Sam & Max: A New Hope?
The webcomic VG Cats has published their own take on the news of Sam & Max 2’s cancellation, not surprisingly in webcomic form. Hopefully the Freelance Police wouldn’t resort to that, but it wouldn’t be the first time (or second or third time) Sam and Max found themselves partaking in George Lucas’ grand epic space opera, or whatever it is.

Something Is Right Here (get it?)
In other news, a few people have asked me what the heck the “Something’s Not Right Here” comic is that appeared in Fox Kids Magazine. It was, more or less, a giant illustration of Sam and Max in their office, filling up two pages of the magazine, in which everything had gone wrong.

There was a train coming out of Sam’s desk, a giant squid outside their window, the wall was slowly becoming unzipped, etc, and readers were supposed to spot the mistakes. A decoder key was included later in the magazine, but the mistakes listed were a bit odd, like the fact that the train was late, or Max’s nailpolish wasn’t his color. Anyway, Steve Purcell did a painting based on the original “Something’s Not Right Here” illustration, and has sent me a scan of it for you to all enjoy.

I’ll be back in a few days with some new reader-submitted fan art, and a tale or two about how people have responded to Sam & Max 2’s untimely cancellation.

The excellent and sexy website Adventure-Treff has managed to get ahold of what are probably going to be the only ever actual in-game screenshots from Sam & Max 2. They obtained the screenshots, and permission to run them, from the German magazine Gamestar, who had received them from Activision (LucasArts’ European publisher) for a preview article in their March issue.

There are ten screenshots in all, some of them new some of them old, all of them from Sam and Max’s office, or the street immediately outside, and dammit it looks fantastic. I recommend checking out the bassoonist sitting outside their office. In addition to the bassoonist, you can get a closer look at the “Gytgo,” the crazy blue organic Game Boy-type device that was set to live in Sam’s coat pocket and allow the player to re-play mini-games at their leisure.

Hey everyone, I just got this email from Steve Purcell with his thoughts on the cancellation of Freelance Police and said I could share, so here’s the letter in its entirety:

LucasArts’ sudden decision to stop production on Sam & Max is mystifying. Sam & Max was on schedule and coming together beautifully.

I couldn’t have been more pleased with the quality of the writing, gameplay, hilarious animation and the gorgeous 3D world that Mike Stemmle’s team has created. The rug has been pulled out from under this brilliant team who’ve so expertly retooled Sam & Max for the 21st century.

I’m extremely frustrated and disappointed especially for the team who have devoted so much effort and creativity to Sam & Max. It’s a shame to think that their accomplishments, as well as the goodwill that has been growing in the gaming press toward this project, will all go to waste due to this shortsighted decision.

Thanks everyone, for continuing to make your feelings known.

–Steve Purcell

Even though LucasArts is not going to go and un-cancel Sam & Max 2, you can still let them know how you feel by emailing them at pr@lucasarts.com. Someone is reading that email address, so don’t worry that it’s going straight into the trash or a computer nobody looks at. Writing well formed letters probably isn’t going to bring back Sam & Max, but it will at least show LucasArts how many people think they’ve made a huge mistake.

Pretty sad news. LucasArts announced today that they have stopped working on Sam & Max 2. The official quote from the company’s acting manager Mike Nelson is:

“After careful evaluation of current market place realities and underlying economic considerations, we’ve decided that this was not the appropriate time to launch a graphic adventure on the PC”

Hopefully something ridiculous will happen like LucasArts changing their minds and un-cancelling the game, but we really doubt it. Best wishes to everyone on the Sam & Max 2 team, who are apprently still going to be kept on at LucasArts. Hopefully sometime in the future we’ll see a new Sam & Max game from somebody, maybe even LucasArts.

Talk about it on the forums.