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We’re just a tick behind schedule on this—what’s a year or four amongst friends?—but MojoDB is starting to come together. Sort of. At least enough so we can give you, our privileged core readership, an exclusive preview of the MojoDB Trivia section. Enjoy a mix of ancient content from our current not-at-all-outdated trivia section as well as gems from the excellent SCUMM Bar. Hey, it’s a bit more readable than what we currently have, at least. And you can rediscover gems like this—Raz appearing in Alice: Madness Returns.

This is all to whet your appetite and expect practically everything to change as we move along. But, for now, enjoy our new Trivia section—just another bespoke service from your friends at Mojo.

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Who reads anymore, right? Luckily, RETURN Magazin's latest issue is packed with glorious screenshots and custom character art from classic point-and-click adventure games. This special edition, touting no less than 154 pages, dives deep into the golden era of adventure gaming, featuring per-game-stylized articles, reviews, and retrospectives on iconic titles that shaped the genre.

You can expect lots of games covered here, including the Monkey Islands, Indiana Jones 3 and 4, Full Throttle and the others. And for the point-and-click connoisseur, feast your eyes on more exotic titles of the era such as Gabriel Knight and Phantasmagoria. To get a sneak peek, check out the review flip-through video below!

Reading in German might be a challenge for some, but nostalgia is universal and pricing is modest!

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Sure, he might have pointedly kept Mojo out of the loop when it came to that furtive GDC showing back in April, and you’re right to challenge the morality of that, but the fact is, Jake looks to have achieved something pretty darned special with Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse: Remastered: The Omen II, so I say why let his pettiness dominate the discussion?

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We’ve got ourselves a release date of August 14th , and that’ll be a simultaneous PC, Switch, Xbox and Playstation launch. You probably wouldn’t be wrong to keep your eye on the official site for more. One assumes that, as with the other seasons, Skunkape will eventually prepare an album release, and in so doing, a historical wrong would be righted. I’ll let our 2021 interview with Bay Area Sound do the explaining for me:

Mojo The-International-House-Of: When Telltale’s first two Sam & Max seasons originally came out, they received pressed soundtrack albums that were sold through the company store. However, Telltale dramatically scaled back on cool physical items by the time they made The Devil’s Playhouse, thus its soundtrack never got a CD release of its own to complete the collection. Is there room to hope that this situation can be redeemed someday?

Jared Emerson-Johnson: I assure you that nobody in the world is sadder about the shift in the merchandise policies at Telltale than yours truly. In fact, I was halfway through preparing season three soundtrack album masters when the policy shift occurred. Without making any promises, I will say that we will hopefully have something exciting to announce in a year or two.

Physical or no, the arrival of an official soundtrack of any persuasion would be redemption. The gears of justice turn slowly, my friends, but oh do they turn. Now that the third, final, and best of Telltale’s Sam & Max seasons (and/or entire damned library) has been tarted up for the ball and will soon be in your grubby hands, the question remains: What does the future hold for Skunkape? And would they bother telling us if they knew? You’d hate for them to put themselves out.

Source: Skunkape

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I mean...

Still, we always support Loom love, so we salute you, Eurogamer.

Image Credit: The Point and Click Store.

Source: Eurogamer

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The edutainment tentacle of George Lucas’s empire, and the ways it tied together with his Young Indiana Jones concept, is a pretty interesting if underdocumented story that has eluded a proper chronicle despite gallant attempts.

As part of the home video release of the Young Indy television show in 2007-2008, which as you may know involved substantially re-editing the series chronologically into TV-movies, Lucasfilm produced a whopping 94 historical documentaries for classroom use that also turned up on The History Channel. Now, Lucasfilm will be releasing this enormous library of supplemental material on their YouTube channel on a weekly basis, starting with “Archaeology: Unearthing Our Past”:

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Source: Lucasfilm.com

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Mojo continues its laudably recessive approach to journalism by letting those desperate, needier outlets get first dibs since they’re in such a damned hurry. But now that all the carrying on has blown over, we’re ready to calmy and safely catch up on the latest bits and bobs surrounding Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, while signaling all turns and obeying the speed limit within a generous margin of error.

Since the Xbox showcase, a few new gameplay clips have emerged. We really have to give the credit on this one to reader Threepwood4life, whose unthinkable willingness to look at social media platforms made the discoveries possible:

Lost in the shuffle of the showcase was this podcast (also fully transcribed) by Xbox Wire, which featured as guests the Game Director and Production Director of Great Circle, Jerk Gustafsson and John Jennings, who both do a pretty credible job at Telling People What We Imagine They Want To Hear game:

XBOX WIRE: Obviously, this is an IP that has been around for decades at this point, so you obviously want to make sure you get it right. Can you talk a little bit about the prep and research that went into making sure that you were bringing an authentic experience?

JERK GUSTAFSSON: In this case, of course, we had a lot of materials to go through, and we spent countless of hours just rewatching the films, especially the two movies, I think, that are closest to the game, which is Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. And looking at the movies both from a broad stroke perspective to get into the mood and why, but also to some extent, scrutinizing them for details and the small hooks that are key to the identity of everything that is Indiana Jones.

And in addition, then, we have one of the best resources through our partnership with Lucasfilm games, and working together with them on this project has been invaluable, just this cave of knowledge about the character, which has been fantastic. And Lucasfilm has been excited about the project from day one and have been incredibly supportive and helpful in bringing the story and the character in Indiana Jones to life through not just our story, but also through gameplay.

JOHN JENNINGS: Yeah. It's been great having access to writers, directors from Lucasfilm, and people who've worked with the Indiana Jones property for decades, having their input. I mean, some of these people know everything that has ever been written about Indy, and having them to bounce ideas off and get some of their own input has been hugely, hugely invaluable. I mean, our writers are huge Indy fans as well and just been scouring all of the countless wikis that are out there written about everything, all of the comics, additional books, and so forth, just to build up their knowledge.

Other things as well. I mean, we managed to get access into some of the Lucasfilm archives as well, which has been-- for Indy fans, has been an absolute dream come true to get access to some of these things that perhaps not so many people have seen, but our artists have been wanting to make sure everything is authentic as possible. We bought replicas of Indy's famous fedora made by the original hat makers who made the original prop from the first film, proper recreations of his iconic jacket, and so forth, just to make sure everything is absolutely spot on.

Lastly, we took the opportunity to update our gallery with the latest screenshots that came out of all the recent hubbub.

The tortoise and the hare, my friends. The tortoise and the hare.

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It’s been politely noticed by our dear readers that we’ve arguably fallen a bit delinquent in highlighting Daniel Albu’s latest interviews, always trackable in that dedicated forum thread, despite their objective status as The Most Mojo Things Ever. I guess it never occurred to our constituents that we might still be watching them.

But the point is made, and it’s high time we catch up on the LucasArts developer interviews that have come along after Annie Fox got her due February. Since then, Daniel invited Aaron Giles over for a third session, to discuss the features introduced in DREAMM 3.0…

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…before pulling Noah Falstein back into the virtual studio for some further Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis commentary…

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…which was in turn followed by a conversation with voice director extraordinaire Khris Brown…

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…and then, in keeping with the theme, by a chat with that other legendary voice director, Darragh O'Farrell…

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…which might have felt pretty darn lonely if it hadn’t been chased down with a session with Mike Levine:

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This latest one has been generating quite a bit of buzz, as Levine used the opportunity to debut rare footage: some fairly unbelievable tests for Indiana Jones FMV sequences using live action, filmed at ILM. Though things didn’t pan out for Indy, the techniques would be leveraged to published success in Rebel Assault 2. It’s unclear if this bit of R&D was part of the cancelled Iron Phoenix adventure game (which is said to have undergone experiments along those lines when a contractor failed to deliver on more traditional animation) or some other project altogether, but regardless of the exact origin you get a decent George Lucas anecdote, so why complain?

Mojo will soon return to cover the upcoming release of Afterlife.

Source: Tech Talk with Daniel Albu

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It’s quiet days, so we might as well toss an old-school trivia nugget your way. This time, a perennial elTee favorite.

Mark Ferrari, what a pro.

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Look, I’m not gonna lie. This post is probably about trying out a beta feature. Probably? Entirely. But why not do so with a classic piece of trivia to do so? Double the fun if you so like.

Sure, most of Mojo’s esteemed readership recognize that little chestnut, but you’d be surprised that many aren’t familiar with the alternate ending.

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This weekend was The Xbox Showcase, and it was a natural venue for showing off more of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. That’s probably why they up and did it:

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The release date remains merely “2024”, so the odds seem good that this will be dropped just before the ball in Times Square does.

Source: Bethesda Softworks

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While we don’t front page every last instance of it, since at a certain point we’d just be functioning as a mirror of Ron Gilbert’s Mastodon page (not that we’re above that in principle - only in work ethic), it’s worth reminding those with ordered priorities that Ron fairly routinely volunteers glimpses of his upcoming RPG A Schtick to the Past (working title) there, for example this one from a few days ago:

I don't know much, but if Ron can’t come up with some arrangement with Limited Run to print a couple of novelty Game Boy Advance cartridges for this, a lot of dreams are gonna be murdered.

Source: Ron's Mastodon

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You don’t pass the twenty-five year milestone in the fan site business without learning a few tricks of the trade. One of them is to maintain a “rainy-day fund” of news items that have an evergreen quality, unburdened by topicality. And on a fine, quiet Sunday like today, why not fish one out of the sack?

Back in 1991, a gamer wrote in to Nintendo Power magazine to report an exploit involving Nurse Edna in the NES version of Maniac Mansion, getting his finding published in the May issue. Today, and by today I mean five years ago, “Agent #912” took to Reddit to claim credit for his five minutes of fame, and he brought along the receipts:

Now then: what have you done?

Source: Reddit

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A bunch of Gary Winnick’s concept art from his Lucasfilm Games days is up for sale over at Heritage Auctions. I don’t know how this came to pass or how that site works, but you’re still going to want to browse the lot. Probably the most intriguing item is this early set of character designs for The Secret of Monkey Island. Who knew Gary did concept art for that game?

I couldn’t even tell you what characters those are supposed to represent. The leftmost one is presumably an early take on Guybrush, and the guy on the right is a credible match for that Governor Phatt-esque character who was found in the resource files but didn’t make it into the final game:

Anyway, you’ll want to check all of it out, and to pass judgment on the mislabeling of Maniac Mansion pieces as belonging to Day of the Tentacle. Such humiliations are the sort any business runs the risk of when they’re too cheap to spring for The Mojo Audit.

Source: Heritage Auctions

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I wouldn’t blame you for not believing this, but sometimes, not often, but now and again, we actually do some work on future sections of this site. Case in point is the elusive MojoDB, which… may become a thing at some point.

Unattainable deadlines aside, having added quite a bit of trivia to the prototype, it increasingly occurred to me that many are unaware of the breadth of details found in Return to Monkey Island. Long story short, instead of putting more work into the database, I ended up writing an article called “ICYMI: Return to Monkey Island.” Actually, “article” might be overselling it. “Listicle” might be a more apt description. But, no matter! Give it a perusal to learn about the hidden Pineapple Man, dangling electrical plugs, the Scumm Bar cook’s extensive rebuilding plans, and more.

If nothing else, it might spur you into replaying the game—or just browse The SCUMM Bar’s ReMI database. Either way, go read “ICYMI: Return to Monkey Island.” It’s basically scholarly material.

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During Mojo’s Monthly Metrics Meeting, Zaarin presented some unexpected data. Numbers show that Mojo’s most-visited page is our September 2022 article, “The Secret of Cogg Island.” Hearing the news, the CEO raised an eyebrow and gave a slight nod, which said it all: More Cogg Island content was needed. And so, we have added a second page to the article called “Puzzling Puzzles.” In it, we take a short look at what likely was the location’s five main puzzles: “Symbol Puzzle,” “Clock Puzzle,” “Compass Puzzle,” “Oar Puzzle,” and “Cannon Puzzle.”

While our findings weren’t plentiful, there’s enough fodder there for at least a decade or two of speculations. So, go read unless you’re a complete butt.

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If you love Monkey Island and want everyone on the seven seas to know it, Devolver Digital's got Return to Monkey Island goods up for preorder.

Just taken a long walk off a short plank? There's a Bella Fisher towel. Yer timbers be shiverin'? Warm up with some Guybrush socks. Eyeballin' your enemies on a tense table and need some style to your swig? Try the Pirate Leaders lowball glass.

There's also stuff from gems like Cult of the Lamb and indie darling Inscryption, if those strike your fancy. Take a look here.

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The future marches on, and so does Grim Fandango. Old Lost Soul Alliance webmaster, Bone Man (aka Dean), sent us word of a remaster of the remaster called Grim Fandango Remaster HD. It’s exactly what you'd imagine: An AI-scaled version of Grim Fandango Remaster OG. Think higher resolution and 32-bit color, wisely set in the old 4:3 ratio. Downside: It only works with the Steam version of the game.

The result is undoubtedly impressive, and you should run, not walk, over to the project’s website for more information.

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Source: Reddit Announcement

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Sure, none of this is actually “news” as such, but as pointed out by TimeGentleman over in the forums, Ron “Ronzo” Gilbert’s upcoming RPG-Adventure (known colloquially as A Little Something) has a small write-up in Eurogamer. If you follow the man over on the Linux-of-social-networks, Mastodon, you’ve seen all of this before, but hey, it’s nice that the game is getting some love.

Plus, I had not noticed that Wally would potentially make an appearance.

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Wally, pixel style.
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Return to Monkey Island—more commonly known as ReMI on various Discords—is set to hit Apple’s subscription service this June. Or, more specifically, Return to Monkey Island+ will. My guess is that the + indicates the game will be playable on both Mac and i[Pad]OS.

Everybody needs more ReMI in their lives, so check it out on June 6th.

Update: The CEO has bestowed upon his wisdom and informed us that the + indicates that downloadable content was included. That could mean that a) the Mac version includes the horse armor or b) as the iOS version has a sandboxed demo, the full game could be the +.

Source: The Verge

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Matthew Shell, a long-time LucasArts and then Disney employee credited on over 60 video games, has suddenly passed away.

Described as an “incredible person with a huge heart,” Shell was primarily an ambassador for Star Wars and Indiana Jones games, most recently 2023’s Star Wars: Jedi Survivor.

Ray Almeda, Global PR Lead for the EA SPORTS portfolio, wrote : “We will miss his jokes, love for Sticky Toffee Pudding, BBQ expertise, celebrating Warriors championships the night of, and of course his profound fandom for his SF Giants. Rest in Paradise my friend and May the Force be with you, always.”

Our condolences go out to his loved ones.

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