It's 1994 or 95. I don't remember the exact year. I walked to the local computer game store, a place called Dream Realm. Yeah, it was a cheesy name, but it was a fun store to stop in every now again and browse the games. The cover of Sam & Max: Hit the Road caught my eye. I looked at the back and it looked funny. So I decided to give it a shot, paying for it with coin rolls. It was money from my paper route and in those days most businesses accepted rolled change without question, so I usually paid for things that way.

^{This is from a reissue by Limited Run (here). I remember my copy had a big sticker on the front disclaring it was a "talkie game" (a game with voice as opposed to just text you read yourself).}

I got home and popped the game in, and was taken away to a strange world where a dog with a huge vocabulary and a psychotic rabbit were freelance police officers and were going to an adventure to make track down a missing carnival Bigfoot. It was strange, bizarre, and lots of fun. It was an adventure game, the kind where you had to solve puzzles in order to progress, but loaded with so much humor that I didn't mind. I loved it. Over the years I probably played that game so many times that I had it memorized.

It was a new type of adventure game, a comedy adventure game. Adventure games had always had an element of humor. Even back to Zonk on the mainframe computers of the 70s, a lot of the text was tongue-in-cheek and intended to make you laugh instead of yell. But this game changed the formula and made the entire game one big gag. The company, LucasArts, was famous for their silly games, and this was another one in that tradition. The twist with this game from some of their previous is that the humor was much darker but more cartoony here.

An early example. At the beginning of the game the police commissioner calls and tells you to meet a police courier who will pass along secret orders. You head outside and find the courier is a cat. The cat informs you that it swallowed the orders for safekeeping but that it couldn't manage to hack them up. In more serious games this could have been a quest in and of itself, trying to figure out how to get them. In this game, use the psychotic rabbit on the cat and watch him stuff his arm down it's throat, pulling the plans out, and then tossing the cat somewhere off screen.

---

Anyway, a few days ago something reminded me of the game. I hadn't played it since high school, but based on my memories I decided it might be perfect for my oldest son. He's currently not much younger than I was the first time I played it.

So I downloaded and installed it, and we played through the game together.

There were many dated jokes in there that just flew right past him. For example, there is a character that looks and sounds just like Woody Allen and Sam (the main character) makes a joke about loving his early movies, "y'know, the funny ones". Neither the character he was talking to nor my son understood that joke. On the other hand, being a LucasArts game, there were several Star Wars joke and one Indiana Jones joke that my son got and enjoyed.

I controlled the game, but let my son solve the puzzles, pointing him in the right direction and suggestion solutions when he got stuck. I remembered a lot and could figure out the rest so I was able to easily guide him. The main character loves to use big words (a joke in and of itself) so I had to explain what he was saying sometimes, but otherwise my son figured out a lot of it on his own.

It was a great experience! My son loved it and wants to play it again. This next time I'll help less and see if he can do it on his own. There are at least seven more good LucasArts games†, so we have a few we can move onto next. Sam & Max is actually one of the weaker games and the rest are even funnier. This might be a new fun tradition, at least for a little bit.

If you are looking for a good experience with your kids, you might consider Sam & Max. You can buy it on Steam or GOG for only a few bucks for Windows or Mac.

---

†: Adventure Game fans feel free to argue, but offhand I'm thinking Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Monkey Island 1, 2, 3, then two harder ones: Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and Manic Mansion. If memory serves, those last two have a few mechanics that probably haven't aged well and would be really frustrating these days, but they are options anyway.

❦

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.