*WARNING* Naked Bunny With Attitude!!! (Sam & Max Hit The Road (PC))

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	Sam & Max Hit The Road (PC)
Date:	03/04/02 (271 review reads)
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1993 was a damn good year for adventure games, particularly humorous adventure games! In the lull between Monkey Island games LucasArts released this twisted piece of genius, a game based upon an irreverent, politically incorrect comic by Steve Purcell. The two title characters are Sam ‘canus shamus’, a big ol’ dog policeman wannabee and his sidekick Sam...a naked hyperactive bunny with an attitude problem. Sam and Max are private detectives, they dress like them(well Sam does, Max is kinda in the buff), they have spraypainted their car to look like a 50s squad car and they’re on a case right now - to hunt down a missing Sasquatch!

Yup, you are on the trail of bigfoot. Seems that bigfoots all over the country have been disappearing from side-shows, this time one in your own neck of the woods, along with the giraffe-necked woman sideshow too and using your combined minds you manage to come to the conclusion that the disappearances may be somehow connected. Armed with that knowledge you hit the road, travelling along route 99(thats a 66 parody of course) in one of the most bizarre adventures you are likely to stumble across.


Sam And Max Hit The Road(S&M from here on, because its the only time I’ll get to write about S&M here) is one of the most quirky adventure games to hit the PC or any other platform and as such its often a name you’ll see in gamer’s top ten of all time - especially those who love adventure games. Its a 3rd person point and click adventure where all the puzzles are solved on a colourful 2D canvas by using the mouse to combine and recombine items and manipulate objects. its tough to explain properly, but if you’ve played the like of Monkey Island, or just about any other non-text based adventure game you’ll know what to expect. Equally in the vein of games like Monkey Island S&M is very funny, hilarious even as you travel down what is essentially Route 66 stumbling across s
everal parodies of the kind of tourist traps you see there and bumping into some weird and wonderful characters - and more than a few celebrities en route. Expect to see Woody Allen(he is even funny here!!), Uri Gellar amongst others and visit such tourist attractions as the World’s Largest Ball Of Twine and to get the chance to go bunjie jumping out of your favourite president’s nostril(!). I think you are getting the picture...


Its all very zany stuff, and although some of the jokes are going to be lost on most Brits because the humour is very American(parodying Country & Western stars like Conway Twitty is going to be lost on most, me included) there is still more than enough here to have you rolling about laughing on more than a few occassions. Of course, because it is so wacky there are a number of times where you do get completely stuck not knowing what to do in order to progress further into the game and it turns out you have to do something totally off the wall to solve that nagging puzzle, but its a minor fault and you’ll forgive it - after you’ve reached for the walkthrough and lost several clumps of hair that is! As I said, S&M is getting on in age a bit and the graphics are beginning to look a little dated to say the least. fortunately games which were drawn in the cartoon style tend to age much better than those which were drawn attempting more realism back in the day, so S&M doesn’t suffer too harshly. It looks OK, the warped cartoon style suiting the humour perfectly, but there is none of the attention to detail seen in some of the more impressive VGA drawn titles of around that period such as Simon The Sorceror. The music is excellent, many characters having their own theme tune, from country, to bluegrass and for Sam and Max themselves jazz, all of course midi files but still rather cool. Conversations between characters are where the game really comes alive though, packed with cynical comments, witticism
s and snappy one-liners that’ll have you choking on your coffee and donuts!


One thing to note though is that S&M is a DOS game and as such if you have ever had a problem installing DOS games then you might want to be wary of this title. Yes you can usually give them a tweak and they’ll work but its a pain in the butt and some older games like Zool(got it free anyway) I have never been able to get working - so its worth baring that in mind. Another thing to note is that LucasArts have deemed it fit for a parental warning on the cover outlining that it might not be suitable for children. Personally I can’t see why they would do this but as a parent you might want to check it out yourself first before letting your corruptible little darlings near it - like I said, I really can’t see anything in here which were it a movie, would give it a rating higher than PG!

If you are in the mood for some loopy fun then you’ll be well advised to check out this title from yesteryear. If you can’t find a copy in the shops(I think they still sell it on a budget label) then look for the LucasArts gamepack Vol. 1 which also comes with several other rather good games from the same time period at a rather nice price. Its definitely worth a look.

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