Those lovely people over at The International House of Mojo have yet again accomplished the seemingly impossible: they’ve written the next edition of what they like to call LucasArts’ Secret History! Doesn’t the name by itself sound wonderfully mysterious? As though the earth would have shattered had they not written another secret history?!

In this edition of LucasArts’ Secret History (part VIII), we get to learn all the nitty gritty details of one of my favorite LucasArts games, Day of the Tentacle, in which a purple tentacle tries to take over the world.

What? A PURPLE TENTACLE COULD take over the world. It could happen, damnit!

And here, you were probably thinking that my favorite game from LucasArts would be their new game Fracture. Well, you would be wrong! While I am proud that LucasArts has finally stepped away from their StarWars obsession, I’m still saddened that it is not an adventure game. AND IT SHOULD BE.

Anyways, back to the tast on hand. Secret History VIII. Learning about Day of the Tentacle. Yadda yadda yadda. In the article, we learn of some pretty interesting facts about the game. Like, Maniac Mansion, the prequel to Day of the Tentacle (DotT) was suppose to be like a horror movie you get to play (which is hard to believe, because that shiz was funny). When Tim Schafer (DoubleFine) and Dave Grossman (TellTale) began production on DotT, they wanted to make the game feel like a Saturday morning cartoon. From the article:

If Maniac Mansion is like playing through a cheesy horror movie, Day of the Tentacle is like playing through a Saturday morning cartoon, and everything from the brand of humor to the puzzle design reflects this.

Speaking of Saturday morning cartoons: What happened to all of them? I remember waking up on a Saturday morning, turning on the tv to any local station and BLAM. There were cartoons everywhere! Now, you turn on the tv to a local station on Saturday, there is just boring old news on. Isn’t that a bunch of crap?

My favorite part of the article is the section entitled Trivia! Secrets! Sex! (Not sex). The title seems misleading, as there isn’t any mention of “sex” in this part of the article. But if you look closely at the parenthesis in the title, you’ll also notice it says “not sex”. Which means, there really isn’t sex in the article. They just like to say the word sex. And what person with a 12 year old’s brain doesn’t? I mean, I’ve probably said sex at least sex… erm six times in this article. And it gets funnier every time I say it! I like learning trivia about games and I also like secrets. This is the meat and potatoes of the article, in my book.

[Image courtesy of Amazon.]

Post from: EveryJoe

LucasArts’ Secret History VIII

JUST KIDDING. HAHAHAH!

I had you going with the title of the post, didn’t I? Have you heard enough stuff about Sam and Max yet? Well, with it’s upcoming release, there’s a lot of news with it…

And there’s a lot of screenshots, now, too! That’s awesome.

So, just for you, I went over to Adventure Gamers and found a whole bunch of screen designs from the new Sam and Max game. You won’t see the wacky rabbit or the pissed off dog in these shots, because they’re just showing off the wonderful background art they did for the game.

You can check out the new art over at this location… right…. over………. here.

The International House of Mojo also has a picture of what the now defunct Sam and Max: Freelance Police was suppose to look like.

I dunno. I kind of like the old art… it’s more dark and kind of matches the mood I think Sam and Max sets forth with their sarcasm and weird sense of humor.

On the other hand, I don’t really care what the new game is suppose to look like as long as it’s AWESOME in game play. Mmmmm… game play ish guud.

What do you guys think? :)

Post from: EveryJoe

A post where I don’t write about Sam or Max

In zee article (some times I have a French accent in my head and think that I can replicate it here. It doesn’t work, I know, but it entertains me), Bill talks about what a big pain in the butt it is to find someone to publish an adventure game. Even though an adventure game has a great story, awesome graphics and good music, publishers feel a little whoozie putting out a game that might do as bad as 50 Cent: Bulletproof, which isn’t even an adventure game, but a game about gangstah’s shootin’ the Fuzz.

Bad Brain was going to publish A Vampyre Story, but thought better of it. Bill Tiller couldn’t understand why everyone was so afraid of adventure games, because he saw numbers while working for LucasArts on a different adventure games they had published and they did good financially.

Publishers are weird.

The great thing about having a publisher now, though, for Mr. Tiller is that he was able to double his staff quickly. This is good, because… well… they can get the game done faster. What was taking Bill and his previous staff a week to do, could be done in a matter of a day. So, why the 2008 release date? It makes me cry, I tell ya!

Also, the game is getting a lot of excitement over in Germany. I wonder why? OH BECAUSE GERMANS LOVE ADVENTURE GAMES.

And also, according to Bill, the artists who are working on the graphics of A Vampyre Story are also the same artists that worked on Curse of Monkey Island and The Digg. So… yes. The graphics WILL BE AWESOME.

He also reveals a basic plot to the story. Mona, who used to be an opera singer, becomes a vampire unwillingly. She hates being a vampire at first. Her master, Shrowdy (what an INGENIUS name for a vampire), doesn’t teach her anything about being a vampire in hopes that Mona will become completely dependent on him. Once she leaves old Shrowdy, she slowly begins to hone in on her black magic skillz and starts blowing crap up with her awesome mind powers.

Okay, they didn’t say anything about explosions, but wouldn’t that be awesome?!

Especially since the interview says that Mona is a good girl, trapped in a bad girl’s body and she just doesn’t want to hurt anyone with her wicked vampire ways. Oh, and she also has to suck blood. She doesn’t like doing that, but if you’re mean to her, she’ll happily suck your blood until you pass out… Riiiiight…

Sadly, Autumn Moon only has so much money to spend on their creative artists and musicians and they have decided to aim for a quality game that isn’t extremely long, but just long enough so that people feel that they’ve gotten their money’s worth. I guess that’s how most adventure games are, though, with the exception being THE LONGEST GAME EVER. Man, that was a long game.

You can view the article in its beautiful entirety here.

Go read it… fill your head with delicacies and love. Now, don’t get too lost into Working Title’s website. These guys are German, so most of the page is in German. I really need to pick up German, because there’s like a billion adventure gaming sites out there… but they’re all in GERMAN. I am a fool!

Post from: EveryJoe

A Vampyre Story Interview

Good news for the fans of Grim Fandango… and there are a lot of them out there, let me tell ya… look at how many people voted for it over there on my poll. Looks like it had the most votes!

Man… I need to play it again. I played it one time and thought it was good, but not the best adventure game ever like I see EVERYONE saying… interesting.

ANYWAYS… back to the subject at hand…

GOOD NEWS for fans of Grim Fandango… the old fan site, Department of Death, has RISEN from the dead again! Which is fitting, because Grim Fandango is a game about the Grim Reaper… and usually when he gets his hands on something, it’s dead for good.

According to the site, they’ve added a bunch of new stuff, including information on a mod that they’re doing for Half Life 2. Awesome. You can kill your favorite characters of Grim Fandango!

Death and destruction… awesome.

Post from: EveryJoe

Grim Fandango Goodness

According to my favoriest site EVER, The International House of Mojo, 1Up has released their online version of Computer Gaming World. You know the one I’m talking about… the on that has Sam and Max on the cover? The one that has the 8 page Sam and Max article? The one with flying monkeys that come flying out of the screen at you when you read it for the first time?

YEAH! That one!

Now, I didn’t want to pay the $7.99 for the online version of the magazine (Umm… $7.99 for an online magazine? That seems some what RIDICULOUS!!!). However, The International House of Mojo has stated that there are some screenshots, an official release date of October and a monthly, 2 hour release of new episodes from TellTale. Now, that doesn’t seem like such a bad deal… 2 hours of Sam and Max play a month? Awesome.

And October is almost here! Holy crap balls!

So… if you want to be crazy and buy the online version of Computer Gaming World magazine, get it HERE!

You can also check out the preview of article here, too. It’s worth it, I tells ya…

Post from: EveryJoe

Some Sam and Max stuff

The game is called Heavy Rain. Sony showed a preview of what the game is suppose to look like at the E3 Conference this year. It’s been said that this was the best demo that Sony had at the conference. So it’s THAT good. All those E3ers were so lucky.

Anyways, here’s a look:

Now hopefully the game actually DOES look like it and if it does, I’m so getting it. Even if it doesn’t look like that, I’m getting it, because I had so much fun with Indigo Prophesy.

There’s some talks going around that it will only be released for the Playstation 3, but the director of the game said they might put it on PC, which would be the awesomeness. I’m not really sure I want to spend $600 on a PS3. I’d rather just buy a brand new computer for that insane amount of money.

Sony is CAAAHRAAAAZEEEE!!!

Post from: EveryJoe

Mmmm… new game goodness.