Telltale Games continues to display respectable business acumen by releasing the first season of its episodic adventure, Sam & Max: Freelance Police, on the Wii. You can expect to find the lovable doggy detective and his demonstrably deranged bunny thing in North American stores on October 7th, complete with newfangled "widescreen" support and a tutorial. Remember, point ... then click.
If you consider yourself of a fan of the highly untrained duo, you'll want to investigate a pre-order offer from Gamestop, which sweetens the $30 deal with a bonus CD (see: behind-the-scenes "making of" featurette, trailers, concept art, a soundtrack sampler, and desktop wallpapers). Nice, though we would have preferred a Prismatology book.
Wouldn't it be terribly sad if you missed the opportunity to play Sam & Max: Season 2 for free? As far as deeply depressing events go, we'd say it's on par with a plane full of puppies crashing into an orphanage. Only you can prevent it by naming your favorite adventure game character on our giveaway post! No, not here, there. On the giveaway post. You have until 5:00PM EST on Friday, April 11th!
Update: Entries are closed. We'll be alerting the winners via e-mail soon, so please keep an eye on your inbox!
In celebration of this Friday's release (Thursday if you're on GameTap) of theSam & Max Season 2 finale, "What's New, Beelzebub?" Joystiq and Telltale Games are giving away three full Season 2 bundles (valued at $34.95 each). If you've yet to point and click your way through the highly untrained duo's second stab at episodic adventure, you can start right here and right now. These rules are all self-explanatory, so be sure to carefully explain them to yourself:
To enter this giveaway, leave a comment naming adventure gaming's best character (any game).
You must be 18 years or older and a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec).
Limit 1 entry per person per day. If you enter this giveaway more than once each calendar day you'll be locked up in a circus cage alongside the amazing giraffe-necked girl.
This entry period ends at 5:00pm EST on Friday, April 11th. We'll randomly select 3 winners at that time (please check your email!).
For a list of complete rules that you can blow away with a very large Luger, click here.
Telltale finally confirmed to GameSpot that Sam & Max's first season is coming to the Wii this fall. Rumors of Sam & Max bringing their freelance form of policing to the Wii began in early 2007 and became pseudo-confirmed this January in a German press release. The game will be a port of the Sam & Max: Season One PC compilation.
Sam & Max for Wii will be published in the US by Dreamcatcher and The Adventure Company. In Europe, JoWood will handle publishing duties of the game, which will have French and German voice acting, with Italian and Spanish subtitles added. No word yet on price for the title, but if it does end up being budget priced (PC was $30), we're very curious to see if this excellent adventure game finds an audience on the Wii.
It's time for Sam & Max to go to hell and bargain for Bosco's soul. Of course, this being Sam & Max, hell isn't exactly what you would. Above you'll see the trailer for the last episode, What's new Beelzebub?, the grand finale of dynamic duo's second episodic season.
The episode will be available April 10th on GameTap and through other outlets the following day. No announcement yet on a Season Three for the dog detective and his insane rabbity-thing partner, but we wouldn't worry about that if we were you.
GameTap brings an all new episode of Sam & Max this week to give gamers their adventure genre fix. In the latest episode, Chariot of the Dogs, the dog detective and his rabbity-thing compadre search for the missing Bosko. Don't know who Bosco is? Then you're obviously not playing these games! Shameful!
Iron Warriors (Windows) - A game where you play as a tank commander in the former Yugoslavia during the Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian War. Seriously, that's what it's about.
After the break we've posted GameTap's list of free games. New additions this week are Fatal Fury and Vulgus. There's also very little time left to check out Myst Online: Uru Live before it disperses into the void of the intertubes.
We did a terrible thing at last week's Game Developer's Conference. Aside from our usual barrage of photographs and "reporting," a select group of attendees had to endure a particularly inane and utterly pointless line of questioning -- just for laughs. This is what happens when you hunt down several adventure game connoisseurs and challenge them to solve a typically obnoxious adventure game puzzle.
The Player Recent Telltale Games addition Mike Stemmle, co-designer of Sam & Max Hit the Road and Escape from Monkey Island, and designer on the ill-fated Sam & Max Freelance Police. He also worked on Afterlife, but he doesn't think you remember it.
The Puzzle You're standing in front of a cave. The goal is to get inside the cave, taking care to foil the ferocious robot bear guarding the entrance first.
The Inventory
(1) perforated parasol
(1) rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle
(1) sealed manila envelope
(1) miniature macaroni Tim Schafer statue
Peek hard at Mike Stemmle's Star Trek strategy after the break.
We did a terrible thing at last week's Game Developer's Conference. Aside from our usual barrage of photographs and "reporting," a select group of attendees had to endure a particularly inane and utterly pointless line of questioning -- just for laughs. This is what happens when you hunt down several adventure game connoisseurs and challenge them to solve a typically obnoxious adventure game puzzle.
The Player Steve Purcell, illustrator and writer best known as the creator of Sam & Max. We're surprised he even talked to us after last year's drunken debacle.
The Puzzle You're standing in front of a cave. The goal is to get inside the cave, taking care to foil the ferocious robot bear guarding the entrance first.
The Inventory
(1) perforated parasol
(1) rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle
(1) sealed manila envelope
(1) miniature macaroni Tim Schafer statue
Find Steve Purcell's solution to the "meta-puzzle" after the break.
Telltale Games has bolstered its collection of adventure veterans with Mike Stemmle, a man you may remember as the co-designer of Sam & Max Hit the Road, Escape from Monkey Island and the lead designer of the thoroughly canned Sam & Max Freelance Police. What you're less likely to remember (by the designer's own admission) is his game Afterlife, a title which has been unable to enjoy the complete resurrection bestowed upon everybody's favorite dodgy doggy detective and hyper-kinetic rabbity thing.
"Mere words are proving woefully inadequate to describe my delight at hooking up with this fiendishly dedicated crew," said Stemmle. "The excitement and talent swirling around Telltale remind me of the geysers of iagination that erupted across the gaming industry in the early 90's. Only this time, with rational production schedules."
Also joining the Telltale Team is award-winning artist and designer Justin Chin, whose credits include the Dark Forces: Jedi Knight series and more recently, The Simpsons Game. Chin will be serving Telltale as an executive producer, alongside newly acquired hired Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike and Lair veteran, Brett Tosti. Both are expected to contribute to Telltale's output and its "growth in multiplatform development."
Sam and Max have altered the space-time continuum and moved the GameTap Thursday update ahead by a couple of days this week. The dog detective and his insanely platonic life partner start their latest adventure, Night of the Raving Dead, today on GameTap and tomorrow on Telltale Games' website.
Sam & Max Season Two: Episode 3 Night of the Raving Dead (Windows) - If you have any moderate love for the adventure genre and still haven't played Sam & Max ... well, we're just going to hope you've been off the grid for a couple years.
Gondomania (Arcade) - A top-down vertical shooter from the late '80s where the protagonist rides a hover-bike and destroys everything in his path. Good times.
After the break you'll find GameTap's list of free games for perusal. Aside from a few new additions this week (bolded), Myst Online: Uru Live still warrants a spin before it dies in 52 days.
It's been almost a year now since the rumor of a Wii version of the Sam & Max series surfaced after Telltale Games began searching for a Wii programmer to add to their staff. Now, a German press release for JoWooD Productions' latest creation, a Wii adaptation of the PC adventure title Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None, has all but confirmed a Sam & Max adventure on Nintendo's console, which JoWooD is apparently porting.
A translation of the press release specifically mentions that "Sam & Max will soon be hunting criminals on the Nintendo Wii," though Telltale Games, the developers of the PC adventure, have not yet confirmed their intent to port the game to consoles. However, the press release seems on the level, and based on earlier evidence, we're fairly certain that we'll be seeing everyone's favorite revolver-toting, anthropomorphic dog and hyperkinetic rabbity thing on the Wii in the near future.
The dog detective and his rabbity-thing companion are back for "Moai" adventure in Sam & Max: Moai Better Blues. This time they hop over to Easter Island for some R&R, only to discover things are about to get explosive with a volcano eruption. That's the fine wine GameTap is serving up this week -- the service's other offering is a bit more vinegar.
After the break we have GameTap's list of free games, including this week's addition, Black Tiger. Still haven't played any Sam & Max yet? Be sure to check out Episode 4 Abe Lincoln Must Die! in the free section to get your paws wet with punny humor.
It's time for the dog detective and his rabbity-thing companion to start their second season of Telltale Games' Sam & Max. The second season, of the series that got episodic gaming right, starts with the duo taking on the vile Santa Claus in Ice Station Santa. New episodes will premiere monthly on GameTap with the conclusion in April; there will be five episodes this season instead of six.
The new subscriber games this week are:
Virtua Fighter (Saturn) - Any other week we would have found an awesome picture of the original blocky fighters and made it the featured game of the week. The Sega Saturn classic that changed fighters as we know them comes to the service.
Shadow Watch (PC) - A secret security force must prevent a conspiracy seeking to stop humanity from exploring space.
Sam & Max: Ice Station Santa (PC) - The boys survived their first season and return for more adventure game hijinks. This season promises to be tighter and more engaging than the first great season as Telltale gets a better feel and continues to write the book on how this whole episodic gaming concept works. American McGee better be taking notes for Grimm.
After the break we have GameTap's list of free games. New free games are bolded for easy reference. Topping the list is the addition of Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, which is part of GameTap's continuing Hitman promotion leading up to the film's debut in theaters. Also be sure to check out the Hitman retrospective premiering on the "watch" channel.
Sam & Max: Season One was one of the first real success stories of digital distribution, where folks could download episodes of the game from month to month, and then after everything had been released, pick up a DVD copy of all the episodes with some extra content. Season Two launches on November 8th (tomorrow, kids!), putting Sam & Max right back into the fray.
We sat down with Telltale Games founder and CEO Dan Connors during E For All to talk about all things Sam & Max, Bone, and what's coming up for the young studio. We started off by waxing poetic about E for All or E3 possibly moving to Vegas, so we could have done this over drinks and then hit the tables. We'd like to think Sam & Max would have been proud.
If you could fight one person in history, who would it be? Abe Lincoln, of course. But if you're like animated crime-fighters Sam and Max then you've already beaten him. So who would you fight in the mythological world? Those of you who answered "Kris Kringle" will soon have your wishes granted, as Sam and Max Season Two kicks off on Nov. 8 when the first episode, "Ice Station Santa," arrives for GameTap subscribers.
If you're not on the service, fix that! But also, take heart! You'll be able to download the episode for Telltale Games' site on the following day. Episodes will keep arriving monthly, all leading up to the season finale in April. This info did come with some sadness though, as Telltale revealed that this season will be shortened to five episodes from six. Here's hoping they make up for it with extra hilarity.
Telltale Games continues to display respectable business acumen by releasing the first season of its episodic adventure, Sam & Max: Freelance Police, on the Wii. You can expect to find the lovable doggy detective and his demonstrably deranged bunny thing in North American stores on October 7th, complete with newfangled "widescreen" support and a tutorial. Remember, point ... then click.
We did a terrible thing at last week's 
We did a terrible thing at last week's 
Telltale Games
