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Not keen to just sit on our laurels with one post this week of tidbits not quite juicy enough to warrant their own stand-alone post, here comes another slew of Mojo related tidbits:

Will the season five finale of The Clone Wars animated television series tie into Star Wars 1313? The HD Room thinks so, and they provide some compelling side-by-sides screenshots of the finale trailer and the 1313 trailer. If nothing else, it certainly does look like the underworld Coruscant from the game.

PC World has an article on "How Adventure Games Came Back from the Dead". It features interviews with Dan Connors (the co-founder and CEO of Telltale Games), Jane Jensen (of Gabriel Knight fame) and Dave Gilbert (of Blackwell fame).

There's no news on Telltale's King's Quest, but there is news for King's Quest fans. Under the Half Dome is a kickstarter project for an album made up of orchestrated versions of Sierra songs by Ken Allen. If you don't know, Ken Allen was the composer of the music from the VGA remake of King's Quest and King's Quest V (as well as many other Sierra games), and he may or may not work on the music for Telltale's King's Quest (no composer has been announced yet, like everything else about the game). The kickstarter has many interesting tiers to choose from, so much so that it was part of Forbes' 10 Most Clever Kickstarter Rewards list (for their $500 USD and $1,000 USD tier). The base price of the album is $15 USD (for the digital version), and if they hit the $20,000 USD mark, all kickstarter backers will have their first names included in a song inspired by the "Nations of the World" song from Animaniacs.

The rumors were true, Brütal Legend for PC is now up for preorder on Steam, and the Multiplayer Beta is available now to those who preorder.

25% off the usual price at the moment, so get on over to steam now!

Apparently part of a series analyzing "gonzo guns" in video games (so, all of them), Gamaustra has a brief piece up examining the legendary Land Shark Gun from Planet Moon's should-have-been blockbuster Armed & Dangerous.

Never played Armed & Dangerous? Dude, it's $4.99 on Steam.

I revive myself from my Mardi Gras-induced stupor to alert you to a piece on Mobiledia about Lucy Bradshaw, a key figure in LucasArts product development back when they developed products worth rallying attention behind.

Bradshaw, whose name might be familiar to you from the opening credits of games like Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, graduated from her "training ground" at LEC in the 90s to become an executive for Maxis/EA. It is the later part of her career that the article largely concerns, but I think she would agree that it was her days being rotoscoped in a wetsuit for The Dig animation tests that truly legitimized the games business as a vocation.

It seems I may have jumped the gun a bit when I teased Telltale Games for only openly talking about The Walking Dead Season Two rather than their other announced projects.

In an interview with IGN, Dan Connors finally revealed some of the details about Fables that fans have been wondering for years. Namely, that Fables won't be called Fables (presumably due to legal reasons due to the title's close similarity to that of the RPG Fable).

Secondly, and most importantly to readers of Mojo, some news about how the game will play has finally been revealed. The game has taken longer to release than Telltale originally anticipated due to the success of The Walking Dead. Telltale is taking that success to heart, and is working hard to incorporate many of that season's game mechanics into their as-of-yet unnamed series based on Fables.

ResidualVM, the sister project of ScummVM designed to run Grim Fandango on modern systems (with official builds on Windows, Mac, and Linux), has received a bug fix update. And what an update it is! There's around 40 gameplay fixes in the newest release, including fixes for 14 bugs that were present in the original 1998 release, making ResidualVM the best way to run Grim even if you have a computer that can handle the original executable.

Here's three Mojo tidbits for the new year:

Firstly, Did you miss the first public Double Fine Amnesia fortnight? If so, you still have a chance to redeem yourself for your misdeeds. Head to Double Fine's Amnesia Fortnight page where you can still buy the games in digital form for $10 USD. If that's not enough for you, for an extra $20 USD, you can now pre-order a collector's package that comes with a DVD with all five Amnesia Fortnight prototypes (plus the bonus prototypes Brazen, Happy Song, and Costume Quest), the 15-track Amnesia Fortnight 2012 Soundtrack, and a Blu-Ray disc of 2-Player Productions' Amnesia Fortnight documentary footage. If that's still not enough for you, for an extra $15 on top of that, you can have the package include a collector's edition cover featuring art of one of the five 2012 protoypes signed by the project leader for that prototype. If you're still not satisfied with these awesome options, feel free to pay $70 USD for a collector's package featuring covers with art from all six prototypes, all signed by each project leader.

Secondly, Telltale's finally openly talking about their upcoming announced projects, but it's not Fables or King's Quest. Instead, they're talking about The Walking Dead Season Two (which should surprise no one). In an interview with Polygon, Telltale CEO Dan Connors talks about the next season's pre-production story meetings. It seems the next season will feature at least some of the same characters as season one, since according to Mr. Connors:

"We're talking through different scenarios, though I don't think we've talked through one where we just start with a new set of characters."

Another interesting bit from that interview is that Telltale is open to the possibility of having the game characters meet the television show characters. It will be interesting to see if they can work that out, since it seems the television show and comic book are handled by two separate corporate entities (judging by the Terminal Reality developed shooter based on the television show that's coming out next month, and the fact that Telltale's game got no publicity from AMC, the network that produces the show).

Lastly, do you remember the Wallace & Gromit's Musical Marvels show at the BBC Proms last year? The one that Mojo covered because it was Ben Whitehead's (of Telltale's Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures) first official credited appearance as Wallace in plasticine form? Well, the good news is that if you missed it last year, you still have a chance to see it live since it's proved popular enough to now become a full touring show. It just premiered yesterday at The Plenary in Melbourne, Australia, and will be touring elsewhere later this year (with the short A Matter of Loaf and Death screened at each performance as a bonus). You can view a list of the full touring locations at the Wallace & Gromit's Musical Marvels website.

For those of you, who, like me, would need to look it up, Ouya is the Kickstarter-funded, Android powered game console that will made be available to its backers come March (and hit the streets this summer). The main bullet points for Ouya are its Open Development Kit (no licensing fee - anyone can make a game!) and the requirement of every title to have some sort of free-to-play aspect.

This makes the platform sound like a rather good fit for an independent studio like Double Fine, and... well gosh-a-roonie, what a co-inky-dink!

Both The Cave and REDS (code name just revealed, apparently) already confirmed? Sounds like the studio is fully supporting Ouya going forward. The pinball machine ports remain an open question.

Graham Annable -- you know him from Grickle, Puzzle Agent, and much more -- is set to co-direct an animated/stop-motion movie. Yes, another LEC artist is hitting the big-time, after Purcell co-directed Pixar's Brave last year.

The movie, The Boxtrolls, is based on Alan Snow's Here Be Monsters and will feature a host of famous voice actors, including Ben Kingsley and Toni Collette. And the co-director? You might recognize his name from the cancelled Curse of Monkey Island movie: Tony Stacchi; he worked on the concept art for the film. What the hell is up with that coincidence, right?

For more, check out Hollywood Reporter. Then get appropriately excited.

Today Gamaustra has published an article by psychologist and semi-regular contributor Jamie Madigan, who explores the neuroscience of how Telltale's eight hundred time Game of the Year winner The Walking Dead emotionally manipulated us.

Just what sort of malignant intent was the moonstruck Jake Rodkin embedding into the design document with crooked-grinned glee? Read to find out.

i09 (via AICN) is reporting a standalone Yoda movie may be in the works.
Here's a link to the original AICN story, but it's pretty much unreadable.

The clip of Bob Iger in this article confirms that both Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg are writing standalone films. Each film will be "derived from great Star Wars characters."

How many websites will report this rumor using exaggerated Yoda backwards-speak in their headline? Start counting.

Update: Much of the above is confirmed true on starwars.com - Kasdan and Kinberg are writing two standalone Star Wars movies. The lead roles are yet to be announced.

In a surprise move, we will be getting new games adorned with the LucasArts logo in the very near future.


Any fans of digital recreations of pinball tables in the house?