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I've added several versions of Steve Purcell's cover artwork for "Pipe Dream" to the opening post.

It's been a while, but there is still stuff in the works. Like these:

It would be very funny if they did a new Monkey Island and undid everything in Return, like they did to the ending of Revenge with Curse! *Guybrush wakes up* "Oh what a confusing dream! Oh well, time to figure out why Voodoo Lady brought LeChuck back to life."

The true Curse of Monkey Island is that every game in the genre is going to be compared to it and inevitably lose, even other Monkey Islands 😄 Anyway, looking forward to hearing more. We had a lot of Curse-likes back in the day and like pizza, even if it's bad, it's still pizza.

I – the loser I am – chose to quit Monkey Island Frantic #63 in 6 seconds after 0 tries. 😞 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Frantic/

I've reworked Sophia's Atlantis Presentation quite a bit, replacing everything with my latest instruments, completely overhauling the balancing of the track, and now it's pretty much as perfect as I can get it. For me, a definitive highlight on the album. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (fan soundtrack) by Clint Bajakian, Peter McConnell, Michael Z. Land

I figured out Monkey Island Frantic #61 in 497 seconds after 71 tries. 😭 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Frantic/ hmpf. That solution wasn’t how I imagined it to look like. Same here

I – the loser I am – chose to quit Monkey Island Frantic #60 in 10 seconds after 0 tries. 😞 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Frantic/

Feel the gravitas and importance of academia in my latest track, Barnett College, which I imagine being the university's hymn, played as a chorale for brass and strings during official ceremonies. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (fan soundtrack) by Clint Bajakian, Peter McConnell, Michael Z. Land

Great interview. I have to say the more we learn about Iron Phoenix’s development, the less clear it becomes. The narrative/timeline I had understood for the longest time was: 1) The project initiates under Joe Pinney, who establishes the basic concept. 2) Pinney leaves the studio and Aric Wilmunder steps in to continue where he left off, developing a much, much more detailed design document to prepare for the largely outsourced production that LucasArts management decided to sign up for. 3) The external studio fails to deliver, which is more or less what kills the project. Aric explores the FMV route as a Hail Mary pass to do the art/animation quicker and cheaper, but ultimately the project withers away. The involvement of Dave Grossman and Mike Levine in these FMV tests throws things into a bit of confusion, because it suggests the FMV idea started earlier in development. Dave makes it sound like he got assigned to the project right after Pinney left, possibly as the lead, and that FMV had in fact been a proposed direction for a while leading up to that. Does that place his involvement during a brief transitional period before Aric took over? The history of aborted Indy games in the early 90s remains one of our most enduring enigmas.

Eep ook ack! I failed at #Mojole #1092. 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 🖤💚🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤 💚💚🖤💚💚💚💚 💚💚🖤💚💚💚💚 💚💚🖤💚💚💚💚 💚💚🖤💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

It's not called anything in the game. And just Voodoo shop in the hint book. (The Voodoo Lady is even called "fortune teller" in it) I thought for a bit it may be called this 👇 but that is across the street. It may have been retconned in one of the later games (CMI? EMI?)

I figured out Monkey Island Frantic #75 in 19 seconds after 1 attempt. 😍 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Frantic/

👕 I beat #MojoleXtremiest #1089 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 6/6 🖤🖤💛💚💚💚💚 🖤🖤🖤💚💚💚💚 🖤🖤🖤💚💚💚💚 🖤🖤🖤💚💚💚💚 🖤🖤💛💚💚💚💚 💚💚💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

👕 I beat #MojoleXtremiest #1087 and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. 2/6 🖤💛💛💛💚💚💚 💚💚💚💚💚💚💚 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Mojole/

I figured out Monkey Island Frantic #71 in 31 seconds after 2 tries. 💖 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Frantic/ Thanks for spelling it out for me, now I see what you mean! Of course, since I'm always so laser-focussed and get to the correct answer right away, I never noticed this

I figured out Monkey Island Frantic #71 in 13 seconds after 1 attempt. 😍 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Frantic/

"comedy narrative adventure" Yeah. I mean, he explicitly doesn't call it a point and click adventure game. And I guess as a designer, you just don't want to repeat the exact same thing you did 30 years ago. On the other hand ... he's introducing Ahern and himself as the designers of MI3, and he's developing a new comedy narrative adventure. I'm getting fairly mixed signals here. "have been developing" This basically says nothing about the state of the game. What do they have that they'd like to present to prospective publishers? Not an almost finished game, that much is certain. "our development team is ready to roll" This is a remarkably confusing sentence to me. Is the "development team" just him and Ahern? Or is there a group of people already hired? What does "ready to roll" mean? Sitting around idly, waiting for money to rain from the sky? Are these folks in cryogenic stasis? using the twice saluter's platform to market the game to publishers ... no comment.

I figured out Monkey Island Frantic #69 in 12 seconds after 1 attempt. 😍 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Frantic/ Spoiler alert: Playing this on Chrome is about twice as fast as Firefox.

I figured out Monkey Island Frantic #67 in 11 seconds after 2 tries. 💖 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Frantic/

Doh I – the loser I am – chose to quit Monkey Island Frantic #64 in 229 seconds after 29 tries. 😞 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Frantic/

I figured out Monkey Island Frantic #62 in 26 seconds after 2 tries. 💖 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Frantic/ Improvement idea: remove guessed answers from the drop down

That Sophia tracks sounds so great.

I – the loser I am – chose to quit Monkey Island Frantic #61 in 257 seconds after 36 tries. 😞 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Frantic/

I guessed today's (Feb 26, 2025) Monkey Island tune 🎵 in 3 tries. 🟥🟥🟦⬜⬜⬜ https://legendofmi.com/webgames/guessthattune/

I guessed today's (Feb 26, 2025) Monkey Island tune 🎵 in 4 tries. 🟥🟥🟥🟦⬜⬜ https://legendofmi.com/webgames/guessthattune/

I figured out Monkey Island Frantic #57 in 18 seconds after 1 attempt. 😍 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Frantic/

I figured out Monkey Island Frantic #54 in 15 seconds after 1 attempt. 😍 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Frantic/ Yeah, that is the most frantic part of all: scrolling up and clicking on the text box first. I usually try do that first while the tiles start to show.

I figured out Monkey Island Frantic #53 in 10 seconds after 2 tries. 💖 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Frantic/

I figured out Monkey Island Frantic #53 in 4 seconds after 1 attempt. And! I’m a Speedrunner Champ, as the challenge was completed in fewer than 7 seconds! 🏃 😍 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Frantic/

...I didn't even think that you could press 'Enter' to submit, I just clicked the option I wanted. I have apparently found new and creative ways to be bad at this game

0.05 seconds to recognise it and 3.90s to type and hit enter. Looking through all the names for 3 minutes to find yesterday’s nearby location helped.

https://bethesda.net/en/article/19eQtJoGEbNeavznlgvNMH/indiana-jones-and-the-great-circle-update-3

That collection of magazines is somehow more satisfying to me than seeing a collection of game boxes all lined up together. The visual symmetry is so pleasing- three Elaine in the right corner; three LeChucks in the left corner, Guybrush's blue jacket in the two middle spots, and getting to compare three Purcell versions of Guybrush. I love how the visual style evolves across the boxes in a way that seems more gradual than it felt at the time they were released. I also have a soft spot for this because I wore out the Curse copy of PC Gamer as a kid, and played the demo disc to an inch of its life.

One part of my contribution to the box design was cleaning up the USA map that's seen on the back of the box. The idea was for me to upscale the original game's background, while Steve would just provide a few little icons to represent the different locations in the game, as he wouldn't have time in his schedule to re-paint the whole map. Right away it was clear, that those pesky longitude/latitude lines would never upscale cleanly, so my first step was to paint those out: Easy enough, right? Let's get to upscaling (correcting the non-square-pixel aspect ratio while we're at it)! Eww... well, clearly this wouldn't work, neither with the text overlay nor Sam & Max themselves. Luckily, Steve offered to repaint those overlays as well, so back to the original background, to give Steve some space to work his magic. Recreating the game's ugly banding was actually harder than I expected, but after all it turned out fine. Back to upscaling! Ah, much better. Using a combination of different ESRGAN models allowed me to not only get nice outlines, but also reign in the banding, which I so faithfully re-created. Ah, well. But this was still looking a bit too clean, so it just made sense to add a bit of a brush texture overlay. Yes, that'll do. For the coordinate grid, I just recreated the lines at high resolution. Now comes the real magic, once Steve adds his overlays. It still boggles my mind that so many years later, we are getting brand-new HTR art from Steve Purcell! Steve also added the brushy lines and scribbles along the route... ... and Jake then wrangled it all into a beat-up, folded map, tying it all together for the back of the box. The end.

I figured out Monkey Island Frantic #79 in 9 seconds after 1 attempt. 😍 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Frantic/ No idea what you're talking about, and you and Huz are clearly just dirty, dirty liars.

I figured out Monkey Island Frantic #77 in 84 seconds after 1 attempt. 😍 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Frantic/

I figured out Monkey Island Frantic #59 in 14 seconds after 1 attempt. 😍 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Frantic/

I figured out Monkey Island Frantic #53 in 10 seconds after 1 attempt. 😍 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Frantic/

I figured out Monkey Island Frantic #52 in 20 seconds after 2 tries. 💖 https://funzone.mixnmojo.com/Frantic/