Udvarnoky

I know I’m late to this, but I think it’s an interesting area. With regard to the CMI team’s perspective on MI2’s ambiguity: I always figured that literalizing its predecessor’s ending was more about making a judgment call not to disappoint what they perceived were the audience’s expectations (“What’s this soluble daydream hokum doing in my pirate game?”), rather than it necessarily representing a personal distaste or rejection of the innuendos Ron was making. Skirting that stuff may have in fact been partly out of respect, with the thinking being “Only Ron can wrap up whatever it is he was driving that, so we’ll just proceed from the escape hatch we were given instead of trying to divine intentions he himself might not have mapped out.” Which, by Ron’s own admission, he in fact hadn’t. Maybe I’m giving too much credit for forward-thinking here, but just look at the way, by intention or by accident, things worked out in the end: Ron was able to complete the statement he was making without having to pretend the other games didn’t exist. Those interim sequels successfully kept the bench warm for the creator’s eventual return -- they didn’t override Ron’s vision so much as postpone it, and it’s probably ungenerous to think this happened entirely by dumb luck. Every team brought their own tastes to the way they grappled with that shoddy seventeenth century electrical wiring, but it was grappled with. CMI seems to have the reputation of being the Monkey Island game that steers the clearest of the meta-angle that Ron was toiling in, but I think it’s a little underappreciated in this regard. It definitely carries the torch of the first two games in terms of perpetuating that surrealistic undercurrent, the anachronism/fourth wall jokes, and the near-constant theme park evocations. Both Plunder Island and Blood Island have plenty of Disneyland nods both subtle and overt, and of course the entire final act takes place at a danged theme park. The fact is, a game that truly flouted the weirdness of the series and insisted on being a pureblood, risk-adverse pirate adventure with an inflexibly straight face would not look like CMI. We know Ron wouldn’t have made CMI, but that game’s team was neither unconscious nor careless about recognizing the substructure going on in his games, in my opinion, and they made an earnest attempt to do that aspect justice. In the wake of Ron finally getting to have his say after thirty years, I actually find myself more impressed than ever with the ways the middle chapters walked that tricky line they were lumbered with.

At this point I think it's certain Mutt won't be in the movie, but I'm sure his absence will be acknowledged in some way. Marion I'm betting gets a cameo. Helena, the character played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge who seems to be Indy's main sidekick, has been called Indy's goddaughter by producer Frank Marshall. It's been speculated that she might be Marcus Brody's daughter, but who knows.

First glimpses of Mads Mikkelsen and Boyd Holbrook, with some new quotes. https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/indiana-jones-5-nazis-1969-exclusive

https://mixnmojo.com/news/Indy-5-sizzle-reel-leaks-in-dubious-qualty-Willow-now-streaming-in-optimum-quality

As with the commercial success of most of these games, the data is too sketchy to be confident either way. By some accounts, the game sold half a million units over its life, which if true is quite a hit for an adventure game. I don't know that I buy that number. But I definitely wouldn't be surprised if the game sold at least as well in its time as Monkey Island 1 did. I think it's possible that both things can be true: that Loom was a genuine hit in its time, but the IP being left fallow allowed it to be forgotten to the point where its own studio was cracking jokes about its obscurity in The Curse of Monkey Island. Awareness is largely a matter of continued exploitation. Monkey Island got sequelized, and Loom did not. In 1990, I doubt that Loom was necessarily considered less fit for a sequel than Monkey Island. But its creator wasn't interested right away, and other attempts to get a design greenlit didn't work out. When the moment passed, inertia had its way.

The "Seckrit" sign that Captain Madison and co. use as LeChuck bait is misspelled the same way Dr. Fred's secret lab is in Maniac Mansion.

I was there. @Remi's thousand yard stare may be permanent.

There's a "Pappapisshu" on Terror Island if you touch the thorns on the rocky beach.

What, another one? That's right: @Marius had a chat with Rex Crowle one day before the game's release, just for you.

Not posting the video was part of the terms...not that I think our interviewers cried too many tears over it. I think the raw transcript approach works great for these things. The results remind me of the old (2004ish?) interview with Ron that Jake and Chris Remo did for Idle Thumbs (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). It was good enough for Peter Bogdanovich and Orson Welles.

Ron and Dave had a long phone conversation with our own @elTee and @Marius. Or the other way around, arguably. It was fun.

How it looks is the furthest thing from a negligible point for a movie. The idea that it's ugly is a matter of taste (mine, for example), but I think the aesthetic does real damage to the movie's sense of immersion. It's not like these adventures have ever been about verisimilitude, but they've at least felt like they took place on Planet Earth, in physical, tactile environments where gravity might actually have an influence. The smeary, self-conscious look is distancing, and without immediacy, you can't have stakes or peril. That's just an upfront, totally gratuitous liability before you consider the shortcomings of the writing. But I will fully admit that for the imaginary sect of people that were disappointed by the movie on the basis that they didn't believe ants could climb on top of each other, you've set the record straight. ;

They're close, huh? My prescription probably just needs adjustment.

https://mixnmojo.com/news/Indy-5-concept-art-teases-Morocco-chase-spooky-cavern

I don't want to set expectations because Aaron certainly hasn't promised anything, but for the past week or so he's been tweeting his adventures in emulating Grim and now EMI. It's fun to watch.

Maybe I just remember it as being a lot. To save face I'm going to do the natural thing and advance a conspiracy theory that he deleted the majority of his tweets because the takes were just too hot.

At one point Tim basically live tweeted his playthrough of TMI. Dunno if those still exist, but I remember him having fun with it.

It sounds unabashedly Golden Age Hollywood, and yes that is a compliment.

There's a lot of contradictory information about the sales of the LucasArts adventure games, but it does seem to be the case that Full Throttle and The Dig performed the best. Tim has said that Throttle sold a million units, while the LucasArts itself touted that "At launch, The Dig became LucasArts best-selling adventure game with 300,000 units sold worldwide." That's probably lifetime sales for one being compared against more immediate sales for the other, but the information is uncertain enough to be skeptical about. My impression is that low six-figures seems to have been the trend for these types of games when they sold OK, so exceeding that was considered a relatively big hit. I believe that CMI, Grim and EMI all squeaked out a profit as well, but there was a brutal ceiling that none but perhaps Throttle was able to break. If The Dig sold even better than Throttle it was probably cancelled out by the sunk costs of its eighteen prior iterations.

My guess about a boxed version is that it will ultimately happen, but as a boutique thing through Limited Run or iam8bit well after the fact, Psychonauts 2 style.

That DREAMM has apparently kicked off some sort of accuracy arms race in @AndywinXp's head is really the best possible outcome.

Scandalous!

EMI probably goes in for more adolescent humor on balance than the other games, but at the same time it may also be the most literate. (A reference to The Illywacker?) It's yet another facet of that game's maddening/delightful all-over-the-placeness. With a chuckle, I am reminded of the exasperation of Randy Sluganski (RIP) in his review of the game: