2023 continues to belt out its remastered games, with this week's flavour being 1995's Star Wars: Dark Forces. Check the reveal trailer here:
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Ron’s next game—presumably the one that goes by A Little Something on Wikipedia—has been revealed just a little bit more...
Sounds like it could be a fun little something to me!
As we reported earlier in the summer, Bill Tiller teamed up with the publisher Zoom-Platform to get A Vampyre Story in fighting shape for newer machines during a self-imposed hiatus from digital storefronts. The title has relaunched on Steam at a discounted price and armed with various updates, which you can find laid out here.
The occasion was seen as grounds to relaunch the long-kaput Autumn Moon web site, complete with a refreshed logo:
Could this signal a new lease on life for the label? Who knows, but in the meantime you gonna want that TruCoat them emotes, whatever those might be.
Source: Autumn Moon
If you frequent our forums—and why wouldn’t you?!—you will have seen this thread from bot-meister JP LeBreton. Entitled “a comprehensive collection of all LucasArts background art (1987-2000),” his current project is... Well, let the man describe it himself:
A few weeks ago I started working on a spare time project: a complete collection of all the background art from every LucasArts adventure game (Maniac thru EMI), in palettized PNG format and in its original resolution and aspect ratio.
Read the whole thread for more, or, if you’re more of the passive type, go check out the bot that posts the backgrounds to Mastodon: LucasArts Places. While we can’t confirm elTee broke down in tears after seeing this EGA scene, odds seem good that it happened.
Looking for more passive entertainment? We post a daily screenshot both to Mastodon and M. And even ol' SCUMM Bar has gotten in on the fun: Follow @scummbar for a daily Monkey Island scene. (“More to come,” we have been told.)
Remember in 2003, when all the Domino bricks started falling, and we learned that, yes, a Monkey Island movie was in production at some point? In 2013, we published a short article about it on The SCUMM Bar, and it has now resurfaced here on Mojo.
In 2021, Polygon published its own story with a lot more official-ish information, of course, but it never really caught the zeitgeist angle quite as vividly. So, go read and relive the movie that thank god never was.
Over to Marius:
Want to relive the Monkey Island 2 commentary tracks without the hassle of playing the game or dealing with YouTube? Mojo got you covered with our new Commentary Browser. Thirty-one tracks, all at your fingertips, right here!
Usual caveats apply: Minimal beta testing, may not work on your device, etc.
Rumor has it the CEO is already working on expanding this with his favorite game, Day of the Tentacle, so stay tuned.
As some of you already know, we made a startling discovery last week: By all accounts, Stan and Elaine had a serious thing going in The Secret of Monkey Island before—or until?—Guybrush showed up.
To further dive into this fundamental plot twist, we sent our software architect department into the depths of the two first games and their discovery... Well, let’s just say that Return now is fully and wholly explained.
Make your own conclusions from rock-solid proof that never was run and edited through multiple pieces of software.
We keep digging through the archive, this time stumbling across our #monkey-island IRC chats with Ron and Dom.
All I can do is apologize.
Rock Paper Shotgun continues its annual "Top 100 PC Games of All-Time" shenanigans. Last week, Tales from the Borderlands came at #93, Return to Monkey Island made it to a respectable #85, and Knights of the Old Republic was at #79.
Now the second half of that list is out. Interesting choices all-around, with Firewatch at #39 and The Walking Dead: Season One hitting #22. (Honourable mention to Half-Life: Alyx, which some Mojo graduates worked on as part of the subsumed Campo Santo.)
Source: Rock Paper Shotgun
Some of you may remember Jake and Marius’ stream of the two original Monkey Islands—we documented the first one right here Now, they’re doing it again, albeit with SeMI.
That’s tomorrow (Saturday), 11am PT/8pm CEST. Be there—the cool kids are sure to be.
Our trip down the old and dusty interview caverns continues. This time we’ve pulled seven of 'em out of the vault and combined them into one “Curse of Monkey Island Retro Interview Bonanza.” Some pre-launch, some post. They’re the type of texts that probably will be taught in universities for decades to come.
Sincere apologies for the lack of any pictures. In the early aughts, we were more concerned about the page loading on a modem than anything. Now read.
If you thought the infatuation wouldn’t last, well... In a sense you were right: It has turned into actual love.
Rock Paper Shotgun has released its top 100 PC games of all time and ReMI proudly occupies #85. Not bad, seeing the game hasn’t even reached a year in age.
The original Monkey Island piratical point 'n' click adventure was, and is, a cultural touchstone for many – including me. What joy, then, to get a new entry in the series by the original creators, starring many of the original cast, as Guybrush looks back on an old adventure? But Return isn't just for nostalgic fans. The 2D art is absolutely gorgeous, the hint system is an unbelievable work of genius, and the story is sweet and relatable without being indulgent. It's the point and click adventure to play if you think you don't like the genre.
Which is a good reminder to download the game for iOS and/or Android.
Other Mojo-related games on there: Tales From The Borderlands hits a deserved #93 and Star Wars: The Knights Of The Old Republic sits on #79. The top 50 will presumably be released soon.
As part of our current merger with The SCUMM Bar—thanks in no small part to expert negotiations by the CEO 
—we have resurrected a highly informative interview with Bill Tiller. For the CMI fan amongst you, it’s a must read and likely what Kubrick had in mind when he filmed 2001.
We didn’t quite plan this retro week, but more to come tomorrow!
Long-time readers may remember all the excitement surrounding the infamous Monkey Island 2-demo hack. Within the source, cut dialogue was found, different scenes were revealed, and music was extracted.
This was all in 2003, and some may have forgotten all that was uncovered. Thus, we decided to not only revisit it, but also update it with newer findings. And, as a bonus, we converted the MIDI music to MP3s. That’s just the service we provide.
Give Monkey Island 2: The Demo Examination
a read, and you may or may not learn a little about what never was.
Update! A couple of more factoids have been added. Also, a few more musical cues were provided by Zaarin, albeit in OGG format: Only the best for my precious MT-32 >:
So, we’ve made the rounds after Xwitter fell out of favor: Instagram, Threads, even YouTube Shorts. None of them were for us. And while our Mastodon presence will remain, we have decided to take matters into our own hands: Today M soft launches.
This is a social network that has it all: Properly embedded images and videos; threading that actually works; a conversational structure. How can we achieve these things other social networks can only dream of? The secret lies in our artisanal technology stack: Mid-90s-era forums.
Yes, M is built on our existing forums. It is a forum, just with some slight alterations. M is where we post the type of short-form articles we used to post on the sosh: “Mojo Scene of the Day” is already going. “Your Daily Watch is a new thing. Much more to come over the next few days: Rumor has it Thrik is firing up his meme machine. M is short-form Mojo, in other words. Microblogging. You get the idea.
Currently, only Mojo can start topics, but we welcome everyone to join in the conversation (screw you Bluesky). Welcome to M, by Mojo. (Footnote: We actually own MbyMojo.com—don’t accuse us of spending those Patreon funds willy-nilly.)
Mojo’s German bureau chief, Marius, has just finished an impromptu Twitch playthrough of the first part of The Secret of Monkey Island. Dubbed A walk through monochrome Mêlée Island on the Atari ST
you can stream it here:
Of note is his platform of choice: An OG Atari ST with monochrome graphics and three channels of bleeps. Presumably, it’s not something many have witnessed, so now is your chance.
Update! Marius has YouTube-d up a highlight reel and gave us a controversial statement: The Secret of Monkey Island is really good.
