Original Sam & Max required/recommended?
Hey Everyone!
I'm one of those folks who was a huge Lucasarts/Sierra fan growing up. I've played every adventure game from these two companies... but I'm embarassed to say, never Sam & Max or Full Throttle. I have these titles but haven't gotten around to getting them running on a more modern OS (I'm assuming Dosbox and/or Scummvm should do the trick) and playing them.
My question is should I hold off on Episode 1 until I have a chance to sit down and play through the original, or can one appreciate Episode 1 just as much no matter the order the games are played in?
Thanks! I'm excited to jump into Sam & Max!
- Chris
I'm one of those folks who was a huge Lucasarts/Sierra fan growing up. I've played every adventure game from these two companies... but I'm embarassed to say, never Sam & Max or Full Throttle. I have these titles but haven't gotten around to getting them running on a more modern OS (I'm assuming Dosbox and/or Scummvm should do the trick) and playing them.
My question is should I hold off on Episode 1 until I have a chance to sit down and play through the original, or can one appreciate Episode 1 just as much no matter the order the games are played in?
Thanks! I'm excited to jump into Sam & Max!
- Chris
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Haha! I KNOW, I KNOW... please don't hold it against me! You have to understand, I was a Sierra fanatic in my younger years. I had never played anything from Lucasarts beyond Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken, and DOTT. I only relatively recently REALLY discovered Lucasarts during college, back about 11 years ago.
A friend introduced me to the Monkey Island series at that time, which meant I HAD to pick up Grim Fandango when it came out a year later, and then Escape From Monkey Island a couple of years after that. Grim was masterful, and Escape scratched the itch but didn't quite feel the same as the previous three games.
Obviously, through playing all of these, I circled back to find the TRUE classics and that's when I found Sam & Max. I found it on Ebay, but never got around to playing it. I can see I need to remedy that!
- Chris
Thanks for letting me know. I've set some time aside this evening to jump in. I also purchased Episode 1 too... just so I don't have to take a break!
Thanks Everyone!
Chris
Dosbox may run it ok, but for truly great results, you can't beat ScummVM
Anyways, you may be best left to playing these games first. Although I feel that "Hit the Road" is indeed a classic, my attachment to that game soured my initial impressions of Telltale's version.
I grew to anticipate their new adventures by now but the different voice actors put me off for the first two episodes.
Guh, I guess what I'm trying to say is that "Hit the Road" is NOT required to enjoy these new titles. You may even enjoy them more having not played the original.
But, with all that said, I've played the original and the first 4 episodes of Telltale's renditions and I'm eagerly awaiting more.
Pff, impossible! LucasArts fans disliked Sierra fans and vice versa. Unless you had a more accute split personality than other people a la Dr Jeckyll & Mr Hyde.
On topic: it doesn't matter if you haven't played Hit the Road (as has been said above). The storyline in TT's Sam and Max is not connected to that one, but you are indeed missing out on a great game if you don't play Hit the Road. ScummVM works great with the oldies.
Hopefully, a helpful public service announcement.
It is one of the 'classics', but I always enjoyed Monkey Island more.
It was the first time they used icons and different pointers instead of the usual verb based interface. The only on-screen icon was "the box" serving as both the inventory and command menu.To give a simple command you had to
Open the box by clicking on it
Select the command by clicking on it
Closing the box by dragging the command off screen
Click on the object
Right Clicking was a shortcut to cycle between available commands. And sometimes it was easier to do things that way. Then again sometimes not. There was not "default command" for objects as in previous lucasarts games.
Furthermore the icons and the resulting pointers didn't have any indication about where their hotspots were (unlike Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers) and they were so huge that sometimes the objects you wanted to click were significantly smaller than the pointer itself. This resulted in uncomfortable hotspot hunting.
Thank God Lucasarts never used that interface again.
As a game Hit the Road's irrelevant and insane story is still much better than the Telltale ones so far. But than again that is my opinion. The game's difficulty was a hit and miss. Sometimes it was too easy, sometimes too hard, and sometimes it seemed hard because the interface got in the way.
It is hardly one of the best games of Lucasarts. But I'd still recommend you to play it just for the sake of its historical value.
Second, the icons did change based on hotspot. The looking-eye was mostly closed but opened when over an object you could look at, same for the pick-up-hand, the use-hand and the talk-mouth. Items had a red outline when over an object and the walking-fingers were split when over move-out-of-area positions.
I'll agree that the interface was not particularly brilliant by any means, but I've never been much bothered by it either.
Sam & Max is the best adventure game ever made closely followed by Day of The Tentacle and the monkey island games.
Others may put the games in a different order but if you haven't played Sam & Max and you still won't after me telling you so, you are missing out on superb humor, nice artwork and cool music.
I learned all my american history and culture through Sam & Max and Day of the Tentacle. It somehow made it so accesible. That's what I call edutainment.
yes I played it for a couple of hours until my friend borrowed it, moved to another city and never gave it back.
NOW I KNOW WHY!
I never found out what all the fuss was about. I installed Grim Fandango, played it for a few hours, and put it away. Maybe I'm a bit of an oddball, but I enjoyed Sam & Max more, and had a bit of a hard time really getting into Grim Fandango. Maybe I will pull it out later and try it again, though.
I also thought Hit the road was funnier than Day of the tentacle, even though I bought that years ago
In my eyes, the best adventure game ever made is Broken Sword*, but Kings Quest - Mask of Eternity and Sam & Max comes not far behind. Oh, and of course monkey island. That series is hillarious, even though I am not sure if I would say it is better than Kings Quest 8 or not. At least I consider it better than hit the road, because the puzzles are more logical. Simon the sorcerer was hillarious too. But just the first game. I didn't like the other games in the series that much, even though they had their qualities(I haven't played the new game yet, though).
* if it hadn't been for this game, I would never have played that much adventure games as I have. I remember the adventure games I saw my brother played before that, and I never really got into it. It just looked so boring. But when I played Broken Sword, it was the first time I really enjoyed an adventure game(and even ended up buying it). I had borrowed sam & max from a friend some years earlier, I didn't really see what he found so great about it, so I gave it back to him. If it weren't for Broken Sword, I never would have played this game ever again. So yeah, thanks Tony and Charles
That's subjective :P I have a small handful of friends from high school who to this day will say that Sam & Max Hit the Road is their favorite computer game of all time.
Edit: Just to add, I was just perusing eBay for Sam & Max stuff (I was hoping to run into some comics) and ran across that item. I had no intention of buying it.
"This listing (190103048818) has been removed or is no longer available.
If the listing was removed by eBay, consider it canceled."
You think that's bad, there are people who sell aimbots and other such devious programs over eBay.
Also, Grim Fandango is an amazing game. If you're not familiar with some Film Noir, you may not "get" it at first, but I promise you that if you play past the first chapter, you'll be hooked. There are sooo truly good games out there (and this one would be on most people's top 10 lists), don't short yourself by not giving Grim Fandango a full try.
That would be no ( They aren't out of print and they are not abandonware). You can still buy LucasArts games new (in fact they just had a rerelease in the UK and Australia) and Sierra recently released the Space Quest, Kings Quest, Police Quest and Leisure Suit Larry collections.
Anyway I must say sam and max hit the road is a MUST play along with all the other classic sierra and lucasarts games. Until lucasarts hit star wars in overdrive they actually made great games.
Also yes.. Sam and max is still #1 on my top ten adventure game list of all time :P shortly followed by monkey island and the space quest series. XD
And yep grim fandango rocks.. I hope the burton rumors are true!
"You know what would look better on your face? THE BAR!"
I've heard a similar statement like this many times. I don't think there was necessarily any fuss on anyones part. I think the license expired and then he was free to do with it what he wanted (someone correct me if I'm wrong).