Sam & Max Hit the Road

Sam & Max Hit the Road is a graphic adventure video game released by LucasArts during the company's adventure games era. The game was originally released for MS-DOS in 1993 and for Mac OS in 1995. A 2002 re-release included compatibility with Windows. The game is based on the comic characters of Sam and Max, the "Freelance Police", an anthropomorphic dog and "hyperkinetic rabbity thing". The characters, created by Steve Purcell, originally debuted in a 1987 comic book series. Based on the 1989 Sam & Max comic On the Road, the duo take the case of a missing bigfoot from a nearby carnival, traveling to many American culture tourist sites to solve the mystery.

LucasArts began development of the game in 1992 with the intention to use new settings and characters after the success of the past Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island adventure titles. Series creator Steve Purcell, then a LucasArts employee, was one of the lead designers on the project. Sam & Max Hit the Road is the ninth game to use the SCUMM adventure game engine, and also integrated the iMUSE audio system developed by Michael Land and Peter McConnell. The game was one of the first to incorporate full voice talent; the two title characters were voiced by professional voice actors Bill Farmer and Nick Jameson while additional voices were provided by Irwin Keyes, Marsha Clark, Denny Delk, Tony Pope and Beth Wernick.

The game received critical acclaim on release, and was praised for its humor, voice acting, graphics, music and gameplay. It is now regarded as a classic adventure game and is often considered one of the greatest video games of all time. Several attempts to produce sequels were cancelled, ultimately resulting in the franchise moving from LucasArts to Telltale Games. Since October 2014, after the acquisition of LucasArts by Disney, the game is being sold by GOG.com. The game was re-released on Steam by Disney Interactive in November 2018.

Gameplay

Sam & Max Hit the Road is a 2D adventure game where the player controls the actions of Sam from a third-person perspective. The player uses Sam to explore the cartoon environments of the game and solve a series of puzzles using a simple point-and-click interface.

Plot

Sam and Max, the Freelance Police, are two comic book characters created by Steve Purcell, who act as private detectives and vigilantes. Sam & Max Hit the Road follows the pair on a case that takes them from their office in New York City across the United States. The game starts in a similar way to many of the comic stories, with Sam and Max receiving a telephone call from an unseen and unheard Commissioner, who tells them to go to a nearby carnival. At the carnival, they are told by the owners that their star attraction, a frozen bigfoot called Bruno, has been set free, and fled, taking their second attraction, Trixie the Giraffe-Necked Girl. Sam and Max set off to find Bruno and Trixie and bring them back. As the duo investigate the carnival, they learn that Bruno and Trixie are in love and that Trixie freed Bruno. The Freelance Police leave the carnival to pursue leads at various tourist traps throughout the country, such as The World's Largest Ball of Twine, a vortex controlled by giant subterranean magnets, and bungee jumping facilities at Mount Rushmore.

thumb|left|Sam and Max outside a "[[Stuckey's|Snuckey's"; Americana sites and parodies like this are a core part of the game's setting.]]

The pair learn that two other bigfoots used as tourist attractions in other parts of the country have been freed by Bruno, and that Bruno has been captured by Liverpudlian country western singer Conroy Bumpus, a cruel animal abuser who wishes to use Bruno in his performances. Sam and Max travel to Bumpus' home and rescue Bruno and Trixie, but Bruno then departs with Trixie to join a bigfoot gathering at an inn in Nevada. Following them, Sam and Max disguise themselves as a bigfoot to enter the party. Eventually the party is gatecrashed by Conroy Bumpus and his henchman Lee Harvey, who hope to capture the bigfoots. However, Sam manages to fool Bumpus and Harvey into donning their bigfoot disguise, and Max locks them in the inn's kitchen freezer.

Chief Vanuatu, leader of the bigfoots, in recognition of the pair's actions, makes the Freelance Police members of the bigfoot tribe and tells them of a spell that will make the world safe for bigfoots again, preventing their capture by humans. However, the chief requires help deciphering the spell's four ingredients, and asks for Sam and Max's help. Eventually, they discover that the ingredients are a vegetable resembling John Muir, hair restoration tonic, the tooth of a dinosaur (or one from a mechanical one as is used), and a vortex contained within a snow globe. Combined with a live bigfoot sacrifice—which Max substitutes for frozen bigfoot-clad Bumpus and Harvey—the ingredients cause large trees to spring into existence, destroying towns and cities and covering the bulk of the west United States in forest. Content that their work is done, Sam and Max take the frozen ice block containing Bumpus and Harvey to the carnival. Believing that Bruno has been returned to them, the owners give a large reward of skee ball tickets to the Freelance Police, who then spend the end credits shooting targets at a carnival stall with real firearms.

Development

Sam & Max Hit the Road was developed by a small team at LucasArts with prior experience on their adventure games, including Sean Clark, Michael Stemmle, and Sam & Max creator Steve Purcell and his future wife Collette Michaud. Sam and Max first appeared as video game characters as internal testing material for SCUMM engine programmers recently employed by LucasArts; Steve Purcell created animated versions of the characters and an office backdrop for the programmers to practice on. Soon after, Sam & Max comic strips by Steve Purcell were published in LucasArts' quarterly newsletter. After a positive reaction from fans to the strips

The game was based on the 1989 Sam & Max comic On The Road, which featured the two on a journey across the United States. Several of the game's tourist traps were based on real locations experienced by the developers; Steve Purcell recollects a childhood visit to a "Frog Rock" - one of the locations featured in the game - and remembered thinking "That's it? It doesn't even look like a frog!" A chain of "Snuckey's" roadside stores and attractions was a tribute to the Stuckey's chain which Purcell and his family often stopped at during road trips.

LucasArts planned a relatively short timetable for Sam & Max of about eight months, and the team opted to use storyboarding for the first time at LucasArts to plan out the game. (based on 6 reviews)

| AdvGamers = 4.5/5

| Allgame = 4.5/5

| CVG = 82/100<br />84/100 (CD-ROM)

| Dragon = 4/5

| Edge = 9/10

| Hyper = 93%

| PCF = 92%

| rev1 = Electronic Entertainment

| rev1Score = 10 out of 10

According to Steve Purcell, Sam & Max Hit the Road was commercially successful. He remarked in 2000 that the numbers were never comparable to Star Wars but it sold enough that it was considered a hit by most standards.

Sam & Max received a favorable reception from the gaming industry's press, holding a rating of 84% on the review aggregator site GameRankings. Edge noted that "with most adventure games, its hard to feel anything for the character(s) you control", but stated that Sam & Max Hit the Road broke this mold by being "genuinely funny". The reviewer praised the game's graphics as "beautifully detailed" and the puzzles as "intricate to solve", but noted that a number of the minigames were "dismal". In 1994, PC Gamer US named Sam & Max the 8th best computer game ever.

In 1998, PC Gamer declared it the 10th-best computer game ever released, and the editors called it "still the best graphic adventure for the PC, hands down".

Sam and Max Hit the Road has since come to be regarded as a classic adventure game title, and is regularly featured in listings of the top 100 games. In 1996, Computer Gaming World ranked it as the 95th best game of all time, calling it "the adventure game that redefined 'wacky'". The same year, Next Generation ranked it 27th best game of all time, explaining that its "goofy charm" was the tiebreaker in the decision to include it on the list instead of other acclaimed LucasArts games such as Day of the Tentacle. In 1999, Next Generation listed Sam & Max Hit the Road as number 45 on their "Top 50 Games of All Time", commenting that the game combined a bizarre plot with LucasArt's adventure game prowess and the robust SCUMM engine. In 2004, Adventure Gamers listed Sam & Max Hit the Road as the eighth-best adventure game of all time, describing it as "the most absurd and ridiculous game ever designed". IGN described Sam and Max Hit the Road in its 2007 top 100 games feature as "known more for its story and characters", noting that "the unusual and interesting gameplay is typically saddled in the shotgun position in fans' memories, but when you're driving a Porsche, even the trunk is a smooth ride". Writing for Adventure Classic Gaming in 2006, David Olgarsson noted that the game had "undoubtedly ... become [LucasArts'] most critically acclaimed adventure game of all time", citing the game's production values, graphical effects, challenging puzzles and story techniques as the reason for this, concluding that the game was an "enduring testament to adventure gaming's finest hours". In 2011, Adventure Gamers named Sam & Max the 28th-best adventure game ever released.

Sequels

right|thumb|Sam & Max: Freelance Police was to take the franchise into 3D graphics.

The first attempts at creating a sequel took place in September 2001 with Sam & Max Plunge Through Space. The game was to be an Xbox exclusive title, developed by Infinite Machine, a small company consisting of a number of former LucasArts employees. The story of the game was developed by series creator Steve Purcell and fellow designer Chuck Jordan and involved the Freelance Police travelling the galaxy to find a stolen Statue of Liberty. However, Infinite Machine went bankrupt within a year, and the project was abandoned.

At the 2002 Electronic Entertainment Expo convention, nearly a decade after the release of Sam & Max Hit the Road, LucasArts announced the production of a PC sequel, entitled Sam & Max: Freelance Police. Freelance Police, like Hit the Road, was to be a point-and-click graphic adventure game, utilizing a new 3D game engine. Development of Freelance Police was led by Michael Stemmle, one of the original designers of Sam and Max Hit the Road. Steve Purcell contributed to the project by writing the story and producing concept art. The fan reaction to the cancellation was strong; a petition of 32,000 signatures stating the disappointment of fans was later presented to LucasArts. a third season, Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse, began in April 2010.

References

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