Sam & Max Hit the Road

Sam & Max Hit the Road is a classic LucasArts adventure game based on Steve Purcell's madcap Sam & Max: Freelance Police comics. Notable for ditching the "bottom half of screen filled with various verbs to click on" interface seen in previous LucasArts games in favor of a more minimalist, icon based system.

Sub-Pages#

Prototype Info Prerelease Info Notes Unused GraphicsA whole bunch of graphics that ended up unused. Unused DialogueLots of dialogue that ended up on the cutting room floor, so to speak. Unused ScriptsSome unused or partially unused scripts present in the game.

Debug Mode#

Like many other games on the SCUMM Engine, Sam & Max has a built-in debug mode. However, the variable to enable it has been disabled.

It can be re-enabled by opening samnmax.001 in a hex editor and changing the sequence of bytes starting at 0x3995 from 0C692622 to 06696969. This bypasses the need for a debug password completely, and debug mode can be enabled after booting up the game simply by pressing Ctrl and D together. This edit has a minor side effect of replacing the word OK in the Save menu with ''. This edit has only been tested on the CD version of the game. It won't work in ScummVM, only in the original DOS interpreter.

At any time during gameplay, press one of the following keys/key combinations:

If you're curious what these debug options look like and don't want to crack open a hex editor to see them, here's a video showing them all:

Disabled Objects#

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: If there are more, find them.

Objects are static elements in SCUMM the player interacts with. Some times objects are just coordinates with no graphic, sometimes they do have some graphics to display on top of the background. Each object can have a name, a code header and a script to run when it's been poked by the player.

Apartment Exterior#

In this room's case, we have a total of three objects with no graphics, which are completely disabled by the coding.

Object 90 - street-diner-door#

Dialogue for looking at the Diner Door.

Object 93 - road kill#

Dialogue for looking at the Road Kill.

Dialogue for picking up the Road Kill.

Some idea of what the Road Kill may have looked like can be found in the original background illustration of this room, found in Rogue Leaders: The Story of LucasArts.

Object 94 - dead guy#

Dialogue for looking at the Dead Guy.

Dialogue for picking up the Dead Guy.

It's interesting to note that the "Antenna" Sam is referring to is exactly the one in your office. If you go into Room 7 and pick up Object 67 using debug mode in ScummVM it will display a STOP icon in your inventory, further proving it was once an obtainable object.

Removed Conversation Opener#

There is evidence that as well as the existing Question, Exclamation, Non-Sequiter conversation opening dialogues in the game, there would have been some sort of Angry way to start chats with characters in the game.

Object Image 1000 is stored directly before the Non-Sequiter icon. There are also two identical copies of the unused icon stored in the two slots after the Non-Sequiter icon.

There are four places where Object Image 1000 would be a valid response to the conversation, indicating it was cut early. It's already a blank image in the early demo, too.

When starting a conversation with Max:

When continuing the conversation with Max:

When starting a conversation with the Snuckey's Employee:

When continuing the conversation with the Snuckey's Employee:

If Sam hasn't heard dialogue about what "Snucky U." is, he will say this when continuing the conversation instead. The response given by the Snuckey's Employee would be the same as the one used for the Question Conversation Topic, "I'm glad you asked, mister..."

Unused Room#

Room 19#

Unused Room 19	Used Room 18

Room 19 is a copy of Room 18, the Wak-A-Rat minigame. It seems to be used to store some of the images seen in the actual Wak-A-Rat minigame, such as bonking Max on the head with the hammer. For some reason, it contains a unique background image which is exactly the same as the used one, except it's missing the score counter in the top left.

Unseen Text#

Most objects in the game have appropriately uninteresting names such as "office-window" or "twine-tram-platform", but a few near the start of the game have names like the sort seen in other adventure games by Lucasarts. Other object names seem to have been written by someone who was hopelessly bored, with names like "ugh" and "bite me!"

Room 1, the room which contains the logo seen right at the start of the game, contains some amusingly named objects: "our-sainted-logo", which appropriately enough, is the Lucasarts logo, and "max-the-object", which is the shortcut to use Max stored in your inventory.

Room 7, Sam and Max's Office, the first non-cutscene room of the game has a few self-explanatory object names that can't be seen: "office phone", "door", "roach farm", "antenna" and "roach food" (the sandwich).

Room 8, Apartment Hallway, has a door called... "door".

Room 9, Apartment Exterior, has some more self-explanatory object names: "liquor store", "beat up DeSoto", "pile of mail", "road kill" and "dead guy". The latter two are both disabled by game's scripts, and are documented in the Disabled Objects section.

Room 10, Map Of The USA, has 12 objects called "ugh".

Room 26, Golfing at Gator Golf, has an object called "gamera".

Room 42, Bumpusville Exterior, has an object called "ajshd".

Room 43, Bumpusville Main Hallway, has an object called "bite me!". Rude.

Room 50, Brain Of Bumpusville Robot, has 5 wires all called "s".

Room 70, Max's page in the Dress-Up Book, has many objects called "asd".

Rooms 71 and 91, also pages of the Sam and Max Dress-Up book, has a Cross-Bearing Orb sticker called "sam-sword-image", hinting that it was probably a drawing of a sword originally.

Room 83, Gathered Bigfoots, has an object called "not-needed".

The string "default, Default! how the hell did I get here?" is printed to the console if trying to access a variant of Snuckey's that doesn't exist.

Version Differences#

Floppy	"Talkie" CD

There are two versions of the game, a floppy release which does not feature voices except for the intro, and a "talkie" CD version which is fully voice acted.

The floppy version also features a copy protection where you have to match Sam or Max's doll clothing as seen in some manual pics. If you fail twice you get booted to the DOS prompt. This check was removed in the CD version, although data for it still exists. Some kind of sound loading screen is instead put in its place.

During the section where you have to steal Conroy Bumpus' toupee, the floppy version has a regular style animation that looks like all other animations in the game. In the CD release, the scene is completely redone as a full screen animation.

Floppy	CD

Here are the unused animations, still fully present in the CD version:

Animation	Description
	Part 1
	Part 2

In the CD version, when the Bigfoot elder throws the four sacred items from the totem pole carvings into the hot tub, the water turns various unusual colors each time. In the floppy version the water always remains a normal blue color.

Floppy	CD

The closing credits in the floppy version have a shorter list of voice actors, relating solely to the voiced introduction. This version reveals that the names of the robotic mad scientist and his kidnapped girlfriend in the intro are Ernie and Dale, respectively.

Floppy

CD	CD	CD

The CD version also included a handy menu wizard for various configurations, starting a Rebel Assault demo or listening to some digital audio tracks.