Long the darling of many old-school gamers, adventure games are experiencing a rebirth of sorts in the retail market. While their revolution isn't shaking up the masses yet, it's building steam, thanks to titles like Telltale Games' Sam and Max. Capitalizing on casual gaming's unstoppable growth, Telltale released a full season of episodic titles (a significant accomplishment in this day and age), and they haven't stopped yet.
If you're unfamiliar with Sam and Max, adventure gaming was referenced for a reason. They stood among the kings of point-and-click in their day, serving the peasants with raucous humor and challenging puzzles during their reign. A single game could only do so much, however, and Sam and Max Hit the Road was released back in 1993. They say that gaming civilization has evolved since then, but at the E for All Expo, a discussion with Telltale reminded me how history might to well to repeat itself.
Dan Connors, the CEO of Telltale Games, was the catalyst for my reminiscence. He noted how the original Atari had an audience that was evenly split, 50/50, between males and females. What about that lucrative but overly catered-to 18-25 male demographic, the one all the modern-day Mature-rated shooters get developed for? It wasn't Atari's focus back then. Universally popular titles like Space Invaders and Pong were their true bread and butter, and brought them the wide-spread fame that the Wii enjoys today for similar reasons.
With such an incredibly large, varied market of people to cater to, the Wii inspires developers in ways its competitors do not. With their aid, Nintendo successfully brought back that massive, casual gaming market, and they're continuing to wow it. Telltale wants to put the adventure genre through its own renaissance, and they're trying their damnedest to do it.
Sam and Max Season One was a profitable venture for them, and an admirable start. Chock-full of the same off-beat hilarity that Hit the Road (and the original comic book series that spawned it) was known for, plenty of people felt it was worth more than what they paid for it, but with room for improvement. There was no Myst-level commercial breakthrough. Telltale still had work to do.
As their marketing coordinator Emily Morganti observed, casual and hardcore gamers alike agreed with reviewers: Sam and Max Season One was a blast, but some of its deliberately repetitive elements weren't as entertaining as intended. Like Bosco's different costumes and Sybil's clockwork career changes, a number of running gags lost their luster quickly, yet they weren't abandoned. Considering that Sam and Max were there to entertain, the jokes that weren't working had to be cut from the duo's routine.
