Sam & Max Plunge Through Space (lost build of cancelled Xbox adventure sequel game; 2001-2002)

Concept art.

Status: Lost

Sam & Max Plunge Through Space was a planned sequel to the 1993 video game Sam & Max Hit the Road, announced in 2001. It was to be developed by the Infinite Machine, a small company consisting of former LucasArts employees; however, Infinite Machine went bankrupt in 2002, and the project was cancelled. LucasArts then bought the rights to Sam & Max and attempted to develop its own sequel, Sam & Max: Freelance Police, which was also abandoned later.

Premise And Gameplay

In the words of the lead developer Steve Purcell:

"It was actually based on a story I had written years before called Sam & Max Plunge Through Space. Sam & Max have to recover the stolen Statue of Liberty which they find parked in another galaxy and being used as a casino called Green Mama's. Then they are pulled into interplanetary intrigue with an evil despot and a mysterious hidden world where everyone resembles Max. We were breaking it down into an action/exploration/adventure game and I was pleased with where it was going. It was a lot heavier on "adventure" than "action". It was intended to be more of a hybrid, giving you the story and characters of a point-and-click adventure, but with the pacing of a 3D platformer. You'd have controlled Sam directly, moving around environments about the size of an FPS level, solving item-based puzzles and getting into dialogue exchanges. Enemies would wander the level, so you could always go back and shoot and/or beat them up. (I remember that we spent a good bit of time trying to figure out how to do shooting without over-complicating the targeting interface, before we remembered that it's Sam & Max, and accuracy is kind of irrelevant.) We were hoping to have a platformer without shallow characters or annoying jumping puzzles, and an adventure game without the feeling that nothing happens when you get stuck. The best part of having a pitch go unpublished is that I can say that we solved every problem, and it would've worked perfectly, if only it had gotten made."

Gallery

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  DeSoto remodeled into a spaceship; according to Purcell, every keyboard button was going to have a DeSoto control function (though some of these functions would be ridiculous)

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  Mena

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  Slippy, some kind of alien DJ

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  A giant cockroach bouncer at the entrance of Green Mama's

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  A mole miner enslaved by other moles to extract the yummy nougat from the center of his planet

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  Parking Lot Jackal, one of a threatening pack that patrol the enormous multi-level parking structure near Green Mama's

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  A city floating in space

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  Span'qee, the tyrannical leader of a children's play area underneath Green Mama's (the kids have been waiting for their parents so long that they developed their own civilization)

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Sources

• The history of Sam & Max Retrieved 14 May '19
• Gallery at the International House of Mojo Retrieved 14 May '19
• Sam & Max wiki Retrieved 14 May '19
• Giantbomb Retrieved 14 May '19
• Facebook Retrieved 14 May '19