Adventure Gamers has rated Sam & Max Hit The Road as the eighth best adventure game of all time. Here’s what they had to say:

Sam & Max Hit the Road is, without question, the most absurd and ridiculous game ever designed. This point is driven home by every line of dialogue, every new location, every supporting character, and every absurd puzzle.

Check out their whole review/opinion on the best adventure game Top 20 Countdown page.

Our soon-to-be thorough and awesome episode guide has been temporarily disabled due to some technical problems. It should be back by tomorrow or the next day, though. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Update: The Episode Guide is back and improved, thanks to some help from ASk.

Hey everyone, Dave here (honest). I’ve updated the FAQ. The links are fixed, and we now have some information up regarding the LucasArts sequel to Hit the Road, and Infinite Machine’s departure. Nothing new, we just had to catch up to modern times. I also tossed up a page with information about Snuckey’s, and why I decided to close it down and join the Unofficial.

JBRAA and bgbennyboy have pointed out to me that there’s a new site in town that isn’t ours. For sound and flash imagery madness, check out www.samnmax.net. So, we’re www.samandmax.net, and they’re www.samnmax.net. Things are going to get confusing!

If anyone knows any details about samnmax.net, please leave a comment on our messageboard, or email me. Thanks!

Steve Purcell passed this virtual Christmas cheer along, and it had to be shared with one and all because its incredibly awesome. Merry Christmas and happy holidays and whatnot to every one. If you missed last year’s Christmas message from Steve, here it is just for you! Also, though somewhat unrelated (well, that depends…), is the Easter greeting too.

And remember, video tapes of cartoons make great gifts for friends and loved ones!

Those who pay a visit to the TV Series pages will notice that we’ve finally started a complete episode guide and media archive from the animated series. The goal is to get a short video clip from every episode, a couple of stills, and a heavily opinionated yet somehow relevant review of each episode from Mercatfat. In the mean time you can at least download 15 or so clips, read descriptions, and of course buy a couple of the tapes.

Anyone wondering what Steve Purcell is up to? To be honest, I don’t really know. Last time we checked in on Mr. Purcell, back in July of 2000, he was working for Industrial Light and Magic, in the “Feature Development” division. The ILM Feature Development divison, now (to my knowledge) dissolved and gone, was responsible for creating ideas that ILM could develop into full-blown all-CGI animated films. You know, like Pixar?

With all of that in mind, it would only make sense that Steve Purcell is now at Pixar, working on the upcoming Cars, directed by John Lasseter. Cars won’t be out until 2005, though, which hints to us that Purcell probably has some time coming up to work on the new Sam & Max game that was announced back in May. Rumors suggest that while Purcell won’t be drawing much if any actual artwork for the game, he’ll be overseeing the art design and direction, and helping craft the storyline and dialogue.

That’s it for now. We’ll let everyone in on more Purcell dirt as it’s uncovered.

Welcome back! Man, I’ve ignored this for far too long. Partly it was by necessity. There was absolutely nothing to write about. Then, after sitting around sulking for months and months with nothing to do, a new Sam & Max game was announced! But… I just let the site sit around some more. Yes. Apologies all around.

Now, some big changes are happening around here. First off, our ex-sister site Snuckey’s has closed. Uh huh. We ate them, they were delicious. And now, gone forever. With that annoyance finally out of the way, I was free to complete my takeover of SamAndMax.net. Gone is the “unofficial.blahblah” from the URL. The whole thing’s mine! All mine! … and Metallus’s.

What?! Yes, former Snuckey’s goober Dave (aka David aka Metallus) is now no longer a goober but instead a lifeless corpse of a webmaster, just like me, forever doomed to tool away on a site that will never be done, let alone read. Rejoice one and all.

The best part of this whole Metallus-as-Unofficial-news-updater deal though, is that, being the Commie bastards that we are, all news posts will remain anonymous. That means I can slack off all I want, and assuming Dave over here doesn’t also slack off, the site will still provide you with the lumpy nuggets of Sam & Max news goodness that you love, and you won’t even know about my recent increases in slackitude. Dude.

In addition to a 200% increase in Jake ranting, the revised Unofficial provides numerous new features you won’t ever notice. For example, the news archive has a little pulldown bar. If that doesn’t impress you, maybe you’ll enjoy the fact that every page on the site finally has content for the first time in almost two years. Yeah, how’s that for progress!

Your friend and mine, LucasArts.com has a new poll up, asking if you had too choose, would you rather be Sam or Max? Remember, this applies only if you had to choose. Fortunately it’s just a poll and not some sort of secret “which character should we make be the playable one” survey… right?

As many of you know, game company Infinite Machine, home of Jedi Knight designer Justin Chin, was making a Sam & Max game, presumably for XBox and maybe another console or two. As rumored on this site and in a couple other places (and eventually assumed to be true), Infinite Machine sadly folded sometime earlier this year. What happened to Sam & Max then? Well I’m a couple days late on the update due to my DSL and phone being dead, but…

SAM & MAX TO HIT THE ROAD (AND OTHERS) IN LONG AWAITED CLASSIC ADVENTURE SEQUEL FROM LUCASARTS
Popular Madcap Dog and Rabbity Thing to Return for More Hilariously Skewed Adventures First Quarter 2004 on Windows PC

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. — August 27, 2002 — Sam & Max, interactive entertainment’s most beloved canine and rabbit combo, hit the road again first quarter 2004 in a long awaited adventure comedy sequel for Windows PC from LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC. The follow up to the critically acclaimed 1993 adventure classic Sam & Max Hit the Road¨ will dispatch the Freelance Police into a wild world of screwy and vaguely quixotic missions. Each one will be jam packed with nerve-jangling action, brain-busting puzzles, and the kind of easygoing banter one might expect from a talking dog and a naked, hyperkinetic bunny. [Catch the full press release here.]

And not a single person anywhere was surprised. A few notes about the sequel: First off, as far as anyone knows, it is not a continuation of Infinite Machine’s space adventure game. Second, from the way the press release describes “many adventures” and some rumors circulating about, this game may be more episodic/serial than the previous game, possibly playable in separate small parts. Third, despite the press release not mentioning the game coming to consoles at all, LucasArts’ recent console-mad history, the game’s appearance in Shacknews’ Late Nite Consoling series, and of course good old rumor mongering, indicate that one or more ports to next-gen consoles may lie in the game’s future.

And fourth, nobody has yet divulged how much work Steve Purcell is doing on the game. He wrote the story and worked on art and game design (read: he did quite a bit of work) on Hit The Road, but the sequel’s press release says the game is based on Purcell’s characters but directed by Mike Stemmle (the designer of LucasArts’ Afterlife sim game, and a co-designer of Hit The Road and Escape from Monkey Island).

The ship date of first quarter 2004 is a little sad, but that at least gives them time to make it good. Keep your eyes on the New Game section of this site, I’ll try and keep it updated with any writeups, info, or screenshots that get put up between now and the game’s release.