The International House of Mojo

There’s a lot of chatter both on and about social media today, and for good reasons. Today marks the major shift everyone was anticipating with various degrees of dread and excitement. The takeover has happened: Mojo has moved The Adventurer from Revue to Substack!

“Why” is a whole thing that will be laid out in the next issue—publishing in a few minutes. If you haven’t already, you probably should sign up. Why? Well, you can never have too much Mojo in your life! (And if you already signed up for our Revue newsletter, don’t worry. Your account was ported over to Substack.)

Meteor Mess 3D, the 3D fan remake of Maniac Mansion that began development in 2008, was released just three weeks ago. In other words, it still needed less gestation time than an Indiana Jones sequel.

The phrase “labor of love” gets thrown around a lot, but I think a number of recipients of it would be well within their rights to feel embarrassment in the face of this victory, which Gabez’s coverage can surely only claim some responsibility for. Investing this long toward bringing a fan game to its finish isn’t merely dedication – it’s downright hardheaded. So celebrate the occasion by grabbing your very own download of the game, and be inspired by Mojo’s solidarity in updating its gallery – yes, we had one! – with more representative screenshots.

Amberfish Arts: There’s hope for you yet.

Source: Meteor Mess 3D

OK, look, I haven’t watched it yet, but going by her chat with Ron, we can assume her interview with Grossman will be good, too. (And there probably won’t be any grilling.)

(More, maybe, as soon as I’ve watched it.)

By now, you probably have noticed that Return to Monkey Island sounds great, and not just in terms of voices and music. The sound design is fantastic, too, and to learn more about it, A Sound Effect sat down to talk with Elise Kates and Andy Martin, two of the leads behind that work.

Head over to A Sound Effect for a lot more.

It only makes sense that NRK (the Norwegian state broadcasting corporation) comes running to Mojo when they want the word out about yet another Return to Monkey Island interview. Read the story if you can, but for most, the video interview—which is quite good—is the better/only option.

This is where I would embed the video, but as the Norwegians giveth and the Norwegians taketh away, you’ll have to go to NRK to view it. Or, read the full transcript for all the dirt.

I’m going by second-hand information here, but that is what friend-of-Mojo Laura Cress told us in an email. I haven’t had a chance to watch her new interview with Ron yet, but looking at the chapter listing, it does indeed look like a must-watch...

So do just that. Watch. Because you must.

That’s right, ReMI and Terrible Toybox are setting their sights on “Best Storytelling,” “Best PC Game,” and “Best Studio.” Not shabby, and they’re up against some large, mainstream names—an honor being nominated, and yada, yada, yada definitely does apply here.

Yet, the masses can vote, so go show ol’ ReMI some love right here.

As revealed in a tweet from Geoff Keighley producer of The Game Awards, Rob Smith, the author of the comprehensive LucasArts retrospective book "Rogue Leaders: The Story of LucasArts" has passed away.

Rob was also the editor of several gaming magazines over the years. You can read a mis-titled Mojo review of his book here: Rouge Leaders: The Story of LucasArts. There's also an interview with Rob himself about the book still to be found on the web archive, even though the original host site is long gone.

Source: Geoff Keighley's twitter

It was meant to be a simple beta release, but after Ronzo couldn’t contain his excitement, we decided to make it public: The Return to Monkey Island Trivia Card Game.

If you played ReMI-proper, the core should be familiar: One hundred cards, four options each, a trivia game for the ages. Of course, ours is a Frankenstein-ed version: Run and play, and see how you rank on the MojoMeter!

Needless to say, this game will contain some ReMI spoilers, so enter at your own risk.

While waiting for an official soundtrack to drop—and the wait could be a long one—we decided to take matters into our own hands and release each and every track from Return to Monkey Island ourselves. That’s four hours of music, spanning more than hundred-and-forty files. You can download the OGGs or listen to the whole shebang on YouTube...

.... granted, completely without chapters/track indicators. We’ll leave it to the semi-professionals to do proper remixes of all of this. Need an example? Check out this twenty-minute mix our in-house DJ made of “LeShip,” arguably the best suite in the game.

Now, see if you can live up to that.

To quickly recap for the uninitiated, Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings was an Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game that LucasArts was developing in the arena of 2005-2008. In the end, this long-awaited follow-up to Emperor’s Tomb was cancelled, but the separate incarnations that were being developed by third parties for the Wii, PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS, and PSP ended up making it to shelves in 2009.

Lead Designer Steven Chen told us that the internal Staff of Kings had reached a “vertical slice” level of development when we had a chance to speak to him, which may explain the reasonably polished look the game in the surfaced gameplay clip below, sourced from Christopher James (Level Designer)’s online portfolio.

As many had already speculated, the game comes off as very much trying to follow in the footsteps of Uncharted, not unlike the debt the early 3D Indy games owed to Tomb Raider. The use of John Williams cues lifted straight from the movie scores throughout the level is right out of the published game, both in its coolness and its not-necessarily-motivated-ness. With another fifteen years having passed without a AAA Indy game, it’s up to MachineGames to hopefully redeem the situation, but it’s nice to steal a look at what might have been, had its team not been subsumed by Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

Source: Cristopher James's portfolio

Double Fine can’t stop, won’t stop with their Limited Run editions. This time: Full Throttle .

For a cool $85, you get . . . well, a bunch of stuff. Game, soundtrack, posters, bandana, a USB drive that hopefully isn’t corrupted, and more. Orders start October 7th and run through November 20th.

The Indiana Jones 5 sizzle reel that was shown at D23 was unfortunately exclusive to the expo, leaving its dissemination up to the cell phone videography of a sneaky audience member.

Well, that leak has occurred. With all the implied quality disclaimers, you can find it here...for now. If you'd rather wait for something that looks good for your first impression, a proper teaser is likely to drop in December (though it's unclear if it'll be a version of this or something new altogether) in front of the new Avatar.

Meanwhile, Willow has been given a 4K upgrade on Disney Plus, so you're gonna wanna get on that.

Source: What's On Disney Plus

You are already familiar with sometimes-Mojo-contributor Nicolas Deneschau’s Les mysteres de Monkey Island: à l’abordage des pirates!, a French tome dedicated to Monkey Island. But what if you don’t speak French? Not to worry: Now you, too, can read the book thanks to an upcoming English translation on Kickstarter.

Named The Mysteries of Monkey Island the book has already racked up $7,955 in pledges, and that’s within an hour. In other words, it will be funded. $35-ish will get you the hardback, while $100-ish will toss in a Steve Purcell poster to boot. $12-ish for the ebook version—there are other, less obtainable tiers, too.

In the eternal words of Robin Thicke: you know you want it, so go Kickstart now.

As with any work of art, this spot speaks for itself:

Source: Twitter

Like so many stories lately, this one comes from Twitter:

A very long thread of LUA voyeurism unfurls from there, including screenshots of amusingly candid comments in the code, hidden debug levels that were accidentally shipped, and some dialog lines that never get triggered due to bugs (Grim Fandango sympathizes). Even Psychonauts team members like Erik Robson (Lead Designer) and Kee Chi (Programmer) end up weighing in, so passionate fans of the game (and isn’t all of us?) might enjoy diging through.

It’s worth pointing out that @ScrungusCrungus seems to have been part of an effort to reverse-engineer Psychonauts for some time now, and past discoveries made along the way have also been documented for those who crave more.

Source: Twitter

Chris Baker, who worked as a studio publicist for LucasArts in the mid-2000s, shared an interesting memory with Craig Derrick on Twitter today...

It’s a shame. The game would have been a beautiful fit on that handheld. Alas, in 2006 LucasArts had other priorities, such as Thrillville and hating you. But hey, with Return to Monkey Island being a bona fide instant classic and all, we live in a more optimistic time where no-brainer ports are concerned.

Source: Twitter

Man, a fella could get used to reporting on Monkey Island articles at Lucasfilm.com. As part of its “Defining Moments” series, the official Lucasfilm web presence has gone and blogged about The SCUMM Bar, and I say good on ‘em.

Among other ruminations on the iconic Monkey Island location, the author makes an interesting attempt to tie in The SCUMM Bar with the theories of Joseph Campbell, whose concept of the monomyth was famously an influence on George Lucas’s approach to stories:

Speaking of Willow – and go ahead and take in the effing BALLERINA-LIKE GRACE of my masterful segues here – we have Joanne Whalley dishing to Entertainment Weekly on her return as Sorsha in the upcoming sequel series. And did we mention Christian Slater is in it? House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings are putting forth a strong face, but we know they’re quivering on the inside.

Mixnmojo: Proving the theory that if you stubbornly stick around for enough decades, Lucasfilm will eventually grow bored enough to once again acknowledge the stuff you actually care about.

Source: Lucasfim.com

There is an easter egg in Return to Monkey Island that refers to a hidden island. That’s about what I want to say about it, as I don’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t finished the game. (Though it’s really not a spoiler—it has nothing to do with the plot. Or much anything else.) If you know, you know: Read our article about Cogg Island right now if you so would like and learn about all its secrets.

One of those names that seems to always be in the credits, Brad Taylor has had a crucial role on just about every SCUMM game from The Secret of Monkey Island onward, both at LucasArts and Humongous. Alongside Aric Wilmunder and SCUMM's originator Ron Gilbert, he was a key figure in the maintenance and maturation of the celebrated story system over its long years of service, all while preserving its critical separation of complexity from the designers, writers and artists so that their focus could stay on the creative aspects of the games.

So when Arcade Attack publishes a 100-minute conversation with the guy, it amounts to something close to self-care that you watch it:

Source: Arcade Attack