The International House of Mojo

We try to keep track of the fantastic work Jimmy Maher does over at The Digital Antiquarian, especially when his comprehensive inquiry into the totality of video game history (because that’s more or less what his efforts amount to) leads him to LucasArts’ sizable contributions to that story.

The Herodotus of interactive amusement, who’s been at this since 2011, has arrived at the mid-to-late-90s in his ongoing chronicle, and in LucasArts terms that has brought us two terrific articles just this month: one examining Jedi Knight and another published only yesterday in evaluation of The Curse of Monkey Island. As usual it’s good stuff and inspires good engagement from commenters who might already be familiar to you.

If you’re unfamiliar with the site itself, you may well want to check out all the LucasArts-related posts over the years, the links for which we collect here for your convenience. Or you can just, you know, stop stagnating at the junior varsity level and read it all from the beginning.

Source: The Digital Antiquarian

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