Udvarnoky

Ehh, after the ugly digital sheen of Crystal Skull, any proper Indy 5 should be going in the opposite direction, hard. Give me every last line and crag on Harrison Ford's decrepit visage and leave the digital face scrubbing and hideous overlit shooting style to daytime television where it belongs. Phedon Papamichael has a solid track record and I am hopeful for some major course correction on the photography front this time out.

We caring about this? Thought I'd make a thread and find out. This is the last Harrison Ford-led Indy movie we'll ever be able to unhealthily obsess over, and it starts filming next month, so let's act like we're all still twelve for one last hurrah of heedless speculation, pre-emptive complaining and the joy-filled hope that it actually looks like a movie this time.

Attention Switch owners [who don't read Mojo]:

We didn't front page it but it seems TMI is back on the Apple Store: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/pressreleases/380609/TELLTALE_REISSUES_TALES_OF_MONKEY_ISLAND_ON_THE_APP_STORE.php I think LCG Entertainment (that would be the holding company that assumes the Telltale name these days) had already restored the series to other digital platforms. We might have even covered it, who can remember. I find it interesting that LCG secured the TMI assets and presumably negotiated a new licensing deal with Lucasfilm. I would have figured Lucasfilm would have swooped in ans bought the assets out (what could they have really sold for when Telltale got liquidated?), thus getting all five Monkey Island games under one roof. If some of the Sam & Max developers could band together and acquire those games, it would probably have amounted to pocket change Lucasfilm do something similar. But what do I know. It's really great that LCG got Strong Bad, Wallace & Gromit and Puzzle Agent back in circulation. Those are gems.

It's not the game in the catalog I would have prioritized, but I'll have to front page it when I get a chance. Thanks for the heads up!

It's a testament to how much of a Sam & Max nut I am that I seriously investigated obtaining a refurbished Oculus just to play this one game. Then I found out you have to log in to a Facebook profile to use it, and that was the end of that. I'm starting to remember why I largely stopped playing new games many years ago. I find the enrollment aspect instantly exhausting. Anybody care to give a crabby old bastard the rundown on the other VR options and what they feel entitled to beyond a $999 investment?

It's not even a question of taste, I would say. One can prefer Bill's new interpretation of the Barbery Coast to the original, but the fact is that's just not what CMI looked like. I think there must be a way to bring CMI up to high resolution without forfeiting its distinctly "scratchy" style.

Thanks for the better quality images! I agree that the darker version is better, but it still seems more kindred to Ghost Pirates than CMI. Bill's contribution to CMI as Lead Background Artist is immeasurable, but Larry Ahern was that game's art director, and I feel like any hi-def revisit of the game should be done in collaboration with him. Maybe he'd surprise me by signing off on this, but to me making CMI so smooth just feels wrong, and at any rate a new interpretation. I would love to see what CMI would look like if the black and white backgrounds were rescanned in hi-res and Bill redid the digital painting as faithfully as possible. It strikes me as the appropriate method of doing a hypothetical remaster. I'll get back to you when I figure out where the financing is coming from, though. ;

Those pencil lines are such an elemental part of CMI's overall art style that it seems heretical to smooth them out. It's why I found Bill Tiller's proof of concept for a hi-def CMI a little threatening. Independently it looks lovely, but it doesn't really feel like CMI.

Cool find. I don't know if it's the same project or yet another one, but the Rogue Leaders book refers to a cancelled 3D game meant as a spiritual successor to Zombies. Concept art for "Sawyer" can be seen here.

Big press push for the game today, with a press release announcing dates, price and platforms, a new batch of screens/footage, and oh yeah, that promised Mojo interview. woot.

I was testing you! Yeah, that's it.

Chariot of the Gods remastered!

New screens. Looking a bit better.

If anybody has a question for HappyGiant about this game, post it here in the next 24 hours and it may appear in an interview Mojo hopes to conduct with them.

Yeah, it's one of the more overt Disneyland nods in an installment that some might consider a bit light on that particular series staple. Though I guess the Big Whoop theme park in general counts for a lot. I'm also doubting this is coincidence: It wouldn't surprise me if the Spider Monkey segment originally had more characters in it. The last act of CMI is where all the most brutal cuts were made when the budget ran dry.

The father/son characters would be the voices in the game's postscript, no?

Mike Levine is sharing some promotional posters for old games. Laser got an even better source of the Rescue on Fractalus! covert art from David Fox himself, but it's still cool, rare stuff. https://twitter.com/HappyGiantGames/status/1358899396868513795/

The photographs for the Mojo Does Cardiff article have been mysteriously missing in action for something like ten years. Fortunately, @s-island was able to correctly interpret the glyphs faintly etched upon a series of windswept runestones in order to divine the secret location of a backup of the article's complete photo gallery, and now one of Mojo's most irrelevant articles is once again an honest to Pete multimedia experience.

I used to bring the MI2 hint book with me on road trips to read in the back of the car. And I'm still waiting for someone to track down Jo ' Captain Tripps' Ashburn and ask him how much he wants to write a narrative walkthrough for TMI and complete the set.

Quez! Nice collection, and nice to have you back.

Skunkape extended their 50% off deal for customers who already bought the original version to January 15th.

A fan recreated a promo for Culture Shock from back in 2006, using footage from the remaster. Hats off for dedication.

From Skunkape's lovely write-up: When I read that paragraph, I was wondering why this seemed vaguely familiar. Then it hit me. Back in the summer/fall 2006, when every last pixel of every bit of media Telltale was putting out was being put under a microscope, this huge render of Bosco's Inconvenience was among the assets shared with the press: Notice how the magazine here is "Playbunny," rather than "Hot Bunny" as it is in the published game. As I recall, someone noticed the discrepancy at the time, and I think it was guessed - maybe even explained by Telltale? - that the "Playbunny" gag was a little too close to the target of the parody for legal comfort, so they had to change the texture of the magazine before shipping. If it was an eleventh hour change, it might explain why they simply cut Max's line (in 101, anyway) instead of re-recording it. It's sick that I remember that. Magazine parodies apparently stress out lawyers in a general sense. A similar change had to be made to an inventory item in Escape from Monkey Island. Quoth Mike Stemmle, from The Mojo: And now for me to spend some time outdoors.

It's not my collection, and it's a month old, but I figured this was worth embedding. I've never seen the Maniac Mansion T-shirt at this resolution: https://twitter.com/MikeJMika/status/1333114880249958403