This Holiday Season, Sam & Max Are Going to Hell

The second season of Telltale’s Sam & Max games, Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space, will launch tomorrow in a newly remastered version, and it’s available for preorder right now.

If you’ve already played Sam & Max Save the World, you know what’s in store. But maybe you haven’t touched a Sam & MaxAre you a gamer since the 1990s or mid-2000s? Maybe you’ve never even heard of the Freelance Police? This post is your crash course.

Sam & Max are an irreverent dog and rabbity-thing team whose bewildering wit and esoteric crime-fighting methods have entertained people with questionable taste for almost 35 years.

They’ve appeared in award-winning comics by Steve Purcell, a 1990s LucasArts adventure game, a short-lived Canadian TV show, and three seasons of episodic games released by Telltale Games (a company I co-founded) between 2006 and 2010. Most of Telltale’s early employees came from LucasArts, where we’d worked together on Sam & Max: Freelance PoliceThe game was cancelled in 2004.

In 2018, Telltale closed down. I joined forces with three others from the group. Sam & Max development team to acquire the rights to the studio’s Sam & Max games. We’re now remastering those games with help from several other former Telltale employees. This is the first season. Sam & Max Save the WorldXbox was the first to get the Xbox One in August.

Sam & Max: Beyond Time and SpaceThe North Pole delivers an unanticipated delivery: A giant battle robot designed to defeat Sam and Max. It is sent by Santa Claus. It seems jolly old St. Nick has gone off his rocker, and he’s sabotaging Christmas with gifts that would send the Consumer Product Safety Commission into high alert. This is not an issue! Freelance Police is on the case.

But saving Christmas isn’t enough. A rogue Bermuda Triangle then seduces Sam & Max via a portal leading to an island filled with bickering moai, barfly children, and a volcano that is about to explode. Then there’s a detour to Stuttgart to face off with an emo vampire who has his eye on Sam and Max’s souls.

Then things get pretty weird.

The five-part story will see our heroes travel through time and navigate through space. The Freelance Police might have crossed the finish line when they meet the evil demons of Hell, LLC.

Sam & Max: Beyond Time and SpaceThis adventure game has many strange places to visit, bizarre characters to talk to, and puzzles that are baffling but not punishing. The game detects when you’re stuck and provides subtle hints—you can crank this up if you want more help or turn it off if you want to fly solo. There are also four optional driving mini-games with decals to collect for Sam and Max’s De Soto, 12 achievements, and new Easter eggs that should amuse longtime Sam & MaxTelltale Fans

The remaster has a handful of Easter eggs. But why purchase the remaster when you can play the original with backward compatibility fairly well? The new version plays and looks more like it was made in 2021 than 2007.

We’ve overhauled the lighting, scaled up the textures, and improved the lip-sync. To keep the download size small, we have remastered and recodified the original audio from original sources. Plus, the new version has 4K graphics on Xbox One X and newer, as well as redesigned gamepad controls that work much better than in the original point & click port. But some of our favorite changes bring the game closer to the look and feel of Steve Purcell’s comics. All of the character models have been tweaked, including Sam and Max with Steve’s input. The main menu has been updated and the opening credits have been rearranged to make it feel more cohesive than five individual episodes. New acting and camerawork have made many scenes more interesting. Jared Emerson Johnson, composer contributed eight jazz tracks which are played by some of the original performers.

If you haven’t played Sam & Max Save the WorldIn this case, you may be asking if the second season is available. Sam & Max: Beyond Time and SpaceStands alone. However, some of the recurring characters and jokes as well as plot elements carry over from previous seasons, much like TV. If you want to start from the beginning, you’re in luck, because Sam & Max Save the WorldSave 25% through December 13.

Give yourself the holiday gift of a gumshoe puppy in a baggy suit with a naked rabbity-thing without an internal filter. Trust me, it’ll be a much better present than whatever you’re getting from Santa.

Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space

Skunkape Games LLC

☆☆☆☆☆

★★★★★

$19.99

The Freelance Police invites you to join them on an adventure that takes us from the North Pole, to the Fountain of Youth and from hell to heaven.

Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space is a remastered version of Telltale’s second season of episodic Sam & Max games, lovingly updated by a small team of the original developers. Sam, a 6-foot-tall canine detective who has a keen sense of justice. Max is an energetic rabbity-thing who loves mayhem and has a keen sense of justice. Together, they’re the Freelance Police—an irreverent comedy duo whose esoteric crime-fighting style has been entertaining comic book and video game fans for more than thirty years.

In this five-episode collection of interconnected cases, Sam & Max are back on the crime beat in a showdown with Santa Claus, a race to subdue a giant volcano, and a face-off with a Eurotrash vampire. Things get weirder from there.

Bosco, a paranoid shopkeeper who talks of grand conspiracy, may be right. Stinky, diner proprietor, is hiding truth about the death of her grandfather (also called Stinky). Sybil Pandemik is a flaky neighbour. Will she ever love true love? Did someone say… BIRTHDAY?!

Hop into the DeSoto for a hilarious outing that won IGN’s Adventure Game of the Year award the first time around and now looks and sounds better than ever, with gorgeous HD graphics, overhauled lighting and lip-sync, finessed cinematography, remastered audio, and eight all-new musical tracks featuring live jazz musicians.

The Zombies will be dancing. Mariachis will sing. The streets will be destroyed by a giant robot battle machine. And when their friends’ lives are on the line, Sam and Max will risk their very souls to set things right.