LucasArts announces Sam & Max sequel

Altima(BoB) writes "LucasArts announced today a sequel to their 1993 cult classic adventure game Sam & Max Hit the Road. This follows a recent announcement of Full Throttle II. The press release explains: It's due first quarter 2004 for Windows PCs, no other operating systems or platforms mentioned, but it looks promising. Personally, I think that LucasArts' adventure games have been long overdue a comeback, anyone who's played them can attest to their top-notch writing and humor."

Re:The million $ question...

Yes, "people" (i.e, the mindless gaming public), buy for graphics. Simple as that. It seems games with great graphics are bought up enmass, while games with unique [nintendo.com] or somewhat overclocked retro [hotgames.com] stylings are shunned and branded "ugly".

If the average gamer went out and bought games based on pure gameplay, we'd get a 2D Sam and Max (which is the way it should be, the same applies to Metroid Prime [nintendo.com], which looks nice, but just isn't Metroid).

You can. I have. It rules!

Check this out. [sourceforge.net]

Basically, it's something along the lines of an emulator that allows the original LucasArts point and click games to run under modern Windows. I've played Sam n Max and Day of the Tentacle for hours, and compared to the 486 sitting next to me, it's identical. Support for other games is in the works.

The absolute coolest part is, it uses your (presumedly) modern sound card's MIDI - the intro to Sam n Max is AMAZING on my SBLive compared to the old SB16 - and it also offers anti-aliased graphics if you so choose. Sure, the jaggies are nice for a nostalgic feel, but these games look simply amazing with the AA effects turned on.

I really can't recommend this enough for anyone who wants to play the old LucasArts games on anything approaching a modern system.

Re:Best of luck

I remember telling my aunt about "Day of the Tentacle". (get yer finger off the 'off-topic' button, it's a LucasArts adventure game like Sam & Max and Monkey Island.) Unfortunately, I mispronounced 'tentacle' and caused everybody at the dinner table to pause their meal and stare at me with buldging eyes.

I really wish my family'd loosen up and watch FOX more often. I really shouldn't be that shocking to anybody.

MY PILLS, GET ME MY PILLS

Well, I didn't know about Full Throttle 2, so reading that post made me slip into what I like to call "A massive coronary".

Full throttle was the best damn Lucararts game ever made, bar none. Maybe even the best adventure game period, and that's if I include Grim Fandago.

That better not be a polecat on the wall.

Best Comedy/Adventure Game EVER

Sam and Max still has my vote for the best game of that genre ever... Any game where the solution to one of the "problems" is to pick up your partner, dunk him in water and use him to short out an electrical panel works for me. It took me an hour to get through trying all the little gadgets in the inventory before coming up with that one.

Can't wait for the sequel.

A happily-phrased "Hell Yes"

Finally Lucasarts is doing something other than milking the rapidly drying "cash-cow" that is Star Wars.

I can't even bring myself to count the number of awful Star Wars Games I had to disdain and refute in order to hook my wife (successfully) on Lucasarts' fine adventure games -- thanks to the great character design on Grim Fandango.

Lucasarts has really good innovators and well done art (Steve Purcell rocks), and it's more than high-time that a decent adventure game came to for.

I for one am sick of the endless parade of "free form" games (i.e. the Sims), the neverending re-release of the "yet-anotherFPS" engine games, and the D&D based games that have more bugs than characters (NWN). <\RANT>

So, back to slashdot thinking... this gonna run on Linux? :)

3D or 2D?

Does anyone know if this going to be 3D or 2D? I am guessing the former because the Full Throttle sequel is 3D from what I have seen thus far. If my guess is correct it will be interesting to see how Sam & Max translates to the 3D world because it was very 2D animated game with some weird geometry and architecture in some areas. I remember Max had a secret 3D cameo in Jedi Knight and that looked kind of weird. Fingers crossed they get the same voice actors and composer too, which if you have never heard you can hear in this remix [overclocked.org]

Not to rant but..

Ok, just to rant just a little...

Sam and Max was a great game. I'm looking foward to the sequel. Sam and Max, in fact, was a great game, orgininal, funny, and just overall fun to play.

And it wasn't a sequel to anything.

Which makes me wonder; Are there any new games that are orgininal, funny, unique, that are worth playing? To read sites like Slashdot (or others), one would assume not, that the only games of note being realased are either

a: A sequel to a popular game
b: A new game based on a popular graphics engine
c: A new game being released on linux.

Don't get me wrong, it's always nice to hear about a release based on the above three things. But what about a new game that nobody's heard of before that's really, really good?

Do they not exist, or are most popular websites either uninformed of them or decide not to publish them. As it stands, the only ways you can find out of there is a good new game that you've never heard of is to:

a: Be impressed at the software store by the shiney box, plunk down $50 for something that may end up sucking
b: Read the game review websites and magizines, which seem to be staffed by, and cater too 12 year old boys
c: Hopefully hear from a freind through word of mouth about a game.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking slashdot. It's not really in their scope (or in my expectation) that they tell me about the next new, hot thing in gaming. But does anyone out there know of a place to find this out? I mean, a place smart enough to distinguish the next Sam and Max from the crap?

Max

Is it just me or do talking rabbits creep anybody else out after seeing Donnie Darko? [imdb.com]

I can only hope I still feel the same way Harvey and Bugs!

damn

thanks slashdot, I've been trying to get the original on ebay for the last couple months now. This asures me of not finding a copy for under the original face value for a few more months to come now!

When??

It's due first quarter 2004

This is the Video Game Industry's way of saying, "We haven't actually started yet."

Mini-reviews DoT, S&M and the Dig

Other great LucasArts games from around that time:

Day of the Tentacle
Sam & Max Hit the Road
The Dig
Full Throttle

Both "Day of the Tentacle" and "Sam & Max Hit the Road" first came out in floppies (yes floppies kids!) with CD-ROM versions with full voices a few years later.

DoT features characters from the original Maniac Mansion game from the 80s (which also spawned a short-lived TV show in the 90s, one of the joke in the game is about the characters not getting royalties from the show ;-). A not so secret bonus in the game is that you can play the original MM by using one of the computer in the mansion!

S&M probably got the strangest story line in any game, EVER. It got a talking dog and rabbit, bigfoots and giraffe-neck girl, circuit freaks and country-singer. And it all make senses in the end!

S&M also features some cool mini-games like the "whack-a-mole" (or rabbit :-) and "dress up paper dolls", the latter one is also used for copy protection in the original floppy version! The game contains at least one song that is even funnier when actually sang by the voice actors.

Both "Full Throttle" and "The Dig" came out in CD only version.

The Dig is probably one of the most overlooked game from the company. While not as good as the others (slower pacing, may hard logical-type puzzles that are not very well integrated into the story), it is unique in that it has a serious storyline with a lot less jokes and gigs than the others. The art direction is a lot more realistic than even darker game like Full Throttle.

The game is about a big asteroid that is going to hit Earth and a team of astronauts is going to set off a bomb to "deflect" it. And that was back in 1995 before films like "Armageddon"! It got some amazing (for the time) pre-rendered 3d cut scenes and probably the first LucasArts game to have a "celebrity" voice actor - Robert Patrick from T2 and later X-Files. He did a good job.

Full Throttle features the now familiar "full screen" game mode. No more list of verbs or icons on screen. When you right click on the objects/persons a context sensitive menu (in the form of a coin) popup. This provides a very cinematic feel of a good action movie.

The game also features a rock theme song (music & lyrics), a mix of 3d objects (vehicles, rotating signs, etc) and 2d backgrounds. FT is also the first LucasArts game to have action sequence (that highway game in S&M doesn't count ;-). There was quite a debug about that at the time.

=-=-=

Oh yeah, as joked about in Curse of the Monkey Island, you can't die in a LucasArts Adventure game!

=-=-=

Ahh the memories. Until I start typing this, I didn't even know that I still remember so much about all these games. It is a sure sign that these are classics, are will remain so in my mind forever. Thanks LucasArts, and here is to more good adventures games in the future.

For those who don't know

The Sam & Max adventure game was based on a comic book entitled "Sam & Max: Freelance Police". They basically roamed the world, pretending to be police officers/P.I.s and solving whatever crimes they stumbled on. Usually with violence.

I was (un)lucky enough to find a color issue of Sam & Max in the bargain bin of a comic book store while looking for back issues of Grendel, The Elementals, and Groo the Wanderer. I think I paid $4. It's the most dangerously funny posession I own. I keep it safely packed away out of sight, because I can't read the damn thing without laughing so hard it brings tears to my eyes.

The comic was drawn pictures first, and then the dialog was made up after the fact. Kind of like Mad-Libs, or the heckling on MST3K. If you like the Simpsons, you might like Sam and Max. Groo the Wanderer is good too, but it's funny the way Mad magazine or Cracked is funny (or isn't) -- mostly corny jokes.

Compare for yourselves:
---
Groo: "I'm hungy. Aha! Groo smells smoke! Where there's smoke, there's fire. Or a village! Or a village on fire!!"

---
Grateful Stewardess: "Thank you for saving our plane! How can we ever repay you?"

Max: "JUST GIMME ALL THE NAKED WOMEN MY POOR EYES CAN STAND!!"

Sam: "Easy, Max. You don't even like girls."
---

Luckless Villager: "Who be you?"

Groo: "I be Groo."

LV: (aside) "We are doomed..."

---
Max: (a naked, yet fuzzy Max produces a 9mm pistol from thin air)

Sam: "Where'd you get that gun, little buddy?"

Max: (grinning) "None of your god-damned business, Sam. Tee-hee."

---

So if you liked the game, you might be able to scare up a copy of the comic book and see where it all came from. I don't there were ever many issues released, maybe less than ten. I get the impression they're fairly rare, unless they've gone into reprints since then.

Sequal? What about the originals?

I think it's great that LucasArts is creating sequals to these games, but new gamers will have absolutely no idea what they're playing a sequal to. You cannot go back and play these games without building a computer specifically for the task, or using the SCUMM engine, which LucasArts is trying to sue out of existence.

While I look forward to these releases, the sad fact is this is a long time comming. It's just further evidence to me that someone making decisions at LucasArts just 'doesn't get it'. This seems like a move by a company struggling to release a good product. I'm sure they have no shortage of money with all their star wars releases, but they've been really letting their fans down in the last 5 or 6 years with BOATLOADS of crappy games all based on Star Wars, and nothing original at all.

I hope this move begins a new day at LucasArts, where they diversify their game line a bit, perhaps stop being so sue-happy, and maybe even write their own emulator to run their games in windows operating systems, so new gamers can learn why we all liked LucasArts so much in the past. I feel bad for anyone who hasn't had the chance to play The Dig, DOTT, Sam & Max, or Full Throttle, or any of the Monkey Island games.