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Classic Games (Games)

Sam and Max Revival? 54

Posted by Zonk from the another-beautiful-story dept.
Though we've mentioned the possibility before, the rumour is again circulating that Sam and Max may ride again. Adventure Gamers has the story in the form of an interview with the owner of the studio supposedly angling for the franchise. From the article: Q: Rumor has it that Bad Brain is attempting to acquire the rights to Sam & Max: Freelance Police. What can you say about that? A: No comment (I signed an NDA). All I can say is: yes, we are talking to LucasArts about a game that might involve animals, but that's all folks!"
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Sam and Max Revival? More

Sam and Max Revival?

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  • LucasArts... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by adderofaspyre ( 800203 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @01:03PM (#11008952) Homepage
    Is it just me or has Lucas stopped making cool stuff some time ago? Why don't they make games like DOTT anymore? and I don't mean sequels.

    • Re:LucasArts... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Khuffie ( 818093 )
      Because they think stapling the Star Wars license on an already established genre in a piss-poor game is innovative.

      • Re:LucasArts... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by bob65 ( 590395 )
        Because they think stapling the Star Wars license on an already established genre in a piss-poor game is innovative.

        No they don't. They think it's more profitable. And as far as I can tell, it probably is - don't as me why, because the target market obviously doesn't include me.

    • My understanding is that classic adventure games in the style of DOTT simply weren't selling as well tacky but good looking and immediately exciting genres were. The bean-counters spoke and the adventure game kicked the bucket.

      • Re:LucasArts... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Lisandro ( 799651 )
        I don't really know... when the sequels for Full throttle and S&M were announced, it generated quite a stir in the gaming comunity. There is a market out there for quality adventure games, but Lucasarts decided to go for the quick buck stapling Star Wars decals in every game they could get their hands on. Shame on them.

    • Re:LucasArts... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by radimvice ( 762083 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @02:03PM (#11009440) Homepage
      Why don't they make games like DOTT anymore? and I don't mean sequels.

      Day of the Tentacle was a sequel to Maniac Mansion.

    • Re:LucasArts... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by servognome ( 738846 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @02:29PM (#11009669)
      That style of adventure game has been dying. The last really good adventure game I can remember playing was Grim Fandango.
      The key elements of the genre seem to have been absorbed by other genres (adventure like puzzles in RPGs, FPS) or morphed into survival horror type games.
      I really do want to see Sam & Max make a comeback!

      • Re:LucasArts... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by MemoryDragon ( 544441 )
        Its as much dying as BSD... last year sort of was a golden year for adventure games with more releases than in the last few years combined...
        • How many were bigtime sellers?
          From what I've seen most adventure games with good sales had some sort of franchise tie in (ie CSI); and the quality of those games isn't that great. Meanwhile many unique and well produced games didn't have good sales numbers, making companies shy away from the genre.
          • You cannot sell a bunch of million of copies with those, but most of them made their money and for many of the original ones (Tony Tough, Runaway , etc...) sequels are in the works. I think you can currently sell between 50.000 and 300.000 copies of those games worldwide (With around 300.000 being The Longest Journey). But they also often are much cheaper to produce than other genres, given that the current tool situation is very good, to excellent. Hence no bigger studio produces those games anymore (excep
    • Why don't they make games like DOTT anymore?
      aside from the obvious reason (they don't sell enough copies to justify the investment), there are other issues that come into play. really i think the primary one is brand dilution; if lucasarts wants to be seen as a top-tier publisher, they can't release anything less than top-tier titles. and no matter how fun, funny, beautiful, or otherwise wonderful they could possibly be, 2-d point-and-click adventure games will never be marquee titles any more.

  • Bringing it Back (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Metsys ( 718186 )
    So long as they do a good job with the game I'm all for it. It was one of my most loved games, but it wouldn't be worth it if they ruin it.
  • Unless they can get the original voice actors from the game, I'll pass. I didn't like the cartoon due to the voice changes, I doubts I'll be coming back to the franchise (how can it be a franchise really with only 1 game.... ok ok they made a cartoon but seriously...) wiht new voice actors.

    And yes I am going to fry you like a pork sausage!

    • Re:Voice Talent (Score:3, Informative)

      by Nasarius ( 593729 )
      how can it be a franchise really with only 1 game.... ok ok they made a cartoon but seriously.

      Actually, Sam & Max started as a series of comics. I saw Sam & Max comics in the LucasArts newsletter/magazine/whatever-it-was many years after the game was released.

      • Re:Voice Talent (Score:5, Informative)

        by Pxtl ( 151020 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @02:22PM (#11009610) Homepage
        Not just that, but you could consider it a franchise given that Max cameo'd _everywhere_ in LucasArts games. There's a map in one of the dark forces game shaped like Sam's head, and in BallBlazer Champions' practice mode, the in cockpit view had Sam's head dangling from your rearview mirror like fuzzy dice.

        Hell, even a mech in one of the battletech books (forget which) was drawn with a Max head decal on the side.

        And that's only the Max heads I've seen firsthand. I'm sure he's elsewhere.

        • Re:Voice Talent (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          He was in a totem pole in the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Adventure Game.

          • Re:Voice Talent (Score:1, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward
            And appeared twice in the original Monkey Island - once in a portrait on the wall of the kitchen in the Scumm Bar, then again as part of one of the idols in front of the Great Monkey Head.

            Man, I really shouldn't remember all this, should I...?
        • Don't forget Sam's silhouette on an asteroid in Rebel Assault.
        • In Shadows of the Empire for N64, one of the challenge points that you had to collect was also shaped like Max's head.

        • Re:Voice Talent (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Mikail ( 817047 )
          The best Max cameo is in the original Jedi Knight. There's a house you can sneak into on one of the levels and find Max carrying a blaster. If you hit the spacebar on him, you can control him and run around. If he gets shot, he goes ballistic and starts blasting everything in sight with psychopathic bunny glee.
    • I suppose it's worth noting that the 3.5" floppy version of the game didn't even have voice actors. Not until the CD-ROM edition were the voice actors featured.

      Also, I didn't mind the voice actors in the animated series, which featured the brilliantly named snack food "Frosted McGuffins" as the central goal of the duo in one episode.

      I could argue that the inclusion of voice actors at all deviates too far from the spirit of the original comic books or the non-voiced version of the game.

  • LSL Travesty (Score:2, Insightful)

    by chigun ( 770799 )
    I hope they don't turn it into a 3d pseudo-adventure piece of cow-flop that is riddled with repetitive mini-games.

  • Please... (Score:2, Funny)

    by centauri ( 217890 )
    ... don't say "angling" again.

  • Willing to Wait for Max and Sam (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MiceHead ( 723398 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @03:20PM (#11010216) Homepage
    Sam and Max's delay may prove to be a boon. Adventure games have been declared officially "dead," with the poor sales of Grim Fandango, but I can't help but believe that its essence will return in some form. The first Sam and Max adventure was one of my all-time favorites, but I think that a sequel whose play is true to the original will do poorly. While production values are higher these days, and aesthetics have improved, adventure gameplay has not evolved as much as gamers demand.

    I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that action gameplay has evolved much further; the gameplay differences between Wolfenstien 3D [mobygames.com] and Half Life 2 are greater than those between Day of the Tentacle [mobygames.com] and Grim Fandango.

    Sam and Max deserve something that's different, and I'm willing to wait.
    __________________________________________
    Inago Rage - Fight, Fly, and Create [inagorage.com]

    • Grim Fandango (Score:3, Interesting)

      by RomSteady ( 533144 )
      I bought "Grim Fandango," and while I have enjoyed the game, I have hated the control scheme with a level of hatred I normally reserve for Jehovah's Witness evangelical door-to-door vacuum cleaner/insurance salesmen.

      LucasArts' choice of controls for "Grim Fandango" were the killing choice. Abandoning the point/click interface for what was essentially a keyboard version of the "Resident Evil" control scheme was atrocious.

      Any time a person has to spend 10-15 minutes rotating their character, slightly movin
      • Agreed, but it was such a great game that stuff like that is forgivable, IMHO. Whenever i see games like "Grim Fandango" and "System shock 2" flopping while the latest Madden incarnation sells like hot bread i could cry.
    • The Longest Journey's done alright, and it wasn't published until quite a bit after Grim Fandango.

      In addition, the Myst series always seems to do pretty well at retail. The only reason I haven't bought the new one is because I don't have a DVD drive in my PC.

      Beyond Good and Evil for Xbox (and some other platforms) did well, also, and you'd be hard-pressed to call that anything but an adventure game.

      The only people who have declared adventure games dead are those people who don't bother to seek them out

  • Retro Gaming (Score:2, Informative)

    by ayersrj ( 701333 )
    I'm totally psyched about the potential of another Sam N Max (again..) It's only a matter of time before graphic adventures become retro enough to be cool again. You can only play so many FPS, RTS and MMORPGS. In the meantime I'll go play a little Peasant's Quest [homestarrunner.com]
  • THANK YOU, thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you! This is news i've been expecting forever now.

    PS, if you don't know what the fuss is all about, download SCUMMVM and get a copy of "Sam & Max: Hit the road" (they're cheap). You can thank me later.

  • Other Adventure Games (Score:4, Informative)

    by Staplerh ( 806722 ) on Monday December 06, 2004 @05:18PM (#11011455) Homepage
    If there's some adventure fans that are psyched about the possibility of a Sam & Max release, there are some fun freeware adventure games out there that I've really enjoyed and feel others may too? Just trying to spread some of the good news in the genre:

    The games '5 Days a Stranger' and '7 Days a Skeptic' are a lot of fun and are free for download, it's neat to see what game developers are up to in order to deal with the paucity of new adventure games. 5 Days a Stranger, http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/5days/ [fullyramblomatic.com] is the first in a series, followed by the Sci-Fi themed 7 Days a Skeptic http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/7days/ [fullyramblomatic.com]. They're both by this designed named 'Ben Crenshaw', and looks like they have won a few awards - it's great that this designer of free software is getting recognized.

    Hope this helps some people deal with the lack of adventure games, and let's hope that this Sam & Max game comes out!
  • The Sam & Max games have had such a ruff history that it's hard to believe Adventure Gamers aren't just barking up the wrong tree. They could really end up in the doghouse with fans, especially on the tail end of their previous difficulties. This game keeps getting wagged in front of our faces, I swear they're like a dog with a bone... ...what?

  • can 3D work? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by RedMagus77 ( 743500 )
    I remember the giddy feeling i'm sure all of us got when playing those origional LucasArts games of Monkey Island, Sam & Max, etc. Really, All I ask of them is great story. While graphics and sound updates would be nice, I really can't see doing the game in 3D or anything. I think one of the monkey islands had a joke about a 3rd dimension? Anyone else think that the games should be left in 2D? or are there some merits for 3D?
    • Monkey Island 4 was done in 3D, and I didn't like it nearly as much as the previous games. The controls were horrible--if I remember right, it was keyboard only movement. Forward and backward moved Guybrush, and left and right rotated him. They completely scrapped the point-and-click stuff that worked so well in all the previous games.

      But I could see a 3D adventure game working. Monkey Island 4's problem was the interface in general, not the 3Dness of it. I could definitely imagine a 3D world where
  • There's always been a certain appeal for 2D adventure games.. and I hope a Sam and Max revival scoffs at that 3rd dimension and delivers us a retro-tastic title. Grim Fandango is the only graphic adventure to pull off 3D, but that's attributed more to the story than the graphics.

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