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.”
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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:
Season 3 has been a significantly more rude game to remaster, technically. It did things with the Telltale Tool that are basically unsupported in modern versions that use a more modern rendering pipeline. We have conscripted three ex-Telltale engine/graphics programmers to help bend the modern engine to our will, but it has taken a lot of annoying and uncertain experimentation.
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...
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- 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.
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.
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!