Sam & Max are probably one of the videogame world’s best known, least well-known stars, having secured cult status during the 1990s, before disappearing without a trace until re-emerging to the delight of so many gamers over a decade later. With Telltale Games officially throwing its weight behind WiiWare today and with Sam & Max Season One confirmed for the Nintendo Wii, let Nintendic acquaint you with the odd pairing, and hopefully, along the way, convince you to watch out for them in future.

Sam and Max began life way back in 1987, as comic book characters invented in the warped mind of one Steve Purcell (or his brother, more accurately, from whom he adapted his childhood sketches). Sam, a six-foot tall anthropomorphic dog and Max, a “hyperkinetic rabbity thing” are a pair of private investigators (or “freelance police” as they refer to themselves) who reside in New York City, but are keen travelers having visited the likes of New Orleans, ancient Egypt, and even the Moon – all in their trusty 1960 DeSoto Adventurer. Yes, even the Moon.

Although the comic book series was distributed under a variety of titles and publishers over the years, they were eventually compiled in The Collected Sam & Max: Surfin’ the Highway set in 1995. Purcell was an employee at LucasArts at the time, a developed famed during the 1990s for their efforts in the graphical adventure game genre; and after cameos in famous titles such as The Secret of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle, the crime-busting duo eventually starred in their very own PC title, Sam & Max Hit the Road in 1993.

Sam & Max Hit the Road stuck to the tried and tested side-scrolling formula adopted by many other of LucasArts’ previous point-and-click efforts. It saw our intrepid pair of investigators on a mission to track down Bruno the Bigfoot (who has gone missing from the circus), and who was also rumoured to have kidnapped Giraffe-Neck Girl. Their search takes them all across the United States of America, to kooky locations from The World’s Largest Ball of Twine to The Mount Rushmore Dinosaur Tarpit. The title also included a number of mini-games, including Car Bomb (a variant on Battleships) and Highway Surfing, in which players are challenged to leap over exit signs on the interstate. Despite a few technical hitches, Sam & Max’s debut was critically acclaimed.

Sam & Max Freelance Police was planned as a sequel to Hit the Road, but LucasArts announced the cancellation of the much-anticipated title in March 2004, citing “current marketplace realities and underlying economic considerations” as the reason. The fact of the matter was that graphic adventure games just weren’t as popular as they had been, and the developer just wasn’t willing to risk the title sinking without a trace in amongst an industry where full 3D gameplay had emerged as king. These events led to a number of LucasArts employees leaving the company to form TellTale Games, a software house dedicated to developing the graphic adventures that LucasArts had lost faith in.

Four months after cutting ties with LucasArts in 2005, Steve Purcell announced that he would be working with Telltale Games to create a brand new Sam & Max project; something that eventually turned out to be Sam & Max Season One, which was originally released in a downloadable episodic form (presumably to keep distribution costs low) towards the end of 2006 and into 2007, before being transformed into tangible retail purchase in August 2007. Although each of the six episodes features its own storyline, the overriding theme throughout the season is hypnosis. Sam & Max’s office features in each episode, and even includes a cheeky reference to the date on which Sam & Max Freelance Police was cancelled, in the form of a labeled box on top of a filing cabinet.

Due to the success of Sam & Max’s comeback, Telltale Games announced that the pair of sleuths would return in Sam & Max Season Two, announced in September 2007. Again released in online episodic content, the game features more dynamic non-playable characters, an improved hint system and a greater selection of mini-games - changes which were made thanks to Telltale’s openness to listening to user feedback. Unlike Season One (whose episodes were developed individually), its follow-up’s storyline sees each section as a part of a greater plot across the release as a whole). The last of five new bite-sized chunks of Sam & Max will be released tomorrow on April 11.

With the Nintendo Wii bursting onto the scene in late 2006, the Wii Remote’s pointer function would, many saw, offer the chance for traditional graphic adventures to work on a home console like never before . Rumours that Sam & Max would be making their way to Nintendo’s latest machine first arose when eagle-eyed browsers spotted an advertisement on Telltale Games’ website calling out for Wii developers in early 2006. The firm remained tight-lipped about the whole project for over two years, finally letting the cat out of the bag in April 2008, by confirming that Sam & Max Season One will be released on the Wii this autumn.

Telltale has stated that part of their decision to bring Sam & Max to the Wii was demand from gamers, proving that a bit of persistent nagging really does work sometimes. The series is renowned for its witty humour, clever puzzles and brilliantly bizarre storylines, sitting in just the sort of genre that would appeal to the console’s new and veteran players alike. After the success of games such as Hotel Dusk: Room 215 and Phoenix Wright on the Nintendo DS, here’s hoping that Sam & Max’s Wii debut is the catalyst for more of the same, quality point-and-click releases on a console that just begs for them to choose as their home.

What are your thoughts and memories of Sam & Max? Are you looking forward to their arrival on the Nintendo Wii? Let us know your thoughts on this, and on the console as a home for point-and-click adventures in general, in the comments section below.