The International House of Mojo

Just in case you needed another reminder of your mortality: Day of the Tentacle turns thirty this year, more specifically on June 25th. To celebrate, the intrepid onaretrotip has put together a documentary that will premiere on that day.

What can you expect?

DOTT superfan Thrik has already set off two hours on his busy calendar—you might want to do the same.

They’re already melding Sea of Thieves with Monkey Island. So why not Indiana Jones with The Legend of Zelda? This summer, the tracing red line sets a course for Hyrule:

I will admit to having... mixed... feelings about Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island (more commonly known as SeMI), and after a while, my mind started wandering. What would my knee-jerk reaction have been twenty-three years ago after seeing the trailer? Anger? Probably! But would that have been fair? Probably not.

Therefore, I sat down and put some therapeutical thoughts down on paper in an article succinctly named 23 Years Ago I Would Have Written an Article Called “Not MY Monkey Island”. Read, if you so must, about my complex relationship with an unreleased expansion pack to a game I’ve never played.

Though there’ve been a lot of cheap alternates as well, the primary one sheet for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny by artist Tony Stella is quite credible -- a welcome throwback to the days of illustrated posters that fits in nicely with the iconic contributions of Richard Ansel and Drew Struzan. Regrettably, the artist had indicated that the studio meddled with his work, but it’s a testament to the quality of his pre-processed art that goodness survives whatever nonsense it may have been subjected to along the way. A reminder:

Unfortunately, “surviving” is not a status enjoyed by an international poster design that Stella had also been commissioned to do. Today comes a tearful Tweet from the artist, offering a tantalizing glimpse of his spurned masterwork as he crates it up for what I assume to be a one-way trip inside a cargo hold bound directly for Disney’s underground Fortress of Neglect. (Reportedly, that’s also where Ken Macklin’s The Dig backgrounds can be found.)

Speaking of Dial of Destiny alternates, it seems we overlooked one when trying to round them all up a while ago, so here ya go:

You can get it clean as well:

In 2024 (allegedly) we're getting a new game called Outlaws with a LucasFilm games logo stamped on it. It's not a western shooter though, more of a Star Wars open-world game. The trailer is chock full of impressive looking non-gameplay footage.

Source: YouTube

We’ve gotten past “this exists,” so now let’s see if we can collect the cold hard facts that have come to light about Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island so far.

Your first burning question is most likely, “Is Ron involved?” Frankly, I think you guys are insulting Disney by even raising that as a concern. We’re talking about the creator of Monkey Island here. We can take it for granted that they’d show the basic courtesy of at least consulting him about the project.

Uh, whoops. Well listen, I’m sure it’s perfectly innocent. They probably just didn’t know how to get a hold of him. Moving on, you’ve got this interview with Creative Director Mike Chapman which pretty much summarizes everything known so far. The product will consist of a three-part expansion to Sea of Thieves, released on a monthly basis. As you heard from the trailer, the key voice talent has been retained. And as for the story-line, well, they seem rather committed to having one:

Personally, I don’t understand the need for this “alternate history” exercise when Return to Monkey Island burnt so many calories to make the further adventures of Guybrush and Elaine as open-ended as possible. I mean, do they not even remember ending #8-Q?

Anyway, it’s not a real Monkey Island game until The SCUMM Bar anoints it an official acronym, but as we await that formality, it's cool to get the sense that the team at Rare is so enthusiastic to play in this sandbox. Stay tuned throughout the week as Mojo does its best to orient itself to the implausible reality that Monkey Island games are now a yearly event.

Source: Xbox Wire

It looks like Rare wanted in on the shtick, because what you see below is a real thing that is in fact happening:

Fans have had to deal with what they thought was a lot of change over the course of this series, but at the end of the day Monkey Island after all consisted of six traditional graphic adventure games. Never before has its fans had to process an outright genre change or dalliance with another franchise. But after the right licensing fee was negotiated with Craig Derrick (who presumably made the deal contingent on that Special Edition logo), the era of the Monkey Island crossover left the realm of the hypothetical. A lot to grapple with here.

We were fashionably late to this big news, so the chatter on the forums is already well underway, awaiting your participation. And congrats to milegend.com on what we assume was a handsome compensation package for the right to that title that makes the AltaVista guy’s cash-out look like tip money.

More to come, undoubtedly.

Source: The Forums :D

When you got yourself an Indy game that was announced two-and-a-half years ago with roughly no updates since, you’ve got a right to get pessimistic. When the game’s publisher next fails to even acknowledge its existence at their big honking annual showcase weeks before the final Indy movie arrives in theaters – and word is that’s just what happened – you have the right to some Staff of Kings flashbacks.

As usual, Indy gets seated at the reject table of the commissary. At this point, I’m putting this one in the Beyond Good & Evil 2 and In the Valley of Gods category. In retrospect, they probably should have just taken Noah Falstein up on his original offer to make a graphic adventure adaptation out of Dial of Destiny. A retro game would have at least shipped.

You may or may not recall how we introduced a virtual LeChuck’s Revenge code wheel replacement a few months back. While not particularly relevant to most—DREAMM and the Special Edition bypass the code screen fully—those with exquisite taste may still prefer to play the game on an Amiga emulator. (Or, if you’re Benny, the actual Amiga!)

Which all is to say, we now have a new Secret of Monkey Island code grid for your hacking pleasure. Mojo’s beta testing has, of course, been axed by the CEO , meaning... This should work, but who knows?! No money-back guarantee.

Your late-nineties self sure will appreciate this!

If you’re anything like me, you may have wondered what the logic behind LeChuck’s appearances in the underground tunnels is. (That is in LeChuck’s Revenge, natch.) Now, Ron has kicked Grumpy Gamer back into action and shed some light on it all:

A quick look at the code gives proof that you aren’t going crazy and there are reasons for LeChuck’s lengthy absences.

I’m one of those crazy people who like to take my time with a game, but I’ll still give budding speed runners a piece of advice: Use keyboard shortcuts—“P” for “pick up,” “U” for “use,” etc.—and you’ll save valuable seconds. The odds of beating LeChuck’s voodoo doll increase significantly.

As we enter the final month of Mojo being able to use this movie as Styrofoam peanuts for filling the front page with, Disney keeps the promotional hose running with seven character posters that proudly declare, "We are capable of clicking Copy and Paste":

Meanwhile, Disney Plus subscribers can kiss goodbye to those miserable days when their TV ever didn't have Indy on it, as today is the day that the four Spielberg installments as well as The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones became available on the service. For how long, who knows, but I'm sure you'll have at least until Dial of Destiny comes out to binge, purge, and binge again.

We elitists, of course, will be sticking to our UHDs, where the iconic sight of George 'Mac' McHale choosing not to stand up will be faithfully reproduced under the fullest color space, the maximum bit rate, and the highest dynamic range. It's called having standards, people.

A bit of a bummer this morning: Telltale is delisting Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People from Steam; it appears to have already disappeared off of GOG.

Telltale announced the delisting on the game's Steam page—not standard practice in the games industry, but appreciated—explaining: "We no longer have the rights to the IP and so we can no longer sell or support the game series."

It's unclear how long the game will remain available for, so, if you've been holding off for whatever reason, grab it now.

Reported rumours of physical media purists in the wild saying, "I told you so!" remain unconfirmed. If spotted, proceed with caution.

Try not to dwell on the fact that your projected life expectancy is now exceeded by the amount of developer interviews that are streaming on YouTube -- it might cut into the time you could be spending with Aric Wilmunder. Four hours worth, to be exact.

In his mellifluous, vaguely Nicolas Cage like voice, Aric mentions possessing “three grocery bags of design documents” (you may recall his regrettably halted efforts at scanning them for his long-404’d web site) that are currently on loan to Lucasfilm itself for some vague anniversary doings. Hopefully they’re ever seen again. It would be difficult to catalog all his other great stories, ranging from misadventures in SCUMM maintenance, the hiring of Aaron Giles, and the development of Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix, so you just as soon tear up those tickets you had for a repertory screening of Abel Gance’s Napoleon and get a-watchin’.

Source: A Conversation with...

Microsoft is up to its tired schtick again, or so Eurogamer reports. Following this Tweet...

... some concluded that “PSYCHOXXX” clearly means Psychonauts 3 or Psychonauts III. Setting aside that “PSYCHO” could mean any number of things—will we finally see a game adaptation of the famous Robert Bloch novel?!—“XXX” also has many meanings. Adult content, for example. Or a reference to the classic Vin Diesel film? Perhaps they’re talking about the Pussy Riot EP?

What XXX does not mean is “3,” but rather “30.” So, maybe an upcoming game named Psychonauts 30 is on the horizon? Or an entirely unrelated PSYCHO 30?

Stay tuned for more schtick.

Thanks to Lagomorph01 on the forums for the heads up!

The press tour continues as James Mangold chats with the Den of Geek. Sounds like COVID might have been a reason things lined up, so Remi causing the pandemic wasn’t without its fringe benefits:

Meanwhile, another production photograph has been released. We got a hell of a gallery going by this point.

Source: Den of Geek

It turns out that a whole mess of new Dial of Destiny posters were released today, as opposed to just that IMAX one. In fact, every one of those upcharge rackets premiere presentation formats gets a one-sheet of its very own, so naturally we gallery’d them up all up. Here they are:

IMAX

Dolby

ScreenX

4DX

Nice to get another illustrated design along with the routine cheap stuff.

We had grand plans for Mojo's 25th anniversary last year, at least until Return to Monkey Island was announced. And, as the CEO had made necessary cuts to our features department (“preparations for emerging financial realities”), we could only focus on one. Needless to say, ReMI won out over Remi.

But: We're still in our 25th year, and there is plenty of time left to celebrate. (Months!) To kick it off, Jason put his mean face on and made all staffers pick their favorite Mojo articles from our vast back catalog.

And he didn't stop there.

For those who really want to reminisce, former staffers Spaff and Jake get meditative as they look back on their glory years. Even telarium gets in on the fun, sneaking in a small Tales of Monkey Island trivia.

Check out the whole 12-page extravaganza and relive some true relics from our past. And more to come, maybe.

You might have heard that the critical reaction at Cannes wasn't quite the complement for the enthusiasm Dial of Destiny was clearly enjoying behind the Disney parapets. Could it be that a conglomeration was somehow capable of misjudging audience tastes (gasp), or is the type of blogger who rates access to a prestigious European film festival perhaps not the best bellwether for a big tent swashbuckler's appeal?

Whether you are interested in seeing a movie that would inspire such schizophrenia, or if you're simply an incurable Indy fan, your response to all this is likely to be "Tickets, please." To that end, today is the day those become available for purchase. Here's a new sizzle reel with some fresh footage to encourage those credit card transactions, and beneath that is an IMAX poster, seducing you to spring for that surcharge.

We’re all getting older, as proven by the number of staffers and readers that have spawned offspring. And, for those with younger kids, finding a way to lull them to sleep can seem like a downright chore. Thankfully, an... artist?... called Lullaby Legends has taken it into their own hands to alleviate the problem with some unexpected tracks.

That is indeed the Scurvy Island theme and a strange version of “The SCUMM Bar” is available, too.

I have a hard time imagining this being properly licensed music—copyright Paul Robert Martin Leonard True?—so enjoy it while you can.

You may recall that Disney cancelled Willow after one season when its viewership didn’t make the grade. Hey, it’s just business. But after you’ve whacked a guy and sent him to rest in the Jersey Pine Barrens, that’s traditionally the end of it, and back you go to shooting pool at the Bing. Not content with tradition, Disney went full plaid and decided to go to the trouble of digging the body back up so they could shoot the damn thing into the Sun for good measure.

I don’t know quite how else to describe Disney’s decision to remove Willow (among other titles under their ownership) from their catalog altogether. It’s become a disturbing trend with these hemorrhaging streaming platforms – something to do with tax loopholes, residuals dodging and other ledger-book shell games – but it’s still kind of wild to observe. I realize we’re not talking about the most beloved of television casualties here, but nevertheless – damn.

When reached for comment, Jon Kasdan remained firm in his optimism that a Season 2 was still hypothetically possible, probably right after that Solo sequel gets produced.

Source: Deadline