#2: Sam & Max: Hit the Road
The Freelance Police haven't been forgotten in these recent years, with Telltale Games' multitude of Seasons keeping the talking dog and hyperkinetic rabbity-thing fresh in our thoughts. Yet the original Sam and Max adventure game, Hit the Road, holds an important part of LucasArts' success. The brainchild of illustrator Steve Purcell, these crime-solving animals brought a unique style of logical-yet-illogical puzzles that tested many people's patience, yet delivered it all with enough humour and reason to make it a well-loved title all of these years later.
Sam and Max's case had them investigating the disappearance of Bruno the Bigfoot from a Freak Show at a nearby carnival. Being the only sasquatch ever found preserved in a block of ice, his vanishing is a critical blow to the proprietor. All that remained of his ice block prison was the melted remains and a tuft of Bruno's hair. As the investigation unravelled, Sam and Max were forced to travel all around the United States, from crocodile-themed golf courses in Florida, the World's Largest Ball of Yarn in Minnesota, and a portal to another dimension in Seattle, all the while uncovering a convoluted plot surrounding Bruno's disappearance.
The years haven't done this game's appearance any favours. Though the graphics are colourful, the art style that was used could definitely benefit from a remastering, and the music could enjoy a similar upgrade in quality, which already included some great tracks even without the quality to express them well. This release featured voice-acting, so it would be entirely LucasArt's choice if they wished to re-voice the characters again, perhaps with the voices from Telltale's recent endeavours. There would be little need to however, because the voices are still extremely well done and sound genuine, if you class Sam & Max as genuine that is.
#1: Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle
Arguably one of the greatest adventure games ever made, Day of the Tentacle is a prime choice to be reborn on our virtual storefronts. As a direct sequel to Maniac Mansion, it sees the return of Bernard and the Edison Mansion as well as the two coloured sentient tentacles from the original game. Designed by Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman, it had some of LucasArt's most superb talent working on it, and the end result was years ahead of its time and a poster child of the genre.
Set some time after Maniac Mansion, Bernard, as well as new college roommates Hoagie and Laverne, are summoned to the Mansion by an urgent message carried by a hyperventilating hamster. Purple Tentacle had consumed radioactive material from the back of the house and gained super-intelligence, as well as, most critical for his world-domination plans, arms. In an attempt to reverse the impending disaster, inventor Fred Edison puts his three subjects into time-travelling portable toilets called Chron-O-Johns to send them all into yesterday to turn off the sewage before Purple Tentacle drank from it. An accident takes place however, throwing Hoagie two hundred years into the past, Laverne two hundred years into the future and leaving Bernard in the present. Through the course of the game, you must exchange items between each of the different time periods in an attempt to fix the machine and return to stopping Purple Tentacle.
The situation with this game is very similar to Sam and Max's – the art style of the game remains strong, but the jagged two-dimensional graphics leave much to be desired by modern standards and resolutions. Music and sound effects are also of poor quality, though the compositions themselves are appropriate, atmospheric and are great to listen to. If this were to be remade, it would be best to try to retain the original voice work, as it still stands as one of the best performances found in any video game, with all of the punch lines brilliantly delivered and almost flawless.
What about the others?
Some of you may be wondering about some of the choices – wouldn't The Curse of Monkey Island be the obvious choice? What about The Dig, or Full Throttle, or any of the others? When compiling this list, I considered that all the SCUMM game post-The Dig had reached a level of technological advancement that committing resources to a remastering wouldn't be as worthy as introducing these older, comparatively decrepit titles to a new audience.
There should be few people complaining about The Curse of Monkey Island's visuals, as it was made with an animated art style that has stood the test of time. With the live recorded music, and the existing, complete voice-over work done by all the recognised voice actors, LucasArts shouldn't be considering continuing with remakes of the Monkey Island series, but instead either with original adventure titles, or remasterings of these old games.
LucasArts has a long history in the games industry, and it is not something that should be forgotten. By revisiting these titles that have built the company into what it is today, they would be gifting this knowledge onto a whole new generation, a generation that could potentially go on to design the games of our future.
