Sam & Max Hit the Road is a graphic adventure video game released by LucasArts during the company's adventure games era. The game was originally released for MS-DOS in 1993 and for Mac OS in 1995. A 2002 re-release included compatibility with Windows. The game is based on the comic characters of Sam and Max, the "Freelance Police", an anthropomorphic dog and "hyperkinetic rabbity thing". The characters, created by Steve Purcell, originally debuted in a 1987 comic book series. Based on the 1989 Sam & Max comic On the Road, the duo take the case of a missing bigfoot from a nearby carnival, traveling to many Americana tourist sites to solve the mystery.
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the best sprite based point and click ive ever played. laughably obtuse puzzles but brilliant writing and humor. i will never forget you sam and max!
This game takes me back to a time when LucasArts were producing the best games out there! Not to mention, some of the weirdest and most popular like in regards to the Sam & Max universe here!
The story follows Sam & Max who are Freelance Police and their job is to track down an attraction. A bigfoot that was frozen in ice has been taken from the circus and the pair need to track them down and solve the mystery surrounding them and also the tiny country music star who seems to also be trying to track him down for a potentially nefarious purpose!
As usual, the absurdist humour hits right on and there's even fun little mini-games you can play with Max too. It's well worth checking out and a lot of fun! I can't wait to try out some more of these classics on stream and showcase how fun they are to the world!
Gameplay/Stream
The story follows Sam & Max who are Freelance Police and their job is to track down an attraction. A bigfoot that was frozen in ice has been taken from the circus and the pair need to track them down and solve the mystery surrounding them and also the tiny country music star who seems to also be trying to track him down for a potentially nefarious purpose!
As usual, the absurdist humour hits right on and there's even fun little mini-games you can play with Max too. It's well worth checking out and a lot of fun! I can't wait to try out some more of these classics on stream and showcase how fun they are to the world!
Gameplay/Stream
Puzzles bem feitos e inteligentes, além da comédia excelente que não datou até os dias de hoje.
this is my second completion of the game and it's still as funny as ever. i think there's a pretty decent replayability factor and you can find new phrases and things you may not have noticed in your first playthrough.
the pixel art and music is still nice to look at, even after thirty years. also, if you like deadpan humor and/or cartoon violence, this might be up your alley. same if you love furries of the openly gay kind. i can't even say ambiguously because sam will say a man or a woman isn't his type and max doesn't even like girls.
the pixel art and music is still nice to look at, even after thirty years. also, if you like deadpan humor and/or cartoon violence, this might be up your alley. same if you love furries of the openly gay kind. i can't even say ambiguously because sam will say a man or a woman isn't his type and max doesn't even like girls.
Man, I need to play more of the LucasArts games, if Hit the Road is anything to go by.
I played the later TellTale games before this, so it was neat seeing what Sam & Max's first (video game) outing was like. Turns out it's not too unfamiliar - while I'm sure "Sam & Max Save the World" is based on the cancelled "Freelance Police" game first and foremost, you can see the direct lineage throughout, in stuff like the cardboard box inventory and the player specifically controlling Sam with Max mostly doing his own thing or being there for hints.
But the upshot of the presentation style is that this game feels way less restrained than its sequel. Not sure if it's because the game is in 2D or because it's got the backing of LucasArts, but even at Sam & Max's most ambitious under TellTale (i.e. "The Devil's Playhouse"), we'd never quite see Sam & Max running around doing something so outrageous. TellTale's games highlight the zaniness of Steve Purchell's character writing, but here we really see his scenario writing and love for excessive environmental detail at work. Hard not to love stuff like people bungee-jumping out of Mount Rushmore, or the secret moleman lair in the Tunnel of Love, or famed naturalist John Muir.
(The thing to love about Sam & Max is if you talk about it out of context, you sound completely unhinged)
Sam & Max is at its best when it's able to present an exaggerated take on something, usually elements of American pop culture. In this case, it's skewering much of roadside Americana, and that gives it a wide sweeping field to play with. If you haven't driven around the US much, I don't know how well this will play for you (I guess most folks will get the Mystery Vortex's whole thing thanks to Gravity Falls).
Me, I love love love roadtrips, so I was very much at home with the shout-outs that you get a great cross-section of the experience here. The only thing that's really missing is a Wall Drug stand-in. But you don't really get the full effect without hundreds of miles of roadsigns, so I can accept that that one's outside the scope of this game. Otherwise, you have a lot of the very specific peculiarities that give roadside America its charm, properly sent-up and ridiculed for all its inherent absurdity.
I'll say also that playing it summer of 2020 really helped the whole experience. I couldn't do a summer vacation that year, so I decided it'd be fun to tackle this on-stream as a "road trip/summer vacation" title for everyone (viewable here). Really elevated the thing for me.
I played the later TellTale games before this, so it was neat seeing what Sam & Max's first (video game) outing was like. Turns out it's not too unfamiliar - while I'm sure "Sam & Max Save the World" is based on the cancelled "Freelance Police" game first and foremost, you can see the direct lineage throughout, in stuff like the cardboard box inventory and the player specifically controlling Sam with Max mostly doing his own thing or being there for hints.
But the upshot of the presentation style is that this game feels way less restrained than its sequel. Not sure if it's because the game is in 2D or because it's got the backing of LucasArts, but even at Sam & Max's most ambitious under TellTale (i.e. "The Devil's Playhouse"), we'd never quite see Sam & Max running around doing something so outrageous. TellTale's games highlight the zaniness of Steve Purchell's character writing, but here we really see his scenario writing and love for excessive environmental detail at work. Hard not to love stuff like people bungee-jumping out of Mount Rushmore, or the secret moleman lair in the Tunnel of Love, or famed naturalist John Muir.
(The thing to love about Sam & Max is if you talk about it out of context, you sound completely unhinged)
Sam & Max is at its best when it's able to present an exaggerated take on something, usually elements of American pop culture. In this case, it's skewering much of roadside Americana, and that gives it a wide sweeping field to play with. If you haven't driven around the US much, I don't know how well this will play for you (I guess most folks will get the Mystery Vortex's whole thing thanks to Gravity Falls).
Me, I love love love roadtrips, so I was very much at home with the shout-outs that you get a great cross-section of the experience here. The only thing that's really missing is a Wall Drug stand-in. But you don't really get the full effect without hundreds of miles of roadsigns, so I can accept that that one's outside the scope of this game. Otherwise, you have a lot of the very specific peculiarities that give roadside America its charm, properly sent-up and ridiculed for all its inherent absurdity.
I'll say also that playing it summer of 2020 really helped the whole experience. I couldn't do a summer vacation that year, so I decided it'd be fun to tackle this on-stream as a "road trip/summer vacation" title for everyone (viewable here). Really elevated the thing for me.
A fun, if short adventure game. The graphics are charming, and the voice acting and humor are great. It has some pretty cryptic puzzles, as is common in these early point and click games. I'd recommend using a guide if you want to make much progress. It definitely got me interested in exploring other areas of the Sam and Max franchise though.