A couple quick updates for the curious. Many people recently have been wondering how to get ahold of Sam & Max comics. Its become especially difficult ever since the Surfin’ the Highway compilation book was discontinued a few years back. Reader Tom Lau wrote in to say he asked Steve Purcell if and when a new comic collection would be made available, and here’s his answer:

That’s probably the most asked question I’ve heard in the past few months. Yeah, that collection will come out again, […] just have to pin down the gruesome details.

We’ll have more news on a reprint of Surfin the Highway (or a new different-named collection) if and when any more news presents itself.

On the Sam & Max 2 game news front, “MrFossey” has written in to remind me that Gamespot lists Sam & Max Freelance Police’s release date as “May 14th, 2004.” While that would be really cool, I suspect the game won’t be coming out that soon — we have a while to wait yet — and Gamespot is just basing that on the original press release and other press material that LucasArts put out when the game was announced.

I could be totally wrong and the game will show up right at the start of Summer this year, but I bet that since LucasArts hasn’t really ramped up the press and marketing machine yet (we’ve only seen three or four screenshots so far, all scanned out of wacky Australian magazines), the game has a ways to go before they unveil it.

Howdy, just thought you’d like to know that there’s some new, and not-so-new things on display in our loverly Fan Art gallery. Lagomorph has sent in a great Max portrait with LEGO as the medium. In addition, I’ve put up two pieces of fan music that were originally hosted on Snuckey’s way back when. And by “when”, I mean “in 2001-2002ish, but I can’t remember exactly”. They are: “Sam & Max Disco” by Trapezoid, and Bart Klepka’s “Freelance Mix”, and you may have heard them before, but they’re well worth revisiting. Thanks to all the submitters, and keep ‘em coming! Fan Art!

After my last post, which was fueled by the conversations in this thread on Adventure Gamers, a lot of people yelled at me for being stupid. I told them no they were stupid - possibly hella stupid - and those screenshots looked pre-rendered and I feared the game would be super outdated and scare people away. The secret answer: I was stupid, not you. Sam & Max 2’s own Mike Stemmle has written in to explain the real story behind the technology behind the new Sam & Max title:

“Actually, it’s full motion video with a toon shader; you just can’t tell from those scanned screenshots you’ve been seeing. What’s missing from those shots is the surround smell technology and the motion-captured animation of a naked midget in a rabbit costume.

Kidding.

For the record, Sam & Max Freelance Police uses an honest-to-George real-time 3D renderer. Its “so-pretty-it-must-be-pre-rendered” look is achieved via a precarious balance of shaders, bump maps, lightmaps, and a little thing we like to call sweet, sweet lovin.”

Thanks once more to Ronda from LucasArts for pestering Mike Stemmle until he finally squealed. I hope everyone is now out dancing naked in the street (possibly naked in a rabbit costume, if that’s possible).

So, which is it? Early rumors, and interviews with Mike Stemmle seemed to imply that Freelance Police would, despite being point-and-click, behave visually like a decently modern game. As in, the environments would be drawn in 3D in real-time, with the possibilities of having a moving camera and lots of interactive elements in the room and all that.

However, the screenshots that ran in that “Hyper” magazine (see previous news post) raised doubts. The two screenshots in Sam & Max’s office looked suspiciously pre-rendered (as in, the artwork, while originally 3D, was just saved out as a flat 2D image file and pasted in as the background, similar to Grim Fandango, or really, the first Sam & Max game). While that’s fine, since the quality of the game doesn’t depend at all on what sort of erm, environment … interface (?) they use, but pre-rendered 2D backgrounds are a little dated at this point.

But now, in the latest issue of CGW, there’s a preview of Sam & Max 2 that says “Did we mention that it takes place in a full 3D environment?” So, which one is it? Pre-rendered, or real-time? Well… only time will tell, since LucasArts sure isn’t. In the end once the game is in our hands, I don’t think people will care either way, but it would be cool to see something new technologically speaking.

A magazine in Australia called “Hyper” has a preview of Sam & Max 2 this month, and in that preview are some new screenshots. Yeah, actual in-game screenshots! The screenshots show Sam and Max hanging around in their office (with a sneak peak at what looks like an in-progress point and click interface), visiting a graffiti’d wall, and talking to some sort of suspicious character.

Want to see the screenshots? Thanks to Lukas Forester from the Adventure Gamers forums, we’ve got a pretty nice scan of the whole article. Hopefully in the next few days I can get ahold ofdigital originals of those screenshots from LucasArts. Time will tell!

The backgrounds appear to be pre-rendered, while Sam & Max (and their car) look drawn in realtime. That’s not quite what I expected given remarks by Mike Stemmle in a couple places (I thought the game was realtime 3D all around, and maybe it still is and I’m just missing something), but it looks good. It’s nice to see Max running around playing with things in the background, if only in very still, grainy form.