The International House of Mojo

As recently mentioned, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is basically all about Monkey Island, something StarWars.com has decided to double down on in a brand-spanking new story:

Well then! Go read the whole story.

Source: StarWars.com

Polish adventure game enthusiast “vicek83”, maintainer of The World of Adventure Games YouTube channel, has rung in the new year by inviting various adventure game developers to talk a little about the projects they’re working on in 2025.

Bill Tiller is on hand, representing A Vampyre Story: A Bat’s Tale, and conveniently his bit comes right at the start of the hour-long video:

Source: The World of Adventure Games

The Secret of Monkey Island turns thirty-five (35) this year, which means some… many, actually… of us should take a long look in the mirror and contemplate how we’ve spent the last three-and-a-half decades.

But screw that – instead, we decided to post a short article with some of the weird secrets and easter eggs found in the first Monkey Island game.

It has been interesting learning over the past few years that the small trivia we thought was common knowledge apparently isn’t. Which, again, is why we should take a minute or two and ask ourselves if we’ve lived our best lives.

That’s for another day, though! Now go read!

I will admit that here in the year of our lord, 2025, I would not have expected web games to still be a “thing.” Yet, a “thing” they are, and recently, two Monkey Island games have popped up – the first of them right here at Mojo. Introducing Monkey Island Frantic, a screenshot guessing game that’s, well, frantic.

It’s a simple concept: Small pieces of a screenshot fly across the screen, and you have to guess which location it is from. And, of course, you can share your score over on the forums.

Meanwhile, over at The Legend of Monkey Island, you can find a Heardle clone called Guess That Tune.

Once again, you can brag about your results on our forums because that’s just the kind of person you are.

And, of course, our old games are waiting for ya: Mojole and a port of sorts of the Return to Monkey Island trivia game.

There, your weekend is set.

While Hothead wasn’t technically one of The Mojo Companies, it was the home Ron Gilbert found for DeathSpank when he shopped it around in the 2008 arena, and he was with them for the duration of its development (not unlike how he squatted at the Double Fine offices for The Cave), so their reported demise merits a mention.

Hothead picked up DeathSpank, which was released in 2010, after dabbling in the episodic realm with the Penny Arcade games. DeathSpank itself consisted of two parts – at least, Ron’s proper opus did. For whatever reason, Hothead produced a third game without Ron’s involvement a year later, called The Baconing. The Vancouver-based studio later focused on free-to-play mobile games and sports titles. After a run of more than fifteen years, it now joins the growing list of game studios that have fallen in these rather brutal times for the games industry, but we'll always remember the good times.

Source: Game Developer

Despite what Remi would have you think, 2024 hasn’t quite come to an end, and neither has its collection of Daniel Albu interviews.

Two await your viewership. Below is a conversation with Greg Hammond, producer at LucasArts in the early 90s, followed by another with Yves Borckmans, a programmer whose principal LucasArts credit is Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II.

At nearly five hours, Daniel boasts the latter to be his longest interview yet, but frankly, I don’t think he’s showing enough deference to the possibility that we are all merely subjects in the ongoing Daniel interview called life.

Some say 2024 ends at 23:59, December 31st, and to them, we say, pfffffft. The year does, of course, end when we publish our end-of-year article, which is today, 14:58, the 26th.

Who was awarded Mojo’s coveted “Game of the Year?” Who won the Double Fine Extravaganza? How on earth did Jason not win the snarkiest Mojoer? Only one way to find out...

They're up there with Sam and Max in holiday postcard game:

Source: A Vampyre Story Facebook page

It’s been a surprisingly vibrant year for Monkey Island fan games, but we can’t forget our history, so it’s nice timing that a complete playthrough of The Fate of Monkey Island has been uploaded to YouTube.

Too young to remember The Fate of Monkey Island? Built in 1999 (Footnote: Jesus Christ) by “Scurvyliver” using the then-ubiquitous Klik & Play game-making tool, it was considered the criterion example of fan games, mostly based on the following unique features:

• It got finished

One-a dem dere “sidequels,” the game takes place during the events of Monkey Island 2 and helps fill in some backstory for Curse by depicting what the monkeys had to go through when LeChuck went into the amusement park business. Yes, the game sees you playing not as Guybrush, but as a monkey named Squinky. (Spielberg would approve.)

The success of the game led Survyliver to embark on a more ambitious sequel, complete with a SCUMM-like interface, but progress was halted when LucasArts cried copyright infringement. Obviously, it wasn’t the best look for the studio, but it’s impressive that they could take some time out of not bug-testing Star Wars: Jedi Power Battles to fire off the cease-and-desist. The scandal even reached the awareness of print media:

While you can still download Fate (and for that matter, the abandoned sequel) and hope your modern operating system can fathom its charms, the following video may satisfy the requirements of those who wish to know their history without necessarily getting it stuck on their shoes.

Source: YouTube

So, this isn’t actually new content, but you may recall that as part of our “Secret History” series (Footnote: That would be our string of big retrospectives on each of the fourteen LucasArts adventure games, originally published on a sort of monthly basis from 2008-2010.), we often had developer interviews included as bonus material, located on one of the later pages.

Thereby integrated into those features rather than being standalone, they couldn’t be found under our Interviews category, leaving them repressed and poorly searchable. It’s been a longstanding black eye on the organizational integrity of our archive and raised hell for the literally millions of research students who rightly use Mojo as a primary source.

Well, thanks to our proprietary MojoDB technology that Remi’s been refining at a frightening pace, this stubborn shortcoming is now addressed, and all those interviews can be reached under, well, Interviews, rather than having to be dug for. Personally, I’m partial to The Passion of Bill Eaken (halfway down the page), in which the artist delighted us with his limited but not uneventful time [attempting to work] on The Curse of Monkey Island, but why not browse the newly comprehensive Interviews section to rediscover such gems yourself?

And that's because Harrison Ford made a special effort to praise the newest and shiniest Indy imitator, Troy Baker, for the voice actor's well-received performance in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

It all went down at the Game Awards a few days ago. You weren't cool enough to get an invitation, so let's set the coordinates on the Dial of Destiny...

If it's justice for Doug Lee you want...talk to Sternhart and Costa.

Source: Lucasfilm.com

The year is coming to a close, and so we’re opening the polls for you to vote for the good, the bad, and the ugly of 2024. Best game. Snarkiest updater. The usual.

To sweeten the pot, we are putting up three Double Fine LRG games and the coveted triangle box for one of you to win:

I mean, what?! Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle, and Full Throttle, all boxed up? The triangle?! And participating is easy:

First, sign up for a forum account unless you already have one.

Then, vote in one or more of the following polls. Each voted-for poll gives you another entry in the contest:

We treat you so fine.

Restrictions apply, of course – no employee of The Mojo Corporation will be eligible for the prize (but vote anyway!) and yada yada yada. You know how all of that goes.

Good luck!

So, now that you know what they think, it’s time to read the Indiana Jones and the Great Circle review that counts: Ours.

Spoilers are kept to a minimum, and only some small details from the first part of what is a large game are revealed.

Vince Lee, whom even those practicing Star Wars ostracism probably know as the principal behind the pioneering Rebel Assault and its FMV engine, INSANE (leveraged also by such games as Full Throttle and Outlaws) is Daniel Albu’s latest subject:

While Remi is still waiting for ChatGPT to spin up that Mojo review (it takes a lot of quarters these days), everyone else in the world has registered their thoughts, and there does seem to be a consensus that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is the goods.

Accepting that as a given, I am pleased to see the property get the long-awaited comeback it has deserved after twenty-five baffling years serving an apparent agenda to strive for the ideal of being perfectly functional Tomb Raider/Uncharted knockoffs.

As you await the only judgment that Microsoft is worried about, you might care to follow the enthusiastic reaction on the forums or experience the superb soundtrack by the always dependable Gordy Haab. Walt Disney Records has made it available through Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and probably everywhere else you don’t prefer.

Double Fine is serious about keeping the Xbox Gear Shop fed, so they lovingly ran off some Brütal Legend pins:

It’s a fine way to celebrate the game’s fifteenth anniversary. As is our article on the subject if it (somehow) fell off your priority list.

Source: Xbox Gear Shop

You, and definitely not us, probably need to catch up on the two Tech Talk interviews since the session with Larry the O. First up is James ‘Purple’ Hamilton, playtester extraordinaire from LucasArts’ olden days:

Then there’s Elaine Marley herself, Alexandra Boyd, whose long-form chat with Cressup only awakened her appetite for streamed interviews rather than bedded it down.

We should also point out that Daniel’s past interviews with Mike Levine and Aric Wilmunder, which uncovered a number of new anecdotes about Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix, have done much to inspire a new article about the cancelled game by the folks at Time Extension.

Staying faithful to the theme of occasions gone unmarked, how about Steve Purcell busting out some hugely justifiable re-runs in honor of Thanksgiving, and now the yuletide season?