The International House of Mojo

Even Ron's got sense enough to understand that he's not working on the most anticipated of belated and unexpected sequels amongst Lucasfilm fringe properties. That honor belongs of course to the Willow series on Disney Plus. And during some sort of Lucasfilm hootenanny in Anaheim today, the crowd was treated to a release date (November 30th) alongside this trailer:

Good to see Warwick Davis front and center. Does Disney think they have their answer to Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings with this? It seems wacky to think so, but that's the part I like about it.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Things are quiet right now, so imagine my joy when I find that Monkey Island creator Ronster has shared the entire contents of the Return to Monkey Island development diary!

Unfortunately it's about one page long and was left for dead in November 2020. But there are still some interesting insights to glean amongst the waffle about contracts and new starters.

For example, it looks like controlling Elaine was considered at one point, and the good old puzzle dependency charts — as discussed in the excellent Monkey Island 30th anniversary event by the Video Game History Foundation — have made a return.

And like me when I decided to replay the Monkey Island series recently, Ron was surprised at how many objects in the original game don't have custom responses, and generally found it quite painful to play. Which brings me to an article subject I've been considering recently: 'Was The Secret of Monkey Island even good?'.

Source: Grumpy Gamer

If you are a Mac and/or Linux user—and why wouldn’t you be?!—you can finally enjoy the glory that is Psychonauts 2. Go through your Humble link, use your existing game key, and kiss your next few weeks goodbye. Psychonauts 2 was named Mojo Game of the Year 2021 for a reason after all. (Also the only new Mojo-related game from what I can remember, remasters aside.)

Bonus news: If you have any interest in becoming a game composer, learn from the best: IGN has a video interview with Peter McConnell and some other guy about how to get into the industry. (All respect to the other guy who I’m not familiar with.)

The hits keep on coming—though this one arrived a bit late at Mojo’s newsdesk: GamesBeat has published an interview with Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman, one that has some meat on its bone. For example:

Conversely, The SCUMM Bar, everybody’s favorite website on the internet, is quasi-consistently being updated, landing-page style, with the latest ReMI factoids. Rumors (from me) suggests there might even be a few nuggets coming in later today.

Relatedly, our Adventurer newsletter already downright broke the GamesBeat news—we can’t be expected to update two sites at the same time after all. (Madness!)

We've come along way from this, now haven't we? Psychonauts 2 is well established to have been a critical darling, but it was no slouch in the sales department either -- at least if we're to believe this article from The Gamer. And we probably can, seeing as they're really just quoting a tweet from art director Lisette Titre-Montgomery, who refers to the sequel as the studio's "best-selling game to date."

Seeing as both the original Psychonauts and Brütal Legend sold over a million units over their lifespans, that would mean that Raz's latest adventure is in the seven figure range less than a year out. Now granted that's how many copies of Zak McKracken Germany sells in a day, but it's still pretty impressive if you ask me.

Source: The Gamer

CNET has published what ostensibly is an interview with Ron “Zo” Gilbert. In-between the writer's tenuous Star Wars comparisons, Ron is allowed to speak a line or two, and… Look, they’re really keeping this Return to Monkey Island thing under wraps, so beggars can’t be choosers. Go read the interview if you’re a completionist.

A nuclear one at that.

Ron and Dave are making the rounds, and sat down with IGN to talk some more Return to Monkey Island. There aren’t a whole lot of new information, but in case there was any doubt that EMI and TMI were still canon…

… consider it undoubted.

Now run and read the whole thing.

Source: IGN

You think the previously announced Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space package is the only big boxed Sam & Max themed income-guzzler you're going to be pre-ordering come May 6th? Think again:

Ron "zo" Gilbert took his website, GrumpyGamer down the other week (I'm not going to find out exactly when, what do you take me for, a journalist?) prompting many in the community to speculate that it was due to a vocal minority of disgruntled 'fans' unhappy with what they've seen of Return to Monkey Island so far and not afraid to swear at the developers about it.

It turns out there might be a nugget of truth to those speculations, because the site is now back with an article called When I Made Another Monkey Island, in reference to that other one. He seems keen to make a few things clear.

For example, he'd like you to know that whatever his idea for MI3 was way back when, it was a nothing. There wasn't enough of a vision in the first place for it to become ruined.

There you have it. The plan for Monkey Island 3, in its entirety.

He goes on to give what I think is a spirited defense of the art style they chose for the game in the context of the history of Monkey Island, expresses disappointment with some of the fan response so far, and finishes with a plea to fans to join them in this ride. I don't think I can entirely do it justice in quotes so you'll just have to read it. I will leave you with one tantalising tidbit about the music, though:

I'm giving you permission to get excited about Return to Monkey Island, people. I know you have it in you. Or as Ron puts it:

Source: GrumpyGamer

The Unofficial Sam & Max Website, once the go-to hub for Sam & Max news (a role assumed by samandmax.co.uk/ these days) got out of the day-to-day business somewhere around 2008, and you probably didn’t fail to notice its reduction to a static splash screen thereafter. This abandonment was perhaps in part because the staff was too busy making Sam & Max games to cover them, but let’s not trip over ourselves making excuses for those deadbeats.

Well as luck would have it, all these years later, new life has been breathed into the domain. The site has been relaunched and re-envisioned as Sam & Max Headquarters. The idea doesn’t seem so much to be producing content as serving as a flashy jumping-off point for all the online Sam & Max destinations deemed worthwhile through the parochial lens of a Web 2.0 world, though I also got a funny kinda feelin’ that there’s more to come.

Anyway, what’s going on there already is pretty neat-o, so show your support for mouseover hi-jinks and giddy up.

Source: Sam & Max Headquarters

I know we report on these Prime Gaming inductions with a certain tone of discharging our duties (humor me on the we/our thing), but this time around there’s a little twist. CMI is indeed going to be one of six games being added to the service on May 1st, but apparently that came to pass because certain folks in the organization were really lobbying for it.

How brightly does the love for CMI burn at Amazon? Well, try on for size the fact that Principal Publishing Producer Amir Satvat put together a ten-minute video thesis arguing that the Plunder Island section of the game is “the greatest hour of video game gameplay ever made.” I mean, this is worth watching before you realize how much it’ll torque off Remi!

Source: Forbes

I, for one, am excited—Limited Run Games’ Sam & Max Save The World collector’s edition was an incredibly well put-together set, so consider the just-announced Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space an instant purchase. Semi-instant. They won’t take orders until May 6th. That aside, here’s what awaits you:

• Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space on physical media
• Bonus features DVD containing trailers, developer’s commentary, and other video goodies from the game’s original 2007-2008 production
• Five episode postcards
• Mini print of Steve Purcell’s "Autopsy" art (originally created for the March 2007 cover of Game Developer magazine)
• Waterproof Banang sticker
• Reproduction of Telltale’s Sam & Max Season Two Case File containing a souvenir from each of the game’s five cases: "The Friendly Demon Song" on mini CD, a Tiny Tiki drink coaster, Jurgen’s rave flier, one of eight random time cards, and a Soul Train subway token

$70 for the PC version, $80 for the Switch, which is pretty much them paying you to buy the set. Check out the LRG store for more, and get ready to open your wallet on May 6th.

Yet another Return to Monkey Island has been published over at Ars Technica, where Ron and Dave talk about... well, nothing earth-shattering, but it's always fun to read their thoughts on anything and everything.

Read more.

Or, as he more popularly is known, Herman Toothrot.

Ronzo took to Twitter today to announce that everybody's favorite hermit (and less favorite grandpa) is back in Return to Monkey Island. Wally Wingert will once again voice him.

Not too much more to say other than that ReMI is shaping up to be somewhat interesting.

Update: A little more say. When asked if Herman would be Elaine's grandfather (as he was in Escape) Ron shot that down and said, "He's back to being just an old crank."

History tells us that it’s always a mistake to expose staffers Benny and elTee to information of any kind. Naïve to their indefatigably compulsive ways, Dave Grossman had no idea what he was unleashing when he innocently mused in 2014 about an unlisted monochrome graphics mode for Monkey Island 2.

But those familiar with the personalities involved found it all too unsurprising when this ignited a near decade-long saga that even the most confirmed of basement-dwelling obsessives would go on to call, “rather sad.” Unmoved by pleas from concerned friends to walk back from the brink, the two defiantly embarked upon an unsolicited quest to resolve this most unremarkable footnote in SCUMM esoterica that guaranteed no wider interest and could only ever end in anticlimactic frustration – all the qualities that make for a classic article, in other words.

One of the bummers that goes along with most of the old hosted sites being lost to time is that a number of them were home to valuable interviews. Where possible, we like to try to import such orphaned archival content to that greatest of rescue shelters: Mixnmojo.

Today's rescues are interviews from the late, great iMuse Island. They were all conducted by the site’s able webmaster Luc Gilbertz and come from the period of 2000-2003. Improve your education and relive historical conversations with…

• Clint Bajakian, fresh off his work on Escape from Monkey Island.
• Peter McConnell, talking all the things that were relevant in 2003. Hey, remember that incident when he and Michael Land started a software company?
• Jeff Kliment, the then-manager of the LucasArts Sound Department, with a few welcome intrusions by voice director Darragh O’Farrell.
• Daniel “Wolk” Strandberg, composer of “Zak 2,” which, unique among Zak McKracken fan sequels, didn’t actually get finished. If that’s a subject that interests you, by the way, there’s no better resource than The Zak McKracken Archive.

This might be a good time to mention that such resurrections are not Easter exclusive, and that any retired webmasters who would like Mojo to keep their legacy content alive (or even to help you relaunch your site altogether) should pick up the phone and dial 1-800-ZAARIN, or for actual results reach out via webmonkey@mixnmojo.com or Twitter.

Mads Mikkelsen is the subject of a fat new profile at The Hollywood Reporter today. Naturally, the fact that Mikkelsen will be playing Indy's nemesis in next summer's fifth Indiana Jones wasn't likely to go unacknowledged, and while the actor can't reveal much, what he does say is likely to be what you want to hear:

Since the franchise is in such a throwback mood, and now that Lucasfilm is all buddy-buddy with adventure games again, maybe they can get to work on Indiana Jones 5: The Graphic Adventure? The 21st century needs its Indy Quotient put to the test. And really, what better things do Ron Gilbert and David Fox have to do right now?

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Adventure Gamers may have broken the seal, but they're not the only site interested in talking to Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman about a new Monkey Island. And so, after Mojo made it clear that the game just isn't relevant enough to Willow to work for us, the designers turned to The Verge to divulge more about Return to Monkey Island.

Though the screenshots included are the same crop shared with Adventure Gamers, what you want are those sweet anecdotes. Consider this one involving Dom and weeping:

When Dom is happy, we are happy. Well, as happy as we can be while noticing that you aren't yet reading the full interview.

Source: The Verge

Your old pal and prolific Adventure Gamers contributor Emily Morganti is back to her hard-hitting ways, having snagged Ron Gilbert (and Dave!) for his first proper interrogation following the announcement of Return to Monkey Island. While our attorneys won’t allow us to make an accusation of bribery outright, we’re authorized to pass along the rumor that Cheese Squigglies™ were exchanged.

The interview includes some specifics about how ReMI* came into being, which involved Ron loosening up a bit on the position of ownership, but in the first place having the right connections:

Check out the full exclusive for the rest of the good stuff, which includes - oh yeah - the first screenshots.

*Remi has “suggested” that this be the abbreviation Mojo perpetuates for Return to Monkey Island, and we didn’t find his bolt action argument easy to disagree with.

Source: Adventure Gamers

The hits keep on coming—though this one arrived a bit late at Mojo’s newsdesk: GamesBeat has published an interview with Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman, one that has some meat on its bone. For example:

Conversely, The SCUMM Bar, everybody’s favorite website on the internet, is quasi-consistently being updated, landing-page style, with the latest ReMI factoids. Rumors (from me) suggest there might even be a few nuggets coming in later today.

Relatedly, our Adventurer newsletter already downright broke the GamesBeat news—we can’t be expected to update two sites at the same time after all. (Madness!)