I’ll keep this short so I don’t interrupt the flood of Indy coverage: You now have yet another way to own Return to Monkey Island, this time from the Epic Games Store. It’s available for a cent cheaper than $17.50.
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Today is the premiere of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny at the Cannes Film Festival. For Disney to have programmed the premiere over a month ahead of the general release is a major vote of confidence, because the movie will be soaking in the incoming word of mouth for a while. Clearly, they are not ashamed of this movie, which seems fated for a glowing reception – reviews are already trickling in. On the downside, spoilers are going to be a challenge to avoid while you wait for June 30th. Good luck.
In the meantime, there’s been no end of red carpet photographs and pushy interviews of the attending Indy team splattered across social media (here’s a decent roundup) if you’re into that sort of thing. Mojo is famous for efficiency, so let’s leave things with this nifty new promotional reel released amongst the media shrapnel, which includes bits of new footage:
Source: The Raven
Though Disney obtained Indiana Jones as an IP when they acquired Lucasfilm, the distribution rights to the first four movies, plus The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, remain controlled by Paramount. Consequently, they’ve never appeared on Disney’s streaming service. Many have asked when that situation would change. The answer, of course, was “when they paid up.”
With a new movie to promote, Disney evidently felt the time was right to play ball with Paramount, and the latter hasn’t exactly been shy about leasing out the movies for cash anyway, with the series regularly disappearing from Paramount’s own service while they were licensed to the highest bidder. It looks like the Mouse bought their turn, and so starting May 31st, Disney+ will be streaming the Indy catalog on a nonexclusive basis (they will continue to be available on Paramount+), the better to leverage that sweet brand extension. Finally, a victory for corporations.
Source: Lucasfilm
I believe there are fewer specks of dust in Thimbleweed Park than installments in this series. And who’s complaining? The author of DREAMM steps forward for a second turn at the merry-go-round, and not all sequels are diminishing returns. The considerable advancements of DREAMM since the last chat are discussed, and some time is even spent playing the games it supports.
Source: A Conversation with...
Ahead of its Cannes premiere this week, a one minute clip from Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny has been shared. It's a glimpse of an elaborate chase sequence set in Tangier, Morocco, which sees Indy and his goddaughter Helena trading quips while racing through the streets in separate tuk-tuks. It looks blessedly dusty and digitally self-restrained. Take a look:
Source: The Upcoming
No one cares that you’re still digesting the last one -- it’s time to spend an hour with Denny Delk, voice actor extraordinaire best known in these parts as Murray from Monkey Island, Purple Tentacle from Day of the Tentacle, and about a billion others. This guy has helped or hindered Guybrush, Ben, Indy, Bernard, the Freelance Police, and the Rebel Alliance to an extent few other resumes can claim.
This time, Daniel Albu is joined by his collaborator Paul Morgan Stetler, and their interview opens with a helpful bit of background about how this “Conversation with Curtis” series came about in the first place. In the process, the unfortunate implication is made that Paul was exposed to The Secret of Monkey Island through the Special Edition, but power through the pity and enjoy their exploration of the career of Denny Delk.
Source: A Conversation with...
Don't be a tuna head. There's even more Maniac Mansion NES romhacking news.
A ROM hacker known as gzip managed to decompress Maniac Mansion for the NES and expand the ROM. This allows the graphics and room layouts to be easier to edit.
Using this decoded ROM, gzip made an uncensored NES version of Maniac Mansion that is closer to the Commodore 64 version than ever before. Even the infamous uncensored beta ROM doesn't go as far as this one does. It even changes the dungeon layout to match that seen in the C64 version, skeleton and all.
It also fixes some bugs, namely the glitched graphics under the house and on the coin box in the arcade room, and the tape text that was assigned to the current kid rather than to Green Tentacle.
There are also a few patches included if you want to mix-and-match things. One changes the graphics on Ted's calendar to be closer to the original, a second uncensors the text on said calendar, the third changes the pennant to read "L.F.L.U. Rah!", and the fourth brings life to Douglas Crockford's Muff Diver arcade joke.
Oh, and HonkeyKong's mouse hack is also included, making this the ultimate version of Maniac Mansion for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Although A Vampyre Story had been available from Valve’s service for many years, it didn’t play nice on a lot of machines, leading to a spate of negative reviews that complained of such design and narrative shortcomings as, “This game doesn’t work.” Last year, Bill took the game down so he could haul it to the garage.
With the help of ZOOM Platform, where the game recently re-emerged on an exclusive basis, it appears that it was given the under-the-hood retooling it needed for its support by modern PCs to be more widespread. So endowed, A Vampyre Story is now making its return to other storefronts. In any case it’s back on Steam, where its user ratings will hopefully be based on the content of the game itself going forward.
Source: Steam
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.
Source: Xbox Games Showcase
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.
Source: A Conversation with...
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.
Source: Fandango
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.
Source: Total Film
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.
Source: A Conversation with...
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.
Source: The Forums :D
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.
Source: Limited Run Games
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!)