Is GameTap taking a day off? / No machinima short

edited December 2006 in Sam & Max
frank1copyim2.jpg


The first machinima short is now up on GameTap. It'll be on this site on Monday.
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Comments

  • EmilyEmily Telltale Alumni
    edited November 2006
    The short is supposed to go up today. I don't know exactly when, but I haven't heard anything to the contrary.
  • edited November 2006
    I'm sure they still plan to put it up, they just haven't gotten around to releasing ANY content today (i.e. games or tv shows). I guess I've come to find that when GameTap says they release updates on Thursdays, they really mean anywhere in that 24 hour period. It's pretty annoying.
  • edited November 2006
    The update just happened a few minutes ago. Saw the first machinima.

    Question: Did Max's voice change from Culture Shock?
  • edited November 2006
    I assume Gametap has a 2 week exclusive window for the shorts as well as the games?
  • edited November 2006
    No, GameTap will release them on Thursdays, and Telltale the following Monday.
  • edited November 2006
    Ooh. Nice! Where'd'ya read that?
  • edited November 2006
    Sweet! Thanks.
  • edited November 2006
    Legolas813 wrote: »
    Question: Did Max's voice change from Culture Shock?

    It's still Chaikin, but he does sound a little bit different. Or maybe it's the doubly compressed audio.
  • EmilyEmily Telltale Alumni
    edited November 2006
    Udvarnoky wrote: »
    It's still Chaikin, but he does sound a little bit different. Or maybe it's the doubly compressed audio.

    Or is it...? :p
    It's a new guy. Andrew Chaikin was unavailable for personal reasons so we had to recast.
  • edited November 2006
    Well I hope he comes back for the next episode. I had no problem with the voices in Hit the Road, the animated 90's TV show or Culture Shock, but this voice is just plain bad (sorry to whomever did it). ;)
  • edited November 2006
    Is this recast just for the short?
  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited November 2006
    Legolas813 wrote: »
    Well I hope he comes back for the next episode. I had no problem with the voices in Hit the Road, the animated 90's TV show or Culture Shock, but this voice is just plain bad (sorry to whomever did it). ;)

    Hey let's not start this again. I hope you were joking.
  • edited November 2006
    I loved the voices in Culture Shock. I'm one of the few people who thinks they are almost perfect. This machinima voice just isn't as good.
  • edited November 2006
    Emily wrote: »
    Or is it...? :p
    It's a new guy. Andrew Chaikin was unavailable for personal reasons so we had to recast.

    Crazy! Despite the noticeable change I was sure there was some hint of him in there, which is why stated it like it was a fact. Well, clearly the recast isn't going to affect me much. Does this mean Phoney's voice is as good as replaced too? Seems to me that would be a more devastating change because he's really distinctive and, well, really great in the role.

    Can you tell us who The New Guy is? Is it Nowlin voicing both again? It did kind of sound like the Max in the original trailer... I don't trust my own ears anymore!
    jp-30 wrote: »
    Is this recast just for the short?

    Apparently it's for the second episode as well - the voice in the gameplay video on Telltale's site is the new one. I honestly wouldn't have guessed it though. Maybe the difference will be more obvious once I hear more.
  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited November 2006
    Legolas813 wrote: »
    I loved the voices in Culture Shock. I'm one of the few people who thinks they are almost perfect. This machinima voice just isn't as good.


    Here's the story...

    Andrew Chaikin won't be playing Max in episodes 2 or 3. This isn't because we weren't pleased with his performance (we loved it), nor was it for any financial or scheduling reason. Andrew had to pull out of his recording for Max, and all of his other acting gigs at the time, for personal, medical reasons.

    We don't know a whole lot about the situation, and what we do know is personal so I won't be writing about it here, but Andrew was unable to record for said health reasons, so we waited, and pushed the voice recording deadline out as far as possible in hopes that he'd be better. Unfortunately that didn't happen. It got close enough to our internal release date for the game that we eventually had to arrive at the difficult decision to re-cast Max for the time-being, if not permanently. It sucks, and we wish Andrew the best in his recovery! He was great as Max in Culture Shock, and he's also of course the voice of Phoney Bone. Sadly, reality meant that we couldn't wait on the games forever; we had to move on with production.

    Fortunately, the guy we got is awesome! His deliveries are spot on - his performances make the jokes come off as, you know, funny, instead of mundanely stomping them into the ground as is the case with so many "funny" video game voice performances. He even sounds quite a lot like Andrew, and as an extension, a lot like Max! The only people who noticed the new voice in our Episode 2 focus tests were people we actually told about the change. These are good signs. We miss Andrew, because he's excellent, but we're really really happy with where the voices are at right now.


    Basically, it's my hope at this point that you guys trust our judgement on voice casting. There were huge waves of online hate about the voices sloshing back and forth in these forums before Culture Shock was released, but the overwhelming majority of players had nothing but praise for our choice of actors once they actually got their hands on the game. The consensus here at Telltale is that the voice performances in Situation Comedy and in Episode 3 are well above the high water mark set by Culture Shock, and we're sure players will agree once they get a chance to play it for themselves.
  • edited November 2006
    Well I didn't notice the difference in the situation comedy gameplay video.. yep the voices in culture shock were good, im sure that will continue.. the delivery of sam's lines could be funnier though..
  • MelMel
    edited November 2006
    I am going to ask a potentially silly question. What the heck is a machinima?
  • MelMel
    edited November 2006
    Thanks for indulging my laziness Doug. :D
  • edited November 2006
    It's funny to think that a relatively obscure comic book character like Max has been voiced five different times.
  • edited November 2006
    Six if you count that week where I was the voice of Max. Of course, we weren't doing any voice recording that week, so nobody really noticed.
  • edited November 2006
    Jake wrote: »
    Andrew had to pull out of his recording for Max, and all of his other acting gigs at the time, for personal, medical reasons.

    Well I think I speak for everyone when I say my thoughts go out to him and I hope he is ok.

    I'm sorry if I sounded negative before. I do appreciate everything Telltale does for us fans.
  • edited November 2006
    I like the new Max voice (although, I thought it seemed like the volume for Max was higher than for Sam and Bosco -- but maybe I'm just hallucinating). I also liked the Culture Shock Max as well, though. I think you did well with this new casting choice, given the circumstances and time constraint.

    I hope Mr. Chalkin gets better soon though. He's a talented guy and an asset to Telltale's growing voiceover harem.
  • edited November 2006
    Indeed. Get well soon, Mr Chalkin.

    So, is the 'voice-actor for Max' the new 'drummer for Spinal Tap'?
  • edited November 2006
    Hehe... how about a running joke where Max's voice is re-cast with every episode?
  • edited November 2006
    So what's the new guy's name, or is it actually New Guy?
  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited November 2006
    In all honesty I can't remember. I'm sure Emily will chime in eventually and let you know.

    As for whether or not the "new Max" is "good or bad" in relation to the "Culture Shock Max," this may sound cheezy, but after recently playing through most of Episode 2, I was back in Episode 1 playing through a couple parts and it didn't even register to me that the voices were different. That's actually the comment that went around the office more than anything else when the new voice recordings came in for episode 2, "After working on the game for two hours this morning I realized that in all that time I hadn't even given Max's voice a second thought."
  • edited November 2006
    Yeah, I still can't spot the difference in the gameplay video, I'll just have to take everyone's word for it.
  • edited November 2006
    I didn't even notice the voice change in the new video from episode 2. I'm going to have to watch it again
  • edited December 2006
    Jake wrote: »
    Here's the story...

    Andrew Chaikin won't be playing Max in episodes 2 or 3. This isn't because we weren't pleased with his performance (we loved it), nor was it for any financial or scheduling reason. Andrew had to pull out of his recording for Max, and all of his other acting gigs at the time, for personal, medical reasons. We don't know a whole lot about the situation, and what we do know is personal so I won't be writing about it here, but Andrew was unable to record for said health reasons, so we waited, and pushed the voice recording deadline out as far as possible in hopes that he'd be better. Unfortunately that didn't happen.

    Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. I wish him the best recovery. I consider myself a fan of his: he did a wonderful work on Phoney and Max...:(
  • edited December 2006
    Is this new gameplay video (not the machinima) on the Telltale site? If so, that's why I haven't seen it yet. I haven't been able to access any of the game pages for a few days now.
  • edited December 2006
    That should be fixed now. IE7 handles xmlhttp differently from IE6. sigh.
  • EmilyEmily Telltale Alumni
    edited December 2006
    The new actor's name is William Kasten.
  • edited December 2006
    Yeah, I still can't spot the difference in the gameplay video, I'll just have to take everyone's word for it.

    I barely notice a difference, if anything at all, in the video on the site. The difference can be heard in the machinima short only (at least for me).
    tabacco wrote: »
    That should be fixed now. IE7 handles xmlhttp differently from IE6. sigh.

    Thanks. As of today, the game pages are back up and running now. I use Avant Browser, by the way.
  • edited December 2006
    Avant Browser is IE :)
  • edited December 2006
    I know. It's basically the same browser, just with added features and skins.
  • edited December 2006
    I watched the clip again and they sound pretty much the same. Maybe a little difference, but nothing huge. Maybe he can do a decent phoney too?
  • edited December 2006
    I guess this is as good a place as any to say "Welcome, Kasten, to the madhouse that is the Sam&Max Fandom!* Also, Get well soon, Chaikin!"

    *Does Sam&Max fandom have a nickname? Like, Star Trek people are Trekkers...
  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited December 2006
    I think they're called "S&M enthusiasts," but I'm not wholly sure of that.
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