Sam & Max: Hit the Road

Moby ID: 745
DOS Specs
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$87.48 used on eBay
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Description official descriptions

Sam and Max - a canine shamus and a hyperkinetic rabbit - are the freelance police: private investigators who receive missions from and are answerable to "The Commissioner". Upon the completion of a rescue mission from the clutches of a mad scientist, the duo drives through the opening credits and immediately receives a new assignment: Bruno the Bigfoot is missing from the circus and seems to have kidnapped Trixie, the Giraffe-Neck Girl. Sam and Max are on the case and will follow the mystery all across the United States, even if it takes them to such locations as The World's Largest Ball of Twine and The Mount Rushmore Dinosaur Tarpit.

Sam & Max Hit the Road is a puzzle-solving point-and-click adventure game. The player directly controls Sam, though Max will usually follow closely behind and is even available to use directly as an item in the inventory. Sam is able to be directed anywhere on the screen, look at objects, try to use objects, try to speak to objects and use items from his inventory on objects. Sam and Max must unravel the mystery piece by piece in order to unlock new locations on their map. They can travel between these locations at any time by using the car keys on their police car.

During conversation, the player is able to make Sam ask questions of persons, speak non-sequitur exclamations, or ask about specific objects, people, and locations (which are also unlocked as clues are discovered). The verb interface from previous LucasArts adventure games has been modified to icon-based commands, allowing the entire screen to be used for the playing area, similarly to Sierra titles.

The game also features a variety of mini-games, which can be accessed at any time once found. These include Highway-Surfing: a game where the player must jump over exit signs on the interstate, Car Bomb: a variant of Battleship, a Sam & Max coloring book, a Sam & Max dress-up game, and a Whac-a-Mole variant entitled Wak-A-Rat. The CD version of the game includes voice-overs for all the conversations.

Spellings

  • סם ומקס מתגלגלים בדרכים - Hebrew spelling
  • 妙探闖通關 - Traditional Chinese spelling
  • 萨姆和马克斯 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

85 People (77 developers, 8 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 88% (based on 37 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 327 ratings with 16 reviews)

When your Bigfoot disappears, who you gonna call? Sam & Max!

The Good
"Sam & Max hit the road" based on the cult comic book "Sam & Max freelance police" by Steve Purchell are perhaps LucasArts finest opus. Sam, the dog and Max, the rabbit (well, actually he's a lagomorph a cross between bunny and wolverine but enough about that) are the freelance police, their mission is to find Bruno the Bigfoot and Trixie the giraffe-necked girl from Scranton who has disappeared from the local carnival. During the search for the two missing freaks Sam and Max travels to various wacky tourist attractions and meets up with even wackier characters, my personal favorites were the cursing Uri Geller-lookalike and the demented country-western star, Conroy Bumpus. The game is filled with absurd humor and funny punchlines, you control Sam and uses Max as a tool on various things in the game often with some hilarious results. As you may have understand by now humor plays a large part in this game, there's nothing serious about "Sam & Max hit the road" just plain old fun. Actually it should have a warning text on it: "Warning! May cause you to die laughing if you play it too much.

The Bad
Some of the puzzles can be pretty obscure otherwise it's more than good.

The Bottom Line
LucasArts at their best.

DOS · by Colonel Olrik (7) · 2005

The best adventure game ever !!!!

The Good
The adventure game world is divided into 2 parts - the part before Sam & Max and the part after....nothing in each part could come close to Sam & Max.... Sam & Max is a humorous adventure featuring a dog and a rabbit who go on a road trip across the USA... the plot may not be a very profound one but it's great nevertheless... The game is filled with wacky animations and sounds ( and voices for the lucky ones with the CD-Full-Talkie Version ) which contribute to the atmosphere... The game is also very, VERY, VERY funny....

The Bad
There's nothing bad I can say about the game but I have something bad to say about the sequel Lucasarts are preparing right now ... It's 3D !!!! if you check out the official website for Sam & Max 2 you can see that characters like these can't live in a 3D world because it's not wacky enough....

The Bottom Line
Great game... get it now !!!

DOS · by Daniel Albu (248) · 2003

The "Life of Brian" of video games

The Good
The best aspect of the game is something that will never go old: it's hilarious. The dialogue is, if possible, even wittier than in Monkey Island and Grim Fandango. And the characters: Sam is a tough-as-nails detective dog who loves big words and inexplicable metaphors. Max is a hyperkinetic, psychotic and violent rabbit. How can you go wrong with a pair like this? The humor, mostly an excellent combination of insane dialogue and creative slapstick, may not be intended for the kiddies, but I still think that this game can be enjoyed no matter what your age is.

Somehow, the game's colorful graphics, animation and music seem to be timeless, and make the game feel like an interactive animated movie. The voice acting is great, especially the voices of the leading duo, Bill Farmer (Sam) and Nick Jameson (Max). Jameson also plays the hilarious lead villain: Conroy Bumpus, a country-western star with an unconvincing British accent and even less convincing hairpiece.

The interface is better than in the earlier LucasArts adventures. The verbs at the bottom of the screen are gone, replaced by a simpler but more effective method. Your options are limited to "use", "pick up", "talk", "walk to" and "look at", but it works fine. Even better is the redesigned dialogue: you can no longer see what you're about to say in advance, so the joke isn't killed by having to read it and then hear the character say it.

Finally, the minigames that you can buy from the "Snuckey's" stores offer a great change of pace, especially if you get stuck. The minigames are something that I'd like to see in more adventure games.

The Bad
It's not perfect, though, and not even the best LucasArts adventure there is. My main problem was with the puzzle design. Though the puzzles in Monkey Island were somewhat absurd, they were still logical. Sam and Max don't care about logic, which sometimes forces you to try pretty much everything until you get the right option. There are also cases when the item you needed to pick up blended into the scenery or was impossible to find. I don't want to spoil the game for anyone, so I'll just use one example: how on earth was I supposed to know where Sam and Max keep their money? Illogical puzzles are a problem in almost every adventure game, but it's still annoying.

The story, featuring Sam and Max hunting a missing Bigfoot, becomes way more interesting than it sounds, but I still would have appreciated something more memorable. Also, the music, despite being made by the same composers, is less memorable and more annoying than in, say, Monkey Island.

Finally, the game somehow feels shorter than other LucasArts games, which was unfortunate.

These are just minor issues and don't ruin the game at all, though.

The Bottom Line
A great adventure game full of madcap, anarchistic humor that can be enjoyed by just about anyone.

DOS · by Zokolov (49) · 2012

[ View all 16 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Sam & Max TV show on DVD? It can happen! Foxhack (32102) Jun 18, 2007

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Sam & Max Hit the Road appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Cancelled sequel

A sequel to Sam & Max Hit the Road, Sam & Max Freelance Police, was developed, but cancelled on March 3rd, 2004 because LucasArts thought it was "not the appropriate time to release a graphic adventure game on the PC." Despite many petitions and negative feedback about the cancellation, the game was not put back into production.

Sam & Max

During the time in which Steve Purcell worked at LucasArts, Sam & Max (or only Max) made cameos in many other games, including Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2, The Curse of Monkey Island, Day of The Tentacle, Rebel Assault II, Jedi Knight, Full Throttle or Shadows of the Empire.

Sam & Max franchise

Sam & Max were not invented for this game, but are part of a whole franchise by Steve Purcell. The media they appeared include the original comics and a cartoon which aired on FOX kids in 1997/98 (awarded with the 1998 Gemini Award for Best Animated Series). Purcell also made one-page Sam & Max spoofs of LucasArts games for The Adventurer, a periodical newspaper for LucasArts employees.

Soundtrack

The CDROM contains four Redbook audio tracks that have the "Sam & Max Theme", "Moleman Music", "King of the Creatures", and "Bigfoot Shuffle" music from the game.

References

  • The music that plays at the World of Fish locale sounds an awful lot like the song "Fishing Blues", which was originally written by blues musician Taj Majal.
  • When you go to Snuckey's, the man serving you is Bernard Bernoulli, a character from Day of the Tentacle.
  • There are multiple references to LucasFilm movies in the game. When Shuv-Oohl karmically links with the Yetis, he says "It's, like, several voices screaming out in terror... and then suddenly silenced.", a reference to a classic Star Wars quote. Using the droid manual on the security droid in Bumpusville results in the droid projecting a hologram of Princess Leia, like R2D2 did. Finally, using the Conroy Bumpus eggplant on the toupee in his bedroom results in a parody of a classic scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
  • When asked what he's reading, Lee-Harvey replies, "Dialenics, by Elrod Hubbel, It's changing my life." This is a reference to L. Rod Hubbard, who started a religion based on a novel he wrote.
  • During the conversation with the Cat outside the office building, Max comments "He looks cute Sam. Can I make a tennis racquet out of him?". This is in reference to the fact that the strings in tennis racquets used to be made from a natural fibre called Catgut, which is produced from the intestines of animals such as cows, horses, mules and donkeys. Despite the name, Catgut has never been produced using a cat's intestines.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) - #95 in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) –#7 Funniest Computer Game
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #8 Most Memorable Game Heroes (Sam & Max)
    • February 2006 (Issue #259) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
  • PC Gamer
    • April 2005 - # 45 in the "50 Best Games of All Time" list
  • PC Powerplay (Germany)
    • Issue 06/2005 - #5 Likeable Secondary Character (for Max)

Information also contributed by James1, John Wallace, Mitch Kocen, NatsFan, Paul Graves, PCGamer77, Satoshi Kunsai, shifter and Trixter

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Nathan Kovner.

Linux added by Sciere. Antstream added by lights out party. Windows added by Ben K. Macintosh added by Jason Savage.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Zack Green, Apogee IV, Sciere, Crawly, Zeppin, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack, El Bosso.

Game added January 13, 2000. Last modified March 23, 2024.