The International House of Mojo

Remember when Mojo was fun? Well, we don’t either, but we’re not going to let that stop us from launching Fun Zone™! Here we will post small projects that may or may not be interesting, weird, and/or fun.

First out: The Thimbleweed County White Pages.

You probably do remember the phone book from Thimbleweed Park, with its voice mail greetings and all. Well, now you can browse through it and listen to/read the voice mails to your heart’s content. That’s just the type of fun services we provide here at Mojo.

Go relive a small snippet of Thimbleweed Park and you, too, can be fun!

I mean, “glory” might be a stretch, plus you’ve been able to access these podcasts through our media section for a while. However, for those who aren’t savages like Thrik, your favorite player can yet again access all our episodes as our RSS feed is back up to snuff. It might take a while for Apple, Google, etc., to catch up, but keep an eye out on your favorite podcatcher and get ready to relive 30 episodes of your favorite podcast. As a reminder, you can subscribe through:

• RSS
• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• Stitcher
• … and a bunch more. Just search for “The International House of Mojo.”

And sure, we haven’t released any new episodes in a while, but more is to come shortly. Maybe. (But probably not.)

Each week brings a new casting announcement, it seems. The latest get is Thomas Kretschmann.

It's hard not to conclude from this that the franchise is crawling back to the Nazis as villains. We shall see!

Source: TheWrap

This is a preannouncement of a preorder: Limited Run Games is going to be taking orders on a Sam and Max slipcase in about nine days. Or whatever the countdown says by the time you click over to it.

In a case of Japanese-style blurring, the slipcase lists the unconfirmed Beyond Time and Space and The Devil's Playhouse. I wonder what we're supposed to pretend is meant to fit in that big slipcase. Could it be...a banana?

So we're preannouncing that the other two Sam and Max games are releasing at the announcement of the Sam and Max slipcase preorder that goes on sale in nine days.

Marketing!

All these timely announcements would prompt me to tell you to go over to our mortal enemies good friends over at SamAndMax.co.uk for speedier Sam and Max updates, since they announced the preannouncement two days ago, but I think in this case the preannouncement is a bit, uh, premature.

It must be a slow news day: Psychonauts 2 is still releasing in 2021, according to a series of Tweets from the Double Fine Twitter account. It's also "playable."

Not that I understand the follow-up Tweets. Twitter is a surreal place.

It is unclear just when in 2021 the long-awaited followup to the 2005 longgg-and-slowww-burning hit releases.

Source: Twitter

Or at least that’s what Limited Run Games proposes with their Save the World bundle. Case in point:

There’s a lot to (literally) unpack here. Those comic-book-style covers in postcard format? There. The iconic “Highway Surfin’” illustration as a mini print? Check. I mean, just look at the goddamn tweet thread and leave me alone.

The Switch bundle will run you a cool $74.99; the PC version $64.99. Pre-orders start April 30th.

Update! Skunkape has posted as history of the casefile. Definitely run and read it!

After announcing Indy's sidekick last week, Deadline is ready to reveal his love interest:

So maybe we don't actually know anything about the character Mads will be playing, but he's good casting even if he's gonna be portraying the animated red line on the map.

Source: Deadline

During the four unproductive years that Spielberg was attached to the project as director, Indy 5 was being scripted by his tentpole go-to, David Koepp, with a break in the middle there during which Jonathan Kasdan and then allegedly Dan Fogelman took a stab at the intractable installment.

Mangold is an accomplished screenwriter himself, so when he took over directorial duties it seemed likely he would have a hand in the script that would ultimately be produced. Now we know:

That this is the same writing team that brought you Ford v Ferrari is probably a good thing, as good things have been said about that movie. Plus, if you’ve dealt with one Ford, you’ve dealt with them all, so Mangold probably knows what he’s doing here.

Source: James Mangold

Okay listen, headline aside, I'm gonna dial back on the snark that it has been politely noticed I tend to dish out when Limited Run Games robs a deserving SCUMM title of one of these top notch packaged releases by routing the budget to a Star Wars title instead while their licensing arrangement with Lucasfilm presumably tick, ticks away.

It's inappropriate, it's not the time, and frankly it's not reading the room.

So in the interest of fair play here - and for gosh sakes, what do I stand for if not fair play? - and without further unsolicited commentary from the peanut gallery, here is the announced Star Wars: Republic Commando boxed set, presented in its full glory:

But if I could just say one thing. Limited Run? You listening? I want to run something past you right quick. It'll just take a second.

You get it, Limited Run Games?

See what I'm saying, Limited Run Games?

I love you, Limited Run Games.

Source: Limited Run Games

Hey, I wouldn't make this up:

The inevitable speculation: Is Waller-Bridge playing Indy's daughter? Well, maybe, but slow down. We need to drag this out. It's the Mojo way.

Source: Deadline

Those revived forums are paying for themselves! The venerable “monkeyboobs” started a thread upon noticing the following submission on Unseen64:

Zombies Ate My Neighbors (1993) has had an impressively unsuccessful time of getting continuations off the ground. The only direct sequel was Ghoul Patrol (1994), which began its life as an unrelated game before the Zombies protagonists were slapped on it at the eleventh hour. In terms of gameplay if not genre, Herc’s Adventures (1997) could quite reasonably be thought of as a third installment, while a proposed tribute game called Demons Ate My Neighbors looks to be going for something much more faithful to the original.

The book Rogue Leaders revealed that LucasArts began work on another game that was intended to be kindred to Zombies back in 2000. The game, code named Sawyer, was abandoned when its team was reassigned to Star Wars: Bounty Hunter. Concept art can be seen here. Is Sawyer the same game as this alleged Zombies Ate My Neighbors 2, or something different altogether? We may never know, but dropping a quirky game in favor of an Attack of the Clones tie-in is some classic turn-of-the-century LucasArts.

Source: Unseen64

And it's just enjoyable to see.

Source: Twitter

Dan Connors and Jake Rodkin of Skunkape were the featured guests on the latest episode of the Retronauts podcast, in which they tell war stories both about making the original Sam & Max Save the World as well as the excellent remaster. There are a lot of good anecdotes here, including how Steve Purcell vetoed a lactating Max and an intended Salmon Mack origin story in Season 2.

It’s really an excellent conversation, and not just because of the multiple Mojo shoutouts. Though that does make it a contractual obligation.

Source: Retronauts

We often talk about the LucasArts adventure catalog as numbering fourteen, starting the count with Maniac Mansion (1987) -- a first both for the SCUMM engine and for Lucasfilm Games’ status as a publisher.

But the fact is, the oft-snubbed Labyrinth: The Computer Game (1986) was the first adventure product the studio developed, and with its “word wheel” concept – a prototypical stab at a graphic adventure interface that in fact appears only after a text-based prologue – it’s of substantial academic interest unto itself, not to mention one of the earliest examples of a commercially successful movie tie-in of its genre.

And as it turns out, its development was pretty interesting, too. Speaking to Retro Gamer last month, David Fox reminisces about the project’s production, which included a trip to the UK for a brainstorming session with two of his heroes, Douglas Adams and Jim Henson:

Like most (all?) of Lucasfilm Games’ pre-Maniac catalog, Labyrinth isn’t commercially available, but there are probably ways to play it for the enterprising spirit while waiting for the inevitable German-made fan remake.

Source: Retro Gamer

They've swung capably at the softballs lobbed so far by affable VR bloggers and Oprah Winfrey, but the developers at HappyGiant knew the time had come to exit the bubble and submit themselves to the hard-hitting rite of passage that is a Mixnmojo interview.

Join us as we put the Real Questions™ to CEO Mike Levine about all things Sam & Max: This Time It's Virtual which, as you know from today's skin-searing press blast, will be hitting a number of VR platforms over the next year, starting with the Oculus Quest in June.

Did you know that Bill Tiller irregularly offers updates on A Vampyre Story’s future, but you just never hear about it because he hides them on Facebook?

It’s true! On the A Vampyre Story Facebook page – the only web presence for the property that appears to still be standing - Bill will make the occasional post and engage with fans in the comments. Here’s a reference to AVS 2 from last summer which, okay, isn’t that recent, but still a lot more recent than the last reference to the series’ future that I was familiar with, and I’m on active lookout for them:

Those with a long memory will recall that Bill used his favorite platform to announce that he regained the rights back in 2019, so the fact that he’s still keeping the dream alive as recently as nine months ago is, well, better than nothing.

And I don’t care if it’s not season appropriate -- I’m also taking this moment to share the Autumn Moon Halloween 2020 card Bill posted on Facebook that I never knew existed because it was posted on Facebook, god dammit.

Help us help you, Bill. Listen, I can blackmail Remi into paying the hosting for amegames.com, if that’s the issue. Don’t worry, he can afford it after selling all those non-fungible tokens for The SCUMM Bar. I know: the guy's shameless.

Source: Facebook

How many times have you asked yourself, “Self, I wonder what the CMI audition material looks like?” Odds are never, because who would even think about anything like that. Turns out spielbergfan1 did, as he has gotten his grubby hands on 70+ pages of the stuff. To quote:

As the man of fine taste he is, he decided to send it all to us. To wit:

• View it all as images, or...
• Download the PDF!

Thanks spielbergfan1! #2 is just an ass in our book.

You’ve probably noticed that today has been an orchestrated press bonanza for Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual, and while our hubris demands that our own interview remain at the top of the page, we also wanted to provide a public service by pointing out a few other artifacts of the blitz from the internet at large, including:

• This preview of the game by Game Informer.
• Sworn rival Fellow fan site SamAndMax.co.uk’s own interview with HappyGiant.
• This GIF that elTee made:

  

  I’m told it makes sense if you’re familiar with the album Remi was parodying in our interview’s header art. We’re all about ostracizing readers with presumptuous reference humor, after all.

We’ll add to this list as necessary!

Hot off the presses: Sam & Max: This Time It's Virtual will be released on the Oculus Quest in June for $29.99, on SteamVR and Viveport Infinity later in the year, and for Playstation VR in early 2022.

The full press release and a bunch of new screenshots can be found here. Update by Remi: No, not there. Here! At Mojo! Press release is below the fold, and our gallery is updated, too.

And don't bother calming down, as Mojo will be making itself complicit in this press push by publishing our own interview with HappyGiant. Stay tuned.

Oh, and did we mention the new footage?

Keep Reading

Source: Gematsu

And these hi-res beauties show off a game much closer to the finish line than some of the earlier glimpses:

Of course, you can check out all released screenshots to date in our meticulously maintained gallery.

Source: HappyGiant