In the world of point-and-click adventure games, there are a few names that stand out as icons of the genre, especially if you’re of a certain vintage. Monkey Island. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The Walking Dead (more recently). Sam & Max Hit the Road.
The last of these was a 1993 adventure that’s considered something of a cult favourite these days, one that continues to win the hearts of most people who play it. The irregular crime-fighting duo of Sam (a friendly, large wolfhound who insists on dressing in full private detective gear) and Max (his cuddly but extremely unhinged and dangerous rabbit pal) have a compelling dynamic, with the permanently laid back Sam a perfect calming yang to Max’s anarchic, destructive yin.
For those unaware of it, Sam & Max Save the World was an attempt to reboot the Sam & Max brand with a series of episodic adventures, something that was a relatively new idea at the time. Released between 2006 and 2007 under the then-new Telltale Games studio, the new Sam & Max was praised for its bite-sized chunks of mirth and the full set of six episodes was eventually released on the Wii at the end of 2008.
This new remastered collection, then, takes those six episodes from the game's first season and gives them a new HD lick of paint. While PC owners have been able to play the game up to 1024x768 since it originally launched (although they too are still getting this better-looking version), the fact is the first time in 12 years that Nintendo fans will get to play the game again, and back then it was a fun but fuzzy, standard-def presentation. The difference here is stark.
The six episodes each count as standalone adventures, each with their own slightly bonkers plot. The first, Culture Shock, has Sam and Max trying to figure out more about Brady Culture, a strange chap who’s been hypnotising a group of former child stars and making them carry out a series of crimes on his behalf. The second, Situation Comedy, has our heroes travelling to a TV studio to confront a talk show host, who’s suddenly become hypnotised into taking her audience hostage.
Episode 3 is called The Mole, the Mob and the Meatball, and sees Sam and Max travelling deep within Mafia territory to try and find their mole and discover why they’ve gone quiet all of a sudden. Not to spoil anything, but there’s hypnotism involved: you may be noticing a theme here. After this, it’s Abe Lincoln Must Die, in which the pair have to travel to the White House to investigate reports that the president has been hypnotised (no topical political comments, thanks).
In the fifth episode, entitled Reality 2.0, a new internet trend is hypnotising the world’s population so Sam and Max decide the only natural solution is to destroy the entire internet. Finally, bringing everything together is the last episode, Bright Side of the Moon, where the pair discover the source of all these hypnotism cases and head to the moon to resolve the situation once and for all.
Each adventure is a little bundle of craziness, and each takes around 2-3 hours to complete, depending on how experienced you are with the point-and-click genre and whether you fall into that classic of the genre, the one puzzle you can’t figure out for some reason. Hey, it happens to the best of us, though we suppose the fact these games are 14-years-old means there are plentiful walkthroughs online, should you ever need them.
The remaster itself is a solid one, if a little straightforward. All the improvements have been designed to simply bring the game’s performance up to 2020’s standards, rather than completely revamping everything about it. For example, Sam & Max’s character models have been improved, their mouths have better lip-syncing when they talk, the game is now in widescreen, there’s new lighting and everything else seems to have been sharpened up a tad: all welcome changes but nothing that messes with the original art style or anything.
Everything feels a lot more stable too. The Telltale titles were all notorious for feeling clunky and jittery, almost as if the whole game was teetering on the edge and was always one stutter away from completely crashing. That isn’t the case anymore and everything feels smooth, especially on docked mode where the game looks nice and sharp. Things look noticeably blurrier in handheld mode during some shots (usually far away ones), but the option to play with touchscreen controls makes up for that to some extent.
The audio has been similarly improved. The original game’s dialogue was heavily compressed to help keep the episodes into smaller, more manageable chunks, but now everything’s been greatly improved and now all the voice acting is far clearer. The best thing we can say about it is also the most mundane: anyone playing the game for the first time would have no idea it used to sound rubbish. One of the voice actors has also been replaced: the actor who played African-American shopkeeper Bosco was originally white, but he’s been replaced by Ogie Banks (best known for voicing Luke Cage and Miles Morales in Ultimate Spider-Man), which is a sensible move.
It unquestionably looks and sounds better, then, but there’s nothing too drastic that makes it feel revolutionary or anything. If you’ve played it before, you know exactly what to expect here because 99% of the plot, the dialogue and the steps you need to take to finish each episode is identical. There’s the odd line tweak here or there but, for better or worse, there’s a reason they called it "Remastered" and not "Remade".
The chemistry between the two is still charming, although Max’s dialogue does still feel a little try-hard at times. When he drops a zinger it can be great, but when pretty much every single line is meant to be zany there will be times when it falls flat, a bit like those people you always overhear in groups at comic conventions who insist on trying to say something loud and funny every single time they speak and are incapable of saying a single sentence and for the love of God, Brian, can you please just shut up for a minute so I can price these bootleg Sonic plushes? Um… sorry, we were miles away there. Just having a bad flashback.
As the straight man, then (or the straight dog, we suppose), Sam is arguably the funnier of the two characters. He feels like the patient parent of a tearaway toddler, and while Max’s over-the-top wackiness can occasionally feel a bit forced, Sam’s pleasant nonchalance at everything is a nice leveller, a sense of “oh, don’t mind him, he’s always like this. I got used to it, you will too.” And you will.
Ultimately, this is a good remaster of a great game, and best of all it’s reasonably priced at £15 / $20, which works out at £2.50 / $3.33 per episode. Considering each episode originally cost $8.95 when the game first launched, with a full season pass available for $34.95, this is the sort of pricing we appreciate: the type of price point you’d have maybe expected a theoretical Virtual Console version of the original Wii game to sell for, but with the HD and audio improvements of a remaster giving it a more modern feel. They haven’t been confirmed (yet), but roll on the remasters of Seasons 2 and 3.
Conclusion
This six-episode compilation remains just as entertaining as it ever was, and the new remaster means it feels far more stable than before. It's not the truly jaw-dropping complete makeover some may have been hoping for, but the former Telltale staff behind this remaster have clearly decided that they shouldn't fix what wasn't broken. Except the broken bits. But they've been fixed.
Comments 93
I love these games, might prefer the original LucasArts game but this is seriously good, even before the remaster. Simply one of the best point and click games out there.
Hey, Hotgoomba_rebrand got his own game!
@Chowdaire YEEEEEESSSSSSS
That perfectly describes me on this website.
I liked the original and if the review is correct the price looks right. I will pick this up.
Niiice! Will get it someday for sure! I love this kind of games.
'Sam and Max decide the only natural solution is to destroy the entire internet'
Funnily enough, this is also what happens in the following game, which is called Sam & Max Read the Nintendo Life Comment Section.
Very tempted, and want to support the game because I dig the character designs so much. But every single one of my unplayed games in my backlog is a point-n-click. Literally 5-6 games 😅
Too bad they censored a lot of the jokes in this.
@nessisonett I would love for a re-release of the original LucasArts game. I have very fond memories playing that with one of my best friends when I was in fifth grade.
@__Link__ Well not "censored", more like "altered", as in their replaced by other jokes.
Still a bit of a shame, but it's kinda understandable and unless you're looking for them, you won't notice that the jokes are gone.
Edit: ok maybe I was a little wrong
@__Link__ Changing your own jokes is not censorship. Censorship is when your product is changed by a publisher or platform holder. The literal guy who wrote the jokes said that he changed them.
@HotGoomba___Rebrand @nessisonett
Self Censorship: control of what you say or do in order to avoid annoying or offending others, but without being told officially that such control is necessary.
From Cambridge dictionary.
@__Link__ Self censorship is not the same as censorship, it falls under artistic decisions 99% of the time. Jokes age, whether that’s because of shifting attitudes or just because the humour doesn’t stick these days. For every Only Fools and Horses where the humour doesn’t age too badly, there’s a Mind Your Language.
@__Link__ Yeah, that's exactly what happened, the jokes aged poorly, so they made the decision to change it.
@Northwind You're talking about Link's comment right? I'll delete this comment once you answer me
I think this game is overrated. Every episode is the same, there is not much of an adventure, just a couple of places and few characters to talk to.
I've finished the first two episodes and it's the best this game has ever been. As for the censorship stuff - it seems like maybe a dozen or so lines were altered (not necessarily removed, but changed to "age better") and I gaurentee you'd never notice if you hadn't read about it.
@BlackenedHalo agree i enjoyed it after picking it up cheap in wii bargain bin and i think it was £5 and worth it but do i want play it again nope and def not at this price
@Northwind You're actually correct, no author is above criticism for possible censorship of their works, self-imposed or otherwise. That's not an outrageous thing to notice.
@nessisonett Self censorship falls under societal pressures, most of the time. Most people are afraid to fully express themselves, so they temper it to avoid backlash. If it were the other way around, the world would be extremely different. Sometimes it's artistic license, I won't deny that. But the world isn't as black and white as you are making it out to be, in this topic!
@__Link__ Agreed. But, most people are afraid to fully express themselves, so they change things like this so that they don't get slammed by the all-powerful Twitter mob.
@TG16_IS_BAE If it came down to it I'd rather have an asanine discussion over well meaning censorship than a potential social media circus about a skinhead reference. Personally I found the joke funnier after they changed it to 'hairless cats'. What would you have done if it were your game?
I'll play any updated lucasarts adventure on switch. Do monkey island next, come on!
@BlackenedHalo It gets a lot better in Season 2 and onward.
@__Link__ 10 lines of minor dialogue isn't major censorship
I love these old school point and click games from the 90s.
@Sun-Wu_Goku Who's truly the coward when people aren't able to to accept a creator making minor changes to their creation? I find your comment ironic given your Goku pic. Do you realize how many changes that series has undergone? Is Toriyama also a coward for allowing it to happen? Whatever your favorite movie/game/whatever is I can say with certainty there have been changes made to it that you aren't aware of. It's called editing.
@Losermagnet Just kept it the way it originally was, and made improvements as necessary. There's nothing wrong with portraying pretty much anything in a piece of media. We play these mass murder simulators, but draw the line at a nazi joke. Interesting form of tolerance, we have adapted to.
@TG16_IS_BAE I'll meet you halfway and say that it probably would've been fine to have left the script the way it was. Sam and Max don' really have a big enough profile for it to matter. But the worst case scenario (however unlikely) is major backlash, and that's not what the people who worked on this remaster (and likely the other two) need, let alone the franchise. Whether we like it or not, they made the safest choice while maintaining the spirit of the characters. Unless the big agenda in 2021 is hairless cat rights, then they're boned.
@Losermagnet That's what I've been saying, the reason for this sort of self-censorship is to avoid backlash.
PSA to anyone on the fence: you can support the devs at Skunkape by playing the game and still be against the decision of the altered dialogue. I'm getting tired of this whole argument from ignorant drones being all “arggg they changed all the dialogue" because they didn't. They didn't flat out rewrite and rerecord the entire script to be politically correct. They're changing 10 lines of minor dialogue because they didn't age well or featured references that only made sense in 2006.
Ah super. Great to see Sam & Max on the Switch. I'll be having a bit of that, thank you very much.
Thanks for the review.
@TG16_IS_BAE fair enough. I guess my response to that is that they're within their rights to do so, and it's a smart decision for business.
@Sun-Wu_Goku I'm sorry, but "Gutless devs pandering to cowards" is a ridiculous exaggeration. Like it or not, some jokes that were acceptable nearly a decade and a half ago don't really hold up today. They've updated the graphics and updated the sound quality, why is updating the script out of bounds? It's a remaster, after all: if you want the unchanged version, go and buy the Wii disc. It's not like the original version has been wiped from existence.
@Losermagnet Sure thing, I agree with you
One of my favorite series! Already own some episodes on Wii and the entire collection on Steam though so I don't know if I'll rebuy yet again but handheld is tempting.
@iulis84 If you're referring to me, I have no moderation power: I write for Nintendo Life on a freelance basis, and my level of 'power' in the comments is the same as every other reader's. I only choose to take part in the comments section because I have a genuine interest in what the people reading my reviews have to say, and since in the comments I don't feel I'm different to anyone else, I also don't think it's wrong for me to disagree with someone if I feel their opinion is too over-the-top.
"Beyond time and space" next?
Think the only point and click games ive ever played were the Broken swords. Love the first 2 on the PS1. May look deeper in to this one.
@HotGoomba___Rebrand I have been reading some examples of the changed jokes, but they are worse, some not even funny.
for example
Original dialogue:
It’s ’cause everyone on the internet has to pick an avatar, like a dwarf or an orc or an hot young fifteen-year- old girl curious about the adult world and willing to experiment.
New Dialogue:
It’s cause everyone on the internet has to pick an avatar, like a dwarf or an orc or a troll… But we’ve got enough trolls.
Could've been easily rewritten as:
t’s ’cause everyone on the internet has to pick an avatar, like a dwarf or an orc or a fifteen-year- old girl curious about the world.
Leaving the punchline in tact, less rauchy but just as suggestive.
Instead of that limp wristed slappy palm slap.
Was thinking about buying this but I'll stick to the original then ty.
@khululy Wow, they could've thought of something better
@khululy Hearing that confirms my fears, which was that they would change things about this to better suit today's politics. Sam and Max shouldn't be censored/changed.
@khululy The only reason they changed that line was because we no longer live in an era where MySpace is a relevant social media platform(not that it ever was).
@Scullion
You don’t get to tell us not to make topical political comments and then immediately make a topical political comment!
Really? Changing the voice actor because of color? So people can only voice chracters from their cultural/ethnical background?
Kratos' voice actor is not Greek so should we change him? No, because he did a good job. The whole point of acting is pretending to be someone you're not.
@Pat_trick They changed the crestfallen Knight in Demons Souls to a black guy in the PS5 version. He’s still voiced by Matt Morgan, a white dude. That’s not racism, it’s progress!
@TG16_IS_BAE Agree to disagree.
Damn people lose their mind over a dev changed few line. People need to get over themselves.
On topic, I’ll wait for price drop since i gonna spend money on chrismas presents.
Nice to see that this plays well on Switch. I love Sam & Max but the TellTale games always had a bit of lag to them no matter what I played them on.
I've been playing this remaster on Steam. Bosco's new voice took me a few minutes to get used, but I think they did a good job.
I plan to pick this up for Switch at some point because I tend to play on that more than PC.
@Guest88 Well it sounds like you are having a far bigger overreaction than they have had. It's natural for fans of something like this to be concerned about removal/censorship of dialogue. Hardly people "losing their minds" or a "get over yourself" sort of situation. It's like people have a right to be annoyed by that sort of thing, especially when the developer went so far as to lie about having done that.
@JayJ
“Well it sounds like you are having a far bigger overreaction than they have had.”
I am not the one crying about censorship here. There are certainly overreaction in this thread.
“ Hardly people "losing their minds" or a "get over yourself" sort of situation”
Oh really? because there are people here complaining about few lines getting changed.
“ especially when the developer went so far as to lie about having done that.”
Then go on twitter and complain to developers. Whining on nintendolife doesn”t help. Put up or shut up.
I used to love the animated show. Never knew what I was really watching, while I ate my breakfast! I might get this. I’ve never been a big point and click person, but I’ve been curious about it.
All jokes are acceptable. They should not censor jokes. If you're offended, then what?
But how are the load times? They where the worst part of these types of games on the Wii.
@SirKif They're a lot better
I think it's important to recognise when jokes age and are no longer appropriate, failure to do this leads to things like Graham Linehan.
@Guest88 Excuse me? I think your suggestion of me contacting the developer directly and complaining about it on their Twitter implies that you are trying to make a far bigger issue out of this than anyone deemed necessary. Fact is this is a comment section for a review, naturally people are going to voice concerns here. Something like "hey, they changed some things even though they said they wouldn't" is informative to a lot of people, myself included. If that somehow offends you, well it sounds like you are the one freaking out.
I’ve been looking forward to this! I was a huge telltale and Lucas arts fan but somehow this particular series passed me by. That’s a fantastic price point for a decent amount of game hours.
Great stuff. Now, give me Day of the tentacle.
I was thinking about picking this up until I read the comments. I will not support any developer who is both a willing participant and feckless supporter of PC censorship.
The tweaks and touch ups they have done bring this game from a janky and lazy telltale mess to a snappy and colourful modern joy! This game is great I urge fans of comedy, story and puzzle solving to buy it
Never played one of there games before, I might pick it up at some point saying as I never played a point and clicker game before.
@MakkaroniOni wait, what do you mean?
These games were great fun back when they released. Although I bounced off Season 3 hard when it introduced action elements. (Plus, my poor PC couldn't handle it at the time). And once they got around to doing Monkey Island it was clear that the Telltale formula was a shadow of the original LucasArts games. But Sam & Max season 1 - especially the Situation: Comedy episode - is a classic of mid-00's creativity as the rules for what a "game" can be were getting shaken up left and right.
Can't wait to buy this hopefully that tt borderlands series is coming to switch next
@N00BiSH Welp, I understand now what you explained to me in the forum before.
@Losermagnet yup. A couple lines are changed for the sake of relevancy and everyone acts like it's the end of the world.
People fought for years to have their movies, shows, comics, anime, videogames, etc, free from censorship and moral guardians, so many people, especially christians, trying to censor our hobbies thanks to their puritanism and family values, and when we thought we finally won, censorship comes back in full force, with the excuse that now it's "good censorship" because we are fighting against offensive content, hate speech and bigotry.
Worse, journalism that used to be against the moral crusade, now sides with the moral crusade.
"You are overreacting, it's just something small and insignificant, it won't make a difference".
Yeah, they change/censor something, fans complain, and fans are a bunch of crybabies for worrying about something so small, but the people who worried about that small thing and demanded to be changed/censored in the first place are ok.
How the hell did a cartoon dog and a cartoon rabbit cause so much controversy on this website
@N00BiSH MySpace might not be relevant but people pretending on the internet still is and the notion that greown men pretend to be younggurls is more absurd than, just trolls.
@HotGoomba___Rebrand It's not just Sam & Max, censorship is back, but now we have to accept it because it's "good censorship".
Plus, they say that it's just something small and we should stop worrying, but do you think they will stop there? It will get worse, it always get worse, and when you start disliking it, it's too late.
@TG16_IS_BAE Deciding to be a decent person is not being afraid of anything. Instead of being so hurt and scared yourself, maybe trying being nice. That you think there must be fear to get people to behave, makes me wonder about you.
@StevenG Wonder away, I don’t owe you the explanation
@TG16_IS_BAE No need to explain, you already did. That comment just confirms it.
I hope you find some peace in this life eventually.
Good- now give us the rest of TellTale’s entire game catalog please.
@JayJ
” Excuse me?”
You are forgiven, dude.
” I think your suggestion of me contacting the developer directly and complaining about it on their Twitter implies that you are trying to make a far bigger issue out of this than anyone deemed necessary”
I am not one crying ”censorship“ here” it seems to me you guys are the one who making fuss out of nothing here.
If you don’t like what devs have done then Twitter is that way. Let them know that some changes are bad.
“ Fact is this is a comment section for a review, naturally people are going to voice concerns here. Something like "hey, they changed some things even though they said they wouldn't" is informative to a lot of people, myself included. If that somehow offends you, well it sounds like you are the one freaking out.”
Oh i am not freaking out, but thanks for your concern anyway.
One of the few good Telltale games. They were good in the beginning with this, and Monkey Island, and the fantastic Wallace and Gromit. And then they went off the cliff into mediocrity. Then insolvency.
This is a classic, and I'm glad it's back! Even if the puzzles were horrible.
@khululy Ouch, that really really really depresses me. This sounds like a rewrite of the game to sanitize it for family audiences and/or avoid any and all potential frivolous lawsuits from offense culture.
For anyone defending the types of edits you're describing, people need to realize the whole thrill of the dialogue from Sam & Max is that it's wholly irreverent, politically incorrect, and that's what makes it charming. If you retrofit it to be politically correct, all the charm and humor gets lost.
It would be like editing South Park to make it politically correct. A politically correct South Park would just be Peanuts.
@MakkaroniOni What was changed in Baldur's Gate?
@StevenG Super quick to judge! You do you lol
You sound too interested. I’m married and straight, so you can pester someone else for attention. I don’t need the boyfriend lol
Hopefully sales are good enough for maybe a full HD remaster of Sam and Max Hit The Road like they did for Monkey Island 1, 2, Grim Fandango, and Full Throttle
I dug the originals a bit on PC, but you should've put "censored jokes!" in the negatives of the review and docked it several points. Gross to see some commenters here defending the censorship, hand-waving it away. Product is ruined, shouldn't be played. Just play the originals on PC, these are not a valid option.
@Facelord glad to see a handful of lines changing for a character who isnt even the main attraction is what makes a game "ruined," lord almighty how fragile can you be
@somebread Yeah, it's always like this, complaining about something so small and insignificant being changed/censored is being fragile, but the people who were offended by this small and insignificant thing and changed/censored in the first place, they are not fragile.
Plus, it will get worse, it always gets worse.
@somebread Censorship is intolerable. Why are you okay with it? How's that boot taste? You want a progressive slide into an Orwellian dystopia, hm? It's clear that your support of censorious, authoritarian shenanigans means you're probably projecting when you claim I'm fragile, very interesting.
Good lord this comments section is still going on with the censorship stuff?
Listen, I'm a big Sam and Max fan. I own all the games in various forms, the cartoon on DVD, the 'Surfin' the Highway' collection of comics that Telltale had a hand in publishing (as well as 2 artbooks they published 'Age of S&M' and 'The Effigy Mound'). In addition to this I have other various collectible. Point is - I know the property. And if I felt like this was some major betrayal of the characters I'd be the first and loudest one to complain. IT'S NOT. Heck, I know the cartoon had many scenes changed from how they were originally written because the network was too concerned. This stuff happens in the background of our favorite media all the time. So seriously, stop with the censorship witch hunt. If you want to complain about the quality of the rewrites i get that. Or the writing of the upcoming VR game. The trailer looked horrible.
@Losermagnet yeah animation wise that trailer did NOT look too good
@Losermagnet It's not censorship to me it feels more like lazy writing to avoid backlash instead of rewriting lines proper so the jokes still have some edge to them.
I know S&M is not South Park but these characters are far from tame.
@khululy and that's totally cool with me. Offering an opinion on the actual text is of so much more value than trying to discredit the entire thing because the notion that it's been tampered with. Personally I haven't been aware of anything in-game that made me take notice or cringe, but I've only played the first two episodes.
Why does a bunny with a gun get a game?
@TheSmashTheorist THAT is none of your damn business
@__Link__ Not offending others... man that would be a high bar to cross over these days.
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