The International House of Mojo

If an open world, single player action adventure Star Wars game gets your blood going, then add Star Wars Outlaws to your bounty list.

Developed by Massive Entertainment and published by Ubisoft, Outlaws is targeting PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on August 30, 2024. The game centres on a major heist and is set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, a brief halcyon period where not everyone was related to everyone else in a galaxy far, far away.

Source: YouTube

Laura Cress has posted another LEC-adjacent interview to her Cressup channel, this time with Elaine Marley herself, Alexandra Boyd.

It’s a great chat, which also circles the reason for Elaine’s recasting in SeMI. (Spoiler alert: Business will be business, and business will often suck.)

On April 1st, Lucasfilm.com ran a little commemoration of their Monkey Island series. And in keeping with the spirit of April Fools, they used the Special Edition cover art as the header.

We try to be pretty “It’s the thought that counts” when it comes to these valentines that the copyright holder has been willing to throw toward its legacy titles, so let’s remind ourselves that it wasn’t so long ago that even these passing mentions were seemingly verboten as a matter of company policy. And while the write-up may be on the fluffy side, I do see something noteworthy in this paragraph, emphasis mine:

Lucasfilm never was able to get its own story straight when it came to whether they saw Return as a series conclusion or not. Guess they’re back to their original stance. For today.

Source: Lucasfilm.com

That risen phoenix of Monkey Island fan sites, The Legend of Monkey Island, continues to walk the walk by resurrecting the long-offline web comic adaptation of The Secret of Monkey Island by artist Paco Vink. Like a number of masterpieces, it stands unfinished, but that only compounds its mystique.

Legendofmi.com’s coup was accomplished by brokering a deal with Dalixam, the webmaster of the defunct World of MI fan site (the comic’s original custodian), a brutal negotiation that sources say took an army of attorneys eighteen months to hammer out. But in the end, the unwholesome favors were exchanged, the blood debts were paid, and the copyrights transferred. Better still, the comic is being offered in higher resolution than was the case in its first-run presentation, so you really need to check it out with some urgency.

When it comes to the (apparent) arms race of hosting legacy fan content of premium caliber, The SCUMM Bar is hardly going to allow itself to fall behind. That’s why it’s now the licensed home of Marius Winter’s celebrated Monkey Island flash videos. These include the one man band's adaptations of the first two games along with his breakout “I Wonder What Happens in… Tales of Monkey Island” speculation videos, a tightly scheduled bit of inspiration that Telltale itself wisely made part of the series’ official hype machine throughout its episodic release back in 2009-2010.

As they say, healthy competition benefits the consumer. As for unhealthy competition, like the sort we’re witnessing? Well, I think the sky’s the limit.

Source: The Legend of Monkey Island

According to The Hollywood Reporter, comedic actor/writer Joe Flaherty, best known as a cast member of the brilliant Canadian sketch comedy series SCTV, has died at the age of 82.

In Mojo World™, Flaherty has the distinction of starring in the polarizing live action television adaptation of Maniac Mansion, which ran for three seasons on YTV in Canada and The Family Channel (replete with an artificial laugh track) in the U.S. As we once attempted to chronicle, the show began its life as a pitch that was said to be along the lines of The Addams Family or The Munsters, with the Edisons naturally assuming the role of the kooky spoof of a gothic horror household. Though there aren’t really any details to go on, the impression is that it would have been a fairly loose but recognizable adaptation of the game.

However, the project was ultimately offered to SCTV alumnus Eugene Levy who, when he expressed disinterest in the series bible he had been handed, was told he had creative carte blanche to shape the show into whatever vision he liked. What resulted was a self-aware parody of the conventional sitcom (think It’s Garry Shandling’s Show) and something of an SCTV reunion project - with Flaherty’s casting as Dr. Fred being only the most obvious connection - rather than anything that resembled the story, flavor, or really much at all beyond the title, of the computer game. The show nevertheless attracted a cult following and squeaked past the magic 65-episode number that led it to be regularly syndicated in Canada for years after its cancellation. No proper home video or streaming release has materialized to date.

Flaherty is also known for the many appearance he made in movies and other television shows. To people of a certain age group, he might be most immediately recognizable as the Western Union guy at the end of Back to the Future Part II:

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Humble Bundle is bundling Humongous Entertainment adventure games, including Putt-Putt, Freddi Fish, and Pajama Sam. You can grab the lot for as little as $14.99.

Humongous Entertainment was founded by Ron Gilbert and Shelley Day after their departure from LucasArts. The company developed adventure games aimed at children, with credits listing ex-LucasArts talent like Dave Grossman and Annie Fox on the regular. Ron Gilbert's especially proud of his games at Humongous.

If that all sounds like fun or you have young children you want to corrupt into playing adventure games, now's your chance.

Source: Humble Bundle

Heads up: Retrofuturist Metroidvania Headlander, developed by Double Fine and released by Adult Swim games in 2016 for PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Mac, is heading off of platforms...well, soon. Certainly before May. This is all part of the C-suite conniving happening behind-the-scenes at Warner Bros. that's seeing movies, shows, and now video games axed off for debt reasons that make sense to the money people.

If you want Headlander before it lands itself at the chopping block, head to GOG or Steam.

Source: The Verge

As we’ve previously complained, Limited Run’s Loom Collector’s Edition package comes with a USB stick that is conspicuously missing the game’s EGA build. This despite assurances that it would be on there. In fact, it seems they just ended up dropping the grossly insufficient GOG fileset on the thumb stick and calling it a day, as if you didn’t fork over $75 for the damned thing.

Fortunately, the company is prepared to make good, even though it’s all being handled in a weird, coquettish way. What you do is head on over to Support and submit a request, order number in hand, to receive the missing files. You will then be given access to a Dropbox link that could conservatively be called the motherlode -- a 9GB treasure trove encompassing a ton of archival builds of the game, including every international version that a global search could round up, demos, patches, the audio drama, and scans of documentation like manuals and the Book and Patterns (in as many languages as could be uncovered), all of it no doubt cobbled together by the tireless and inconsistently credited efforts of Laserschwert.

It’s quite the nifty directory structure, and also a pretty decent model of exactly what Lucasfilm ought to be offering in the first place when you buy the SCUMM games on digital platforms. But after all, the nine additional seconds they would have had to spend to prepare complete copies of their classics is time they wouldn’t have been able to spend making Guybrush look like a Dreamworks Douche™:

Anyway, I really think you guys could stand to stop being so bitter about this and just claim your files. All’s well that ends well.

If you’ve been one of those who’ve wondered why Quick and Easy’s “EMI Background Viewer” hasn’t worked with the PS2 version of Escape from Monkey Island, wonder no more. And celebrate that it once again works:

Now give Benzo your forgiveness, and run and download the software. Run, I said!

In the realm of fringe dorkdom, few catastrophes resonate more rancidly and/or amusingly than the cancellation of Sam & Max: Freelance Police on March 3rd, 2004.

Yup, it’s been twenty years now, and what better way to mark this bittersweet anniversary than by cracking open our pitiful memoir on the topic for a re-read. Or at least to gawp shamelessly at Bill Eaken’s artwork for it, conveniently available with and without text. Frankly, if you don’t already have that thing framed in your house, a question is inescapably raised: Are you even Proper Mojo™?

Lucasfilm.com is back with more token appreciation of their rich back catalogue, an exercise just unwonted enough to remain suspicious. The latest installment of “Lucasfilm Games Rewind,” which is, one ascertains, a thing, celebrates the 1992 graphic adventure classic Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.

Sure, it’s a bit thin, but a relationship with an estranged dad, however frigid and uncomfortable, doesn’t have to be without positive gestures, even if it all ultimately sours back to bitterness and despair. Wait, sorry, that was not at all the point I was trying to make.

Anyway, Indiana and the Fate of Atlantis is available from Steam and GOG.com.

Source: Lucasfilm.com

Eurobricks have had some hands on time with the forthcoming Nightdive Studios remaster of Star Wars: Dark Forces. There's lots of context on the history of the game and how it stacked up against contemporaries like Doom.

Pew pew pew, it'll soon be time to get your pre-Jedi Kyle Katarn on. Also hello Remi, it's me, JP!

Source: Eurogamer

It’s been a long runway, but it seems The SCUMM Bar, founded in 1996, is finally starting to hit its stride. If it’s escaped your notice that it’s been seriously upping its Trivia game for the past month or so, well, it’s probably a good thing we were here to point it out.

Heck, even ReMI trivia as oven-fresh as this divulgence from Dave Grossman only yesterday has been accordingly filed into the site’s downright show-offy new Trivia Viewer infrastructure. Clearly, our motivational criticism has been heeded. We do what we can. As for you, now could be the time to flatten out the creases of your Phatt Island library card (Footnote: Yes, I know that reference would make more sense for a site called The Bloody Lip Bar. Calm down. We're doing the best we can here.) and patronize The Bar as a regular once more and always.

Source: The SCUMM Bar

Enough of the YouTube videos I hear you say. We want to read. We want to read about the development of LucasArts classic point and click adventure "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis", and we want to hear it from the director and co-designer Hal Barwood.

We want quotes such as:

Fine, here you go.

Source: Time Extension

Being a Zak McKracken aficionado, you already know that Annie Fox is the namesake of Zak’s principal ally in The National Video Game of Germany, and you may also know that she and David Fox are the forces behind Electric Eggplant.

But if you really want to go deep into Fox’s career as an educator, game designer, and New Media maven – which is inclusive of contributions to the Putt-Putt series for Humongous Entertainment, you’re not going to want to settle for less than her new interview with Daniel Albu. That promo for the Marin Computer Center at 3:47 alone may have more historical value than the Magna Carta.

Much as I tried, I couldn’t find a good pun for “Bajakian,” so my apologies for the vanilla headline. But he does chat, Clint! For four-and-a-half hours.

Interesting as I’m sure it is, I haven’t started it yet because… four-and-a-half hours. One handsome man’s unsolicited opinion is that something like this is better suited for podcasts, a medium designed for chunk-sized on-the-move consumption. I’m sure listeners gladly would chip in on Patreon, too, just for the convenience.

But, if YouTube is what we got, then that’s what we’ll try to watch.

And speaking of Patreon…

You all remember Limited Run Games’ rather promising-looking Loom package back in January of last year. True to the average turnaround time, it began shipping just recently.

Loom has long suffered a pretty compromised position in terms of availability. Like other SCUMM games that debuted with EGA graphics but received a subsequent VGA treatment (Last Crusade and Monkey 1), the latter eventually became defacto. Loom’s VGA version is unique, however, as it was also LucasArts’ earliest foray into “Talkie” editions. This prototypical effort relied on CD audio, which resulted in excellent sample quality (far better than LucasArts games would boast for years afterward, in fact), but with brutal trade-offs: the struggle to animate lip-syncing led to the game’s signature close-up artworks being almost entirely eliminated, while space limitations prompted an economic rewrite of the entire dialog script – without the involvement of its original project leader. In essence, the original game was replaced by what might be called a novelty version; to date, the legal copy of Loom you can buy on Steam or GOG is this CD Talkie revamp, not the game that Brian Moriarty actually presided over in 1990, and which is often considered the apex of what could be wrung out of a 16-color palette.

So you can imagine the relief when it was revealed that the USB stick included as part of the Limited Run Games release would have the EGA build tossed in. Except, not so fast. Two reports from customers who have received their package seem to confirm that this supposed inclusion fell to slaughter, like so many Glassmakers under the Great Scythe.

Heartbreaking. It’s enough to temporarily put one off their arbitrary SCUMM Bar feud.

Source: The Forums

Getting old ain’t for the cowardly. With bones that crack when we so much as try to lift a yellow flower petal, it isn’t easy for we front page custodians to keep up with the hiatus-free Tech Talk parade, which is why we always recommend keeping tabs on the forum thread.

But the tortoise wins the race in the end, or something, and we’re here to catch you up on Daniel Albu's latest interviews. First up is Ken Macklin, illustrator extraordinaire best known for the Maniac Mansion cover art and his regrettably scrapped backgrounds for the first version of The Dig. Just recently, some incredible promotional art he did during the early Lucasfilm Games years emerged, so it's very much the Month[-ish] of Macklin. Here’s the interview:

Next up is Charlie Ramos, who served as animator on Outlaws (Lead Animator, in fact), Full Throttle and The Dig. And that's another theme: The Dig war stories. Honor your veterans:

Source: Tech Talk with Daniel Albu

While the Good Neighbor policy that Thrik enacted upon starting his term (Footnote: Possibly a misnomer, as his “term” has limits in the same way Putin’s does.) as CEO (after the mass layoffs, of course) has been indicted by some as a performative and cynical device for Mojo to applaud its own virtuousness, it does carry the benefit of promoting fellow fan sites when they’re delivering the goods.

One of the “advantages” of a Monkey Island game being released into the modern world is that it’s loaded to the gills with achievements, a promise that Return to Monkey Island more than made good on. The question remains: how are you possibly going to keep track of them all? Why, with the elaborate achievements guide published by legendofmi.com, of course. Hopefully this sort of thrown gauntlet encourages the Monkey Island fan sites that tend to rest on their laurels to up their game, but you don’t drop coins into a wishing well with the expectation of getting a return on your investment, after all.

Update: The SCUMM Bar claps back.

Source: The Legend of Monkey Island

Your most valued friend Aaron Giles is back to give you first crack at an upcoming version of DREAMM. Version 3.0 Beta includes a ton of new supported games and features. Frankly, it’s too much to list out – let’s just say those lonely, Fate of Atlantis: The Action Game-free nights are over – so you just as soon head on down to the web site for the details and your obligatory download.

Be sure to share your findings and/or gratitude in the corresponding forum thread. Now go forth and enjoy a privilege previously only known to the royal family: Roland upgrades and simulated CRT scanlines.

Source: DREAMM

The game documentarians at Noclip have chosen as their latest subject Return to Monkey Island, a natural for this sort of retrospective seeing as it’s now roughly as distant an event as the First World War.

Since Noclip had the good sense to involve Ron Gilbert, Dave Grossman, Jenn Sandercock, David Fox, Rex Crowle and Dominic Armato as talking heads, it was inevitable that it would be good. Proceed therefore with burning the next 90 minutes in the security that the investment carries the Mojo Seal of Approval.

Source: Noclip

If you’re anything like me, you glance past most backer emails, because… well, there’s really no “good” reason to do so, but here we are. Long story short—yesterday's Psychonauts 2 email was one I actually did read, and it was worth the thirty-second effort. In it comes word that the Art of Psychonauts 2 has gone digital and is available in your Humble Bundle account right now. And the 402-page monster is pretty damn impressive.

And the motherlode hardback is "in the mail"—the same excuse we use for the Christmas-bonus cheques around these parts.

There’s an official LEGO site called LEGO IDEAS, which is exactly what you’d expect it to be: A place where people can post ideas for future LEGO products. If the idea reaches 1,000 (update: 10,000) votes, it will be reviewed by the LEGO Illuminati and potentially become the real deal. I admittedly know Jack about LEGO, but elTee does, and he excitedly posted this little gem (not to Mojo, but… ¬¬):

If that’s not enough to sell you, check out this video:

That’s right, the sucker opens.

The set has 259 votes at the time of writing, but after being Mojoed, I think it’s safe to say this will happen within the next two years or so. Go vote

Update! As pointed out by gdeligne in the comments, the LEGO idea requires 10,000, not 1,000 votes. What’s an extra zero amongst friends anyway?

Source: LucasTones

You’ve seen the videos, now it’s time to read the articles.

First up is an interview with game director Jerk Gustafsson featuring all the unflinching gossip and hard-hitting questions you’d expect from Lucasfilm.com.

Meanwhile, Entertainment Weekly confirms that Indy is being performed by Troy Baker, known for playing a guy name Joel in that game The Last of Us, and context clues suggest that people who are familiar with video games made since Obama’s second term are going to find that exciting. For the rest of us, we’ll be replacing all the lines in our heads with Doug Lee.

And while you’re at it you might as well check out the game’s press release over at the official Bethesda site, which also includes the first screenshots. Naturally, Mojo already has them all gallery’d up, because we pull out all the stops for our readership.

Yup, that’s really the title. The game is due out by the end of this year on PC and Xbox Whichever One We’re On. Without further ado, here's the goods:

About six hours from now, at 12 p.m. PST / 3 p.m. EST / 9 p.m. CET, the Xbox Developer Direct event will be streaming at the YouTube video embedded below. As you know, the broadcast will include the first look at the new Indiana Jones title by MachineGames (among about seventy other studios, it sounds like):

Of course, for you sensible people without FOMO, you can always just wait for the highlights after the fact.

Source: Xbox YouTube Channel

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

(That’s all I got.)

Source: The Forums—Read them daily!

It was an impressive trick on the part of the upcoming Indy game, getting itself announced prior to the fifth movie going before cameras and managing to stay a committed no-show all the way up to the present, on the other side of Dial of Destiny’s home video release.

But that is scheduled to change later this month, as Eurogamer reports:

It’s all part of the Xbox Developer Direct showcase, which “will be broadcast on 18th January at 8pm UK time - that's 3pm Eastern or midday Pacific.” We’ll be here to point you to that stream when the time comes. I mean, probably.

Source: Eurogamer

Did you know that Michael Land composed The Secret of Monkey Island theme in fifteen minutes? Or that LeChuck’s theme was conceived at a urinal? These are just some of the crazy facts you’ll learn in the latest entry of the “Conversation” series:

Almost three hours long, so buckle down!

If you’re an avid Wireframe reader, this article should already be familiar to you. If not, get ready to dig into the many towns of the Monkey Island universe, from Secret to Return in a scholarly essay. An excerpt—and as this is The Year of “Escape from Monkey Island”, it seems like an appropriate example:

That’s from Sean Clark, speaking about Lucre Town. In fact, almost all the familiars are quoted in the article: Gilbert, Grossman, Fox, and so on and so forth. As far as Monkey Island architecture goes, it’s a must-read .

Author Konstantinos Dimopoulos might be familiar to some of you—he co-wrote Virtual Cities: An Atlas & Exploration of Video Game Cities which covered Grim Fandango’s Rubacava among other things. It got stellar reviews around these parts:

“DON’T BE SUCKED IN” —

But Escape from Monkey Island’s 25th anniversary isn’t until next year, you cry, and right you are. What needs to be taken into consideration is Mojo’s track record with anniversaries, which is... less than stellar. In that sense, it only makes sense to start a year earlier, and when we finally hit the actual date, we may or may not match up. It’s all more or less logical.

So, to start it off, we have videos. Many, many videos.

And if you don’t want Mojo’s fake(-ish) EMI trailer, you can spend your day comparing the PS2 cutscenes to the PC ones. Dig through all the EMI videos to find official trailers and who knows what else?! (And for those who are YouTube averse, we’re in the process of putting all of this up on Mojo proper.)

More to come! And if you followed us on Mastodon or Bluesky you would have seen most of these, as we often provide exclusive previews there.

So, you’ve already downloaded DREAMM to play all those classic LEC games—that’s just the connoisseur you are. But, instead of going through Zak for the umpteenth time, you want to see something different. Something weirder. You want more.

Enter our collection of LucasArts demos.

During the nineties, there were a bunch of chunk-sized samples to try, ranging from the bizarre to pre-release bugfests. And we have collected them all (Footnote: -ish) for you to load into DREAMM. (Or, as it is, features editor elTee has—his Christmas bonus looks pretty sweet this year.)

Jedi Knight and Yoda Stories? They’re right there. That weird standalone Secret of Monkey Island? We got you covered. Outlaws? Grim Fandango in French? All there.

There were, of course, a million different demo bundles through the years, but seventy-one different picks should be enough to get you started. We even provided a handy little filter for a smoother search.

Run download to your heart’s content, if only to summon your inner elTee!

(Oh, we added demos for non-PC platforms, too. Give ’em a try in ScummVM, too!)

By now you should recognize Cressup as the UK task force in this internationally bustling Interviewing Adventure Game Adjacent Humans For A Long Time genre. She has notched another great interview, this time with voice actor Bill Farmer. Best known generally as the voice of Goofy for Disney, Farmer is most treasured by us as the original voice of Sam in the multimedia debut of Steve Purcell’s characters, Sam & Max Hit the Road. It stands as the only published instance of Farmer voicing the character, though as we all know he was reprising his role in LucasArts’ ill-fated sequel before the assassin’s bullet found its mark. (Footnote: We’ll always have that trailer, though.)

Farmer discusses both of his Sam & Max experiences as well as his broader career in the enjoyable conversation, available in full below. We're above giving Cressup any grief over the misleading choice to put the Telltale/Skunkape version of Sam's model in her video's preview image, so that's why I'm not even gonna bring it up.

Source: Cressup

I don’t know how many times we have to stress that Laserschwert’s poster thread is basically the nexus of all that makes the internet esteemable -- a status aided by the fact that it’s pretty much the only example of it.

Why just this week, none other than legendary illustrator Ken Macklin decided to serve the cause by offering up three gorgeous pieces he did for Lucasfilm Games during the 80s. Behold some truly mindblowing, never-before-seen (Footnote: At least in raw form, in the case of The Eidolon.) art for The Eidolon and Maniac Mansion, along with some context by Laser:

Weird, yes, but it makes them especially noteworthy that the Maniac Mansion pieces are artifacts of an earlier phase of the game’s conception, when Weird Ed was imagined as a far friendlier character and even the villainous meteor had a decidedly cuddlier demeanor. (Well, a demeanor period.) Naturally we’ve welcomed these images into our concept art gallery, where you can find some Gary Winnick sketches from that same trimester of the eventual classic’s incubating identity.

Source: The Forums

As part of Grim Fandango's 25th Anniversary, DoubleFine put on a wonderful live concert of Peter McConnell's amazing soundtrack, and now you can watch it in the comfort of your own home. Just turn down the lights, get yourself a cocktail, and pretend you were there:

And if you want to feel extra film noir vibes, there's a "Black & Bone" edition, too.

Thanks to TimeGentleman and Sopabuena for alerting us to this wonderful thing in the forums!

Source: The Forums

Largely considered the best Sam & Max game by those who count (Footnote: Mojo.), The Devil’s Playhouse is set for its remastered “spring“ release.

And sweet it looks! Go wishlist the censored on Steam. The game will also be available for Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 4.

Addendum! There’s also a contest:

Steam has more.

Those who follow Ron on Mastodon have likely seen a steady trickle of information for his upcoming RPG (more than likely named “A Little Something”). Recently, he solicited his followers’ favorite quests from other RPGs, a collection of which you can find on his blog. All this undoubtedly serves as inspiration for his new game.

Want to contribute and go down in history as someone who worked as Ron’s muse? Read the aforementioned post, then @ him with your ideas.

Tell him @mixnmojo sent you—we carry a lot of clout. (Footnote: Citation needed.).

Afterlife may not be something we (for whatever reason) talk much about here at Mojo, but child-of-Kotaku, Aftermath, has a lot to say about it. One Mike Stemmle, in particular, gets downright confessional:

Go read.

Meanwhile, over at YouTube, Daniel Albu has yet another brief conversation, this time with Steve Purcell.

Longtime fan site The Legend of Monkey Island is still busting out jams. (Footnote: Remi points out that this article got advertised heavily on “the socials,” but I figure civilized people deserve to know about it as well.) To celebrate the 26th anniversary of The Curse of Monkey Island, they’ve published an ambitious new article detailing the differences between the game’s demo and the shipped final product. There are even some fresh quotes from Bill Tiller to give it that extra prestige. Read it and remind yourself that great Monkey Island content isn’t exclusively hosted on or by Mojo. Even though it's basically a rounding error.

Source: legendofmi.com

It’s award season over at Apple again, and nominated for “Mac Game of the Year” is Return to Monkey Island. The game is up against ELEX II and Lies of P, which, let’s be honest, are fake, so consider this another win for ReMI. The official results will be released “later this month.”

Daniel Albu’s interviews continue to deploy at a rapid clip, and his latest is with Mike Stemmle. On the Freelance Police front, the designer acknowledges that the source is “floating around” (oh really?), and as far as I know reveals for the first time that the Gytgo stood for Genial Yet Troubling Gaming Organism. It’s all but a taste of the full interview, which explores Stemmle’s whole thirty year plus career:

We’re barreling headlong toward the 20th anniversary of Sam & Max: Freelance Police’s cancellation now, yet there always somehow seems to be a few drops more blood to squeeze out of the stone.

Karen Purdy, who worked as an environment artist on the game, was the source of the last bits of known media, through her online portfolio. Reader Emma T has alerted us to the fact that Purdy has since revamped said portfolio with some additional art from her LucasArts projects, including Sam & Max 2.

We’ve dutifully made both our screenshot gallery and preposterous feature-length Feature current in accordance with this development. Scroll down to the bottom of this page for our attempts to contextualize the latest additions.

Need more Freelance Police autopsying to bring your day to its fullest potential? Daniel Albu’s ongoing series of developer interviews, which you can always keep track of in the dedicated forum thread, has included a recent chat with Dan Connors. This timestamped link will drag the needle to where most of the Freelance Police talk is.

Last we reported, Bill Tiller was putting together a demo for A Vampyre Story 2: A Bat’s Tale to pitch out to publishers in the hopes of restarting production. In a quick update, Bill says, “Still working on the AVS2 publisher demo, but it is rapidly winding up and looks fantastic! My team has done a tremendous job.” So, know that. While waiting, he encourages you to pre-order that pop-up board game he worked on, Shivers.

’Course, nobody was exactly expecting that A Vampyre Story 2 was imminent. On the other hand, Skunkape’s much-anticipated remaster of Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse had openly targeted a 2023 release, and December has traditionally been the release window for these. Yes, I’d say it’s high time that Jake guy explains himself. And so he has, in that globally recognized confessional that the guilty are always free to avail themselves of, the Mojo forums:

So it’s coming, you just gotta wait a little longer. You can handle it. Heck, you probably won’t even be sobered up from all those no-holds-barred Grim Fandango 25th anniversary bacchanals (they’ve been sweeping the nation) by the time it hits the streets. I’m here to tell ya, the one my grandma hosted did not spare the hookah water in those coffin shooters.

We’re a little late (Footnote: Our thanks to faithful reader Scott S for not being too polite to point this out.) to acknowledging Dave Grossman’s tradition this year, but nevermind that and behold what the 21st century Picasso of pumpkin mistreatement hath wrought for 2023: “Eye Infection”.

Source: Phrenopolis

Our fantastic friend, Double Fine (their words!), has thrown together a nice little look-back at Grim Fandango. Specifically, it dives into the fans’ memories of the game (which probably are foggy, seeing we’re basically past expiration at this point). Go read!

Heads up for those of us who missed the first pressing: The Grim Fandango OST is once again available on vinyl from iam8bit.

Source: GFN’s Bluesky

Do you remember the day Grim Fandango hit the shops? I more or less do—Wikipedia claims it’s October 30th, though many-to-most believe it’s actually November 2nd—and so I feel old. Twenty-five years? I mean, good grief…

Us barrelling toward the retirement home aside, Grim is, of course, one of the all-time greats, and what better way to celebrate than having the Grim Fandango Network spring back from slumber. Thrik has given the site a spiffy overhaul, and the former .net has been switched out with a fashionably trendy .network. This is just the beginning, and we can look forward to regularly updated sections in the coming weeks and months.

Want more? The fan site has become active on the socials with a shiny Bluesky profile as well as a not-so-active home on Mastodon. Thrik isn’t kidding around.

Happy birthday Grim Fandango and welcome back Grim Fandango Network!

For their 400th episode, popular podcast The Retro Hour have a two-part interview with Aric Wilmunder. Aric always has plenty of interesting stories so this will be well worth a listen.

Our only fear with posting interviews like this is that Mojo CEO Thrik will demand that we jump back on the podcast bandwagon. Look out for our 15 part retrospective on Star Wars: Pit Droids soon.

Source: The Retro Hour

For years* your Max plushie had to alone put up with your unregulated private detective skills and musings.

Finally the day has come for these crime-fighting and life partners to adorn your computer shelf together.

Now open for preorders on Uncute is the Sam plushie, for a seemingly high $50 pricetag. But you can't leave Max alone can you? That's ill-advised.

*if you could afford the import/shipping costs...

Source: Uncute Plushies

Unfortunately, TellTale Games in its current incarnation has had to do what many gaming companies have had to do this year and layoff a percentage of employees, some now experiencing this from TTG for the second time.

With their recent release of The Expanse coming to a close it is possible the layoffs could be related to the ebb and flow of staffing, or not, but TellTale Games responded to the news stating that layoffs did indeed occur but their current pipeline of projects (The Wolf Among Us) are still in production.

We wish all the developers who have been laid off to quickly find new positions and get back to stable work.

Source: PCGamer

Everyone's* favourite LucasArts adventure, Grim Fandango, turns 25 later this month (yes, you are officially THAT old) and DoubleFine are asking fans to share their "thoughts, art, cosplay, and more..."

Link: Share your Manny memories

Why are they asking for this? Good question! They say "so we can see where Manny's fandom stands in 2023". What does that mean?! An upcoming celebration? Market research on the viability of a sequel? Share your theories below...

* - Well mine, anyway.

Source: DoubleFine's Twitter/"X"

I wish I liked it. But I don’t. I do hope you enjoy “The Lair of LeChuck,” though! And feel free to read my opinions.

I mean, that’s about it.

Not content to only chat with Dom one time, Laura Cress has upped the ante:

I haven’t had a chance to listen yet, but apparently the topic of conversation is Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island — go listen if that’a your jam.

For those eagerly awaiting Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island: Tale 3: The Lair of LeChuck, you can stop holding your breath on September 28.

Skip to 4:49 for some footage of Monkey Island.

Source: Eurogamer

It's been two years since our inquiry into the public access TV show Fiction by Louie was published and we took home all those Pulitzers. Like any artistic masterpiece, it included a single imperfection to avoid offending the divine. Alerted by Remi’s cynical-minded promotion of the article on Bluesky this week, Dave Grossman caught the mistake and brought it to our attention.

One of the tidbits that appears in the article is that a MIDI track used in the show was composed by the familiar name of Patrick Mundy. Thinking that I could trust my memory of The Secret of Monkey Island opening credits, I styled him as “Patrick Mundy of Earwax Productions fame,” but Dave points out to us that the composer was in fact separate from the Earwax guys. A quick revisit of the game's opener shows that I was indeed blending credits in my head:

Dave further notes that Mundy was the composer of the music heard when navigating Guybrush around the top-down views of Mêlée Island and Monkey Island. I didn’t know that before, and as we’ve established I know everything, so it seems this all worked out profitably in the end. Though it will be your instinct, I assure you there is no need to thank me.

Well, hell, a year has passed? Return to Monkey Island has hit its first birthday, and so we went crazy and published a newsletter looking at the timeline up to its release.

As for other celebrations, we are hearing rumblings that some official “stuff” may hit soon.

Oh, and feel free to subscribe to the newsletter! As things have gone a bit quiet, it won’t hit your inbox that often, so there’s really no reason for you not to.

Update! The official celebration begins with the ReMI crew picking their favorite parts of the game.

And so it starts, the collectibles, albeit digitally only for now.

While I’m not familiar with Qobuz, the service will make the ReMI soundtrack available for sale tomorrow. The caveats are that it is CD length and CD quality, but whatever—this is, by all measures, great news. (Ungrateful bastard as I am, I’d like to see it on vinyl, too.)

I have no idea if it’s the same album as will be included with the LRG box. Either way, this will be available tomorrow so go get ready to grab it.

Source: The Forums

Just because we slow down doesn’t mean the rest of the world does the same.

First, as you’re well aware, we’re quickly approaching ReMI’s first anniversary. And during the last few weeks, Terrible Toybox has gotten quite busy on the sosh. Today, for example, over on their Facebook page, Rex has tossed out a piece of concept art alongside a short anecdote. (It’s also over on Xitter, so pick your poison.) Keep an eye out for more.

Speaking of the sosh: We’re on Bluesky! Expect the same quality content you find on Mastodon. Our handle is mixnmojo.bsky.social—rolls right off the tongue.

Finally, elTee has started doing god’s/the CEO ’s work, gathering information for all of LEC’s international releases. It’s... a project. Learn more here.

And that’s all!

If you missed out on the last few episodes of Conversations with Curtis (as we have), it’s time to catch up. And what better place to start than with this Kyle Balda interview? Balda is mostly famous for being the intern behind the DOTT credit screen (our CEO’s favorite game ) and also directed small indie features like Minions.

What else have you potentially missed? Hal Barwood; Mark Ferrari; Ronzo himself. Maybe even more! So go check it all out.

Boss Fight Books is now taking pre-orders for their upcoming release of the Oral History of Day of the Tentacle, available in both paperback and e-book formats.

Don't delay; order yours today!

Source: Boss Fight Books

It's been every iPad owners dream to be able to play classic LucasArts adventure titles on their device, and while several of them do exist for that platform (thanks DoubleFine), ScummVM has steadfastly remained an Android exclusive (unless you were willing to build and install ScummVM yourself).

That is, at least... until now: The ScummVM team have just announced that the iOS port of their monumental VM is in testing!

There's still a question mark around whether Apple will allow software they will likely view as an emulator on the App Store, but when questioned about it, ScummVM team leader, Sev, said, "we are yet to see". Hopeful! (?)

Source: ScummVM Website

Bill Tiller must be making headway on that A Vampyre Story 2 demo he mentioned at the beginning of the year. Over on his Instagram page, he shared some background art from the long-stalled game and the following caption.

What publisher could afford not to pick this up? Bad Brain, thy redemption arc is nigh.

Source: Bill Tiller's Instagram

News post for a slow week: Writer Simon Parkin's podcast My Perfect Console has guests pick five games for a perfect console, discussing these games as well as their careers. Each episode's about an hour.

One Dominic Armato joined Parkin about a month ago for an interview (episode 31), and one Erik Wolpaw (who co-wrote the first Psychonauts) joined previously (episode 13). Both episodes are good and representative of the show as a whole.

Listen to them on Apple Podcasts, Acast, Spotify, etc. It's been a staple of my low intensity cardio days, although fair warning that the podcast does make you want to go out and play video games afterwards.

It’s no secret that, despite Mojo’s bandwagon-spurning affection for the movie, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ended up being a massive box office face-plant for Disney. Since the studio long ago stopped granting me gross point participation in their feature films, I am happy to report no personal financial impact, but it does raise the question of the fate of whatever MachineGames is working on.

Hypothetically, one should have nothing to do with the other, but having already noticed a certain deafening silence around the Indy game despite its two-and-a-half-years-ago origins, one feels justified in growing a bit jaded.

Today, you can breathe a sigh of relief. In a new interview with Bethesda big shot Todd Howard, the game is given an official status of, erm, “midway.”

Of course, they say such things about Beyond Good and Evil 2 about every fifteen years, but hey, let’s be optimistic.

Source: British GQ

”The Quest for Guybrush” as it is called:

2023 continues to belt out its remastered games, with this week's flavour being 1995's Star Wars: Dark Forces. Check the reveal trailer here:

The remaster is being handled by Nightdive Studios, who recently released a "benchmark" quality remaster with Quake II. It's releasing on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and Steam, promised to be in 4K and 120 FPS (FPS in this context means "the new 'omg gr@phics!!!'").

Dark Forces is an FPS that has you blasting through Star Destroyers, Coruscant, and a yacht as a guy with the overtly sci-fi fantasy name "Kyle". Kyle's job? To "battle every man and machine the Imperial Forces can muster" in order to stop the rise of "a doomsday army - one that, if finished, will become the final cog in the Empire's arsenal of terror and domination."

I think the original trilogy answered this tantalising "will they/won't they" (as in "will they/won't they singlehandedly destroy every man and machine the Imperial Army can muster, or will it show up in the movies?"), but I doubt you're signing-up for this for story, anyway.

More info as it becomes available.

Ron’s next game—presumably the one that goes by A Little Something on Wikipedia—has been revealed just a little bit more...

Sounds like it could be a fun little something to me!

As we reported earlier in the summer, Bill Tiller teamed up with the publisher Zoom-Platform to get A Vampyre Story in fighting shape for newer machines during a self-imposed hiatus from digital storefronts. The title has relaunched on Steam at a discounted price and armed with various updates, which you can find laid out here.

The occasion was seen as grounds to relaunch the long-kaput Autumn Moon web site, complete with a refreshed logo:

Could this signal a new lease on life for the label? Who knows, but in the meantime you gonna want that TruCoat them emotes, whatever those might be.

Source: Autumn Moon

If you frequent our forums—and why wouldn’t you?!—you will have seen this thread from bot-meister JP LeBreton. Entitled “a comprehensive collection of all LucasArts background art (1987-2000),” his current project is... Well, let the man describe it himself:

Read the whole thread for more, or, if you’re more of the passive type, go check out the bot that posts the backgrounds to Mastodon: LucasArts Places. While we can’t confirm elTee broke down in tears after seeing this EGA scene, odds seem good that it happened.

Looking for more passive entertainment? We post a daily screenshot both to Mastodon and M. And even ol' SCUMM Bar has gotten in on the fun: Follow @scummbar for a daily Monkey Island scene. (“More to come,” we have been told.)

Remember in 2003, when all the Domino bricks started falling, and we learned that, yes, a Monkey Island movie was in production at some point? In 2013, we published a short article about it on The SCUMM Bar, and it has now resurfaced here on Mojo.

In 2021, Polygon published its own story with a lot more official-ish information, of course, but it never really caught the zeitgeist angle quite as vividly. So, go read and relive the movie that thank god never was.

Over to Marius:

Want to relive the Monkey Island 2 commentary tracks without the hassle of playing the game or dealing with YouTube? Mojo got you covered with our new Commentary Browser. Thirty-one tracks, all at your fingertips, right here!

Usual caveats apply: Minimal beta testing, may not work on your device, etc.

Rumor has it the CEO is already working on expanding this with his favorite game, Day of the Tentacle, so stay tuned.

As some of you already know, we made a startling discovery last week: By all accounts, Stan and Elaine had a serious thing going in The Secret of Monkey Island before—or until?—Guybrush showed up.

To further dive into this fundamental plot twist, we sent our software architect department into the depths of the two first games and their discovery... Well, let’s just say that Return now is fully and wholly explained.

Make your own conclusions from rock-solid proof that never was run and edited through multiple pieces of software.

Hey, the demo doesn’t lie.

To be clear, this is absolutely canon, as proven:

We keep digging through the archive, this time stumbling across our #monkey-island IRC chats with Ron and Dom.

All I can do is apologize.

Rock Paper Shotgun continues its annual "Top 100 PC Games of All-Time" shenanigans. Last week, Tales from the Borderlands came at #93, Return to Monkey Island made it to a respectable #85, and Knights of the Old Republic was at #79.

Now the second half of that list is out. Interesting choices all-around, with Firewatch at #39 and The Walking Dead: Season One hitting #22. (Honourable mention to Half-Life: Alyx, which some Mojo graduates worked on as part of the subsumed Campo Santo.)

Source: Rock Paper Shotgun

Some of you may remember Jake and Marius’ stream of the two original Monkey Islands—we documented the first one right here Now, they’re doing it again, albeit with SeMI.

That’s tomorrow (Saturday), 11am PT/8pm CEST. Be there—the cool kids are sure to be.

Our trip down the old and dusty interview caverns continues. This time we’ve pulled seven of 'em out of the vault and combined them into one “Curse of Monkey Island Retro Interview Bonanza.” Some pre-launch, some post. They’re the type of texts that probably will be taught in universities for decades to come.

Sincere apologies for the lack of any pictures. In the early aughts, we were more concerned about the page loading on a modem than anything. Now read.

If you thought the infatuation wouldn’t last, well... In a sense you were right: It has turned into actual love.

Rock Paper Shotgun has released its top 100 PC games of all time and ReMI proudly occupies #85. Not bad, seeing the game hasn’t even reached a year in age.

Which is a good reminder to download the game for iOS and/or Android.

Other Mojo-related games on there: Tales From The Borderlands hits a deserved #93 and Star Wars: The Knights Of The Old Republic sits on #79. The top 50 will presumably be released soon.

As part of our current merger with The SCUMM Bar—thanks in no small part to expert negotiations by the CEO —we have resurrected a highly informative interview with Bill Tiller. For the CMI fan amongst you, it’s a must read and likely what Kubrick had in mind when he filmed 2001.

We didn’t quite plan this retro week, but more to come tomorrow!

Yep. It’s out. Go get it—works great.

Long-time readers may remember all the excitement surrounding the infamous Monkey Island 2-demo hack. Within the source, cut dialogue was found, different scenes were revealed, and music was extracted.

This was all in 2003, and some may have forgotten all that was uncovered. Thus, we decided to not only revisit it, but also update it with newer findings. And, as a bonus, we converted the MIDI music to MP3s. That’s just the service we provide.

Give Monkey Island 2: The Demo Examination a read, and you may or may not learn a little about what never was.

Update! A couple of more factoids have been added. Also, a few more musical cues were provided by Zaarin, albeit in OGG format: Only the best for my precious MT-32 >:

So, we’ve made the rounds after Xwitter fell out of favor: Instagram, Threads, even YouTube Shorts. None of them were for us. And while our Mastodon presence will remain, we have decided to take matters into our own hands: Today M soft launches.

This is a social network that has it all: Properly embedded images and videos; threading that actually works; a conversational structure. How can we achieve these things other social networks can only dream of? The secret lies in our artisanal technology stack: Mid-90s-era forums.

Yes, M is built on our existing forums. It is a forum, just with some slight alterations. M is where we post the type of short-form articles we used to post on the sosh: “Mojo Scene of the Day” is already going. “Your Daily Watch is a new thing. Much more to come over the next few days: Rumor has it Thrik is firing up his meme machine. M is short-form Mojo, in other words. Microblogging. You get the idea.

Currently, only Mojo can start topics, but we welcome everyone to join in the conversation (screw you Bluesky). Welcome to M, by Mojo. (Footnote: We actually own MbyMojo.com—don’t accuse us of spending those Patreon funds willy-nilly.)

Mojo’s German bureau chief, Marius, has just finished an impromptu Twitch playthrough of the first part of The Secret of Monkey Island. Dubbed A walk through monochrome Mêlée Island on the Atari ST you can stream it here:

Of note is his platform of choice: An OG Atari ST with monochrome graphics and three channels of bleeps. Presumably, it’s not something many have witnessed, so now is your chance.

Update! Marius has YouTube-d up a highlight reel and gave us a controversial statement: The Secret of Monkey Island is really good.

(I mean, no introduction necessary—you know the drill by now.)

I wish I liked it, but...

Feel free to read my spoiler-free-ish thoughts on Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island: The Journey to Mêlée Island. And feel free to disagree. Or agree. I feel how I feel; that’s just how it is.

On the eve of the Monkey Island-themed Sea of Thieves expansion, Rare has released a spoilerific deep dive into the game:

What is there to say, really? I’m still uncertain about this whole SeMI thing, but there is no doubt that the team is showing downright reverence for Monkey Island. So whatever my personal opinion may be, I can already say I respect their dedication.

Download the game tomorrow and decide for yourself how it all stacks up.

(Oh, and the Voodoo-theme woodwind deserves a chef’s kiss.)

I’m sure some (or many) are on the fence about this whole Sea of Thieves thing, and if getting the game just for another taste of Monkey Island isn’t your “thing,” you always got this.

Almost five minutes of a Mêlée Island walkthrough. Hey, if all you were interested in was seeing the island in full 3D, this at least is something.

For the rest of us, the expansion is two days away.

Update! Hey, there’s an interview, too!

As is often the case, I have not watched this before posting it here. But there is no way this video...

... is not interesting. Land, McConnell, and Bajakian chatting for almost two hours? Just do yourself a favor and watch the thing. (I’m planning on doing myself the same favor as soon as I can.)

Let’s just get to it shall we: First, SeMI keeps expanding its own name: With the first part now having a title, we got Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island: The Journey to Mêlée Island. Two more episodes to go—this first one releases next week.

And as the video above reveals, there’s a lot of Monkey Island swag coming to the game, too. You even get a quick musical snippet from the MCU (Monkey Island Cinematic Universe) so the video is worth a gander even if you don’t care about the crossover.

Speaking of swag: As mentioned by Sopa on the forums, more Sam & Max action figures are being made available from Boss Fight Studios.

The reference material:

Once they hit 750 backers the production begins. Be prepared to shell out $80 for each figure.

Got five minutes to spare? You could do worse than spend them watching this mini-tribute to the infamous The Secret of Monkey Island stump joke.

Sure, there are some oddities—if you’re going to use art from our LucasArts' Secret History #12: The Curse of Monkey Island article, at least credit Paco Vink—but hey... A fun watch all the same.

As expected, Return to Monkey Island is set to release on iOS and Android. On July 27, you can perform yet another act of penance for that copy of The Secret of Monkey Island you pirated by tossing $10 to Apple or Google. Or both. Here’s the trailer.

And speaking of mobile: Mojo has yet again gone social, this time on Threads. That’s right. We’re all about the 'gram. For now. (Email us a Bluesky invite if you want even more of us!)

So, that’s @internationalhouseofmojo for the only social account you’ll ever need. We’ll see if it sticks.

Hey, psst, want a book recommendation? We asked pretty much every writer and designer who’s worked on a LucasArts, Telltale, Terrible Toybox, Double Fine, Autumn Moon, etc. game on here for good recent reads, then added a few of our own. (Every writer, that is, except Chris Purvis, Sean Clark, and Brendan Q Ferguson, whom we couldn’t find. We assume they’re mythical creatures now, living off the grid, somewhere in the northern wilderness, swept up in starlight.)

Some people never got back to us (understandably), and some said they would but hadn’t by the time the article went up (also understandably), but we’ll happily (to crib video game dev parlance) patch in any updates to the article should they reach out. (Sincerely, we'd love that. Unlike, say, Jim Ward, the brows being furrowed over here aren't over silly things like deadlines, but books. And I don't joke when I say we reached-out to all the designers/writers.)

Happy reading!

Video game documentary filmmakers Noclip have somehow acquired themselves a lot of boxes of tapes (remember those?) that they're now digitising—a decade's worth of video game history, mostly feature and BTS material, that was apparently headed for a landfill from the GameSpot vault. Among the initial batch of unearthed videos is this behind-closed doors demo of Knights of the Old Republic, from E3 2001 (remember E3?).

Noclip's Danny O'Dwyer explains more here:

One wonders at the mid-2000s gems they'll unearth from the Psychonauts, Telltale, and Special Edition days. Wonders and—if one were there and remembers the clammy awkwardness of game press events of the era—probably prays against.

Source: Noclip Games History Archive

Never you mind about what Rotten Tomatoes or some Reddit mega thread has to say. The final word on cinema, as on all matters, is Mojo’s, and you are all her constituency. With pride in this civic duty, we bring you our release date review of Indiana Jones and Dial of Destiny. After reading it, you will require no other review, or much of anything, because you’ll be dead of old age. Cripes, Jason.

Disclaimer: While we tried to be mindful about spoilers by refraining from any explicit summary of the plot beyond the first act, we can’t vouch for what your personal standards are. Go to the cinema clean if you want to experience the movie that way. And who are you kidding, anyway -- it’s not like you aren’t going see this like a good little consumer.

The best thing to happen to Mojo is the rise of YouTube interviews: Others create content; we reap the benefits. In this case:

We’re there tomorrow.

If you want to play The Legend of Monkey Island DLC from July 20, you're going to need the base game Sea of Thieves. And if you don't have it yet, to celebrate its 5th birthday, Steam have it on sale at half-price, as well as the other related soundtracks, wallpapers etc, for the next day.

Go buy it the instant you have Dialed up your Destiny. Or now. Whatever.

Source: Steam

By now you’ve probably watched one or two DOTT-related celebrations, so why not make it a trifecta? Laura Cress will be streaming a Q&A with Tim Schafer tonight at 8 pm. What 8 pm is that? Who knows! Presumably, BST, which is 12 PDT, which is... Oh, just check the conversion table.

Fun is sure to be had!

I have no problems admitting I don’t really “get” speedruns, but as others do, I feel like I should link this “Monkey Island 2 Speedrun History” video.

Ron even makes an appearance, so that must be worth something even for those who don’t hurry through games.

I haven’t watched the video yet, but I can only assume it takes place to the dulcet tones of “The Cook Chase.”

Source: Legend of MI

Sure, by being someone who is “with it” and therefore a confirmed reader of the forums, you’re about to be told redundant information, but a new version of DREAMM always has to hit the broadsheets. Here is Aaron with the rundown of your newest testing mission, DREAMM 2.1 Beta:

Source: Aaron Giles

The thing’s a week away and so the marketing machine is belching out exhaust in choking quantities now. How diligent do you expect Mojo to be about collecting all that smoke with a butterfly net? Well, we’ll see what we can do.

First off, we’ve got a new piece from Variety with James Mangold that’s reasonably substantial as far as these things go. There’s some new behind-the-scenes photographs as well as a little more light shed on the process of Spielberg passing the torch.

The director gave another good interview to Uproxx as well. If reading bores you, Mangold and the cast have been junketing their way through no end of taped puff pieces for morning shows and the like, so a “fun” day on Youtube awaits the PR-addicted. I think the most worthwhile plug is gonna be an upcoming appearance by Ford on Conan O’Brien’s podcast, likely dropping Monday. It’s comforting to know that despite Conan’s television show being over and the general improbability of a fifth Indy with Ford even existing, that the tradition of the two of them behaving like jackasses survives for one final round. A good sampling of the arts they’ve worked together in the past:

There’s also a bunch of new clips, promos, and featurettes. Probably more than the four below, and there’s undoubtedly more to come, but I think we’ve done our part by now. On the Dial of Destiny score, let’s agree to meet up again at Mojo’s release day review. Our topicality streak can’t possibly last, but why not go out swinging?

We’ve already granted you access to one YouTube celebration, but, not surprisingly, more keep popping up. And equally not surprising, Daniel Albu is responsible for this one.

One June 25th, one Dave Grossman will face the interrogation squad. Exactly why the description says In this conversation they discuss the history of the SCUMM engine and go over all the major milestones in Aric's career! is anyone’s guess, though maybe Dave will talk a lot about Aric? Or it’s a typo—who can even say these days?! (Mojo famously has none of those. (Footnote: citation needed)) Anyway: June 25th is when it all goes down, so check it out.

Breaking news! The typo has been corrected. On the YouTube page that is. Mojo will keep having 'em.

Today we have two minutes of people blowing smoke up John Williams’ ass (note I don’t say it’s undeserved), with some hitherto unseen footage from the movie sprinkled in.

For those interested in owning up to 30% of the recorded score, an official release will drop ahead of the movie on June 28th, at least digitally. A pressed album will follow later in the summer. Here is the cover art, showcasing a level of effort that some have called “Remi-esque":

The Los Angeles premiere of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny took place at the El Capitan Theatre on Wednesday. Still needing to fill some seats after indiscriminately inviting every TikTok profile with a fedora, Disney took the measure of hauling in some actual heavyweight dignitaries, including Temple of Doom reps Ke Huy Quan and Raj Singh (who played the doll-stabbing Maharajah in what some (Footnote: citation needed) have called LeChuck’s prototype):

The attendees were treated to a little John Williams concert before the screening, and here’s Spielberg giving an intro for it. George Lucas’s demeanor is best described as “My Consent Wasn’t Sought By Disney For A Sea of Thieves Crossover.”

We’re not far from the first part of the seminal SeMI-expansion release, and even with my tepid expectations I have downloaded Sea of Thieves. Hey, Monkey Island is Monkey Island, right? Right! And, over at the forums calls for new crews has already started. If I understand it correctly, Thieves allow for four-person parties, so if you haven’t joined one yet, now is the time to do so. In other words, jump on our forums and start organizing. I have no clue if there are any particular ways for crews to intermingle—I saw some mentions of fleets—but this also seems like a good way to spread the glory of the Mojo community. And create free grassroots advertising for us be part of something bigger.

To continue the SeMI chatter, more after the cut.

Read more...

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.

"Pew, pew, pew!"

Star Wars Wrath Warth Unleashed next?

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

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.

Back to Indy!

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!)

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.

Source: Collider

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.

Source: Sam & Max Funhouse

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!

Over in London today is the Star Wars Celebration, an annual convention during which Star Wars, as I understand it, is celebrated.

Lucasfilm still found the time to squeeze in a panel for Indiana Jones in the Dial of Destiny, where audiences were treated to the official trailer. This follows the teaser trailer back in December and the Super Bowl spot in February. Volunteer yourself to be more Twitter Trend than human by checking it out yourself below.

Disney has also shared a new poster for the movie:

Discuss the new unveilings below or in our Indy 5 forum thread. Maybe some of you could pool your talents and throw together an official web page as an act of almsgiving; times are so tough for the studio, IndianaJones.com still redirects to a Facebook page.

The world has been awaiting a worthy follow-up to telarium’s twenty-two year old interview with Gary Winnick, the first artist hired by Lucasfilm Games as well as Ron’s creative accomplice on Maniac Mansion and Thimbleweed Park, and pundits are finally ready to say that a contender has emerged.

A highlight comes at 43:30 when Gary holds up his original character designs for Maniac Mansion. I’m sure if they had been left for Lucasfilm to vault they’d be landfill by now. Protect that binder, Gary.

At the close of the interview, Daniel Albu teases that his next interview will be with Bill Tiller. May the roster of LucasArts veterans at his disposal never tap out.

Source: Conversations with Curtis

Twenty-four hours remain for you to decide whether you want to have electricity this month or own any/all of these from your rapacious friends at Limited Run Games:

Meanwhile, folks on the forums are reminiscing that it was a year ago today that Ron announced a new Monkey Island game as a vicious April Fools joke. Still can’t believe some of you fell for that. There’s a sucker born every minute, I suppose.

Source: Limited Run Games

Substantiating earlier rumors, Disney plans to premiere Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny at the Cannes Film Festival in May. While Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was also unveiled to the world at Cannes (not to mention last year’s Top Gun: Maverick -- a release that Disney would surely love to replicate in more ways than one), the June 30th release date for Dial of Destiny means an entire month will separate this debut and the general release.

It’s hard not to view this as a vote of confidence on the studio’s part given how much soaking that allows the word of mouth out of that screening to do. Imagine the render quality they must have achieved with the prairie dogs this time.

Source: Variety

As we approach the one-year anniversary of the best Aprils non-fools schtick in recent memory, we’re seeing some more “lessons learned”-type information making its way to the public. Take producer Jenn Sandercock’s recent GDC talk, The Production Secrets of 'Return to Monkey Island', from which you can download the presentation deck. I haven’t read it myself, but couldn’t help but notice this tidbit while skimming through it.

According to one David Fox, Return’s musicians also held a talk called Thirty Years Later: Scoring 'Return to Monkey Island'. We haven’t gotten our grubby hands or eyes on that one yet—if you can help us track it down, we’ll pay in hugs and love. Not a bad little soundtrack, that.

Download PDF

• RTMI_ProductionSecrets_GDC2023.pdf From jennsand.com

Statements by Bob Iger and Kevin Feige last month sent the signal that Disney has sailed past the honeymoon phase of torching kajillions of dollars at a time on streaming content, and they will consequently be rolling back their production of Star Wars programming for Disney Plus to a mere surfeit.

It hardly needs to be said aloud that a belt-tightening policy of somewhat-less Star Wars at Lucasfilm means an absolute banishment of anything else. Historically, Lucasfilm has never required having Disney as a parent company to satisfy that expectation all by its lonesome, but it’s been an unusual last few years in this regard between the ill-fated revival of Willow on Disney Plus and an incoming finale for Indiana Jones that was said to be spawning a live action television project on the same service. Well, about that:

I’d be telling quite the whopper if I acted like I lament whatever that Indy show was gonna be, but Mojo’s memory is long enough to recognize that this strategy of Daring To Consider A Slate Consisting Of Half A Percent Of Not-Star Wars Before Abruptly Coming To Our Senses is…well, a classic.

Source: DiscussingFilm

Whether you know him from his animation career at LucasArts, his stint as Creative Director of Telltale Games in its earliest days, his comic strip Grickle (whose universe the Puzzle Agent series occupies), or his movie credits (Coraline, The Boxtrolls), Graham Annable is definitely One Of The Principals, so there was no escape for him as the latest subject of Daniel Albu’s “A Conversation with…” series.

Don’t let your unseemly, targeted lust for the Sam & Max: Freelance Police juice (29:28) get in the way of watching the whole thing.

Source: YouTube

I often forget that I gave Fallen Order a shot, but I did and it wasn’t exactly “my thing.” That said, the 2019 Star Wars game was well-received by many, and I will admit—the sequel is looking pretty good.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor releases on April 28th for Xbox S/X and PS5. PC “coming soon.”

Being that I’m the guy who repeatedly, and only somewhat sarcastically, used the front page to hype up the approach of the Willow television show, it might have been noticeable that I fell silent when the thing actually arrived. Well, Mom always said that if you don’t have anything nice to say…

But hey, just ‘cause the show’s aggressively tropey Young Adult vision wasn’t for me, doesn’t mean it wasn’t for somebody. Plus, you gotta cherish when Lucasfilm puts anything non-Star Wars on its docket. It’s sorta Mojo’s raison d’etre, if I might invoke a little…Portuguese?

So I stand with the bereaved in reporting that Disney/Lucasfilm has given the show the axe rather than allow Jon Kasdan to make good on his outstandingly presumptuous post-credit implications, presumably on the grounds that it didn’t have lightsabers in it. On the plus side, you’re effectively left with an eight hour, live action Willow 2 quasi-starring Warwick Davis, which few people over the past thirty-five years would have called possible.

I’ll also take this time to point out that the show’s soundtrack, featuring compositions by James Newton Howard and Xander Rodzinski when it wasn’t going in for horrific rock covers, is available from all the Mickey-approved platforms in a three-volume digital release from Walt Disney Records. It’s another important precedent for those of us who have our fingers crossed for more official soundtrack releases for certain non-obvious Lucasfilm properties.

Now, dry those tears and let’s get that throwback graphic adventure continuation up and running. May I suggest David Fox?

Source: Deadline

At least for consoles, that is.

As pointed out by Jn, you can now pick up a boxed version of ReMI for $35.

Let’s be honest, you can never own too many copies of the game. Run to Amazon and buy, buy, buy!

Did “springing forward” this morning leave you feeling bitter, outraged, and dispossessed? Then it may be time to revisit Dave Grossman’s time-honored, Pulitzer-dodging rant against the institutional handsiness your clock is subjected to twice a year by participating countries.

Those who want to take it to the next level might even try placing an order for Dave’s attendant schwag, to see if that old Cafepress store can still phone home. Report back with your results!

Source: Phrenopolis

And we’re all privileged enough to witness it:

So he’s making feverish progress on his newest game, interrupted only to hang out with Dom? Ron is living his best life right now.

Source: Ronzo

The latest DREAMM build from Aaron Giles is meant to be the final beta before the release of DREAMM 2.0 and the start of world peace. Download away and replay your favorite LucasArts classics all over again for the good of mankind.

Aaron’s apparently made of sterner-than-average stuff, as he hasn’t yet been scared away from the Mojo Forums (we’ll get there), so share your findings with the mad scientist himself in the DREAMM thread if Bernard starts talking like Dr. Fred or The Dig starts acting like a good game (Footnote: Low blow. I like The Dig.) or something. And remember, DREAMM is beginning to expand to support a broader LucasArts catalog, so you can give titles like Afterlife, X-Wing, and Dark Forces a whirl on it these days. Don’t bother getting your beloved copy of Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis: The Action Game out of hock just yet, though.

Source: DREAMM

We’re not at our best when we’re acknowledging deaths two years past, but punctually or not we must give a proper salute to voice actor Doug Boyd, who passed away in 2021. Boyd was a go-to talent for Telltale Games, a relationship that stretched all the way back to the dawn of the studio, when he nailed the role of Smiley Bone in Out from Boneville and The Great Cow Race. Anchoring a game wasn’t beyond his talents either, as he went on to voice Nelson Tethers himself in that gem of a series Puzzle Agent. And when it comes to all the roles he played in the Sam & Max games, they’re almost too numerous to list. Fortunately, as it often does, the Sam & Max Wiki has us covered:

• Specs
• Drivers
• Puppet President
• Slushie
• Maimtron 9000 (Beyond Time and Space)
• Red Elf
• Documentary Narrator
• WARP Announcer
• Train Conductor

Reading that list makes me feel all the more grateful for the work that Skunkape and Bay Area Sound do on the remasters, as the higher sample quality they achieve by going back to the original recordings preserves these wonderful performances.

Boyd’s game voiceover reel (which, in a Small World moment, was put together by fellow Telltale regular Adam Harrington) remains online, and offers a nice encapsulation of his resume:

You think Musk is a character? You should get a glimpse of what the Mojo workplace is like under the brutal thumb of our Chief Executive Officer. No, really - visuals get the message across in ways that words could never hope to.

There are those who would contend that a cultural mismatch was to some degree inevitable, what with a top-down management style being imposed upon an environment that traditionally thrived under a bottom-up approach that came to be seen as signature, but even still.

A few hours before Tim had his chest pinned with that aforementioned award over in Las Vegas, IGN took advantage of his vulnerable state by talking with him extensively about all things Double Fine.

A lot more ground than that is covered, so hear all of what Tim had to say in the final moments of his pre-Hall of Fame life. And savor it, because from now on you’ll only be hearing from him through an elaborate network of limo drivers and bodyguards, what with him being, formally speaking, a Big Shot.

Source: IGN

The MPAA has awarded Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny the traditional PG-13 rating, citing “sequences of violence and action, language and smoking.” Yah, you’re gonna want that TruCoat violence and action. Allegedly (Footnote: elTee’s alludes to “reliable sources” that he steadfastly refuses to identify), this was only achieved after the filmmakers cut out 40 solid minutes of unflinching sexual activity, Cruising-style, but as a commercial matter The Mouse needs this to reach the widest possible audience. You’re gonna want that widest possible audience.

A movie can only be rated after it has locked picture (unless the studio wants to pay for a resubmission), so the real news here is that this thing is in the birth canal, and there’s no turning back. Next on the horizon should be a proper trailer. That’s probably the one that’s going to give us our first look at Sophia Hapgood, or so elTee’s reliable sources (Footnote: Okay, it was just that adventure-gui.de guy) tell me.

Source: Screen-Connections

It was only a matter of time.

LRG has announced its next money sucker: Zak McKracken. What will $75 get you? Seemingly quite a bit:

Get ready to mortgage your house, sell a kidney, and/or get a second job, as sales start this Friday, March 10th. You got 'til April 23rd to cough up the dough. More information here.

Assuming you’re unemployed, you’ve survived the great voyeuristic chronicle that is Double Fine PsychOdyssey, be it on YouTube or by hauling down hundreds of gigabytes from Archive.org, where it’s been sportingly commended for your offlining needs.

Now we come to the time for post-mortems, victory laps and retrospective quarterbacking. Leading the vanguard is YouTube channel MinnMax, which has logged hours of virtual discussion on the documentary with no end in sight. Their panelists have included members of the 2 Player crew, members of the industry, and Maniac Mansion NES object tagger Tim Schafer.

I mean, there’s no bottom here.

Ronzo's next game, an RPG we've taken it upon ourselves to code name A Little Something, isn't as far away as we might have guessed:

Are we looking at the first screenshot? And just when can expect to traverse Ron's Hyrule, anyway?

That would be a rather swift turnaround considering Ron shipped a game six months ago. On the other hand, he's been percolating on this one since at least 2018, so maybe I shouldn't be so dubious. The point is, Ron's not done with you, and you're not done with Ron, and we're here to support the addiction.

The book tie-in to Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings has been on quite the journey. LucasArts commissioned established Indy novelist Rob MacGregor to write the literary adaptation, which was, naturally, supposed to come out alongside the game.

Somewhere along the way of the game slipping its schedule, getting quasi-cancelled, and finally being published in the form(s) that it was in 2009, the completed companion book fell between the cracks, while legal constraints prevented the author from releasing the work himself in the absence of interest from Lucasfilm and a publisher. There was some plain old weirdness surrounding the whole thing.

The book was quasi-liberated a year or so ago when MacGregor gave a chapter-by-chapter reading in podcast form. Now, finally, the thing can be read in its intended medium. The details come courtesy of “ThrowMeTheWhip” on TheRaider.net forums:

Good grief. But nice that the whole thing had a happy ending, eventually.

Source: The Raven forums

How about a making-of book for Day of the Tentacle? Well, you’re getting one from video game historian Bob Mackey, via publisher Boss Fight Books. Here’s the spiel:

So there you have it. The book is being Kickstarted now, and it looks like the goal has been comfortably exceeded, so get that space on the bookshelf ready.

Source: Boss Fight Books

These reminders feel a bit tawdry and perhaps even irresponsible, but the time is upon us. The pre-order window for Limited Run’s multitudinous Return to Monkey Island offerings closes this weekend.

Good luck?

Source: Limited Run Games

Next up in Daniel Albu’s mission to interview all SCUMM luminaries one at a time is his installment with David Fox. Noting that Ron and Gary didn’t seem to get one about the Maniac Mansion re-release, Fox mentions that he’d appreciate a holler from Limited Run Games if they should happen to like input on a hypothetical Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders box.

Of course, much more than that is discussed over the nearly two-hour conversation, so set aside the time, as challenging as that might be in a world where twenty-two hour Psychonauts 2 documentaries are a thing, and hear all the stories.

It’s worth noting that David Fox previously sat for an hour with this “Conversations with Curtis” YouTube channel just last year, chatting with the series’ other host, Paul Morgan Stetler, shortly before Return to Monkey Island came out. So if you didn’t get enough with this new one, rest assured that there’s more:

It’s always useful to remember that a corollary to our getting a fifth Indiana Jones movie is that we’re getting a fifth Indiana Jones score from John Williams. In a new conversation with the maestro, Variety extracted a few quotes on his final Indy score (but not necessarily final film score, as had been previously indicated):

I don’t want to spoil anything, but you’re gonna love the “Indy’s Noble End” track!

Source: Variety

The following tweet from Lucasfilm Magazine (also known as the French Star Wars Fan Club) appeared last week:

The text, translated to English:

So, was this something that was being considered independently of the MachineGames/Bethesda project? Who knows, but anyway now you have some cool sketches to look at.

Source: Lucasfilm Magazine

Maniac Mansion getting a big stupid collector’s box set is pretty much the type of event that Mixnmojo stays alive to witness, but it’s a little more of a novelty when the official Lucasfilm web site starts throwing conspicuous love bombs at the first SCUMM game.

With Josh Fairhurst of Limited Run Games on hand, Lucasfilm.com has taken the opportunity to publish a suitably reverent article about Maniac Mansion and the broader collaboration between the two companies that has resulted in all of these hugely expensive exciting box sets.

Every possible version on the USB drive? Jan thanked by his full name, as something other than a footnote, and only slightly mispelled? Maybe they're onto something over there.

Source: Lucasfilm.com

If you’ve been following along with us on all things Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, you may know that English character actor Toby Jones will be playing Basil, a sidekick to Indy, in the much-touted prologue set in 1944. Conforming to how Indiana Jones teasers usually play out, it all sounds heavy on the eventfulness:

So when you see Jones “walking along” on June 30th, you can rest assured that he did so without fakery. And if that doesn’t justify an IMAX premium, what does, really?

Source: Deadline

I can’t decide whether this is a PSA or an act of malice, but I’ll point out that the pre-order period for Limited Run’s big boxed Collector’s Edition of Sam & Max Hit the Road closes out with the weekend. A reminder of what that obscenity looks like:

For the record, Mojo does not encourage anyone to go into debt over boutique computer game re-releases. We’re just doing our jobs here. If you or someone you know has a compulsive collecting problem, help is available and should be pursued.

Some new quotes from Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny director James Mangold have been published by way of The Hollywood Reporter.

Though there's always something vaguely mannequin-like about the end result to even my aging peepers, the glimpses we've gotten of this VFX effort look like it's going to be the best of its kind so far. Read Mangold's comments in full here.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

I mean, it's thirty seconds, so just watch it.

Source: YouTube

Do you think there has been a sufficiency of documentary miniseries about Double Fine Productions? Follow up question: How does it feel to be wrong all the time?

2 Player Productions, which probably ought to be considered tenants of the Double Fine offices at this point, are at it again. This time the exalted documentarians bring you a series on the development of Psychonauts 2:

The first of those THIRTY-TWO episodes (all available now) can be found below, much of it covering the founding of Double Fine and the production of the original Psychonauts, complete with rare home movie footage. It’s pretty unflinching, too, regaling such harrowing tales as the infamous layoff of the original design team and the cancellation by Microsoft.

This is obviously a comprehensive must-see, but you all knew that going in, having previously seen, possibly even on a $5 Blu-ray, that twelve-hour calling card known as Double Fine Adventure.

Source: YouTube

That young upstart Tim Schafer is starting to make waves in the industry. How else do you account for the fact that the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences will be inducting him into their Hall of Fame at the upcoming DICE Awards? The details are right here, should you find yourself in Vegas two weeks from now.

As a matter of trivia, Tim was very nearly inducted into the Mojo Hall of Fame™, but in the end the votes just weren't there. I'm usually against calling people out by name, but let's just say Thrik's spite over the cat track puzzle has a shocking half-life.

Congratulations, Tim!

Source: AIAS

The Hollywood Reporter has a lengthy new interview with Harrison Ford, and while you should read the whole thing, it’s the Dial of Destiny segment you want. Find it below the cut:

Read more...

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Yep, here we go again. Another LRG release: Maniac Mansion. Listen carefully, and you can hear Jason weep with joy.

Grab a PC collector’s edition ($75) or an NES premium edition ($100). Or both ($175). You’re not using that kidney anyway.

Update: Ron weighs in:

Touché, Ron. And touché, Marius.

If you’ve struggled to get through the 100 trivia cards in Return to Monkey Island, know that another hill is right ahead of you. 70 new trivia cards have been added to the game, and many of them are, for the lack of a better term, fiendish. And for that, you can blame credit sometimes-Mojo-correspondent Marius, who wrote them all.

When reached for comments, Marius had this to say:

Us being us, we feverously slaved updating our online version of the trivia. Does it all work? I do not know because I don’t know the answers to all of the questions! But this is a great time for you to find out.

Last year we brought some attention to the work of one @ScrungusCrungus, who has apparently devoted their time on Earth to reverse-engineering the Psychonauts source code, and more broadly to the discovery and collation of every fragment of esoterica related to the classic game. Certainly, Mixnmojo should be the very last to judge such an obsession.

The ongoing quest has included the search-and-seizure of rare pre-release media, which means the disreputable archives of certain fan sites and communities active in Double Fine’s earliest days are being plumbed, to the justifiable horror of us all. Mixnmojo, the Idle Thumb forums, and Thrik’s dedicated yet sadly unmaintained (Footnote: Not to get political, but I find this delinquency fairly reprehensible in light of the fact that CEOs are currently posting record profits.) fan site Razputin.net (which today redirects you to an Archive.org snapshot) are but a few of the resources that have fallen into the crosshairs of this Robert Caro-esque level of research:

ScrungusCrungus even politely noticed that The Grim Fandango Network (another milestone from Thrik’s executive training days) underwent a rather yawn-inducing theme change, leading to a bonding moment that international relations could stand to benefit from looking to as inspiration.

You can find some of ScrungusCrungus’ most notable findings collected on this blog dedicated to the purpose, but you’ll want to work up some loyalty toward the Twitter account if you want the minute-by-minute updates. And let’s not kid each other: you do.

The knowledgeable know that before he joined the ranks of his younger buddy George's game studio, Hal Barwood belonged to the same filmmaking cohort as Lucas, befriending him at USC and going on to serve as animator on Lucas's first feature THX 1138.

Hal often worked alongside his writing partner Matthew Robbins, with their credits including such screenplays as The Sugarland Express, MacArthur and an uncredited contribution to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The crown jewel of their collaboration was the cult classic Dragonslayer, which Robbins himself directed from their script. The film is a highlight of 1980s fantasy, with its uncompromisingly filthy 6th century vision and a dragon which celebrity uber-dorks like Guillermo del Toro and George R.R. Martin consider live action cinema's most iconic.

Being a Paramount/Disney co-production that didn't set the box office on fire, fans haven't held their breath on the film receiving the special treatment it deserves in the arena of home video, but sometimes the wheel turns favorably, and a handsome-looking 4K Blu-ray package freighted with extras is arriving on March 21st. Presuming Paramount didn't get cute and de-grain this earthy masterpiece, we're in for a real treat.

Source: The Digital Bits

Jenn Sandercock, who produced Return to Monkey Island, not to mention Thimbleweed Park before that, will be attending this year's Game Developers Conference in March to give a talk about the production processes that led to the game being recognized among Mixnmojo's most preferred of September 2022:

It's unclear if the presumptive recording to come out of this is something GDC is going to share with the public free of charge - there's a bit of inconsistency in the way they handle that - but it costs nothing to hope.

Source: GDC

Why should we generate content when you do it for us?

Over at the forums, Gins’ is doing god’s work by kicking off the “Mojo Book Club” with the Monkey Island-adjacent On Stranger Tides. If you haven’t read it, this is a great—and community-centric—time to do so. And if you have already finished it, why not revisit it? It’s an entertaining read.

The book club kicks off this Thursday, with a new chapter studied and reviewed every week. Make sure you check out this simple outline for more details. Now you, too, can be an intellectual on Thrik’s level.

(Oh, and if you think you can cheat by watching the movie, don’t. The two are barely related.)

The fearless correspondents at Pixel Refresh decided the time had come at last to puncture the veil of the sordid, rock’n roll world of LucasArts poster restorations by chatting it up with Jan Hofmeister (the unlikely handle of your friend Laserschwert), who requires no introduction here. Put aside an hour you don’t have and listen to what goes into his masterpieces of masterpiece-conservation:

Next up is the ongoing “Conversation with Curtis” series hosted by Daniel Albu, who previously brought you interviews with such luminaries as Brad Taylor and Aaron Giles. This time his subject is ScummVM’s project leader Eugene Sandulenko (again, you better know him by the name on his birth certificate: sev), and they dive deep into the twenty-year history and ever-expanding future of a project that some of us would still call miraculous. You can even hear the official ScummVM perspective on DREAMM if you scrub over to 1:16:28.

Incidentally, Remi decided to climb off the tanning bed long enough to do something useful, and the forum now has a catch-all thread for these increasingly frequent hour-plus long interviews.

An interesting phenomenon of big franchise movies with their attendant merchandising tie-ins is that the toys sometime scoop the marketing machine. The logistical need for this stuff to be manufactured well ahead of time by the licensed partners, and the wacky calendar vagaries that can result, has historically led to reveals coming from unexpected places. I seem to vaguely recall that product descriptions for LEGO sets and the like back in 2007-2008 exposed otherwise shrouded story and character elements from Crystal Skull way in advance of the movie, for example.

Anyway, the tradition continues with Indy 5 -- Hasbro’s putting out a whole bunch of future landfill fodder for all the Indy movies, including something called a “Worlds of Adventure” line aimed at younger children. Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character from the upcoming movie made the cut, and the packaging for her ends up unveiling her surname and presumably her vehicle of choice. Meet Helena Shaw:

Once your heart rate settles back down, there’s also the similarly detailed figure below for Mads Mikkelsen’s villainous Jürgen Voller, helpfully stripped of his Nazi iconography. I wanna say this character’s full name may have already been revealed elsewhere, but hey, now you know he might be piloting that aircraft in the movie, so there’s really no reason to go to the cinema at this point:

You can ensure the continued celibacy of your day by checking out Hasbro’s full line-up at Lucasfilm.com.

Source: Lucasfim.com

No need to get fancy with this one; I’ll just reprint what Aaron posted over on the forums:

I mean, you heard him. Get to work, and do your part to ensure that Hugo the perfume salesman will forever spritz his way across the computer monitors of future generations.

Source: The forums

In his coverage for Limited Run’s upcoming Return to Monkey Island physical release(s), Remi noted the unusual offering of an “upgrade kit,” in which you get an expanded and corrected version of the Anthology box (with the game logos in the correct order, in addition to appending ReMI’s position) along with a smattering of additional trinkets.

Well, Limited Run is workshopping an altogether new comedy sketch with the so-called “Gold Key Bundle.” See, the other quirk of these releases that you may remember was that each of the four individual editions (one per platform), plus the upgrade kit, would respectively include replicas of each of the five keys Guybrush collects in the game’s second half, in a predatory play for the OCD fan who's gotta catch 'em all. A visual reminder of how all that shakes out (note the bottom left of each picture):

For those who have lost their goddamned minds and would actually pursue that, the distributor is helpfully offering a comprehensive bundle of all the above for an even $419.99.

What kind of diseased mind even conceives of this stuff? Anyhoodle: buy away. Bankruptcy ain’t nothing but a number.

Source: Limited Run Games

Look, we know this isn’t much of an issue anymore: The code-wheel-protected Monkey Island 2 isn’t available for purchase, and even if it was, DREAMM hacks straight through it. Like butter. Furthermore, there are virtual code wheels out there that emulate the tactile feeling of flimsy nineties cardboard.

Which is to say, why not try yet another tool to hack through LeChuck’s Revenge? Introducing The Monkey Island 2 Code Grid. Does it work? Who knows! It was something I developed for the Amiga version of the game a good while ago, and it has gotten me past the copy-protection screen on multiple occasions. (Using those virtual wheels is a true pain.) Maybe it’ll work for you, too? Or maybe it won’t. Either way, give it a shot if you so like.

As if you don’t have enough things to spend money on, Côté Games are taking pre-orders for The LucasArts Chronicles.

There are seemingly some oddities with the book—e.g., I recognize the screenshots as promo material—but who knows? Judge for yourself. The “simple” version of the book will run you €45; the complicated “deluxe” edition €62.

Source: The forums

More news outside the usual Mojo purview, but Telltale stalwart Jared Emerson-Johnson—you may remember him from Sam and Max, The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us—crooned out an album. Jared Emerson-Johnson's One-Man Skeleton Revival's album 1924 released in December and it is pretty sweet, and is available on Bandcamp, YouTube, Amazon, Apple Music, and Spotify.

LucasArts and Telltale alumnus Graham Annable (of Nelson Tethers fame) did the cover art, with design furnished by some guy called Jake Rodkin.

I've listened to the album twice since discovering it last night—Mojo was timely for a while, I guess!—and it makes me want to dance. It's a new favourite, and (I suspect) absolutely phenomenal played live. Good stuff, Jared!

This is tangentially related to Mixnmojo's usual purview, but we thought it was worth breaking protocol for: If you love adventure games, you owe it to yourself to buy the Wadjet Eye Humble Bundle, which goes for anything over $10, with money heading to charity (specifically, the JDRF, which does Type-1 Diabetes research).

The games included are the Blackwell series, The Shivah, Primordia, Gemini Rue, Unavowed, Technobabylon, Resonance, Shardlight (which, uh, was quite the experience during the pandemic), and Strangeland, with a 30% coupon for their latest, The Excavation of Hob's Barrow.

You need the Mojo stamp of approval? You got it. While some of the earlier games are a little rough around the edges—specifically, the first Blackwell game and The Shivah—the rest are gold. Wadjet Eye's games constantly reinvent themselves and their mechanics, but have unique identities, are beautifully written, and forego both death and dead ends. While not comedies, their games have authenticity.

And Dave Gilbert, who heads Wadjet Eye, is just a really nice person. Anyway, get clickin'. You won't regret it.

Source: Humble Bundle

I mean, we knew it was gonna happen, right? Return to Monkey Island in a glorious, limited box.

$89; $60 for an anthology “upgrade kit.” What do you get? We’re talking LeChuck’s onboarding pamphlet; a letter from Ron and Dave (presumably the ingame one); the scrapbook; a blowfish stress ball; the Chum lure pin; a platform specific golden key (just so you can buy five copies); a poster; booklet. And what do you know—a soundtrack!

This is what second mortgages are made of.

Variety is reporting that Earl Boen, who memorably provided the voice of the villainous ghost pirate LeChuck in the Monkey Island series up through Tales of Monkey Island, has passed away at the age of 81.

Though his voice work was particularly prolific, the veteran actor was well known for his appearances as Dr. Peter Silberman in the first three Terminator movies among countless roles across film and television. Though Boen had been retired since even before Tales, it was said that his enthusiasm for performing as LeChuck led him to nevertheless reprise the character for that project and the Monkey Island special editions that were produced around the same time. His contributions as Guybrush's arch-nemesis will endure. R.I.P.

Source: Variety

Clearly inspired by our own interview, online publication Time Extension decided to get in on the CMI 25th anniversary action in the final moments of 2022, running a retrospective with project leaders Jonathan Ackley and Larry Ahern eight seconds ahead of the New Year. A taste:

Listen. They did a fine feature. We did a fine feature. Who’s to say, really, who did the better job?

Source: Time Extension

It’s always good to hear from Bill, so it was probably an easy decision by The Retro Hour Podcast to host him for an hour long chat.

Bill shares some pretty good war stories from The Dig, his surreal experience of getting personal approval from George Lucas to shoot live action footage for Star Wars: Rebel Assault, and of course his experiences on The Curse of Monkey Island. The conversation doesn’t get a chance to cover the Autumn Moon games in depth (might I suggest a follow-up?), but the designer/artist does confirm that he regained the rights to A Vampyre Story 2 several years back, and drops the bombshell that he is actively at work on a demo for the long-halted game to pitch out to publishers. In addition, he promises that the original game will return to Steam in a matter of months, retooled so that it will actually run on your computer.

You can listen for yourself here. The interview begins around the 40 minute mark.

Source: The Retro Hour Podcast

Let’s be clear about this: there’s the EGA version of Loom, and then there are the imitation versions. Unfortunately, the initial and definitive release has been out of legal circulation for a lifetime; what you’ll find representing this classic on Steam, GOG and wherever else is the “VGA Talkie” version, which Brian Moriarty himself has gently called “an abomination” for its revisionism and myriad of compromises.

Limited Run’s Monkey Island Anthology from a few years back offers some hopeful precedent for the inclusion of archival builds, as the USB stick in that package came loaded with a bunch of legacy versions of the game (original .exe’s included, which is crucial in a world where DREAMM exists). The idea of the upcoming Loom box following that lead was hoped aloud for on the forums, leading local poster restoration pundit – and by now routine collaborator on these LucasArts Limited Run releases - Laserschwert to confirm that the EGA build will be included. Justice.

Honestly though, can’t they just put all these old SCUMM builds on an FTP server at this point? I mean, what are even talking about here. Cripes.

Source: The forums

As noted on the forums, a feature-length interview with Aaron Giles is now streaming on YouTube. The chat covers Aaron’s prolific history in the dark sciences of porting and emulation, and you’ll get to hear some of his stories directly from the horse’s mouth. His LucasArts tenure is of course highlighted, with DREAMM getting discussed at length in the second half. Though the games are not supported yet, he also relates adventures in expanding his emulator to run the two GrimE titles, and he even namechecks some non-adventures in the LucasArts catalog he’d like to tackle.

More important, you finally know that Aaron’s last name is pronounced with a soft G, so you no longer have to worry about making an ass of yourself if you ever bump into him at your local Delchamps.

Source: Conversations with Curtis

It seems Indy was driving around Morocco when he came down with some sort of a metaphor for Mojo’s backend. But seriously, folks.

Source: CoveredGeekly

We’re getting into the weeds here, with Loom set to receive the LRG treatment:

$75, so not too bad compared to some of these bundles. Currently unknown is if the EGA version will be included. We shall see soon enough.

Pre-orders start on January 13th, and it begs the question: What’s next? The Dig? Or Zak, a game Germans would legally be obliged to buy? Time will tell!

In November, Hit Point Films released Tales of Melee Island, the charming fan-film directed by Julian Stamboulieh. Mojo got to talk with Julian not long after. Like a pirate shanking a privateer, get some insight into the inner workings (by reading the interview). We cover inspiration and making of, plus gain a glimpse into Montreal's film and TV industry. Get readin', then rewatch the film below. (Also be sure to read our interviews with Monkey Island head honchos Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman, plus artist extraordinaire Rex Crowle.)

We’ve possibly become a bit entitled, having been delivered superb Sam & Max remasters two Decembers in a row. The third and final – and, let’s face it, best – season from the Telltale archives is obviously requiring a bit more elbow grease, but Skunkape has offered official assurances today that it’s most definitely on its way:

Just as Mojo was ready to embrace the sweet release of death, it’s condemned to afforded another welcome lifeline.

Source: Youtube

Don’t start spending those Christmas cheques yet—Sam & Max Hit the Road is running Limited on January 6th:

$100 will get you... Well, a bunch of stuff. Thrik is looking at getting a good dozen copies as Mojo’s Christmas bonus was a decree making each of us give him a cool hundy. For the rest of you:

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny director Jim Mangold has some teases and a new production still for Entertainment Weekly, but only because the Webmonkey address bounced.

He also confirms that Mutt will be unseen but acknowledged, while Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character is the daughter of “a friend of Indy’s, who we will also meet in the movie.” That’s gotta be Toby Jones. Anyway, you’ll need to read the article for the rest.

Source: Entertainment Weekly

While we were on a CEO-mandated furlough, no less than two stories passed Mojo by. And if you subscribed to our newsletter, you would have known what those stories were.

...

Fine, I’ll post them here, too:

I’m fairly certain NME—née New Musical Express—was my dad’s magazine of choice during the sixties, so it only makes sense that this grand old magazine sits down with the grand old game developer, which subsequently is being “reported” on by the grand old Mojo. That is to say, NME has a lengthy interview with Tim Schafer. There might not be a lot of new information to be found, but it is an interesting read nonetheless. Not least because of this:

ReMI tops his list—that’s just heartwarming!

Doing a one-eighty, The Force Engine has hit 1.0. What is The Force Engine, you may ask? Have a gander at the trailer:

Those of us of “a certain age” may remember the original reviews of Dark Forces complained about the lack of lightsabers. Now, it feels downright refreshing.

Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders have been irreversibly tied together ever since that can of chainsaw gasoline was found on Mars, but a new fan game is taking it to a whole other level. Below is the spiel for Zak the Maniac - An Interactive Music Video:

You can download the game and the cover tune that suggested it right here.

Source: Error 47

If you've read our big 25th anniversary interview with the Curse of Monkey Island project leaders (and if you haven't, there's still time to do so fashionably), you're well aware of the legend of Bear Pig -- a classic example of programmer art that Jonathan Ackley cooked up to occupy "room zero" to the satisfaction of SCUMM's inviolate laws.

But just as everyone sees a different statue in the marble, BearPig represents different themes to different interpreters. In his latest blog post, CMI programmer/writer Chuck Jordan casts BearPig as his inspiration for some brief reflections on the concept of art that is "good enough." Read it, and lament Ron's delinquency in reprising the series' most indelible character.

Source: Spectre Collie

Sure, only the first and last words of “Best Puzzle Game” properly describe Return to Monkey Island, but any nomination is a worthwhile nomination.

Somewhat more awesome, in my not-so-humble mind, is “Best Performance in a Game,” where Dom received a well-deserved nomination. Says IGN:

Sounds about right to me. The results are set to be delivered on December 12th.

Source: IGN

By all accounts, George Lucas had virtually no creative role in the development or production of the new Indiana Jones, but a story is circulating that, having been shown a cut of the movie, Lucas requested to be onboarded as an Executive Producer. You can see his name among the EPs listed in Lucasfilm’s press release for this week’s trailer, whereas it was notably absent from previous issuances.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a departure from tradition in that Steven Spielberg has ceded the director’s chair and assumed more or less the George Lucas role, while Lucas himself seemingly removed himself from the equation altogether in his embrace of retirement. With the movie essentially finished, his name being lent as a producer at this late date would seem to function as a vote of confidence. When asked for comment, Willow responded as follows on formal letterhead:

:~

Source: The Raven

Attendees of D23 got to see it in September (sans title). Attendees of CCXP22 - that would be Brazil's Comic-Con, for those who find unintuitive acronyms to be unintuitive - got to see it today. And now, so do you.

A lot to discuss here. And if you're Too Cool to carry it on in the comments, take it to the forum thread why don't you.

Big-budget video games take something like seventy-five years development on average these days, dwarfing the investments represented by a tentpole movie or joining America's coasts by high speed rail. So you can probably expect next year's Indiana Jones movie to be celebrating at least its first birthday before you'll be playing the upcoming Indy game by MachineGames on whatever space-age platforms the average zero-gravity household will boast by then.

That we're still a ways out is endorsed by the fact that details on the title remain thin on the ground. However, a few comments were extracted out of Todd Howard of Bethesda (that would be the game's publisher, albeit one that also functions as a studio itself and which happens to share the same parent company as MachineGames, just to confuse matters) in a new interview with said Executive Producer:

Pretty useless. But hey, at least the project is still trucking along. And if we know one thing about long-in-development Indiana Jones games, it's that it all works out in the end.

Source: PC Gamer

So, let’s see...

Return to Monkey Island is not only available to order from GOG, but it’s also 20% off. Run and buy another copy, right now!

Meanwhile, LRG slams down with the Humongous Classic Collection for Switch. $60 gets you six classic (Footnote: Presumably, I never played them.) kids games and a soundtrack.

Grumpy Gamer has less than grumpily revealed an early ReMI puzzle dependency chart. Spoilers abound, of course, and definitely some cool “what if” revelations in there.

Three updates for the price of one—we’re all about convenience here at Mojo.

While Disney may have sunk its new Pirates of the Caribbean film, Tales of Melee Island, a lovely little Monkey Island fan-film helmed by Montreal-based Julian Stamboulieh, is happy to be flying its flag:

Starring Fred Nguyen, Simon Peacock, Shawn Baichoo—all appearing on video games credit lists (and, in Ngyuen's case, HBO's The Sympathizer, based on Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer-winning novel)—the short film docks at this port courtesy of Hit Point Films, a just-launched YouTube channel dedicated to fan movies.

Stamboulieh even provides some BTS material. It's fun stuff.

It's a rare day you get new Monkey Island, and a rare year you get a new Monkey Island game, but this is 2022: Japan has beaten Germany, Saudi Arabia has beaten Argentina, and we, improbably, have both Return to Monkey Island and, now, this.

Show them some love.

Source: YouTube

That's the title of the new Indy movie, per historically reliable purveyor-of-Indy-5-exclusives "ThrowMeTheWhip" over at The Raven, the forum of TheRaider.net.

Meanwhile, folks have gotten their hands on print copies of Empire's latest issue containing their big Indy 5 spread -- that would be the six-page "first look" of the movie that Empire's online presence has been teasing excerpts and photos from over the last week. Inevitably, somebody's got scans, but we at Mojo trust you will all do the right thing and refer to these only as a convenience after buying your own copy in support of print media.

Source: The Raven

Surprising few, Return to Monkey Island took home the Golden Joystick award for “PC Game of the Year”:

What is there to say at this point, really? ReMI has run victory laps since its day of release, and little suggests it will stop anytime soon.

How will it fare when we hand out the coveted Mojo Game of the Year, though? The competition is steep, so time will tell (Footnote: Actually, it’s the only Mojo-related game of 2022, so the odds look to be on its side.).

While Mastodon’s mainstream impact remains a question mark, we’re happy to see that Ron is throwing out some exclusives there. To wit:

Exciting times ahead!

And, if you haven’t already: follow us on the nascent social network!

It seems Empire is going to keep these coming at a steady drip until Thursday, and who am I to complain? The latest tease is of Phoebe Waller-Bridge's character Helena: Indy's goddaughter and by all accounts primary sidekick for his last adventure.

The opening reel of Indy 5 will see a de-aged Harrison Ford infiltrating a Nazi castle during World War II. More at the link in the tweet embedded below.

Source: Empire Magazine

Did you enjoy Mixnmojo's cautious preview of Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels from our E3 2003 coverage, but wish you could have been there in person? Well, some footage from that very booth has made it into the wild, so now you can do the next best thing. As an added bonus, you get celebrity developers Malena Annable and Dan Connors hanging around the sides of the frame for some reason:

The uploader is the same archeologist who brought you leaked cutscene footage from the rarely-lamented game this past summer. I'm not entirely sure I understand where this was sourced from, although he attempts to contextualize it in his video description.

Only Father Torque knows what he means by that last statement, but maybe we somehow haven't heard the last of Full Throttle II. For now, enjoy the latest discovery -- ideally with a slice street pizza.

Thanks to forumgoer Radogol for bringing this to our attention.

If you don’t keep at least semi-regular track of the LucasArts posters thread, you’re missing out. Just over the last few months, Laserschwert has gifted to the world dazzling new versions of Peter Chan’s Day of the Tentacle Star Wars parody, Zak McKracken’s cover art, and, in a direct valentine to mine own heart, some marriage-threateningly seductive Maniac Mansion alternatives. Freshly endowed with some superior Outlaws source material, he’s promising to bring that one to similar heights in the future as well.

It’s all there for the taking in the internet’s finest forum thread. Sleep on it at your own peril.

It would appear that the first three (out of eight) episodes of Willow have been distributed to distinguished members of the press, or in any case to a bunch of sites with “geek” in the name. (Not to be a churl, Craig, but Ronda Scott would have hooked us up.) And while an embargo prevents full reviews from being published until Nov. 30th, these critics can at least tweet their general reaction, and so they have:

Well, if you’re inclined to put your trust in whomever those people are, the show sounds like it’s more fun than a sharp stick in the eye.

Need more to sustain your excitement? You might also want to check out Gizmodo’s new interview with showrunner Jon Kasdan, who among other things discusses how the show somehow features Val Kilmer without featuring him. TV Line also got in on the action with an exclusive clip. I’m telling you, with Monkey Island 6 out the way, you can all finally devote yourselves body and soul to the true messiah. That would be Willow, for those playing at home.

Guess they wanted to save some stuff for the weekend. The latest Indy 5 tease is our first glimpse at Voller, the villain played by Mads Mikkelsen.

Follow the link for some new quotes and an image of Voller's "lapdog" played by Boyd Holbrook.

Source: Empire Magazine

In Mojo’s typical mad dash to be the first to press, we overlooked the fact that Empire also released a new production still for Indy 5. Check it out beneath this excerpt from the first look you can enjoy in full when the magazine is published next Thursday.

Source: Empire Magazine

Look, I don’t know much about the Bilbao International Games Conference, but it warms the heart to see Return of Monkey Island [sic] winning its “Best Art Direction” award.

Goddamn well deserved it is, too. And why not revisit our interview with Rex, the art director behind the game?

Sure enough, Empire had something to share about Indy -- or will, in the upcoming edition of their magazine hitting newsstands November 24th. But to tease that preview, they do have these rad covers to show off:

Source: Empire Magazine

At least, that seems to be the consensus interpretation of this announcement:

If Empire is running the first magazine spread for the picture tomorrow, it would be a nice appetizer ahead of the teaser trailer, which director James Mangold has already alluded to appearing in a matter of weeks. Maybe Empire will unveil the title? Or maybe Lucasfilm just wants to cease-and-desist a fan game on a bigger stage this time.

Vainamoinen, your patience has paid off: Return to Monkey Island will be released on GOG “soon.”

(That’s literally all I got.)

Xbox Wire—apparently an official Xbox publication—coaxed Dave Grossman into writing what looks suspiciously like a Buzzfeed article: “Eight Things You Should Know Before Playing Return to Monkey Island.” And, if you, like me, had prepared to drop some hardcore anchor facts during your next cocktail party, well . . .

. . . I apparently have a lot of opinions I have to reconsider.

Sometimes, the DIY spirit benefits us all. While waiting for an official OST, BillyCheers said enough is enough and released his own mix of the Return to Monkey Island tracks. You can download them from Google Drive.

Listening through the “Suites” version of the soundtrack—the complete score is also available—I gotta say . . . the three guys did a pretty OK job with the music. It’s almost like they knew what they were doing.

I wouldn’t be against a vinyl version of the OST, so, y’know, if anyone with some clout is reading this . . .

Variety is reporting that Disney+ is eyeing up an Indiana Jones TV series. Seems perfect timing now that Harrison Ford has retired from that iconic role to join the Marvel universe. Quite what the show will entail is still a ways off.

Nice to see the character finally getting some more attention, what with the forthcoming movie and videogame.

Source: Variety

You can never have too much Sam & Max in your life, nor too much vinyl, which is why this is a perfect package for you.

Sam & Max Save the World OST on three discs in a loving analog format, composed, of course, by Jared Emerson-Johnson. I mean, look at the thing, how could you not want that on your living room shelf? Go purchase, but note: Only two per customer. So don’t be too greedy.

You saw it coming—possibly because you were using the pre-release version—and now it has landed: Quick and Easy’s Dinky Explorer. Meaning, Return to Monkey Island-hacking has arrived at your fingertips. Benzo says:

Getting other people to do the work for you: It’s a page out of Thrik’s playbook. Now go find the secrets hidden within ReMI’s source files.

Apparently, November 8th will be another Return to Monkey Island milestone: Not only will we see the game available for more consoles, it’ll also be available with German voiceovers. Wunderbar! (That’s all I got.)

Disney is meeting the interesting challenge of resuscitating Lucasfilm’s Willow with a certain amount of “How do we do this?” where the marketing is concerned. Few things say Modern Trailer quite like monotonous pop music and overdelivered comic beats that land with a thud, and the latest promo for the series is nothing if not fashionable:

Sorry you had to go through that, but you’ll probably find yourself less cringe-stricken on average by this poster:

I can’t identify the artist, but the victory here is that a poster was commissioned that actually called for one.

In any event: Willow.

It might not come as much of a surprise, but Return to Monkey Island is headed to Game Pass next Tuesday, the 8th. That means PC, cloud, and, indeed, Xbox. Hey, it plays great on Switch, so the more console platforms, the merrier. Presumably, PlayStation can’t be far behind.

Update! PS5 confirmed, too.

It's time to put that kidney up for auction.

Limited Run is throwing together yet another boom of a collector’s edition, this time for Grim Fandango. We’re talking USB drives, posters, prints, Bone Wagon replicas, and postcards. All for a mere $99.99.

The sale goes live on November 4th and runs through December 18th. Platforms:

• PC
• Xbox
• PS

Oh! There’s also a triangle box for those who order Grim, DOTT, and Throttle. This is literally getting ridiculous.

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