Vainamoinen

Very excited to get the Purcell soundtrack cover confirmed – and of course to see Sam at the piano.

Well ... more than two months ... no soundtrack release on bandcamp (and no game on gog). Any good news there ... ?

I only found the first part re-used, for example in Atlantis' "crab room".

All three parts of the track (0:00 to 0:16, 0:17 to 0:45, 0:46 to end) can be heard in that sequence when Jones and Sophia first look at the Hermocrates manuscript in Jones' office, immediately before choosing a path. Starts at minute 43:00 in this youtube walkthrough.

Well, I'm definitely to blame. I didn't "show up to" any "Steam release" in my entire life. 😅 I understand Duke Nukem guy to a large degree, but the brunt of his 'advice' is easier said than done. The in jokes, the references, the slavish use of the same old formula, that's the stuff that sells. Take a look at Hollywood, heck, take a look at the game industry. The recipe that works is going into innumerable iterations. I hear even Star Trek: Resurgence did pretty well, and that's really The Walking Dead 1.01A. He's asking for larger development teams, well bad news Mister B., we have wall-to-wall game sales in the industry right now. Even in the popular genres, it seems that only two types of game developers can succeed, either a two people development army backed by a bunch of freelancers or a quadruple A 20,000 staff company desperately clinging to making the nth iteration of their most popular game. Wadjet Eye games tried 'something new', and their later games are really great point & clicks with great storylines (and ... less than great puzzles), but apart from 'the other Gilbert', I struggle to think of adventure games that aren't stuffed to the brim with references to Monkey Island. In their later years though, it seems they had lost the power to innovate. They still innovated, naturally, but the new things weren't accepted any longer. Their fans largely expected very concrete things and when these expectations were not fulfilled, bam, Grim Fandangbomb. The problem of the living legend maybe, people expect the same great things from you over and over. Back then LucasArts still had staff willing to innovate with each new games, but the audience had such fixed expectations, petrified the whole company into a statue, a memento of former greatness unable to move its arms and legs.

I'd love some updates concerning the bandcamp soundtrack release and of course the GOG release too ... I never liked Poker and I've come to actually hate crossovers during the last years. But STILL Poker Night 2 had a real spark to it, it really considered the possibilities. How about a bad guy edition for Poker Night 3 ... say, Wreck-It Ralph, Biff Tannen, LeChuck, Agent Smith, Doctor Robotnik, and/or of course Skunkape?

Still no luck on GOG. They have a national holiday in Poland today, and as any European knows, if Thursday is a national holiday, not much is going on on Fridays either. So chances are it isn't even coming this entire week. 🥺 Ah well, the good news is that I have at least 25 hours left to sink into the ridiculously addictive Steamworld Heist II which came out last week. I fully intend to write long form individual episode reviews and musings once I finally am on The Devil's Playhouse. Might be a good thing that I can't rush it. I would guess that the rights are not nearly as easily acquired as those for Sam & Max. So we'll likely never see what Flotsam Town would have looked like if it wasn't broken in two for the Wii's undersized RAM. Re-doctoring the art style of Tales game might give some folks ideas about what could be done to Return, so it might still be a good thing that it likely isn't happening. There I said it moment: Instead of another Remaster, Skunkape could do S&M Season 4.

It's out on Steam. No luck for me yet.

Yes, absolutely, it was Telltale's finest hour. That said, I might indeed be the type to slight The Walking Dead, but then again, I never liked zombies that much; the hopelessness that pervades this work kind of dragged me down; and the TTG forum culture went out the door with the advent of a gazillion hyperactive twelve year olds. Besides, if my elephant brain doesn't let me down here, the great schism of those ancient times was puzzles or no puzzles. I was a puzzle guy. The Devil's Playhouse had them. I'm looking forward to re-experience this game and to find out, without any rose tinted glasses, what this particular je ne sais quoi (with an i in the last word, mind you) actually is/was. For now, my two questions are: Soundtrack, bandcamp, when? I want to send my money flying on those heavenly wavelengths ... New lines of dialog?! Which ones? (I'd ask those P. B.s you mention, but given the cataloguing talent they've demonstrated with the last S&M remasters, I might get more accurate results asking a random six year old)

It's been said that the past had the disconcerting tendency to claw through the freshly laid soil of the present and wrap its cadaverous fingers around the entrails of the future. But sometimes, the past just peeks through that soil to give you a good long cuddle, and maybe it even stays around long enough do do great things in the future. But, while we're at it, this little quote from the past had me wondering for 13 years.

And a day one GOG release. 🥰😍 In August, I'm literally buying my first two 2024 games, and The Devil's Playhouse will be one of them. Suddenly, I won't know what to play first. This will be a wild, wild, experience for me that I haven't had in at least a decade. .... aaaand apparently the NutriSpecs are now available to all platforms.

Not that it has a chance to ever be published on a platform or service I'd use, but sure, I would play that new Indy game. My main gripes would remain: Facial animation and first person perspective.

I still have mountains of CDs lying around, and have bought the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth OST on eight discs this year. But ... I ripped those CDs and put the box on my shelf to collect dust. I don't even own a designated CD player any more. Another sign of these strange times. I'd also buy a physical release of Season 3's OST. The impulse is there. It's just less sensible every year. 😐 A larger format reprinting of the comics including "The Big Sleep" however: I'd buy three of those.

Instant + 100 beats per minute pulse. A Summer release would be off the charts awesome (well, you know what 'platform' release I'm waiting for 😬 ). And of course I'll get the soundtrack off bandcamp FTL. Hope you have that Steve Purcell cover ready ... all the new stuff from Jared ... and that speech for the folks in the Telltale forum.

My drawing and painting community forum chose a vampire theme this month. That's not my jam. I don't know any vampires. None whatsoe... oh wait. Still waiting for the Devil's Playhouse Remastered! ❤️

The winner is no surprise. The only thing that matches Steve Purcell's cover art for LeChuck's Revenge ... is Steve Purcell's back cover art for LeChuck's Revenge. Even though it's painted in oils to my knowledge, Purcell uses his perfected acrylic technique, building up color in washy layers. It was a truly daring concept to put the villain front and center. It's all about the eerie atmosphere for me. The only humorous element here is the dead bird on LeChuck's hat, and even that bird seems to be frozen in its last horrific seizures of agony. Also, I don't know if Purcell ever drew another monkey without a hat, pipe, eyepatch or at the very least a scimitar. The lighting is impressive, the composition is impressive, from the knowledgeable use of repoussoir to the usage of negative space (see how Guybrush is framed by the mast to the left and LeChuck's jacket to the right?).

I hope you're still working on this project, because the intro section was just 🤩🎵🤍. On a related note, I'm looking for an active online forum-ish place to discuss video game music, and one that is so rabid about the whole thing that people would even discuss piano sheet music. I can't find anything like that. Does anybody have a suggestion?

Any chance for this to go up on youtube any time soon ... preferably in 2023 ... ? Oh, I see, it's just "a scene", no video.

I can see how this would have fit right into the Lucasfilm canon. Beaver hat dude and the girl with the propeller cap are my favorites. And that animated chainsaw ... maybe they wanted to lay something to rest with this game already.

I just googled myself into the John Williams fan forums trying to find out whether it's "Raider's March", "Raiders' March" or just "Raiders March". 🤣 My official soundtrack versions, both Raiders and Crusade, choose no apostrophe at all. My Spielberg/Williams Collaboration CD tracklist (that one with the Struzan cover) has the apostrophe after the s. So, uhm, it seems like nobody actually knows for certain, but an apostrophe's after the r would mean that there's only one raider in the movie – which the title already contradicts.

Actually, I want that credit for bringing the thread up September 30th after nobody had posted for eight months. Felt like a complete necro to me. 😅 The reckoning has begun though ... the topic of proper citation has exploded on youtube with hbomberguy's latest video and there will be ample fallout. ⛈️

Absolutely brilliant. You're definitely knocking previous arrangements out of the park. The opening might be one of the most difficult pieces to do, because it incorporates the Raiders March so prominently. I've heard that a four digit number of times in its fully orchestrated variant(s), and yours still sounds great. I've listened myself unconscious with the existing stuff on youtube over the years, especially the 3:16:20 version that somebody uploaded in 2014. I'm still obsessed with the idea they'd reboot FOA and use an orchestra for the soundtrack. And I still think that overall, it's the best that Clint, Michael and Peter have ever done. Yes, better than Monkey Island even. Not looking that forward to the end credits actually, as that would be more Raiders March. 😅 An actual track that draws on Fate of Atlantic specific themes and introduces the motifs would be "Sophia's presentation". And of course, there's all the themes while exploring Atlantis that really stuck with me and elevate the soundtrack above a mere hommage to John Williams' undoubted genius. I'm looking forward to hearing how you're progressing.

Monkey Island Heardle #375 🔉🟥🟥🟩⬜️⬜️⬜️ #MonkeyIslandHeardle I was discontent with how this game was always either solved on the first attempt or not at all, but this was a nice change.