch it yet, but will very much carve out the hour to do so ASAP. As should you—what else do you really have going on if you’re reading this?

Update: After clearly exceeding their streaming limits from hoards of Mojo views, the embedded video looks to have been blocked from outside GDC’s site. So, go view it there.

It was on a short hiatus, but as most have noticed, The Adventurer made its triumphant return last week. And if you’re one of those precious holdouts who haven’t subscribed to our newsletter yet, well, get over yourself and do so right now.

Meanwhile, as you may have heard, Substack has also launched its Twitter alternative called Notes. After having given the service a once-over, the CEO put forth a decree instructing Mojo’s social media staff to initiate a pilot program utilizing it as a potential Mastodon replacement. This is to say, if you subscribe to The Adventurer, not only will you receive our newsletter, but you’ll also get to enjoy our social presence. That’s a win-win for you and us!

(Rumors that the CEO is using Mojo’s Notes metrics to strategically place his new endeavor, Insert Disk 64, are still unsubstantiated.)

Well, here’s something: Broken Age’s Kickstarter campaign launched ten years ago. To either mourn time passing us by or to celebrate the occasion (depending on your point of view), Game Informer has put together a roundtable interview with the development leads behind the game.

Tim Schafer, Greg Rice, Lee Petty, and Anna Kipnis are all there, and there’s even a “special thanks” to one James Spafford. I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, but the odds of it being good seem good.

And what was Mojo up to ten years ago today? “LEC old timers submit to creepy Youtube interviews”—strangely related-ish. (Update! Other than the fact that the news post was from 2012—look, I can’t be expected to know that it’s 2023. In 2013 we were doing zilch on this day.)

And it’s 2 hours and 22 minutes. That makes it the longest of the Indy movies, but not to the extent of outrageousness. And it is a finale, after all. What with movies beginning only after nineteen hours of ads, though, you still pretty much need to clear your day.

In other Dial of Destiny news, it turns out that attendees of the Star Wars Celebration panel, where the new trailer debuted, were also treated to a six-minute set piece from the middle of the movie. Inevitably, it’s leaked out in phone quality. While that’s more continuous footage from the film than I personally need to see outside of the proper context, the reactions have been good. And that’s good.

Back in the day, LucasArts included a trade-in form inside the box of The Secret of Monkey Island that allowed you to mail in your purchased version of the game (plus a nominal fee) to exchange it for another. So for example, if you had the VGA version on 3.5” diskettes but decided what your heart really desired was the EGA version on 5.25” diskettes, you could fill out the card and send it off along with a check and your diskettes. Within two business weeks, you’d find yourself with the replacement disks and, presumably, happiness ever after.

In June 2002, our own telarium wrote up a personal odyssey of redeeming that Monkey Island coupon a decade after the fact, to test the extent of the company's honor. When we undertook a mission to restore all our old features, we were never able to find the two photographs that telarium included in this particular one, which is kind of lethal given the premise of it.

In the end, the retired staffer said “eff it” and reproduced the photos, and now the classic feature rides again without compromise. While we were at it, we submitted a copy to the Library of Congress for reasons of redundancy. Weirdly, they only accepted it on the condition that we send them a $10 money order.

Because he likes breaking my heart, Steve Purcell’s official Sam & Max presence these days remains…a Facebook page. Though he often uses it to re-run vintage Sam & Max art, he’ll occasionally slip in a new piece.

Trouble is, you pretty much have to be as diligent as samandmax.co.uk to notice such things in a timely manner, and who could be expected to be their equal? So if you keep up with them (as you should), you already know that Purcell rang in the new year with this gem:

Hey, why not? With the as-of-yet-undated release of The Devil’s Playhouse Remastered due out sometime this year, it will indeed be a noteworthy year for Max. It’s also the 30th anniversary of Sam & Max Hit the Road, so maybe someone out there should get cracking on the retrospective? We did ours 15 years in, so now it’s your turn. We’ll even host it for you.

Update: It's been brought to my attention that the Twitter account https://twitter.com/samandmax does a reliable job of posting any new art that Purcell puts out, so you may want to be keeping tabs on that as well.

You probably noticed that the forums have been down for the past day. Rest assured that our crack staff of technicians, plus zaarin, are at work on it now, and that before you know it you’ll be exchanging favorite EMI moments with cyberspace’s most refined minds once again.

In the meantime, why not read Remi’s ReMI article forty more times? It was met with Ron approval, which more or less makes it holy writ.

Sure, the announcement anniversary just passed, and the seven-month anniversary of its release is two weeks away. So, consider this either a dessert or an amuse bouche: “Remi Returns to Return to Monkey Island,” a look back at the game now that the new-car smell has worn off.

And, there isn’t much more to say about it. Maybe you’ll agree, maybe you won’t. Either way: read it! You know you want to!