
	Platform PC Genre Adventure Developer / Publisher LucasArts Year released 1994
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Sam & Max Hit the Road

sam and max hit the road

Originality can be the biggest challenge for game developers. They want to make their game familiar enough to gamers without seeming to scream "Me too!" Sam & Max has heaps of originality.

Sam & Max started out as an underground comic book and were launched into stardom with the release of Hit the Road. Sam (the dog) and Max (the slightly insane bunny), Freelance Police, are introduced via stylish opening cutscene and prepares the gamer for what’s going to happen in the game. The sensibility is whacked out to say the least – Sam & Max get a call from the local circus to investigate the disappearance of a sasquatch, Bruno, and a Giraffe-necked girl named Trixie. The investigation takes Sam & Max on a cross-country trek in which they visit various American landmarks such as Mount Rushmore (you get to bungie jump from one of the noses) and the World’s Largest Ball of Twine. (Sam remarks, "It’s places like this that make me wish I were Canadian.") They also have to contend with a diminutive adversary, Conroy Bumpus, country-western star (and his henchman, Lee-Harvey) who has plans of his own for Bruno and the rest of the Bigfoot. It’s crazy but it’s also a lot of fun.

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Humour (mainly dark), is front and center in Sam & Max Hit the Road (HTR). There are jokes and jibes everywhere. The banter between Sam and Max is uproarious at times. Not only is the dialogue funny, it’s also delivered well. Sight gags are also prominent. In one of the requisite references to a Lucasfilm movies, Max performs the "ol’ switcheroo" like Indiana Jones to grab a toupee. Players control Sam, so at times Max can be used as a tool. And since Max is amoral at the best of times, he’ll do practically anything.

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Audio and graphics combine to create a sense of taking part in a comic book adventure. They are showing their age, but they do the job admirably. A nice touch is being able to play some of the audio tracks from the CD in any CD player. The animation is first-rate – a hallmark touch of games from LucasArts.

The puzzles range from obvious to hair-pulling shouting matches with your computer. There’s one puzzle – finding the entrance to Mole Man’s place in the Tunnel of Love – that is particularly aggravating. There’s only a couple of seconds to perform the critical action and if you miss it you have to repeat the process again and again. I’d say that the majority of puzzles are mid-range. Think long enough and you’ll figure out most of the puzzles on your own. For example, at one point Max gets stranded on a small island (in a drunk tank) that is circled by gators at, where else, Gator Golf. You’ve got to get the gators into a position where Sam can walk across their backs to rescue Max. This entails Sam golfing with dead fish. Or the final totem puzzle. Logic and a little creative thinking will save the day. Of course, like all adventure games, you’ll spend time asking yourself, "What the hell am I supposed to be doing?"

And since HTR is essentially a tribute to road trips to tourist traps (and all the weird crap in-between), there are several mini-games included. You can play dress up with Sam and Max (just like those paper dolls) a Battle Ship-type game, Car-bomb, complete with explosions, or a coloring book. (The copy protection also uses the dress-up method.) The most outlandish is one that has Max on the roof of the car speeding along the highway and jumping at highway signs. (You’ve got to smash the signs by jumping at them.) None are critical to finishing the game but it gives you something else to do while trying to figure out how to overcome a puzzle.

Trying to get HTR to run on faster Pentiums can be tricky. I tried installing it on two different computers (one Celeron 733, one PIII 500) and got drastically different results. Whatever the configuration of the Celeron, HTR just wouldn’t want to run from the CD. On the PIII, running under DOS, there were no problems. (But if you just copy the contents of the CD onto your hard drive – no problem.)

Sam & Max Hit the Road is still a fun game to play. It’s solidly designed and funny – two things that adventure games need to be successful.

- Omni


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