The International House of Mojo

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