Games Learning from TV: The Sam & Max Story
May 10, 2007
Popular anthropomorphic crime-fighting duo Sam and Max made a long-awaited return to PC screens all around the world last year, as San Rafael-based development studio Telltale Games unveiled their season of six bite-sized, four-hour adventure game episodes. Sam and Max's first season wraps up this week, capping an outstanding series that's impressive both for the quality of the games it produced, and the innovative way Telltale applied concepts familiar to TV drama series addicts to the video game world.
Who are Sam and Max, anyway? They're a duo of freelance detectives, one a six-foot talking dog and the other a four-foot talking rabbit. Both are drawn to each other through a shared affection for violence (preferably as random and senseless as possible, although they're not fussy). They solve mysteries, rescue unfortunate hostages, and save the world. Packed with witty asides, hilarious exchanges and delicious sight-gags, their games have a well-deserved reputation of being some of the funniest around.
Originally created by comic book writer Steve Purcell in 1987, the pair first appeared on computer screens in 1993 in an adventure game called Sam & Max Hit the Road. Despite achieving considerable critical success, gathering a large number of fans, and spawning a spin-off TV cartoon series, no attempt was made to bring Sam and Max back to the gaming world until 2002, when publisher Activision announced another adventure game was in production. When that game was canceled in 2004, it looked like we'd seen the last of the pair.
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Not so. Much to everyone's surprise, small studio Telltale Games picked up the license last year and, with the cooperation of Purcell as co-designer, embarked upon creating a six-part series of shorter, leaner Sam and Max stories, released through a variety of online distribution methods. The final episode of Season One goes on sale on Telltale's site this week. Each Sam & Max episode takes just four hours or so to play from start to finish, which isn't much compared to full-priced games. But then, an episode only costs $8.95 from the creators' web site. Each one told a self-contained (and inevitably surreal) story, but plot threads and running jokes spanned the whole season. Hence the "episodic" handle, of course: you'll recognize the format from just about any TV drama.
Telltale's series isn't the first time episodic style gaming has been tried, but so far it's by far the most successful attempt. Origin's Wing Commander: Secret Ops is usually named as the first episodic game - it began in 1998, picking up the storyline from the successful series of Wing Commander space combat games. Secret Ops didn't do well, and ended when the Origin studio responsible for its development was closed by uberpublisher EA.
As the Internet became more ubiquitous, it became easier to distribute episodic content to buyers without having to worry about distributing multiple releases to retail stores. The early years of this century saw some publishers and developers flirting with the concept, but most abandoned the unproven format for the more familiar territory of a standard box. Indigo Prophecy, a dark 2005 PC adventure game, was originally conceived as an episodic game, but when it eventually reached gamers the plan had been abandoned.
More recently, Valve's Steam online game distribution platform has renewed interest in the episodic format, pioneered by Valve's own Half-Life: Episode One. Strong though it was, as Episode Two slips into the fall (it was originally scheduled for release last year) it becomes increasingly hard to consider the Half-Life series as "episodic" in the same sense as the Sam & Max games. Sin: Episodes, another first-person shooter episodic series, looks to have died after just one installment as its developer Ritual hit rocky times in December. Making episodic games, like starting your own business or writing a novel, is one of those things that many people talk about but few actually do.
Where Telltale succeeded, and where other episodic designers have failed, is by setting a tight, punishing schedule - and sticking to it. Would you keep watching Lost if there was a year's wait for the next installment? One four-hour Sam & Max episode per month compares closely to a typical TV series' calendar, but it can't have been easy to achieve that pace. Game development already has a reputation for brutal "crunch" periods of intensive work in the weeks leading up to a game's release, but Telltale must have been in crunch mode for six months solid.
Still, the popularity of shows like Lost, Battlestar Galactica and Heroes demonstrate we love series that tell lengthy stories one piece at a time. Sam & Max episodes can comfortably be polished off in an evening, and compare favorably to the cost of a movie ticket or a handful of iTunes songs. No wonder they were successful.
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They were also fortunate enough to pick the perfect genre. Adventure games once lined store shelves, attracted huge movie licenses and were tremendously popular, but as 3D graphics became more and more ubiquitous gamers began to demand more from their entertainment than the simplistic graphics the genre usually entailed. These days, they're relegated to a mere aside from small-time, low budget studios.
But the adventure genre is proving a natural fit for the repetition inherent in episodic stories. Who'd want to play the same single-player first-person shooter level over and over again? Nobody - but Sam & Max had the advantage of being able to liven up repeat visits to the same locations (and there were certainly plenty of those) with new dialogue, new puzzles and new jokes. Just like a TV show, once you've built the sets, you can use them scene after scene without much in the way of extra expense.
So what's up next for Telltale and Sam and Max? Season Two, for one thing - it's in the planning stages already. The company recently advertised for Xbox 360 and Wii programmers, leading many to wonder if we might be seeing Sam & Max episodes showing up on Xbox Live Arcade or the Wii Virtual Console at some point in the not too distant future. They'd certainly benefit from the wider exposure, and the Wii's remote would be perfect for a point-and-click adventure game, wouldn't it? Here's hoping.
Sam & Max: The Episodes
Episode One: Culture Shock
What happens when washed-up child stars go berserk? Find out in Culture Shock, as Sam and Max take on the three Soda Poppers. One's super-fast, one's half-blind, and the third...well, the third's incontinent. Culture Shock may leave the floor damp, but the humor's plenty dry.
Episode Two: Situation: Comedy
Sam and Max confront the deadly world of daytime television in Situation: Comedy. Myra Stump, talk show host extraordinaire, has gone nuts and taken her audience hostage. It's down to you to navigate your way through a minefield of cooking shows, sitcoms and quiz shows to save the innocent from Stump's clutches. If you've ever wanted to star in a light entertainment show with a chicken for a straight man, here's your chance.
Episode Three: The Mole, the Mob and the Meatball
A mole at the Ted E. Bear Mafia-Free Playland and Casino has gone quiet. Sam and Max have to go undercover as mob members to infiltrate the organization and discover his fate. Hilarity ensues, and before you can blink Sam and Max are conducting hits, vandalizing stores, and...er...recovering meatball sandwiches.
Episode Four: Abe Lincoln Must Die!
Sam and Max jump with both feet into the murky puddle of political satire, and come out covered with nothing but laughs. Telltale's impressively deft and non-partisan script hits all the right notes, and speaking of which, the episode's marvelous song-and-dance number is one of the season's real high spots.
Episode Five: Reality 2.0
Standing out as the best all-round experience of the series, Reality 2.0 twists geek cliche after geek cliche into a satirical masterpiece. Even if you don't spot all the references, anyone who's enjoyed a video game from time to time will find plenty here to laugh at.
Episode Six: Bright Side of the Moon
Wrapping up the season, Episode Six sees Sam and Max taking on their Season One arch-nemesis Hugh Bliss in his cheerfully-decorated moon base. Every villain needs a secret base, right? Bright Side of the Moon features welcome reappearances by characters from every other episode, and a somewhat trickier set of puzzles than the rest.
How to get them
- Direct from Telltale. Check their web site for details, but they'll run you $8.95 per episode or 34.95 for all six. They're yours to keep, and they'll even mail you a CD for just the price of shipping.
- From Gametap. This subscription-based service gives you unfettered access to a portfolio of hundreds of games, including all six Sam & Max episodes. A Gametap subscription costs $0.99 for the first month, then $9.95 thereafter, although cheaper deals are available if you don't mind paying a few months in advance. Stop paying, though, and you lose access to all your games.