After enjoying a cult following as the stars of an underground comic, Steve Purcell's madcap duo were long overdue for a game of their own, an idea that became a reality in 1993 with Sam & Max Hit the Road. After parodying LEC games in the company's internal magazine and making hidden cameos within many of the games themselves, a graphic adventure vehicle seemed like the next logical step for the anthropomorphic crime fighters. The project was headed by first time Project Leaders Mike Stemmle and Sean Clark, with Purcell himself serving as part of the core team. Like Day of the Tentacle, which came out the same year, Sam & Max is often associated with the Golden Era of LEC and of adventure games in general, both in terms of the quantity and quality of the genre's output.

For the deprived souls who are unaware, I suppose some background is in order. "Sam & Max" or "Sam & Max Freelance Police" is a semi-obscure and irregularly published comic created by Steve Purcell, whose offbeat creations were first publicly exposed in the 80s. When Purcell joined Lucasfilm Games around that time, his characters came with him, and they soon became popular within the company to the point of being almost unofficial mascots of sorts. Sam is a six foot dog in 1930s style police getup, and his partner Max is a three foot, "hyperkinetic rabbity-thing." Together they are a pair of private detectives who tackle rather unique mysteries, often at the behest of the enigmatic Commissioner over the phone. In their indestructible Desoto squad car they patrol the streets of their grimy New York neighborhood, and often places more exotic (such as ancient Egypt or the Moon) and/or bizarre, where they solve twisted and improbable cases through casual indifference and the misuse of firearms.

Their adventures are light on reverence and heavy on absurdity, making for some of the most hilarious comics you're likely to read (and which have recently been re-released after years of shamelessly exorbitant eBay sales). Despite the charmingly edgy characters often wielding their oversized weapons and cruising and abusing in their Desoto, their creative solutions to their rather singular challenges make them a much better fit to the graphic adventure genre than a more action oriented one. (Though I wouldn't mind seeing an attempt.)

The story of Hit the Road is loosely based on one of the characters' full-length comic adventures, "Sam & Max On the Road," and sees the mayhem-causing investigators traveling all across the continental U.S. on a hunt for a bigfoot named Bruno, who ran away from his carnival freak show of employment along with his romantic partner, the giraffe-necked girl from Scranton. The case takes Sam and Max through cheap tourist traps and roadside attractions for clues (including such locales as the Biggest Ball of Twine and the Mystery Vortex), and acquaints them with a number of crazy suspects and grotesque miscreants (including the likes of profane, wrench-bending psychics, hygienically unencumbered carnies, and intergalactic molemen, to scrape the tip of the iceberg) with the game primarily parodying Americana but making jabs at just about everything else it can in that patently insane and brilliant way that only Sam & Max can.

Along the way the pair discovers that Bruno and his equally freakish girlfriend have been kidnapped by unscrupulous country music star Conroy Bumpus, who employs animal abuse as a selling point of his performances. It's up to the self-accredited detectives to free the freaks from their bonds, avert catastrophe for the surviving race of bigfoots, and cause about as much damage to private property as possible while doing it. In short, it's another average day in the life of the Freelance Police.

The next in the long and noble line of SCUMM games, the gameplay of Sam & Max Hit the Road will be familiar to anyone accustomed with its forerunners, though it must be said that Sam & Max does make a pretty active effort to change things up a bit. Instead of a set of verbs and inventory taking up the bottom fourth of the screen, Sam & Max opts for an icon-based interface, likely something that low resolutions made impossible for older games (and which was somewhat similar to the interface Sierra pioneered around that time). It's a pretty significant change from what came before it, at least visually, but the experience remains a fairly streamlined and user-friendly one. The verbs are replaced here by cursor icons, such as Sam's hand or an eyeball, which can be tabbed or right-clicked through to get to the action you need. It is also even possible to "use" Max, should the need arise, which it does in a few puzzles. Sam's inventory is collected on a screen that is brought up when you select the ragged cardboard box icon on the left hand corner.

The icon driven approach extends to the conversations as well. Instead of text-based dialog trees, Sam is given a set of icons that represents the brand of verbal interrogation you can have him deliver: a question, an exclamation, a non-sequitur, and any relevant topics that apply. That the player doesn't actually know what Sam will say until he says it has the benefit of jokes not being ruined, but on the flip side I'm not sure it was the ideal method either, since it has a way of making things too vague at times when it isn't necessarily desired. The more recent Telltale episodes, which retain text-based dialog trees but don't necessarily give away what's best kept a surprise, seem to hit the right balance. All in all, Sam & Max's experimental interface represents an interesting change, if not necessarily one for the better. In any event, it was not continued.

Like all great adventure games, Sam & Max Hit the Road has a lot to offer, but what this game will always be remembered for is its humor and writing, which expertly adapts the unique style of the comics. The sheer inspired absurdity of the overall proceedings and the dialog between the characters, which frequently breaks through the fourth wall, is easily the biggest strength of the game. The most fun you'll have playing Sam & Max Hit the Road will probably come not from the main story or the puzzles, but simply from the character exchanges. Oftentimes you'll find yourself having Sam and Max talk to each other just to hear whatever hilarious nonsense is on their minds. As your constant, non-playable companion, Max is simultaneously a source of amusement and of hints, which he can deliver in veiled ways within the sarcastic banter. As usual, this is an LEC adventure where some of the best lines come from unnecessary poking around, such as checking out the answering machine or taking a quick peek inside the local convenience store. In fact, Hit the Road is one of the most quotable of LEC's adventures, and one need only boot up the game long enough to witness the iconic intro sequence to see why it's never been forgotten.

The absolutely superb art, to which Purcell himself heavily contributed, is the game's other major strength. The painted background illustrations, character design, and animation (all brought to life by of the likes of Peter Chan and Larry Ahern) is all top notch and holds up wonderfully, with the compression of the artwork hurting the game surprisingly little fifteen years later. I know the ageless quality of this game's visual side echoes sentiments I've shared about most other LEC games, but what can I say? These are simply gorgeous games that were brought to life by extremely talented people, who always embraced technology, yet used it to enhance, rather than constitute, the attractiveness of the product.

The insane universe of Purcell's comic creation is brilliantly realized here. Packing tons of detail and edginess in every screen, this game keeps some consistency with its loony style, yet it's nothing if not diverse. Technically speaking, the game seems like it's on precisely the same level as DOTT, with a few nifty lighting effects and other (at the time, at least) impressive advancements sneaking appearances every now and then, adding to the visuals in subtle ways. There's even some fancy-pants primitive 3D modeling going on, such as in the helicopter and Biggest Ball of Twine tram animations. Really though, it's the art itself that makes this game pleasing to look at to this day.

"When the worst thing you can say of an adventure game is that it's not LEC's best, you're hardly unleashing anything slanderous. It's certainly held up better in fifteen years than I will. "

What adventure games excel at in other areas they tend to lack in replay value, and the genre is always making attempts to address this. To this end, Hit the Road is the first LEC adventure to really make use of minigames. While the immortal Wak-a-Rat (which is exactly what it sounds like) is essential to the game's completion, most of the minigames (available at the three Snuckey's establishments scattered across the map) are unnecessary time wasters that have no bearing on the actual plotline. Ostensibly, these minigames were included to give players something to do during times when they got stuck and while I question the success in that particular regard, there's no question that diversions like Car Bomb are downright brilliant as self-contained shenanigans. Then there's Surfin' the Highway, accessible on the map, which is a decidedly less successful effort (as most action oriented sequences implemented with the SCUMM engine tended to be) that continues to baffle experts to this day. Overall, the minigames in Hit the Road are arguably as memorable as any other aspect of the game.

On the audio side, Hit the Road more than keeps up with the company's high standards. The still fairly new digital sound effects are of a similar vein to DOTT (and in fact, the two games share many of them) and duly serve their purpose, appropriately supplying a loud crash or a painful thud when it's of benefit the comedy. The iMUSE-utilized MIDI soundtrack, composed by Clint Bajakian, Michael Land, and Peter McConnell, reflects the diversity of the game's visuals, though it roots the characters' main themes (particularly in the New York locales) in a jazzy, noir style that perfectly captures the gumshoe aspect of the characters while having enough attitude and personality to stay true to their boisterous natures as well. The music always feels appropriate to the scenery and is oftentimes rather catchy. (I've always been partial to Biggest Ball of Twine tune, personally.) Notably, the game features a full-fledged, centerpiece musical number, with Conroy Bumpus performing a vocal country tune with some electrifying surprises. It's brilliantly hilarious and disturbing at the same time, and thus about as Sam & Max as you can get.

The voice acting of the game stands with Day of the Tentacle as one of the best early efforts in a video game, with the jokes actually being improved, rather than hurt, by the performances. (This was also the last adventure game which LEC offered a dual release for, with both floppy and CD Talkie versions. Subsequent adventure games were CD-based only.) Bill Farmer (who was at the time and remains Disney's current voice for Goofy) and Nick Jameson star as the title characters, and do an excellent job of bringing the not-so-cuddly animals to life while delivering the jokes with a pitch perfect pizzazz. Like DOTT, I'd say Hit the Road is as good as this stuff gets in 1993, and fans were completely happy with Farmer and Jameson's work (and the consensus seems to be that they were far superior to the voices in the Saturday morning cartoon), and it's not surprising to know that Purcell was involved in the casting. The supporting characters are equally well suited, from B-movie legend Evelyn Morrison to the accommodating vegetable lady. Overall, it's another Grade A audio job from a company from which such was expected.

The excellence of all of the above makes any faults that Hit the Road has incapable of tarnishing its badge too much; however, the game does have a significant problem that has only become far more noticeable over the years – its puzzle design. While the bizarre and nonsensical nature of the obstacles that Sam and Max face are perfectly reflective of the characters' personalities, and they're certainly as creative and fun (as ideas, anyway) as any you'll find in an adventure game, their solutions don't do much in the way of contributing to a rewarding or enjoyable experience. Hit the Road can be a rather frustrating game, and I don't think I'm falling victim to hyperbole when I say that some of the puzzles are downright ridiculous. Whether you're exercising unconventional uses for ball retrievers or trying to master the mechanical controls for a rotating diner, Hit the Road's puzzles are a lot of things, but logical isn't really one of them, with lateral thinking (if not a walkthrough) being a constant necessity.

What separates the puzzle design of Hit the Road from, say, Day of the Tentacle is that the latter had a palpable if cartoony sense of logic even if there were quirks along the way. And even if Day of the Tentacle wasn't a much saner game than Sam & Max was in terms of its style, there was a rhyme and reason to how things worked once you got into the game's head. Not so with Hit the Road, where progress will often reward mere trial-and-error – the sort of thing that may appeal to die-hard adventurers, but few others. Yes, in context, Hit the Road is nothing obscene for 1993, where LEC was leaps and bounds above the competition, but after the superb puzzles of DOTT, Hit the Road's design philosophy can't be seen as anything but a step backwards. The game perfectly captures the spirit of its source material in the art, writing, and overall style, but it may have gone too far in extending the license's randomness to the puzzle solutions at the expense of the player's sanity.

Additionally, Sam & Max doesn't seem as consistently well-paced as some of its brethren. Like the SCUMM games before it beginning with Monkey Island 2, Hit the Road is a pretty large and nonlinear game, with Sam and Max navigating across a US map in their Desoto to various locations that are gradually opened to them. While the scope of the game is impressive, the overall experience suffers from some pacing issues, with the game hitting a pretty discernable and lengthy period of drag in its middle section, relying more on the writing and the humor than the plot to see the player through (which it does successfully). Combined with the pandering to the hardcore demographic in its design philosophy, Hit the Road is decidedly a game that requires more patience than most other LEC alternatives. As I said though, these problems are not ruinous; they're just not minor. While I am definitely among the number who would hail Hit the Road as a classic game, these flaws prevent it from being quite on the same level as LucasArts' best. Still, when the worst thing you can say of an adventure game is that it's not LEC's best, you're hardly unleashing anything slanderous. It's certainly held up better in fifteen years than I will.

The financial and critical success of the game along with the characters' utter lack of a backstory gives the license plenty of room for sequels, and indeed several were attempted in response to the incessant clamoring of fans. Key word: "attempted." In fact, in recent years the subject of Sam & Max video games has become known more for what hasn't existed than for what has. After the cancellations of an Xbox game in 2001, and later a direct sequel by LucasArts itself in 2004, Sam & Max finally returned at the capable (and in many cases, familiar) hands of Telltale Games with episodic adventures that continue to be produced at the time of this writing. While these characters' appearances in whatever medium they choose to grace has been in the past pretty irregular, the duo has proven very durable and always seem to find themselves in a world where a modest but consistent group of people is waiting for more of their endearing craziness with open arms.

Although Sam & Max Hit the Road does not always hold up against age in the areas of design, it nonetheless deserves its distinction as a genuine classic and features some of most entertaining character interaction ever in a game, with an irreverent brand of humor and wacky style that's in full force from the opening image all the way through to its interactive end credits. Like all of the LEC adventure games, time has done nothing to diminish the humor, style, or craftsmanship of the whole production, which remains a celebrated, all-time favorite. Sam & Max Hit the Road is a must-play for fans of the comic strip, graphic adventure die-hards, and anyone who likes games where characters, personality, and presentation take a front seat. Or for anyone who likes hitting lagomorph skulls with a wooden hammer.