The International House of Mojo

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...

• • 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.

I mean, that’s about it.

Not content to only chat with Dom one time, Laura Cress has upped the ante:

For those eagerly awaiting Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island: Tale 3: The Lair of LeChuck, you can stop holding your breath on September 28.

Skip to 4:49 for some footage of Monkey Island.

Source: Eurogamer

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!

If you missed out on the last few episodes of Conversations with Curtis (as we have), it’s time to catch up. And what better place to start than with this Kyle Balda interview? Balda is mostly famous for being the intern behind the DOTT credit screen (our CEO’s favorite game ) and also directed small indie features like Minions.

Boss Fight Books is now taking pre-orders for their upcoming release of the Oral History of Day of the Tentacle, available in both paperback and e-book formats.

Don't delay; order yours today!

Source: Boss Fight Books

It's been every iPad owners dream to be able to play classic LucasArts adventure titles on their device, and while several of them do exist for that platform (thanks DoubleFine), ScummVM has steadfastly remained an Android exclusive (unless you were willing to build and install ScummVM yourself).

That is, at least... until now: The ScummVM team have just announced that the iOS port of their monumental VM is in testing!

There's still a question mark around whether Apple will allow software they will likely view as an emulator on the App Store, but when questioned about it, ScummVM team leader, Sev, said, "we are yet to see". Hopeful! (?)

Source: ScummVM Website

Bill Tiller must be making headway on that A Vampyre Story 2 demo he mentioned at the beginning of the year. Over on his Instagram page, he shared some background art from the long-stalled game and the following caption.

What publisher could afford not to pick this up? Bad Brain, thy redemption arc is nigh.

Source: Bill Tiller's Instagram

News post for a slow week: Writer Simon Parkin's podcast My Perfect Console has guests pick five games for a perfect console, discussing these games as well as their careers. Each episode's about an hour.

One Dominic Armato joined Parkin about a month ago for an interview (episode 31), and one Erik Wolpaw (who co-wrote the first Psychonauts) joined previously (episode 13). Both episodes are good and representative of the show as a whole.

Listen to them on Apple Podcasts, Acast, Spotify, etc. It's been a staple of my low intensity cardio days, although fair warning that the podcast does make you want to go out and play video games afterwards.

It’s no secret that, despite Mojo’s bandwagon-spurning affection for the movie, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ended up being a massive box office face-plant for Disney. Since the studio long ago stopped granting me gross point participation in their feature films, I am happy to report no personal financial impact, but it does raise the question of the fate of whatever MachineGames is working on.

Hypothetically, one should have nothing to do with the other, but having already noticed a certain deafening silence around the Indy game despite its two-and-a-half-years-ago origins, one feels justified in growing a bit jaded.

Today, you can breathe a sigh of relief. In a new interview with Bethesda big shot Todd Howard, the game is given an official status of, erm, “midway.”

Of course, they say such things about Beyond Good and Evil 2 about every fifteen years, but hey, let’s be optimistic.

Source: British GQ

”The Quest for Guybrush” as it is called: