With the return of Telltale Games in 2022 announcing their resumed development of The Wolf Among Us Season 2, two of their episodic games have stayed relevant up to this day. The first title is named after the dog and lagomorph cop buddy duo, Sam & Max aka The Freelance Police. The other series is about following the life of Clementine during the apocalypse of The Walking Dead.
Sam & Max returned in the remaster of their first season, Save the World in 2020 by the original team and the series creator, Steve Purcell, under the indie company publisher known as Skunkape. Three years later, Telltale Games worked alongside their collaborator at Skybound Entertainment for The Walking Dead: Definitive Edition, a four-season collection dedicated to Clementine’s journey.
As I played through the Sam & Max original trilogy and The Walking Dead: Definitive Edition, these two series are closer than players thought.
Tellatale’s Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse Set the Foundation
Believe it or not, Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse (2010) gave Telltale a new direction on how point-and-click adventures could change based on its gameplay mechanics. Instead of only controlling Sam, you now have control over Max who carries The Gift to use psychic toys for puzzles and messing around to experience various dialogue interactions.
At the series finale, Sam gets worried about Max’s monstrous condition of a brain tumor containing dark matter. Throughout the game, Sam has been experiencing Max’s near-death experiences multiple times, and his instincts are telling him his death is arriving. His choice HUD appears for the player to pick between two responses; “Recall crimefighting” and “Recall adventuring.”
“Recall crimefighting” will have Sam talking about the different criminals he and Max faced, rewarding the player with an ending with Sam and Max off to their next case. “Recall adventuring” will have Sam talking about him and Max traveling around the universe, rewarding the player with an ending with Sam and Max using the time-traveling elevator to their next adventure from Sam & Max: Beyond Space and Time.
These mechanics helped shape the gameplay of Telltale to become more than the standard point-and-click style we knew from the 80s-90s era. Telltale developers’ would experiment more with decision-making and gameplay in their collaboration with Skybound Entertainment’s Comics and Games division with Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead in 2012.
Telltale’s The Walking Dead Impact For Future Games
Telltale’s The Walking Dead Season 1 was released in 2012, two years after the success of AMC’s The Walking Dead. Skybound Entertainment’s Comics writer, Robert Kirkman reached out to Telltale after experiencing their previous title, Strongbad’s Cool Games for Attractive People, with the webtoon’s creator, Homestar Runner. He entrusted the company to provide a good narrative story with decision-making gameplay that would fit the Walking Dead’s apocalypse setting.
During the first season’s development in 2010, Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain was released exclusively for the PS3. Telltale took inspiration from Heavy Rain’s quick time events involving players to react during the action sequence. Game designer, Sean Vanaman, and writer Carl Muckenhoupt were messing around with a prototype with various inventory items to choose from and choices that will affect the player’s consequences to the world around them.
With lead artist, Derek Sakai, the game captured the comic lines, paint textures, and decay atmosphere with The Walking Dead’s cover and comic artists, Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard. Then Telltale’s character and environment 3d artist, Johnathan Banks modeled them to life. Together, they have set another standard for Telltale, the rough comic book aesthetic.
The greatest aspect came from the relationship between convict Lee Everett and the lone young girl Clementine. As Lee, the player must carefully make decisions to help him and his group survive. First-time players won’t realize until later in the story, that the choices made will influence Clementine as Lee instantly becomes her guardian. These choices all affect the group’s morale.
All of these gameplay elements gave Telltale an insight into what to expect for their upcoming project with Warner Bros. and DC Vertigo, The Wolf Among Us, and they continued to explore more gameplay possibilities in other titles like Telltale’s Batman.
Sam & Max Easter Eggs in The Walking Dead
During Telltale’s The Walking Dead‘s lifespan, 3 Sam & Max easter eggs can be found. The first one is in Kenny’s RV while searching for a pencil for the train’s notepad. There’s a powdered potassium protein drink called Banang, first appearing in Sam & Max: Beyond Time & Space. Max uses it to change the water in the ceremonial urn into this yellow beverage for the Ocean Chimps.
The second is easy to find in the first episode of Telltale’s The Walking Dead Season 2. Clementine comes across a family dog named Sam. This one is obvious for anyone who has played the Sam & Max original trilogy before their remasters. Unfortunately for Sam the Dog, Clementine had to put him down after he attacked her for a can of beans.
The last one is from the side story, Telltale’s The Walking Dead: Michonne, based on the same character from AMC’s The Walking Dead and Robert Kirkman’s comics. During her apartment flashback, the player will find three toys under the living room couch; a dinosaur, a bunny, and the robot from Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse. Don’t let its looks fool you as this item is known as the Cthonic Destroyer, equipped with a deadly ray to destroy eldritch tentacles.
The Walking Dead Easter Eggs in Sam & Max
Since Sam & Max’s revival in two of their season remasters, Skunkape has contributed their fair share of easter eggs to Telltale’s The Walking Dead. There’s a box on the case file cabinet in Sam & Max’s office in Save the World and Beyond Space & Time. In the original version, the date “03-03-04” referenced their original studio, LucasArts’ cancellation of Sam & Max: Freelance Police, the 3D sequel to Sam & Max: Hit the Road on March 4th, 2004.
In the remastered versions, a second date can be found below it. The date “09-18-18” referenced Telltale’s sudden closure after the first two episodes of Telltale’s The Walking Dead: The Final Season was released. For unknown reasons, Telltale laid off many of its employees including their head developers. Thanks to Robert Kirkman, he gathered many of the developers working on the project with the assistance of Skybound Entertainment’s Games division to finish what they started.
Beyond Time & Space’s remaster has an extra easter egg in a minigame. In Episode 3, Night of the Raving Dead, Sam and Max’s neighborhood gets overrun by partying zombies. The COPS (Computer Obsolescence Prevention Society) asked you to take out the zombies from the neighborhood with your car to earn a car antenna to charge your Nev-R-Die batteries with lightning.
As you drive, there’s a roughly drawn house with a mailbox. This is Clementine’s house from Telltale’s The Walking Dead Season 1, Episode 1. Any time Sam and Max hit a zombie in front of her house, she’ll thank them for being there. Her lines were voiced by her actress, Melissa Hutchison.
Speaking of, her role in Sam & Max is Stinky, the granddaughter chef of Grandpa Stinky. Her first appearance is in Sam & Max: Beyond Time & Space, and her last is in The Devil’s Playhouse. Will we see one more easter egg in the upcoming remaster of Sam & Max’s final adventure?
Definitely, but I’m going to let Telltale decide where it will be placed.
Telltale’s Poker Night 2 Advertised The Walking Dead
It would be a crime if I didn’t mention Telltale’s Poker Night 2‘s advertisement. A year after Telltale’s The Walking Dead Season 1‘s debut in 2012, Telltale wanted to celebrate along with Sam & Max’s 25th anniversary. They picked out their four characters for The Player to go against. Sam from Sam & Max, CL4P-TP from Borderlands, Brock Samson from Venture Bros., and Ashley J. Williams from The Evil Dead and the Army of Darkness.
So where’s The Walking Dead? In the advert, Brock is playing the first episode of Season 1. Sam, Ash, and CL4P-TP all gave him suggestions on what to do to kill the zombies at the Travelier Motel. In the game’s intro sequence, The Player enters the entrance to the Inventory for a poker tournament. The Walking Dead’s Doug is walking into a set room with piles of pizza boxes.
There was supposed to be a poker table set for the series’ first anniversary but it was cut in the final product as Ash already had a table set designed for the Army of Darkness comics. You can still find the dialogue for The Walking Dead table set using the Telltale Speech Extractor.
Telltale’s Poker Night 2 has special dialogue and events when a character is knocked out. The Host, Lord Reginald Van Winslow from Tales of Monkey Island, makes the cast freak out when they see walkers around the Inventory. According to CL4P-TP, everyone has fought zombies at one point, though Ash will point out that a deadite is about possessing a soul rather than being a brain-eating muncher. The dealer, GLaDOS from Portal, comments on the possibility of Reginald recruiting a powerful zombie fighting team.
Ash would have been cool outside his series for his execution dialogue alone, fighting zombies with his chainsaw and iconic broomstick. Soon, the Evil Dead would be referenced 5 years later in AMC’s The Walking Dead in Season 9 with its cabin and a skeleton holding the Necronomicon.
Telltale’s Love Letter
The original Telltale Games thanked these two series during the studio’s prime in the 2010s for the evolution of point-and-click adventures mixed with various gameplay and narratives. Soon, The Wolf Among Us would follow in their footsteps as Fabletown’s sheriff enters their game library.
Almost as if they parallel one another, The Wolf Among Us Season 2 was rescued from development hell after Telltale’s shutdown as much as Robert Kirkman wanted Telltale’s The Walking Dead: The Final Season to finish the story of Clementine. Now with Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse Remastered, it seems these two detectives will cross paths again with the potential of a release collaboration since both games are set to release sometime this year.
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