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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."

13 of 36 comments (clear)

  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.
  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
  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 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

  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. 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!!!!!!!!!

  8. 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 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.

  9. 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.

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    Comment of the year
    1. 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.