Go back to Sam and Max Hit The Road

Written by: Rik
Date posted: November 2, 2006

Okay, look. Everyone agrees that LucasArts adventures are great – it’s just that everyone has their own favourite. It’s hard to think of any time that this may come up in day-to-day conversation, but let’s take a hypothetical example where, in a bid to relieve the mind-crushing tedium of, say, a day at work, or, worse, a house party, and with a brave but foolhardy disregard for the tastes and interests of ‘normal’ people who spend enough of their time at work hunched over a keyboard without doing it in their spare time, you attempt to engage them in conversation about old computer games and succeed:

You: Remember those LucasArts adventures?

Bored colleague/party-goer: Yeah! They were skill.

You: Day of the Tentacle – now there’s a game.

Bored colleague/party-goer: Actually, I was more of a Sam and Max person myself.

And so on, until you both lose the will to live. But you see how it works. Here’s another example, using the same template:

You: Remember those crap eighties TV shows where criminals operated above the law and could only be taken down by maverick vigilantes in cool vehicles?

Bored colleague/party-goer: Yeah! They were skill.

You: Knight Rider – that was great.

Bored colleague/party-goer: Actually, I was more of an Airwolf person myself.

So then, Day of the Tentacle is just like Knight Rider; both feature a hero with preposterously large hair, a camp talking car and plenty of attractive, recently widowed young women who need your help. Sam and Max, however, is more like Airwolf, frequently recalling the chiselled features of Jan-Michael Vincent and memories of a crap fifth series filmed in Canada… anyway, you get the point.