Jenni

I finally finished Legend of Monkey Island. I liked it, mostly. I really like how it fits snugly in between Curse of Monkey Island and Escape from Monkey Island. I also love the idea of a curse that makes Guybrush, and presumably Elaine in future chapters, relive memories of past adventures that create a skewed version of whatever island is being remembered. That accounts for the appearance of Murray. I really loved Murray in this one, especially after he gets a body. The animators deserve a raise for Murray's walking animation alone. As for the cursed captain, I hope it's not just a way to mash franchises up that is forgotten next chapter. If you talk to him after you pick up Murray, he remembers the Sea of Thieves and complains that no one believes him. That would mean he's real and somehow made it to Melee Island but got stuck up on the wall by the three pirates. There's a lot of potential for story there and I hope Rare doesn't squander it. The Pirate Lord invited Guybrush and Elaine to honeymoon in the Sea of Thieves but at the end of the chapter, it's revealed LeChuck seeks his power and impersonates him to dupe the pirates in the Sea of Thieves. Presumably, it's LeChuck that invited them there, which would make perfect sense for him. But if he's real, then hopefully they explain how he's there and not stuck in ice, considering the timeline. I also thought the puzzles were fun. I liked how they integrated the Sea of Thieves mechanics into the puzzles too. The sword, tankard, and lantern all were used fantastically. The crane puzzle, especially, was great. It was a head-scratcher, especially when the crane wouldn't lift it. I was stuck for a while before I jumped into the water to see what was going on and saw the frayed ropes. That puzzle was something that felt like it could have been in the series proper. The music was also used well, with the Monkey Island theme popping up as you approached Melee, the familiar SCUMM Bar music that faded out in volume as you got further away from the bar, and Walt playing the skeleton ship theme on his violin. Bonus points for the name Walt, too. But there were things I really didn't like. Hunting for pieces of eight was tedious and not fun at all. At the end of the chapter, I searched all around for 200 pieces of eight so I could buy the history book. Corina the Voodoo Lady kept saying I still had to do more on Melee Island, but eventually, I just gave up and told her I wanted to leave with only 196 pieces of eight collected. The walk up and down the hill to get to the lookout and back wasn't fun, and he didn't have enough pieces of eight for the trouble. I kept jumping off early on the path down and losing health. Jumping down and getting hurt was worth it though, because it cut down on all the tedious walking. I really hope the next chapter ditches the money collecting and long walks because it felt like artificially extending the time required to finish the chapter. I like the idea, but the execution is somewhat lacking so far.

I'd definitely be willing to buy some of these for the games I own without big boxes. Do you know a good printing company that can manufacture these big boxes? I'd love to get some made for older consoles I own like the CoCo. There are so few good boxes left in the wild since the originals were extremely flimsy and poorly made.

couple fun facts, just for the heck of it: All versions of Maniac Mansion past the first Apple II/C64 version are technically censored. At the ending where Fred tells Dave "don't be a tuna head", in the first version Fred tells Dave "don't be an ****." (IIRC the swear in question was 'asshole'). That surprised the crap out of me when I first played it. The keypad for the steel door looks like it was removed in the NES versions but it was actually made small and transparent. It's hard to find, but possible - and, yes - entering the wrong key code does blow the house up. In the NES versions you can enter 0000 for the code on the lab door, skipping the arcade section. I use that when I feel like playing Maniac Mansion so I can do a play through of around 5 minutes - making the game a fun diversion at times when I get bored.

At least the 256 color DOS versions of the Monkey Island games are able to be extracted from the special editions. I don't really care one way or the other about the Star Wars Special Editions, but it is a shame that the original theatrical cut isn't available for those who do care . Is not having any opinion about the Star Wars Special Editions an unpopular opinion? 😛

I'm not sure why you think ScummVM isn't interested in supporting high res asset replacement. The Grim Fandango Deluxe forum is even hosted by ScummVM. Edit: Just noticed you were mentioning the PS2 port, which is unsupported. It's not a matter of plugging the PS2 version files into the code to get the game working (which IIRC is what ScummVM does, hence the crash), as it is completely unsupported. There's a bunch of differences specific to the PS2 version which would require a coder who owns the game, has enough free time, and who knows PlayStation 2 disassembly to work on it. That's a tall order. Without that coder, it's not possible to support the PS2 version, and no amount of complaining is going to help. There's a lot of alternate platforms of games that aren't supported. It's not because we don't want to, but because it has code that requires someone with knowledge of the platform and free time to do it. That being said, the Windows version works great. I played through the Windows version on three different systems with three different operating systems (Mac Mini running macOS, MacBook running Windows with Bootcamp, and a Chromebook running Chrome OS) and I was able to play through the whole game without problems. If you have problems, make sure you have all the files listed on our Wiki, including renaming the files to the proper names, etc. Make sure you have the latest stable version of ScummVM. Try running the game with all three of the different display settings (OpenGL, OpenGL with shaders, or software). If all of these didn't help, make sure you have all of the most recent drivers for your video card. If you tried all of that and it still crashes, leave a report on our issue tracker.

Skunkape posted on Twitter that there is a retail Switch version of Save the World remastered at Best Buy with a retail-exclusive cover (and Jason posted it as Mojo news, which is where I found out about it). I had to dust off my Best Buy credit card as the completionist in me needed to get one. '

Seeing as this is Japan, they might have just changed it for cultural reasons. The Japanese have always viewed themselves as a homogeneous country, with very little ethnic diversity. It's not true, but most of the immigrants in Japan are Asian, so the myth has always permeated. Because of that, some of the immigrants from other Asian countries still do pretend to be completely Japanese to avoid bullying. There's a xenophobic atmosphere, especially for African-descended people, where they actually face fear similar to Western nations prior to the mid to end of the 20th century. A lot of Japanese people there actually think that they are lesser, or even dirty because of the color of their skin. In addition, there has always been a view that ivory white skin is a goal to achieve, especially for women. So, even now, you have a huge market for skin bleach and you still can see women cover up on beaches because they don't want to get a tan. This too is improving somewhat, but the Japanese media and culture in general still enforce the toxic notion that only the women with an ivory complexion are desirable. It's getting better this century, as the first Japanese and African-American-descended woman won a beauty contest for the first time in 2015. Although, she still faces discrimination where even though she was born in Japan and speaks Japanese fluently with a Kansai accent, she still has to deal with reporters asking her what she feels about the Japanese, as though she isn't Japanese herself.

Ooh, I like the look of that Sam & Max VR big box! I actually already have Sam & Max This Time It's Virtual digitally for PlayStation 4 but I haven't played it yet because all of my cables for my PSVR headset are scattered around. That big box looks awesome, but with Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space coming out on Limited Run this month too I don't know if I can afford to buy all of this awesomeness. Sam & Max VR is a four-week pre-order though, which will bring it into June before it closes. I might be able to squeeze my bankbook a bit to get both. I'm mad I missed out on the Monkey Island Anthology (which is listed on eBay for $500 or more), so I really don't want to feel the same way about these.

I picked up the first season for PC and Switch, and it was glorious. I'll be picking up the second season too - probably on both platforms, but definitely on the Switch. The thing I liked about the original mini CD was that not only was it shaped like a record, but it had a record groove noise on the music as well. I thought that was a fun touch.

Skunkape does exactly this. It offers the original version as free DLC.

I got the PC Big Box, the Switch Big Box, the Switch 3-game case holder and a regular Switch version of the game to go in the holder. I noticed that the PC Big Box and the Switch Big Box were different as the Switch one had the Nintendo Switch logo on it. I only opened the PC Big Box, so I hadn't seen that it was a slipcase. That's a great compromise. I also have the Thimbleweed Park Big Box from Limited Run and that one doesn't have the Switch logo on it and doesn't have a Switch logo on the top either. I wonder if Nintendo made a fuss about the Thimbleweed Park box causing them to be sticklers with this one. I actually like the 'feelies' in the case file better than the original Telltale ones. They are made with sturdier material yet look the same. I might do a video comparing the two at some point (although I'll have to do a bit of improvisation on two of them as I lost the original Bosco Tech napkin and my sister's puppy ate my original Ted E Bear magnet).

I recently picked up something that I highly doubt anyone else here has, as I'm probably the only person crazy enough to do so. They are Pogo (bootleg Lego) figures of the Telltale versions of Bane, Batman, Catwoman, Harley Quinn, The Joker (and John Doe), Mr. Freeze, and The Riddler. I ordered them back in November, and they finally arrived this month (since they shipped from China). I wasn't sure what to expect, since I read that Lego bootlegs by Pogo can vary hugely in quality from awful to just as good as the Lego figures. Now that they've arrived, I can happily report that the Telltale figures are firmly in the latter camp. Surprisingly, Pogo Batman's cape is actually of sturdier material than that of the official Lego Batman figure in the Lego Dimensions starter pack. I plopped down $1-$2 a pop on these bootleg figures, but I feel I got my money's worth. I mean, they came in plastic bags and likely won't gain anything in value since they're bootlegs, but the figures are actually really well made.

I created a Monkey Island page in 1997 (the Monkey Island Mega Monkey page) that was on the webring, The first iteration had a blue sky background and swinging Monkey gifs from Monkey Island 2. It was hosted on my computer through the dyn.dns service. I was lucky to live in the Time Warner Road Runner (then called Line Runner) testing area so my parents got high speed cable internet way back in 1995.

I loved the webrings. My favorite was a site called SCUMM, which simply had a Monkey Island parody of the Cheers theme song. I've thought about doing a video parody of that song, but I don't know who I would credit.

The Double Fine Discord invite is here.

Yes, I'm also super grateful that the forums are back again. I've been using the Double Fine discord and the Telltale forums to keep up with people I consider online friends, but I also consider my fellow Mojo updaters and the Mojo readers online friends too. I've noticed that it has a lot to do with age and (for the game forums) genre. The Steam forums have always been hot trash because it's always attracted a young (13ish) demographic. The GOG forums have gotten bad as they've become more popular and attracted younger people themselves. The Mojo forum, even when we were young, didn't attract too many awful people because most of us were adventure fans, which by the late 90s was a niche genre (plus prior to Win95, computer games required computer knowledge to get them to run, which tended to attract more mature young people). The Telltale forums became hot trash after The Walking Dead brought in young teens and tweens into the forums, and they've become a lot more pleasant again now that Telltale no longer has the Walking Dead rights.

I did a video version of the bloopers from the Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures datafiles that could be found using bgbennyboy's Telltale Explorer back when I was just starting to get the hang of video editing 10 years ago: Then I did a mashup of The Wolf Among Us and Night Court (appropriate as Night Court is seen on the prince's TV in that game). This was done 4 years ago. The Night Court intro, for comparison:

People demanding that minority characters being played by minority actors is absolutely not overreacting, though. The entertainment industry is heavily tilted against minorities. You absolutely can't achieve inclusivity and social change without progressive politics. That's the raison d'être for that whole movement. Speaking from experience, as an actor/voice actor myself, I know that there are tons of people of all ethnicities and backgrounds having seen them when I respond to casting calls, even in an area as small as mine. Casting minorities definitely is not limiting the pool, it's actually expanding the pool because these groups of people wouldn't even be considered under normal circumstances. That's actually the crux of the problem that this particular progressive movement is striving to address. The progress that's being made now won't shift back, the same way progressive politics didn't cause the entertainment industry to shift back to minstrel entertainment and blackface back during the 1950s-1970s US civil rights era. Looking back on that era from today, 40-70 years on, almost everyone would say it's extremely good that we don't hire white actors in black makeup to play black characters. The same thing will hold true 40-70 years from now, where people will agree that having white voice actors make voices that "sound" like African American, Asian American, Native American, etc. dialects is not a good thing, especially when there's a huge field of voice actors to choose from that actually belong to those groups. If the "purple character" you are referring to in Sam & Max is Bosco, then I think the important thing that you are missing in this is that he speaks with an African American dialect (not to mention the fact that Momma Bosco is very obviously African American herself). So, yes, if a "purple character" speaks in a dialect or accent of a specific ethnic group, or is said to be of that ethnic group, then that "purple character" should definitely be played by an actor that is actually from that specific ethnic group. As for changing actors for new remasters, that's up to the company (Skunkape chose to do so with the Sam & Max Save the World remaster, but they weren't compelled to by anyone other then themselves). However, if a company leaves things unchanged, they shouldn't be surprised when they're opened up to criticism or even limited sales because of it due to the product being released in today's market (as was the case in my Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded example above). Yes, but with more and more people flexing their wallet towards inclusivity (see the huge success of Black Panther, Black-ish, etc.), the tides are changing. As an example of progressive politics changing people's viewing habits to the benefit of minority actors, people used to love minstrel shows and blackface too (most of the early cinema included these and were runaway successes). But, with the progressive politics of the civil rights era, more and more people (and not just minority audiences) became turned off by these types of films. 40 to 70 years later, almost everyone around the world doesn't want to watch that anymore. Another 40 to 70 years down the line, the majority of people will be turned off by fake "ethnic" dialects by white voice actors too. The progressive push is starting here, and the industry will only go for inclusive casting more and more as time rolls on.

Inclusivity is never a bad thing, for any of those you listed. There are black and brown voice actors who are not being hired for black and brown characters because white voice actors are hired in their place. There are paraplegic actors who are not being hired because able-bodied actors are being hired in their place. Trevor Noah put the situation quite well over the controversy surrounding the original intention for Scarlett Johansson to play a transgender man, before she stepped down so an actual transgender man could play the role. Paraphrasing Mr. Noah, "The issue isn't that [non-minority actors] can't play the part. It's that [they] can play the part as well as any other part they want to play". Minorities don't get that option, especially in the voice realm, since casting directors will often go with a non-minority actor, meaning the opportunities they actually do get are few and far between. The changes that are happening now are making sure that the playing field is fair, where it absolutely wasn't before, and that's actually taking the to industry to a really good place.

To be fair, this isn't a case of it being just a product of its time, as it's not being released as it was in 2006. It's a new release brought up to modern standards, so anything that doesn't fit modern sensibilities is fair game to criticize. For example, Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards got (and still does get) a pass for the depiction of the Indian-American clerk selling "lubbers" because it was created in 1987 (and even the first (SCI) remake was released in 1991) so it was a product of it's time. However, when Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded was released in 2013 it was open to fresh criticism about that character, since it was an updated product released to a modern audience. It's the same reason why the Yakuza 3 remaster removed a side quest making fun of a transgender woman. Updated releases need to keep modern sensibilities in mind in a way that straight-up re-releases don't.

Both are really programming-intensive as they require at least a moderate amount of C language knowledge to use. They both are feature-rich in the games they can make though and feature most of the SCUMM functions. I never could get ScummC to compile using GCC for Windows. I primarily use macOS now, which is *nix based, so it might be fun to try to do it again on my current machine. In order to compile and use ScummGEN, I pored over the C source code in order to see how it actually functioned, which is admittedly not a skill that a lot of people who want to make SCUMM games would have. The actual scripting language is still SCUMM though, so once you go through the hard part of actually getting the compilers functioning properly, it's not a hard language to come to grips with.

As a historian and president of a computer museum, I would absolutely love to have the tools for archival and preservation purposes. But, as a developer and gamer - there actually already are tools to make a brand new SCUMM game that can be played on floppy disks. ScummGEN already can create fully playable games in SCUMM that can be played in ScummVM on one of the many platforms it supports or with the Day of the Tentacle executable in DOS. I accidentally originally said I used ScummC above. It was actually made in ScummGEN. I tried to play around with ScummC to add the triangle puzzle to OpenQuest for SCUMM using a simplified routine I discovered when I converted OpenQuest to Wintermute, but I couldn't get it to compile. Here's the link for the very short playable game written in SCUMM that I alluded to above (note that it was created by the ScummGEN team - I just compiled it, added some missing elements, and fixed some bugs). If you're interested in seeing a SCUMM game created with publicly available tools, the game is here: https://jennibee.itch.io/indiana-jones-and-the-call-of-thunder The source code is also here, if you're interested: https://github.com/JenniBee/callofthunder I haven't personally tried Visionaire Studio, but I've heard good things about it, especially its robust and easy to use interface. If you're looking for something with a modern environment that's robust and easy to use, one engine that I have used and heartily recommend is Godot combined with the adventure game framework, Escoria, That engine and framework were used to create the awesome adventure game, The Interactive Adventures of Dog Mendonça & Pizzaboy, and it's also the engine we used for the 2nd and 3rd place picks during the community prototype portion of Amnesia Fortnight 2017.

Plus, if you want your game in ScummVM, there's Wintermute (it even has 2.5D capabilities ala Grim Fandango). SCUMM is certainly fascinating to play around with (I've dabbled in ScummGEN when I compiled and added some missing pieces to the ScummGEN Indiana Jones fan game), but if you really want to make adventures, there's plenty of modern tools out there.

Maniac Mansion NES was the first adventure game I ever completed (Space Quest II was the first I ever played, but I never completed it until much later), so I'm always happy to see someone mention it. Speaking of that, I've been collecting the Flashback dedicated consoles and managed to snag the Adventure Flashback Blast! for a good price on Mercari. It contains games based on Disney and Lucasfilm properties, and surprisingly it also includes the NES version of Maniac Mansion. I managed to talk to Ron and Gary at PAX East when I was working at the Double Fine booth, and Ron said that most people tell him that the NES was the system they used when playing Maniac Mansion. It was awesome to finally meet them, as they're two of my inspirations (Ron for gaming and coding, and Gary for art - especially comic art). Now if I can meet Tim Schafer (he wasn't at PAX East unfortunately, but I did get to work with Spaff), Steve Purcell, Michael Land, Michael Stemmle, Peter McConnell, and Bill Tiller, I'd be able to die happy.

Want to? Yes. Can do? No. Luckily Laserschwert's poster art is darn near perfect. I'm not sure if it can be topped.