Garrett wrote in to tell me that you can also get the complete version of Sam & Max Hit the Road on the demo/preorder disc for LucasArts’ Armed & Dangerous. We did know about this version already, but I didn’t mention it the previous post because the version of Hit the Road included on the demo disk is corrupted! I’ll lay out the details, since it’s possible that not a lot of people have heard about this. The following was posted on Aaron Giles’ (ex-LucasArts programmer and author of the Mac and Windows ports of Hit the Road) website.

Sadly, there seems to have been an error while mastering the disks. Several people have mentioned that sound cuts out when reaching the circus tent, and sure enough it does. A little investigation has shown that the last 16MB or so of the file “MONSTER.SOU” is all zeros on the CD.

So far, the only methods of fixing this error require finding a non-corrupt version of MONSTER.SOU, which can be found on the old DOS version. But this requires having the old DOS version, which sort of defeats the purpose. We’ll keep you posted if LucasArts fills us in on any possible fixes to this problem.

Hope everyone is enjoying the new site! This is just a post to let people know that even though Sam and Max Hit the Road is no longer displayed individually on the LucasArts Company Store, you can still get it (at least in the United States and Canada), in the LucasArts Adventure Collection, though it will set you back about 30 of your stinking American dollars. The information I had in the Hit the Road section has been corrected to reflect the existence of this Adventure Pack, which also contains Day of the Tentacle and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. European folks looking for Hit the Road would do well to seek out the “LucasArts Entertainment Pack,” which was not released in North America.

Sam & Max 2 news stories are few and far between. But we just came back online and needed something to talk about! So, while LucasArts has promised me that they’ll be telling us absolutely nothing about the new Sam & Max game for the next few weeks, they were nice about it. If you’ve been hoping for some new Sam & Max 2 artwork forever, well… here you go:

Thanks to Ronda at LucasArts, we’ve got this great screenshot of Sam & Max’s office, as it currently appears in Sam & Max Freelance Police. This isn’t an in-game shot, remember, but a render of the artwork used in-game. Check out the office, or look at a couple details like the desk and bulletin board (note Mack Salmon), and the dart board and couch (note the picture above the phone). For those of you with lots of bandwidth to spare, there’s also a giant version for your perusal.For the curious, yes this shot appeared in this month’s PC Gamer (for more on that, see three news posts down), but in the magazine the shot appeared tiny and any detail was impossible to make out. “This is better.”

As usual, I took a long time getting the site back up. As I’m sure many have heard by now, over the summer the entire Mixnmojo server was taken down by a wee knee-high hacker from Brazil, and after a few months dragged itself back to life. The Unofficial Sam & Max Website, however, decided it sort of liked being dead. Less responsibility, obligation, you know? Maybe it would be better to just shut the site and hide myself. Sadly, it was not to be, for a few reasons.

First, people bug me about it. “Why isn’t the site up?” People on the forums ask me, people on IRC ask me, people ask me via email, even mysterious public relations people ask me. I guess I should get the site up, yeah?

Second, and this is really cool (if a bit egotistical?): We’re somehow the number two Sam & Max site on Google, second only to LucasArts’ Sam & Max 2 site. I felt damn guilty somehow being the #2 site on Google when all my site consisted of was a little Gif saying “sorry we’re offline.” This guilt was doubled when I temporarily thought DML’s grandaddy of Sam & Max websites had finally kicked the bucket. Fortunately it’s still around, though its index page has disappeared from the net. Probably hiding in shame after my “offline notice” Gif bumped it to #3 on Google. Booyah!

And finally, Sam & Max 2 is nigh. Nobody knows when the game will actually come out, but the press has started talking about it, and I’m excited. Mike Stemmle, the game’s designer and writer (and co-incidentally co-wrote and co-designed the first game) continues to talk about the game, and every new word out of his mouth just gets me that much more worked up about the game. Anything LucasArts having that effect on me is damn rare these days. Good stuff.

PS: David “Metallus” Eggers is also still helping with the site, if you were wondering. In fact, he did most of the work required to bring the site back online. I’ve just stolen all the credit.

If you’ve been looking to buy the Sam & Max animated series videotapes but were put off by the fact that it would cost a lot, you should shut up now. Online store VideoFlicks (the only people who seem to carry Sam & Max episodes on tape) is now offering a 3 pack, featuring all the episodes released on tape, bundled together for $22.99 US. Not bad.

This of course still doesn’t include the elusive “missing episodes” which aired on Fox Kids but were never released on video (including “Christmas Bloody Christmas” and “The Glazed McGuffin Affair”), but it’s a good deal nontheless.

Live in America? If so, go to the store right now, pick up this month’s copy of PC Gamer (labeled “February 2004″), and turn to page 47. Aye. PC Gamer has listed the upcoming Sam & Max Freelance Police one of the top games of 2004, and have a full page writeup dedicated to it. What’s on that page? An interview with Mike Stemmle, of course, and a couple new screenshots including much-improved character models of Sam and Max themselves! Thanks to ATMachine of the Adventure Gamers forums for the tip.

Mike Stemmle (the lead designer/writer of the upcoming Sam & Max 2, and the co-designer/co-writer of Sam & Max Hit the Road), has been interviewed by Computer and Video Games online. If you’ve been waiting to be filled in on some details about Sam & Max’s upcoming adventure game, this is your lucky day (or rather, your lucky day was a few weeks back when the link was posted, but pff). Here’s some of what he said:

Mike Stemmle: The story of Sam & Max: Freelance Police is really six stories, loosely held together by a thrilling uber-plot. The individual stories are wide-ranging cases of the Freelance Police, featuring exotic locales (such as a low-rent space station, and a lame-ass neopagan desert bacchanal) and freakish bad guys (like an exceptionally honked-off Miss Congeniality, and a rogue artificial intelligence made out of tortilla chips). We’re trying to keep the uber-plot under wraps for now, but suffice to say it features all the barely plausible grandeur that fans have come to expect from Sam and Max.

Sound good? It should. Visit C&VG for the complete interview.