Bobo and Fletcher Go Deep Into The Congo (lost build of cancelled PC adventure game; 1995)

This article has been tagged as Needing work due to its lack of clarity and half of the article consisting of direct quotes.

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Ron Gilbert, in 2013.

Status: Lost

Bobo and Fletcher Go Deep Into The Congo was to be the first episode in an episodic adventure game series made by Humongous Entertainment. It was to be made by Ron Gilbert, known as the creator of LucasArts games Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion, as well as the Humongous kids' games series Junior Adventure (Pajama Sam, Spy Fox, Freddy Fish, etc.), as a part of a planned more mature series called Ultimate Adventure.

The game was later cancelled since the episodic format wasn't commercially profitable back in the 1990s; however, Ron Gilbert stated in 2018 that he still owns the game's URL (boboandfletcher.com), and is still open to the possibility of making it.

Summary

In 1993, Dave Timoney of Humongous Entertainment stated that:

We're also working on our first Ultimate Adventure (more mature than Junior Adventure) called Bobo and Fletcher Go Deep Into The Congo, the epic tale of a man and his ape. That will hopefully be out around Winter 1995.

In June 2018, Ron Gilbert gave a detailed description of the game's concept in a thread at the Thimbleweed Park forum:

Simply put, it was about a guy who has odd adventures with a highly intelligent ape. Fletcher was the Ape, Bobo was the guy.

I was planning it on being episodic, but this was way before the internet we know today and was hoping to send out CD’s monthly. I also wanted to incorporate some of the fun elements of the kids’ games, like click-points.

Dave Grossman helped write the first episode. Well, it was more of a plot outline than an episode. The first episode was “Bobo and Fletcher Go Deep Into the Congo” where the duo visit Fletcher’s parents. Hilarity ensured. Another episode was Bobo and Fletcher go to Heck. That title was inspired by an interview I did with a kid (junior high school?) who was interviewing me about Monkey Island. He wanted to know if Guybrush was in Hell, but his mom wouldn’t let him say Hell, so he used the word Heck.

At the time, doing episodic just wasn’t viable and the mainstream adventure game market was in dire straits. I still own the URL, so who knows…

Sources

• Thimbleweed Park forums
• Interview with Ron at the International House of Mojo
• Interview with Ron Gilbert at the World of Monkey Island
• Google Groups Chat with Dave Timoney