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Sam and Max 2 to Remain Cancelled

Posted by Zonk on from the dangit dept.

Doomstalk writes "In the last couple of months, rumors on the possible resurrection of LucasArts' Sam and Max: Freelance Police grew in gaming circles. The rumors mentioned a new, mysterious games publisher called Bad Brain that was willing to raise money in order to buy the rights to an unnamed adventure game from LucasArts. Many thought this was too good to be true. Unfortunately, they were proven right, as Bad Brain revealed the news that negotiations with LucasArts over the rights to Sam and Max 2 have been discontinued."

36 comments

  1. In other news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Johnny Carson to stay dead.

  2. There is nothing to live for by TychoCelchuuu · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm organizing a mass suicide. Who wants to help?

    I loves joo Sam and Max. We will never forget.

    --
    Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
    1. Re:There is nothing to live for by Lisandro · · Score: 1

      Seriously. I'll bring the KoolAid.

      (queue to Jay and Silent Bob) "Fuck you, Lucasarts. Fuck you up your stupid asses!"

    2. Re:There is nothing to live for by nadadogg · · Score: 1

      I'll be weeping in the corner like the ugly geek who can't get a date with destiny(in this case, S&M2)

      --
      i use linux and windows oh god how can i have an opinion
    3. Re:There is nothing to live for by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I dated a girl who was really into S&M once. It wasn't until the 3rd date that I found out she didn't mean Sam and Max...

  3. I left with King's Quest 6 by BTWR · · Score: 2, Insightful
    King's Quest 6 was the last great adventure game I truly loved. I tried 7 and 8, never liked them much. Quest for Glory 5 didn't interest me after a few minutes. Those old Lucasarts adventures were awesome (Indy Atlantis, The Dig, Full Throttle, etc).

    R.I.P. adventures...

    1. Re:I left with King's Quest 6 by gehrehmee · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Find yourself a copy of Grim Fandango, and see exactly why LucasArts still needs to be making adventure games.

      --
      "You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
    2. Re:I left with King's Quest 6 by MatW · · Score: 1

      Love Full Throttle! I loved playing the first Monkey Island :) The Curse of Monkey Island hehe also love playing the Dig.

      --
      http://www.iWebmasters.com -your offshore staff leasing services!
    3. Re:I left with King's Quest 6 by TLLOTS · · Score: 1

      While not strictly an adventure game, I'd recommend you pick yourself up a copy of Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines. One of the best things about it is it really does have a very intriguing story, lots and lots of dialogue with characters with bucketloads of ways you can approach a situation. In essence it has some fantastic elements of adventure games in it.

      Just a warning though, the game is quite buggy so be prepared for that. If you can deal with the bugs and don't mind vampires and such then this is a gaming experience you should find very rewarding.

    4. Re:I left with King's Quest 6 by MatW · · Score: 1

      I wonder why they are not making them anymore? Would love to see another game like Day of the Tentacle :)

      --
      http://www.iWebmasters.com -your offshore staff leasing services!
    5. Re:I left with King's Quest 6 by djdavetrouble · · Score: 1

      Instead of me having to fork over money for a game that you see as the nail in lucas arts adventure game coffin, why not just tell us why ? I looked at the website, and it looks really fucking cool to me. gameplay may be a different issue though. grim fandango site.

      --
      music lover since 1969
    6. Re:I left with King's Quest 6 by gehrehmee · · Score: 1

      Who called it a "nail in the coffin"? I said that LucasArts needs to keep making games. Grim Fandango was *fantastic*, and if they can keep making games like it they'll be doing great.

      --
      "You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
    7. Re:I left with King's Quest 6 by djdavetrouble · · Score: 1

      oh my bad then i misread your post as saying that GF was why they shoudln't make adventure games anymore .... then i went to the website and was in awe of how freaking cool it looked and it didn't compute...
      pz.

      --
      music lover since 1969
  4. Cancelled.. by Ben+Struferga · · Score: 4, Informative

    Bad Brain Entertainment, a new german game developer, has indeed failed to get the rights for Sam & Max. But they are now talking to Steve Purcell, creator of the two characters, to whom the rights appearently will fall back in may 2005. So theres still Hope...

    1. Re:Cancelled.. by jasonmicron · · Score: 1

      Can you put up a link to this? Where did you hear about this at? If the rights really do fall back to the original creator then there is yet hope indeed!

    2. Re:Cancelled.. by Ben+Struferga · · Score: 2, Informative

      Ive read it on pcgames.de, a german games-news site. The article this information comes from can be found under http://www.pcgames.de/?article_id=344800. The information is in the last sentence, its in german though, but maybe babelfish can make some sense of it. Hope that helps

    3. Re:Cancelled.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Any word on if they are going to try getting what code that has been done so far back(given LA's response, doubtful), or that they will they start from scratch?

    4. Re:Cancelled.. by Doomstalk · · Score: 1

      Actually I read about it on Bad Brain's official site, but it doesn't appear to be there any more.

  5. just call them fax and bam. by gl4ss · · Score: 2, Insightful

    and get over it.

    if you need the licensed characters you didn't have any jokes to start with anyways.

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  6. Why block on the license? by tod_miller · · Score: 2, Funny

    Aaah maybe they are preoccupied with 76 new games on all platforms for the release of SWIII.

    You can only have so much quality...

    There are some great open sourced adventure engines coming out... I would like to see an adventure game engine written in some crazy engine like GTA or Doom3... smooth camera movements, nice UI...

    Perhaps the license to make sam and max 2 is inside some cute kitten somewhere, and you should jsut turn it inside out and look!

    --
    #hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
  7. Troll? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think some wierd php code must have snuck in that trolls anyone mentioning SW!

    'cute kitten somewhere' you have to play the game...

    There are some great open sourced adventure engines coming out try insightful!

    mod parent up before it gets lost amongst the pocket lint!

    1. Re:Troll? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      PHP code?!? slashdot is written in perl you insensitive clod!

  8. MORE STAR WARS GAMES, STAT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Gotta keep working on Star Wars Episode III: Boba Fett Sexual Identity Crisis Dress-Up 2 so it's out by May!!!!!!!!!

  9. And in other news... by Greasy+Spoon · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Generismo Francisco Franco is STILL dead...

  10. Anyone else see this as a positive sign? by Prien715 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Right now Lucasarts is making near $0 on the Sam and Max license. They could get a non-zero ammount for it, but instead they choose to keep it. Why? Well obviously it's worth more than is being offered to them, which must mean they're planning on doing something with it (as opposed to sitting on it and making nearly $0).

    --
    -- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
    1. Re:Anyone else see this as a positive sign? by Bagels · · Score: 1

      Or, y'know, they might be holding out for a larger non-zero amount of cash. It's not worth zero to them, particularly considering all of the work they'd already put into Sam & Max 2...

      --
      --- Bwah?
    2. Re:Anyone else see this as a positive sign? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It may be the last chance for the lucasarts version to see the light of day, unless some savvy buyer is actually secretly talking to LA about securing the unfinished code. SIGH - not bloody likely.

    3. Re:Anyone else see this as a positive sign? by Dachannien · · Score: 3, Informative

      I don't see it as a positive sign at all.

      Nearly six years ago, Sierra cancelled production on their "Babylon 5: Into the Fire" game. (They booted numerous employees as part of a facility consolidation that resulted in the death of other games as well.) Most of the head developers expressed an interest in finishing the game they had put so much work into, and so they approached Sierra/Vivendi with an offer to purchase the work they had already finished. Sierra refused.

      In the time since then, the rights to develop the B5 license into a computer game reverted to Warner Brothers, leaving WB with a license but no game, Sierra with a half-done game (and a crapload of voice acting and original music) but no license and no designers, and a bunch of designers without their old jobs. The inertia was gone, the designers had moved on to other companies, and the game is pretty much officially dead.

      (Fortunately, the mod community is pretty strong for the B5 universe, and there's a team of Russian programmers who have come up with a nice rendition of the universe, sans license. http://www.firstones.com/)

      The moral of the story: Just because a company refuses to sell you something doesn't mean they plan to do jack with it themselves.

    4. Re:Anyone else see this as a positive sign? by jonwil · · Score: 1

      Something that is a factor in the case of the B5 game and probobly also in the case of Sam & Max 2 and probobly other canceled projects is that by canceling it and burying it for all time, you can get a tax benifit on whatever you spent on it (I think this applies to anything, not just games).

      I am not a tax expert so I dont know for sure but if that is the case, that is a good reason for them.
      i.e. its worth $x in tax benifits to bury it vs $y in possible sales if they release it.
      Unfortunatly for fans of B5 and adventure game fans, the marketing and accounting people at vivendi and lucasarts did the math and based on how many units they thought they could ship, the estimates led to $x being enough vs $y that it was better for them to bury the games.

  11. Cue the standard /. replies... by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Cue the standard /. replies about how the Adventure game genre is dead from people who have never played Syberia, The Longest Journey, Myst IV, Beyond Good and Evil, or any of the other dozen adventure games that have come out in the few years.

    --
    Comment of the year
    1. Re:Cue the standard /. replies... by cyberfelon2k5 · · Score: 1

      Except none of those games are as funny or as quirky as Sam & Max: Hit the Road.

    2. Re:Cue the standard /. replies... by TRACK-YOUR-POSITION · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I'm not sure if Beyond Good and Evil should be counted with those other ones--gameplay wise, it probably has more similarities with Zelda: Wind Waker.

      I don't think it's that adventure games have died, it's that the audience for them has shifted to story-centric RPGs or action/adventure games. Given the growth of networked games (massively multiplayer or otherwise), we may eventually consider them all to be the same genre--single-player story-based games.

    3. Re:Cue the standard /. replies... by MemoryDragon · · Score: 1

      Tony Tough is, The Westerner also...

    4. Re:Cue the standard /. replies... by Flyboy+Connor · · Score: 1
      Cue the standard /. replies about how the Adventure game genre is dead from people who have never played Syberia, The Longest Journey, Myst IV, Beyond Good and Evil, or any of the other dozen adventure games that have come out in the few years.

      I played three of those (not BG&E, since it is not an adventure). I thought they were quite boring. These three games take themselves much too seriously, replacing fun with nice graphics. If I want to see nice graphics, I look out of the window.

      Really, the world needs a new adventure in the classic LucasArts style. Too bad no publisher is going to touch it.

  12. Bad Brain wanted LucasArts' code, not 'rights' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just to clear up a big misconception about this situation.

    Bad-Brain were trying to buy the unfinished Sam & Max game source code from LucasArts. Source code that included proprietory engine modules from the likes of LucasArts games such as RTX Red Rock, Grim Fandango, EMI etc, plus a lot of new custom built code. It's really no surprise that LucasArts would not want a 3rd party to have it to do what they will with.

    The 'rights' to the Sam & Max characters are not and never have been LucasArts' to sell. The rights have been licensed to LucasArts for use in a videogame for the last couple of years (since the first attempt at a Sam & Max sequel by software developers 'InfiniteMachine' went belly-up) The LucasArts license expires in May 2005 when the gaming rights revert back to owner / creator Steve Purcell.

    Now that the Bad-Brain negotiations to buy the game code from LucasArts has failed, Bad-Brain is attempting to aquire the character rights from their owner, Steve Purcell (in anticipation of when they revert back to him in May), to use in their own, brand new, Sam & Max game.

    We also know Telltale Games (made up of laid-off members of the LucasArts Sam & Max 2 team) has expressed an interest in the character rights for the duo too.

    1. Re:Bad Brain wanted LucasArts' code, not 'rights' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I thought the misconception was that LucasArts had anything worth buying. It's not like they have been pumping out hit after hit. Do they even make games in-house anymore? Don't expect anything great to come out of Telltale either.