[diego]

THANX FOR THE TEXTS FIEN!!!!!

(sorry )

[seagul]

Originally Posted by Fien

* I have no idea what Mom says. Sounds like Oedipus or edifice to my non-native ears, but that does not make sense.

In the german version he speaks about Oedipus, too. And i would scratch my head if i had hands, because i don't understand this, too.

[zobraks]

Originally Posted by Fien

The eyes part of the game is absolutely great. Creepy, thanks to Roger's craziness.

And the music (as expected) and chants are absolutely superb.

I remember being scared to death by an eye suddenly turning toward me as I crawled past it.
Didn't expect that kind of spooky stuff in Mojo.

Originally Posted by Fien

* I have no idea what Mom says. Sounds like Oedipus or edifice to my non-native ears, but that does not make sense.

Originally Posted by seagul

In the german version he speaks about Oedipus, too. And i would scratch my head if i had hands, because i don't understand this, too.

Search in progress...

Originally Posted by diego

THANX FOR THE TEXTS FIEN!!!!!

[Fien]

Originally Posted by zobraks

Search in progress...

Don't worry, Mr. Zobraks, we'll take good care of Diego... we're his family now.



You're all so very grateful to me, but none of you noticed that I used the word "blaze" where it should have been "blades". HA! It came to me in one of my rare lucid moments.

Seagul:

In the german version he speaks about Oedipus, too. And i would scratch my head if i had hands, because i don't understand this, too

Well, all I can think of is that in a sense he "kills his father" because he doesn't want to have anything to do with him. He may not have married his mother, but he loves her, carries around her locket and portrait. And then there are the eyes! the eyes! Is he blind because he doesn't see the truth right in front of him?

Okay, so I'm desperate to find a connection to Oedipus.

[zobraks]

Originally Posted by Fien

Don't worry, Mr. Zobraks, we'll take good care of Diego... we're his family now.

Hehe, Mojo-related humo(u)r - my kind of humo(u)r.

Originally Posted by Fien

You're all so very grateful to me, but none of you noticed that I used the word "blaze" where it should have been "blades". HA!

We don't read your texts, we're just plain grateful!

Originally Posted by Fien

It came to me in one of my rare lucid moments.

Lucid moments is what makes this crawlthrough so great.

Originally Posted by Fien

Well, all I can think of is that in a sense he "kills his father" because he doesn't want to have anything to do with him. He may not have married his mother, but he loves her, carries around her locket and portrait. And then there are the eyes! the eyes! Is he blind because he doesn't see the truth right in front of him?

Okay, so I'm desperate to find a connection to Oedipus.

Reminded me of what has been said about deeper meaning of Bad Mojo:

Originally Posted by serpentbox

Mojo has no purpose other than to entertain in a somewhat intelligent manner. There is no great goal. No lofty meaning. It is what it is, the struggle of a man as depicted by the struggling artists who made it. We are not great thinkers. Only great idealists.

[zane]

music video for post-badmojo reflection: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uaaF83eVig

[zobraks]

Here's something more related to Bad Mojo - Joe's Apartment.

Originally Posted by Jackal

If I remember correctly, you were originally going to make a "cute" bug game, but abandoned that for the realistic approach.

Originally Posted by serpentbox

It wasn't so much "cute" as it was cartoony. Remember Joe's Apartment? That MTV short and ill-fated movie? Well, that's what we were thinking. But we didn't want to go that direction. That's not what we are all about. David Lynch, that's what we were into...

[zobraks]

The final part of this crawlthrough started 114 minutes ago (as announced). It's a timed sequence - you have about 6 minutes to play the end game, but here it will last until (Sacred) Friday, 17th of December at 17:00 CET (8 a.m. forum time).

Keep crawling and try to save the precious behinds of our heros (?!?):

[seagul]

Yesterday i played one of the bad endings ... i want to play every day another ending. Till i reach the best ending.

About the fuze puzzle: the fist time i played the game i walked over and over the fuzes till i knocked them out by incident. So i didn't understand some of the hints, mom says.

About the money: Roger was in the past very sure he would find a way to illiminate cockroaches. So some company spended money - seems totally normal to me. No big secret here.

[zobraks]

Originally Posted by Fien

Yes, but this is not about the deeper meaning of the entire game or something, it's about the hints that Mom drops in her cutscenes. If she didn't mean anything by Oedipus, she shouldn't have mentioned him.

She should have mentioned things like Oedipus (things not many people are familiar with) because:
1) The target Mojo audience were people who seeked intelligent entertainment (as stated by the authors of the game in the AG forum chat).
2) Angelina's clues were meant to be less obvious. For instance, while "The wind well will suck you into the belly of a beast" makes one use his/her gray matter more intensively (which is one of the adventure's goals), "You'll get sucked into a vacuum cleaner, sucker" is plain & pretty clear in meaning.

Originally Posted by Fien

And I'm glad they chose the David Lynch way, and not Joe's apartment

Me too, although (except for the creepy music and sound effects) I don't see much of Lynch's ( Eraserhead, Lost Highway ) influence. There's more of Honey, I shrunk the kids and Naked Lunch in Mojo .

Originally Posted by Fien

The fuse puzzle is my least favorite one because the solution is so arbitrary and unclear, even though it’s just as nicely integrated in the game world as the other puzzles. I vaguely remember there are several hints to be found in the game, ... But it’s all pretty farfetched, there are so many meaningless numbers anyway and I hate the enormous amount of backtracking necessary to find those hints.

Most people I know who had played BM complained about the fuse box puzzle. And I guess rightfully so - most of the humans out there don't care much about ciphers surrounding them, but I think there's a kind of people (myself included) who are obsessed with numbers and who easily notice the repeating number patterns (although written in various ways). Perhaps Mojo authors fall in the latter category, so they were quite sure players will dig the fuse box code sooner or later, more so with four numbers repeating all around Eddie's joint. One more reason for believing that was what they had in mind is the fact that a player don't have to solve the riddle until the very end of the game and by then (they thought) those numbers would with no doubt stick in player's memory.

There is a whole topic devoted to this matter, and that's the same topic that (for better or worse ) made me take part in Adventure Games discussions (after hibernating as a member for four years).

Here are the places you can find fuse box code at once again (with one of them found after the Code topic):




The last picture is a solution (I put it in to make the whole set of screenshots symmetrical), so handle it with care!

Originally Posted by Fien

About the embezzled money. Call me dumb, but I still don’t get it. The article in the paper, the telegram in the den, and Roger’s own notes in the shower all say the same thing: some company donated a million bucks. Pfffff...

That one million dollar donation is the haziest subject for me. That Blattidae Group (a Swiss consortium of chemical manufacturers specializing in commercial insect control products that are very interested in assisting Dr. Roger Samms' research in the compound he calls Blatapropid) have someone called A. Tito B.G. [which is an anagram of G. (George?) Bat(t)ito!] who sends the telegram. Is that another lost relative? Roger's uncle? Eddie's father? We'll never know for sure if Vincent doesn't show once again and tell us.

Originally Posted by Fien

My favorite “moving” eye in the den is the one which when you crawl over it shows the falling Roger cockroach from the intro. But it does so only once.

It does so as many times as you like , but you have to come out of the screen with the eye and enter it again. Here, I took some screenshots showing your favorite blinking eye:

Originally Posted by Fien

Zobraks, I had another look at your many celebrity eyes and still nothing. I admire you for trying though, and for all the effort you put into posting the beautiful pics.

Thanks, Fien, glad you like it . I have the screenshots for almost everything in Bad Mojo . I could make a BM photo-novel out of those pictures .

Originally Posted by Fien

I love that you can already hear the flapping wings of the butterfly when you’re still one or two screens away. Same with the ventilator behind the grate in the den and other stuff.

I like that a lot too. Haven't seen such a good use of music warning you and building suspense since the classic Hitchcock movies. Thank you once again, Peter Stone!

Originally Posted by Fien

Such intelligent use of sound in adventures wasn’t common practice in 1995, was it? With the exception of my all-time favorite The Last Express, which did it better and more extensively.

Dunno. Haven't played many adventures from 1995, and The Last Express keeps being derailed by the newer adventures . Gray Matter being the last:

Originally Posted by Fien

There’s a piece in the den about Shenectady being cockroach capital of the world. Never heard of the place (good thing too, apparently), goooogled it and found the most horrifying article. Just read the first paragraph... Huuuu!!

Just kidding! Thanks for the notice, mentioning Shenectady is one of the rare details in the game that slipped my attention.

Originally Posted by Fien

I’ll post the text of the 4 endings later.

Keep them coming! You always remind me of something else I forgot to say .

Originally Posted by Fien

PS: Have we lost Pollo Diabolo for good?

Unfortunately no sign(s) from her/him or Origami lately. Guess they're overwhelmed by the magnitude of the experience.

[zobraks]

Originally Posted by seagul

Yesterday i played one of the bad endings ... i want to play every day another ending. Till i reach the best ending.

Let me guess:

Spoiler:

1st day: only Roger is saved (the worst)
2nd day: Both are saved (worse)
3rd day: only Eddie is saved (bad)
4th day : no-one is saved

Originally Posted by seagul

About the fuze puzzle: the fist time i played the game i walked over and over the fuzes till i knocked them out by incident. So i didn't understand some of the hints, mom says.

A lot of people solved the fuse box puzzle that way, often believing they HAVE to solve it in the first chapter.
BTW, mom doesn't say anything about the fuse box code as far as I remember.

Originally Posted by seagul

About the money: Roger was in the past very sure he would find a way to illiminate cockroaches. So some company spended money - seems totally normal to me. No big secret here.

Well, the big companies usually don't give you a cent for some research just like that, and that Swiss company handed Roger a million dollar check without previously contacting him, having an interview or something, becoming more closely informed about his work "from the horse's mouth". Not very likely.

That anagramed name "Batito" is enough for one to raise his/her eyebrow.

How did the Swiss learn about Roger's (not public) work (suppressed by Dr. Michaelson) in the first place?


BTW, (as I already said) I like the way Mojo story is fleshed out with all the notes, articles, letters, faxes, bills and stuff. I made a (nearly) complete compilation of texts found in Bad Mojo (typed everything from these and these pictures - click on "Prikaži") and you can download it here (the text file is too big for an AG forum attachement).

Feel free to add the missing parts in Roger's diary, found in the bathtub, which is somewhat incomplete.
And anything else for that matter.

[seagul]

Zobraks, thanks for showing the numbers. I only found the bad mojo recipe. I am obviously not obsessed with numbers.
I am more the obsessed with chocolate type.

My ending yesterday was a bad ending. I always start with the bad endings and try to get more positive.
It was this ending:

Spoiler:

Mom is unhappy with the result.

OK, you are right, there ist something strange with the money donation. But how can this be? There are no hints in this direction, except the strange name. I'm sure you didn't miss something crucial.

Thanks for the dokuments. I downloaded them. I made pictures on my own and inserted them in my "diary" of the game.

So let's see what end Roger and Eddie have to suffer today...

btw: Pollo diablo is a girl.

Perhaps Pollo and Origami have to many arrangements for christmas. Even my other playthrough is totally deserted.

[zobraks]

Originally Posted by seagul

Zobraks, thanks for showing the numbers.

You're welcome .

Originally Posted by seagul

I only found the bad mojo recipe. I am obviously not obsessed with numbers.
I am more the obsessed with chocolate type.

Hey, I like chocolate too , but numbers are also my forte.

Originally Posted by seagul

My ending yesterday was a bad ending. I always start with the bad endings and try to get more positive.
It was this ending:

Spoiler:

Mom is unhappy with the result.

I played all the endings. Now I'm doing it to get new screenshots - there are a lot of great moments in these endings.

Originally Posted by seagul

OK, you are right, there is something strange with the money donation. But how can this be? There are no hints in this direction, except the strange name. I'm sure you didn't miss something crucial.

I don't know, really.

Originally Posted by seagul

Thanks for the documents. I downloaded them. I made pictures on my own and inserted them in my "diary" of the game.

You're welcome. It took me some time to type these. Printed documents were easy to copy, but those pages of Roger's diary in the bathtub were tough to get. They're handwritten, smudged, blurred, scattered over many screens and often illegible.

Originally Posted by seagul

So let's see what end Roger and Eddie have to suffer today...

Keep crawling!

Originally Posted by seagul

Perhaps Pollo and Origami have too many arrangements for christmas.

Maybe.

Originally Posted by seagul

Even my other playthrough is totally deserted.

It's a shame that playthrough turned out the way it did - Sanitarium is a great game and one of my all-time favo(u)rites.
Then again, it's very tough to predict how a(ny) playthrough would come out.

[Origami]

The reason I was absent is because you guys are discussing plot points I haven't yet encountered.
I am still in 'My Room'. I tried to avoid this topic(this post is the product of me accidentally clicking and seeing my name having been mentioned).

I'll finish tomorrow. Promised.

[zobraks]

Originally Posted by Origami

I tried to avoid this topic

And you did a magnificent job at that!
The last time you made a comment having something to do with Bad Mojo was more than two weeks ago . Don't get me wrong: I'm not deprecating you (this crawlthrough is not obligatory, we're all here by our free will), I just say how it is.

Originally Posted by Origami

I'll finish tomorrow. Promised.

I repeat: this crawlthrough is not obligatory, you don't have to finish the game and/or make comments about the gameplay.

[PolloDiablo]

I've fallen behind a bit (still in the bar... looking for a drink ) because I have been busy with work and some (p)reviews and a beta test. I have a day off on Friday so I'll catch up, no worries.

[seagul]

When you are in the Bar you have still the best part in front of you - have fun (and till friday).

[zobraks]

Originally Posted by Fien

I suppose it's possible. Sounds kind of weak though.

Show me a game that has no flaws and I'll show you a game that doesn't exist.

Originally Posted by Fien

So tell me, where and what is "the Oedipus" you're supposed to "discover"? And while you're at it, what does the "cave by the door" stand for, the locket, Roger's eye?

I cannot be sure, of course, but, as I see it, the "orifice" you have to enter in order to discover "the Oedipus" is this:


because...

Spoiler:

... you have to go back there (after warning Eddie) to save Roger, who fits the role of Oedipus (he too can kill his father).

Originally Posted by Fien

I don't agree. Which is fine, discussions trive on disagreement.

I'll drink to that! I love discussions/hearing different opinions.

Originally Posted by Fien

The overwhelming majority of the players, say 99.99 percent, will only recognize them with hindsight on their second playthrough.

True.

Originally Posted by Fien

The code... And the designers complicated matters even more by inserting a 0 after the 7.

Hey, 76 bucks worth of electricity a month for a bar (even for a small bar like Eddie's) wouldn't sound probable, they had to put that zero in between.

Originally Posted by Fien

Never played The Last Express?!? You have a nerve telling ME that!

I knew my life would be in danger if I tell the truth, but my mom taught me not to lie .
(mumbles) Stupid mom.

Originally Posted by Fien

The game is not easy for the hearing-impaired though: subtitles for conversations in Russian and French, not the English ones. The good news is that I have made a transcript of every conversation, so you know who to butter up when you finally realize that you cannot ignore one of the best adventures ever.

Speaking of transcript, I belive you stiil haven't delivered the third disc texts . I'm waiting for that last portion to continue playing.

Originally Posted by Fien

Good of you to remind me I should force myself to continue playing Gray Matter. Still stuck in chapter 3 and still rather bored.

Hehe, I started GM after you (you already had that "Playing: Gray Matter" label for quite some time when I did start), and I finished it on Monday (13th) .

I find GM highly entertaining and excellently written. I enjoyed it a lot, specially the Daedalus Club grand puzzle.

Originally Posted by Fien

PS: Vincent promised he'd answer our questions, so it should be okay if you prod him a little.

I'm sure he'll get back to us (without prodding) eventually , but if someone else want to say hello to him or something like that here's where he left the contact e-mail address.

[diego]

Thanx so much for texts Fien!

*runs and hides

especially of that "Mexico" ending transcription


Yes, i saddled my roach today and didn't leave until the end. I can say more when i cool my head and try to forget that horrific scene



actually, it's a great ending, simple and fulfilling. My biggest problem in final stages was to "trigger" the cigar to come out of ashtray. As for the notorious fuse puzzle

Originally Posted by zobraks

Here are the places you can find fuse box code at once again

well yes, if you know what're you looking for, than you can find it even here



but seriously, it was "the best of puzzles, it was the worst of puzzles" - I love the way that main puzzle in the game came up to be lateral thinking sort of like Phantasmagoria 2 computer password puzzle, but not unless you were paying attention to ALL the numbers in the game previously you would know what was expected to do. However, even if player misses all those numbers or doesn't want to go back and search for it, there's still the screen at the very same scene



which was the one where i figured it might have to do something with the numbers, it was only that i didn't figure out at first that 7 is fixed and at what numbers i need to look. I was trying to do something with that number 20 like multiplying . actually, once you realize that 7 is fixed and that fuses change corenspondent numbers AND that you're expected to make adequate 4-digits number, it comes to logical deduction

[zobraks]

And now - some humo(u)r: