Would gamers be able to wait for a complete game if it was sent out in monthly installments? That was the question that Telltale Games would try to answer in 2006. Episodic games were not a new idea, but no gamming company had ever set a schedule for monthly releases and then stuck to that plan. The final product was Sam & Max Save the World, a game that would be the first true success for the company.
Sam & Max started life as a comic book in the late eighties. These two were detectives, a dog and rabbit thing more specifically, in a world that was heavily influenced by pop culture. There was not a lot of stories featuring the two, although a television series did air for one season in the late nineties. It seemed that Sam & Max were destined to be a cult favorite, but their inclusion in video games would open them up to a much larger audience. When Lucasarts decided to not create another game with these two, Telltale decided to give it a shot.
Sam & Max Save the World is a classic point and click adventure with some mini games and chase sequences thrown in for good measure. The different episodes deal with different cases, but a larger story is also being created. Sam & Max have to solve what is suddenly causing people in their world to act completely crazy. The puzzles are not hard, the focus being the story. This being based on a comic book, our heroes solutions are a little out there. In one episode, our heroes decide the only way to save the world is to destroy the internet.
The game was well received, but it was the monthly schedule that really shook up the industry. For a business that sometimes cancelled games just days before release, Telltale was putting out smaller games every month for six consecutive months. This began Telltale’s business model of having a complete game come in monthly or bi monthly installments.
Sam & Max might have taken a backseat to some of the more mainstream games produced by Telltale, but the game still holds up. You can see the dedication and hard work that was put in to a game the company truly believed in. This was the beginning, and it all started with a dog and a rabbit thing.
