Sam and Max: Hit the Road - Pink Glasses

[Dracos]

In the early 1990s, the adventure genre was still flying high, providing the narrative king spot that RPGs have largely taken over today.  These crossed all kinds of genres, but some were well remembered for their wacky antics, keen geek humor, and general stylistics you don't see often today.  Sam and max was one of these.  This was a game built on the culture of wacky budget sci-fi and cheap freak shows back when low budgets defined games too, even if I doubt this was low budget for the day.

   Sam and Max is the tale of Sam, freelance police detective, sharp shooter and dog, and Max, his cute, short, and violent companion bunny.  From the very beginning you can tell the game is going to have quirky humor and characters at its core, and it doesn't deceive in that manner.  From beginning to end, the real driving force of the game is its wacky characters and their interactions, far outstripping any plot that got put in.  For the time period, the characters are pretty darn good.  This is to say, they're good for having middling voice actors, writers that could've been a bit better, and a terribly weak plot to work with.  The game focuses on a single adventure of the two vigilante style police officers.  Sam and Max have been called in to recover a stolen Bigfoot from a freak show.  The entire rest of the game is chasing that Bigfoot pretty much and occasionally clashing with a country western singer.  Overall, it's easy to see why the game is remembered fondly as the characters really do steal the stage.

   That said, it is was a middling game and shows many of the traits of why the adventure genre of the late eighties and early nineties pretty much died out.  The interface, as a rule, was poor.  They defined a few actions but in general, a single 'act on this' would've been fine as there were numerous times that I found myself cycling through actions knowing what needed to be done and waiting until, sure enough, the right action popped up.  Given you couldn't screw up or lose by misusing things, the interface was simply a way to add tedium.  Beyond that, it also bore the faults of many adventure games of the time: It was difficult to direct where to go and sometimes to tell where you could go.  It wasn't until I glanced at a walkthrough that I realized there was more to the main office than I saw.  I would never have considered that I was only seeing half the office otherwise as there really wasn't good hints where screens ended.  Items had similar trouble at points, where it would be very hard to recognize that an item was even there to pick up.  Beyond that, I had several cases of wrestling with the system to tell Sam to walk to a certain place.  Finally, like most adventure games of the time, the puzzles were often nonsensical and single solution based.  This was exacerbated by the issues with items, as nonsensical puzzles could be hard enough without realizing you don't even have tools capable of solving it.

   The game was very open in where it allowed you to go.  Anything that Sam and Max knew about once, they could go to.  This was both good and bad.  Good as you could never screw up irreversibly.  Bad as you were left with the issue that any puzzle could require parts for solving from any previous area.  There was no compartmentalizing, no sectioning off.  Things from the very first area could very well be critical in the very last.  A current puzzle could involve heading almost anywhere in the game.

   Art wise, the game is pretty nice.  Sure the art is a little dated, but generally the animation is smooth, the art is extremely serviceable, and manages feeling like an old era cartoon very well throughout it.  It's also very consistent.  It's one of those games where it has great staying power by the manner of the construction.  Basically, the game's art looks like it would've fit just fine in any 80s era television cartoon series, which is fairly high praise for a game of it's time period.

   The sound was okay, nothing special in hindsight even if it must have been top of the line for the day.  It has voice acting, but it's only middling in quality, as if they got guys at the studio doing it rather than professional voice actors.  Of course, that somewhat contributes to the kind of down to earth charm of it, but overall it could've benefited from more talent in this area.

   Anyhow, the game in the end is viewed more with pink glasses than with sense.  It's a game that really doesn't have much other than charm going for it.  I wish all the luck for those working on a sequel to this, but really, the original wasn't that great a game, bearing all the faults of genre games of its time and succeeding in spite of them rather than through merit of creativity or implementation in the game design side of the equation.