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Remi must have missed this interview with Dan Connors and Jonathon Sgro of Skunkape Games last week, and it’s too bad, because it’s quite good. Most of the discussion focuses on what went into the development of the Sam & Max remasters, including throwing Jake under the bus at one point. But if I know you, you probably want to know what they said about The Future™:

Time Extension: With the Sam & Max games done, it would be interesting to hear what's next for the studio — what have the conversations been like internally regarding Skunkape's future? Do you anticipate working on more remasters like this or do you envision yourselves making something else entirely?

Connors: Well, we've developed something that's really powerful, which is the ability to remaster games in the Telltale engine, and there's a lot of stuff there, but they all have tricky situations around them because it's not like four years ago.

Now there's different ownership around a whole bunch of it, so we're trying to develop the right relationships there, because that's super interesting to us, and we're the right people to do it. I think the Sam & Max stuff has shown that. You know, aside from that, that's something we've got to figure out because everybody's too talented to not be working on something cool. So we just gotta figure out what it is.

Time Extension: A big thing that I've seen people say online in terms of Skunkape's future is, 'I hope they do this for Tales of Monkey Island' or 'I hope they do this for another Telltale game'. We definitely think Tales, in particular, is a game that definitely could benefit from this kind of treatment, with new lighting and things like that. It would look amazing. And I guess Disney has kind of shown some interest in doing stuff with Monkey Island again: reuniting with Ron and letting him kind of do his thing with Return to Monkey Island, but then also like doing the Sea of Thieves' crossover as well.

Connors: Yeah like we would love that. That would be amazing.

Time Extension: Yeah, I think it would definitely help introduce those games to a new audience and get the message out, 'Hey, you know these Telltale Monkey Island games are fun to play'. What do you think?

Connors: Yeah, there are things in Tales that I think we might have rushed or concepts that we thought were gonna work, that we got to a certain point, and then kind of failed before we had fully executed them. And even on Sam and Max, there were a couple of those, and when we do this process, we can say, 'Those two or three last things that we wanted to do to make this sing, we can do now.' And I think that's one of the subtle things that makes these remasters so great.

Sgro: Yeah. I love working on these things because back at Telltale — like I worked at every game on Telltale — there were always things that we couldn't have done because of the technology or the budget or time or all of that stuff combined.

You look at the final result and it's like, 'Yeah, it's great, it could be better.' So now it's just been fun taking the Sam & Max games and trying to make them the best that they could possibly be and improve all those things that we didn't have a chance to do originally. So, personally, I'd love to do that to any Telltale product pretty much. But it's limited on what we could do.

Connors: If we had a time machine, we would go back to when we got Sam & Max and try to do more but you know it is what it is.

Well, that all sounds rather definitively…ambiguous. Check out the whole thing, and buy The Devil’s Playhouse eight more times.

Source: Time Extension

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Release day has come and gone, and whether you binged your way through Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse: Remastered or you’re making a point of savoring it (or you’re merely employed), the game is pretty much the only purpose your life serves at the moment. And rightly so.

While Remi’s review is really the only one you need to consider, I guess we should point out that critics everywhere are taking the necessary steps to not make fools of themselves by aggressively loving the game. Meanwhile, Skunkape has published its traditional Steam post that goes deep into exactly what they changed in their fastidious remastering efforts. Some of it May Surprise You. Cover-up image

Additionally, they assure that the usual sack of archival content, along with the soundtrack release you’ve all been awaiting since, oh, let’s say 2010, is forthcoming. Where the former is concerned, followers of Skunkape’s social media presence have already gotten a taste, and quite the nourishing one at that for proper connoisseurs of vintage web announcement ephemera:

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Speaking of social media, I was happy to see that Chuck Jordan, whose last big contribution (his greatest to adventure games, if I might suggest?) at Telltale was The Devil's Playhouse, registered his thoughts for the occasion:

The three-years-in-the-making revamp of Telltale’s masterpiece is what is termed in esoteric Mixnmojo parlance A Big Deal, and we can naturally be expected to keep squeezing juice out of it for weeks years an appropriate and judicious length of time to come. So get ready to relish every second of it.

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They said it couldn’t be done and they were mostly right. But, this one time, you get a review on time: Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse Remastered, right here, right now.

Do we like the game? We do! And so will you, because you presumably don’t suck. Go read, just to whet your appetite.

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Sure, he might have pointedly kept Mojo out of the loop when it came to that furtive GDC showing back in April, and you’re right to challenge the morality of that, but the fact is, Jake looks to have achieved something pretty darned special with Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse: Remastered: The Omen II, so I say why let his pettiness dominate the discussion?

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We’ve got ourselves a release date of August 14th , and that’ll be a simultaneous PC, Switch, Xbox and Playstation launch. You probably wouldn’t be wrong to keep your eye on the official site for more. One assumes that, as with the other seasons, Skunkape will eventually prepare an album release, and in so doing, a historical wrong would be righted. I’ll let our 2021 interview with Bay Area Sound do the explaining for me:

Mojo The-International-House-Of: When Telltale’s first two Sam & Max seasons originally came out, they received pressed soundtrack albums that were sold through the company store. However, Telltale dramatically scaled back on cool physical items by the time they made The Devil’s Playhouse, thus its soundtrack never got a CD release of its own to complete the collection. Is there room to hope that this situation can be redeemed someday?

Jared Emerson-Johnson: I assure you that nobody in the world is sadder about the shift in the merchandise policies at Telltale than yours truly. In fact, I was halfway through preparing season three soundtrack album masters when the policy shift occurred. Without making any promises, I will say that we will hopefully have something exciting to announce in a year or two.

Physical or no, the arrival of an official soundtrack of any persuasion would be redemption. The gears of justice turn slowly, my friends, but oh do they turn. Now that the third, final, and best of Telltale’s Sam & Max seasons (and/or entire damned library) has been tarted up for the ball and will soon be in your grubby hands, the question remains: What does the future hold for Skunkape? And would they bother telling us if they knew? You’d hate for them to put themselves out.

Source: Skunkape

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Largely considered the best Sam & Max game by those who count, The Devil’s Playhouse is set for its remastered “spring“ release.

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And sweet it looks! Go wishlist the censored on Steam. The game will also be available for Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 4.

Addendum! There’s also a contest:

If you could make a Christmas gift for Sam & Max creator Steve Purcell, what would it be? This is the theme of Skunkape's first-ever "Oops, We Missed Halloween So Let's Do a Holiday Contest Instead" contest, launching today!

Steam has more.

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Last we reported, Bill Tiller was putting together a demo for A Vampyre Story 2: A Bat’s Tale to pitch out to publishers in the hopes of restarting production. In a quick update, Bill says, “Still working on the AVS2 publisher demo, but it is rapidly winding up and looks fantastic! My team has done a tremendous job.” So, know that. While waiting, he encourages you to pre-order that pop-up board game he worked on, Shivers.

’Course, nobody was exactly expecting that A Vampyre Story 2 was imminent. On the other hand, Skunkape’s much-anticipated remaster of Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse had openly targeted a 2023 release, and December has traditionally been the release window for these. Yes, I’d say it’s high time that Jake guy explains himself. And so he has, in that globally recognized confessional that the guilty are always free to avail themselves of, the Mojo forums:

Season 3 has been a significantly more rude game to remaster, technically. It did things with the Telltale Tool that are basically unsupported in modern versions that use a more modern rendering pipeline. We have conscripted three ex-Telltale engine/graphics programmers to help bend the modern engine to our will, but it has taken a lot of annoying and uncertain experimentation.

So it’s coming, you just gotta wait a little longer. You can handle it. Heck, you probably won’t even be sobered up from all those no-holds-barred Grim Fandango 25th anniversary bacchanals (they’ve been sweeping the nation) by the time it hits the streets. I’m here to tell ya, the one my grandma hosted did not spare the hookah water in those coffin shooters.

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Look, we barely use the pit of despair known as Twitter these days, and I’m not sure any of us have a Facebook account. Therefore, it’s barely our fault we missed this little Steve Purcell nugget:

As the image indicates, it was posted over at Sam & Max Funhouse, a domain that mercilessly redirects to Facebook. Mojo’s critical stance: That art deserves better.

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Because he likes breaking my heart, Steve Purcell’s official Sam & Max presence these days remains…a Facebook page. Though he often uses it to re-run vintage Sam & Max art, he’ll occasionally slip in a new piece.

Trouble is, you pretty much have to be as diligent as samandmax.co.uk to notice such things in a timely manner, and who could be expected to be their equal? So if you keep up with them (as you should), you already know that Purcell rang in the new year with this gem:

Hey, why not? With the as-of-yet-undated release of The Devil’s Playhouse Remastered due out sometime this year, it will indeed be a noteworthy year for Max. It’s also the 30th anniversary of Sam & Max Hit the Road, so maybe someone out there should get cracking on the retrospective? We did ours 15 years in, so now it’s your turn. We’ll even host it for you.

Update: It's been brought to my attention that the Twitter account https://twitter.com/samandmax does a reliable job of posting any new art that Purcell puts out, so you may want to be keeping tabs on that as well.

Source: Sam & Max Funhouse

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We’re not at our best when we’re acknowledging deaths two years past, but punctually or not we must give a proper salute to voice actor Doug Boyd, who passed away in 2021. Boyd was a go-to talent for Telltale Games, a relationship that stretched all the way back to the dawn of the studio, when he nailed the role of Smiley Bone in Out from Boneville and The Great Cow Race. Anchoring a game wasn’t beyond his talents either, as he went on to voice Nelson Tethers himself in that gem of a series Puzzle Agent. And when it comes to all the roles he played in the Sam & Max games, they’re almost too numerous to list. Fortunately, as it often does, the Sam & Max Wiki has us covered:

  • Specs
  • Drivers
  • Puppet President
  • Slushie
  • Maimtron 9000 (Beyond Time and Space)
  • Red Elf
  • Documentary Narrator
  • WARP Announcer
  • Train Conductor

Reading that list makes me feel all the more grateful for the work that Skunkape and Bay Area Sound do on the remasters, as the higher sample quality they achieve by going back to the original recordings preserves these wonderful performances.

Boyd’s game voiceover reel (which, in a Small World moment, was put together by fellow Telltale regular Adam Harrington) remains online, and offers a nice encapsulation of his resume:

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We’ve possibly become a bit entitled, having been delivered superb Sam & Max remasters two Decembers in a row. The third and final – and, let’s face it, best – season from the Telltale archives is obviously requiring a bit more elbow grease, but Skunkape has offered official assurances today that it’s most definitely on its way:

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Just as Mojo was ready to embrace the sweet release of death, it’s condemned to afforded another welcome lifeline.

Source: Youtube

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You can never have too much Sam & Max in your life, nor too much vinyl, which is why this is a perfect package for you.

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Chef’s kiss!

Sam & Max Save the World OST on three discs in a loving analog format, composed, of course, by Jared Emerson-Johnson. I mean, look at the thing, how could you not want that on your living room shelf? Go purchase, but note: Only two per customer. So don’t be too greedy.

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You’ve already preordered that game that releases on International Talk Like a Pirate Day, so why not grab another couple of adventures this September:

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You can never own enough copies of the excellent Sam & Max remasters, so this should be good news for everyone!

The games will run you $20 each, and you can find them here:

Save the World: North America and Europe.

Beyond Time and Space: North America and Europe.

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If you’re not paying attention to samandmax.co.uk, you’re decidedly not part of the cool crowd. The site’s latest feature is an interview with voice actor Chuck Kourouklis, a recurring cast presence in the Telltale catalog. His more notable roles were Mr. Norrington in Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse and the Ferryman to the pirate crossroads in Tales of Monkey Island.

What were the recording sessions like for Sam & Max?

Damn difficult in one respect – like many of the best-written projects, you fall apart like Harvey Korman in a Carol Burnett skit (am I giving you all some wild stuff to Google and YouTube or what?) Seriously, you just break up and collapse laughing in the most inopportune moments, and Sam & Max was MURDER that way. I hope at least there was a writer gratified to hear how he wrecked my professionalism, somewhere in the creative chain…

Read his recollections in full, and look forward to re-experiencing his Sam & Max performance in higher quality whenever Skunkape can get that Season 3 remaster to you.

And speaking of Sam & Max voice actors, let me quickly work in this month-old tweet of a fan’s happy run-in with Bill Farmer, the original Sam and parenthetically the voice of Goofy.

Source: samandmax.co.uk

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Skunkape’s exulted remaster of Sam & Max Save the World has long been available from all your favorite digital storefronts, and there were the Limited Run Games collectors editions for those who demanded it expensive and in their hands. You might have thought that accommodated every possible consumer, but that would have overlooked the people who required to see it on Best Buy shelves:

I’ll admit, it hurts that they’d go with a pull-quote from Nintendo Life when Mojo’s contemporary rave, “Is it okay to say that I prefer Bone?” was there for the taking, but everyone sees a different statue in the marble, I guess. Literally go out and buy!

Source: Best Buy

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You think the previously announced Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space package is the only big boxed Sam & Max themed income-guzzler you're going to be pre-ordering come May 6th? Think again:

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I, for one, am excited—Limited Run Games’ Sam & Max Save The World collector’s edition was an incredibly well put-together set, so consider the just-announced Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space an instant purchase. Semi-instant. They won’t take orders until May 6th. That aside, here’s what awaits you:

  • Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space on physical media
  • Bonus features DVD containing trailers, developer’s commentary, and other video goodies from the game’s original 2007-2008 production
  • Five episode postcards
  • Mini print of Steve Purcell’s "Autopsy" art (originally created for the March 2007 cover of Game Developer magazine)
  • Waterproof Banang sticker
  • Reproduction of Telltale’s Sam & Max Season Two Case File containing a souvenir from each of the game’s five cases: "The Friendly Demon Song" on mini CD, a Tiny Tiki drink coaster, Jurgen’s rave flier, one of eight random time cards, and a Soul Train subway token

$70 for the PC version, $80 for the Switch, which is pretty much them paying you to buy the set. Check out the LRG store for more, and get ready to open your wallet on May 6th.

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The eminent Jared Emerson-Johnson's work on the Telltale Sam & Max soundtracks is rightly celebrated, and his opportunity to polish it even further for the Skunkape remasters was justly met with excitement.

But in the final analysis, is something truly of any worth until it's been discussed on public radio? To the relief of millions, it's a question that doesn't need to be confronted, as Jared was invited to be interviewed by WSHU. Listen to it, then head over to Bandcamp to buy the soundtracks eight more times.

Source: WSHU

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Just as they made a point of doing with Sam & Max Save the World, Skunkape has followed up their remaster of Sam & Max Beyond Time a Space with original builds as gratis DLC* and a bountiful archive of legacy bonus and promotional videos. Here, they’ve pretty much done all the legwork for us with these tweets:

*Unless you bought on GOG, in which case you've already got that.

Source: Twitter

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There’s not much more to say, really. Get it from GOG for $20 minus a cent. Need a trailer? There’s that, too.

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It happened for Save the World last year, and the joined forces of Skunkape and Bay Area Sound weren’t about to drop the ball on the even more ambitious soundtrack for the second season. What I'm saying is the re-release is available now from Bandcamp and Steam for a ludicrous ten bucks. (The old release is still up as well, so don’t be getting confused.)

As you know well from playing the remaster fifty times already, it includes eight all-new music tracks, extending an already gigantic score. It looks like the album cover got some rethought lettering as well (old versus new), though the comparison mostly just serves as a reminder of how awesome Purcell’s artwork is. One wonders: Since The Devil’s Playhouse never received a proper album back in 2010 and Skunkape seem to possess the kind of taste that would make addressing that an imperative, might we see the trilogy completed at last? I guess we’ll find out in a year or so. For now, exercise the privilege of owning Jared Emerson-Johnson’s staggering opus for Beyond Time and Space.

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