It’s been 350 days since Sam & Max Save the World came out, and during this time we’ve been (mostly) quiet, but don’t be fooled! The Skunkape team has been cranking away at Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space (aka Season Two), and today we’re flinging open the reinforced bulletproof door so you can peek in and see what’s happening in our secret game-remastering bunker. But first...
We just announced that Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space will release on Steam (PC), Nintendo Switch, and Xbox on December 8! We’re not doing preorders on Steam this time, but add the game to your wishlist and mark your calendar, because launch day is only three weeks away.
You might be wondering if we’ll offer a legacy discount to owners of the original Sam & Max Season Two, like we did for Season One owners last year. Unfortunately Steam no longer supports this type of discount. We’re just as bummed about it as you are. :(
Instead, we’ve figured out a way to give a launch discount to people who already bought the Sam & Max Save the World remaster on Steam. We hope this will cover a lot of the people who would have benefitted from a Season Two legacy discount. We’ll announce details on December 8.
At launch we’ll also post a detailed mega-list of what’s new for those who want to see it before they make a purchase decision (or are just curious). For now, we’ll lay out the bigger updates to get you all tingly with anticipation. Starting with...
Updates You Can See
Sam & Max Season Two came out in 2007/2008, and it showed. The remaster has beautiful dynamic lighting, shadows, and ambiance that pull a fourteen-year-old game into the future. All graphical assets have been scaled up, which means more detailed environments and smoother animations.
We once again tweaked all of the character models to bring them closer to Steve Purcell’s aesthetic, in some cases under his guidance. Kid Sam, Kid Max, and Flint Paper look more like they do in the comics, while Jurgen is closer to Steve’s original concept sketch. Putting car keys on Jurgen’s nipple ring was a little too risqué in 2008, but in 2021 we went there.
We’ve also added visual effects that Telltale’s engine couldn’t support in 2007/2008, including falling snow in the North Pole and new ambiance in the Zombie Factory. You can get a glimpse of these in the trailer.
And a couple of cinematic artists with years of experience on Telltale series went through the whole game to improve camera angles, choreograph new sequences, and punch up character acting. There are several examples in this first look playthrough video. (Warning, contains spoilers!)
Updates You Can Hear
Believe it or not, a good number of people still had dial-up internet in 2007. Telltale was always looking for ways to keep download sizes small, and massively compressing audio was a favorite trick. Now that we’re living in the future, this isn’t necessary, so we went into the vault and scrounged up the original voice files to remaster and re-encode them at higher quality. Your ears will thank us.
(We only had access to the English voice files, so there is no foreign language voice in the remaster. The game has subtitles in English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian, same as Sam & Max Season Two.)
As in Sam & Max Save the World, we once again rerecorded Bosco with voice actor Ogie Banks, but no lines were rewritten this time. Longtime fans may notice some small changes due to the natural improvisation that happens during recording, but the script itself is untouched.
The music has also been spruced up, with some existing tracks embellished and eight new ones written by Jared Emerson-Johnson. The new tracks were performed by live musicians from the original Season Two soundtrack and the Sam & Max Save the World remaster.
Where did we find space for eight new tracks in a game that was crammed full of great music already? Well, you might have noticed that episodic games often reuse content. This saves time and money during production, but it can get old. We saw an opportunity to put a new spin on reused content with some themes in Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space that were either identical to a Season One track or would benefit from variations between episodes. For example, you’ll now hear a brand new street theme, City Streets Saunter, rather than the original City Streets that had been carried over from Season One.
The new music will be included on the Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space soundtrack, also coming out on or around December 8.
Updates You Can Play
While the story and puzzles haven’t changed, we did update the DeSoto decal system. Decals were a big deal when Season Two came out (and also a big headache for programmer Randy Tudor), because they were the first example of Telltale content that carried over from one episode to the next, laying the foundation for the game remembering your choices in later series like The Walking Dead.
But the decal system was punishing, because you couldn’t go back to collect the ones you missed in earlier episodes—you essentially had to 100% an episode before moving on to the next. Not anymore! In the remaster, you can go back to previous episodes and get decals you missed, and they’ll carry forward into future episodes without having to replay. We also added a decal poster next to the De Soto so you can see which decals you still need to get.
The same quality of life improvements in Sam & Max Save the World are present here, including a choice between mouse, mouse + keyboard, or gamepad controls; smoother shooting and driving; and optional subtitle backgrounds to make the text easier to read. In addition, we’ve added two new accessibility features: the option to skip driving mini-games, and a toggle to turn off lighting effects that could trigger seizures.
And it wouldn’t be a remaster without new Easter eggs, right? We’ve added those too. Not gonna tell you where they are, but we hope you enjoy finding them as much as we enjoyed hiding them.
Updates?! But what if I don’t want no stinkin’ updates?
We hear you. We walked twelve miles to school through the snow, uphill both ways, too. The original Sam & Max Season Two will live on in your game library (if you already own it), and on Steam it will be bundled with the Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space remaster as free DLC. So if you’re feeling nostalgic for those chunky polygons and crusty audio, or you want to compare the old Bosco voice to the new, or you just prefer to play your games on an 800x600 CRT monitor thank you very much, we’ll have you covered.
Of course, the Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space remaster has a lot more in store than we’ve covered here, and we can’t wait for you to see, hear, and play it! This big Sam & Max Save the World post goes into more detail about the big picture changes, if you missed it the first time around. And if you’re looking for more info about the remasters in general, check out our FAQ.