![]() ![]() It's a fairly significant adjustment, visually, from what came before, but the experience remains a mostly streamlined and user-friendly one. ![]() Instead of a set of verbs and inventory taking up the bottom fourth of the screen, the designers opt for an icon-based interface, likely something that low resolutions prohibited by default for older games, and somewhat similar to the interface Sierra pioneered around that time. The next in the long and noble line of SCUMM games, the gameplay of Sam & Max Hit the Road will be familiar to anyone accustomed with its forerunners, though Sam & Max does make a pretty active effort to change things up a bit. In short, it's another average day in the life of the Freelance Police. ![]() It's up to the self-accredited detectives to free the freaks from their bonds, avert catastrophe for the surviving race of bigfoots, and cause about as much damage to private property as possible while doing it. The case takes Sam and Max to cheap tourist traps and roadside attractions for clues (including such locales as the Biggest Ball of Twine and the Mystery Vortex), and acquaints them with a number of crazy suspects and grotesque miscreants (to scrape the tip of the iceberg: profane, wrench-bending psychics, hygienically unencumbered carnies, and intergalactic molemen) with the game primarily parodying Americana but making jabs at just about everything else it can in that patently insane and brilliant way that only Sam & Max can.Īlong the way the pair discovers that Bruno and his equally freakish girlfriend have been kidnapped by unscrupulous country music star Conroy Bumpus, who employs animal abuse as a selling point of his performances. on a hunt for a bigfoot named Bruno, who ran away from his carnival freak show of employment along with his romantic partner, the giraffe-necked girl from Scranton. The story of Hit the Road is loosely based on one of the characters' full-length comic adventures, "Sam & Max On the Road," and sees the mayhem-causing investigators traveling all across the continental U.S. Despite the lovable, edgy characters often wielding their oversized weapons and cruising and abusing in their Desoto, the creative solutions that they tend to find to their rather singular challenges make them a much better fit to the graphic adventure genre than a more action oriented one (though I wouldn't mind seeing an attempt at the latter). Their adventures are light on reverence and heavy on absurdity, making for some of the most hilarious comics you're likely to read (and which have recently been re-released after years of shamelessly exorbitant eBay sales). In their indestructible Desoto squad car, they patrol the streets of their grimy New York neighborhood and often places more exotic (such as ancient Egypt or the Moon) and bizarre, and with a surprisingly unassailable track record they solve twisted and improbable cases through casual indifference and the misuse of firearms. Sam is an anthropomorphic, six foot dog in 1930s style police getup, and his partner Max is a three foot, "hyperkinetic rabbity-thing." Together they serve as dubiously altruistic private detectives who tackle rather unlikely mysteries and acts of malfeasance, often at the behest of the enigmatic Commissioner who will give them assignments over the phone. When Purcell joined Lucasfilm Games around that time, his characters came with him, and they soon became popular within the company to the point of acting almost unofficial mascots of sorts. "Sam & Max" or "Sam & Max Freelance Police" is a semi-obscure and irregularly published comic created by Steve Purcell, whose offbeat creations were first publicly exposed in the 80s. Arguably, the early 90s were fertile for the genre in a way that was neither sustained nor ever reclaimed.įor the deprived souls who are unaware, I suppose some background is in order. Like Day of the Tentacle, which came out the same year, Sam & Max is often associated with the golden era of LEC and of adventure games in general. The project was headed by first time project leaders Mike Stemmle and Sean Clark, with Purcell himself serving as part of the core team. After parodying LEC projects in the company's internal magazine and making hidden cameos within many of the games themselves, a graphic adventure vehicle was perhaps the next logical step for the haphazard crime fighters. After enjoying a cult following as the stars of an underground comic, Steve Purcell's madcap duo were long overdue for a game of their own, an idea that became a reality in 1993 with Sam & Max Hit the Road. ![]()
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