Telltale Games is working with Sam & Max creator Steve Purcell to create an ongoing series of episodic Sam & Max games. We've partnered with GameTap to distribute the first season of games and share in the general revelry. (Dan Connors also got a nice t-shirt out of the deal!) Season 1 will debut this fall at GameTap and on Telltale's site with short, punchy episodes released in rapid succession, each telling a self-contained story, all the while feeding into a grander season-wide arc.

If this sounds kind of familiar, don't be alarmed. Look over at your television for a second and think about how TV seasons work. (To make the analogy sweeter, try and concentrate on the good shows.) It's kind of like that, but with funny video games.

Episodes mean you get more Sam & Max with less waiting. More fun with shorter dry stretches in between. We all know what it's like to wait three or four (or five) years for a game to come out — no fun. Telltale's sending that model out of style.

Steve Purcell has always said one of the best things about Sam & Max is that they work in any format you throw at them. Just take a look at the crime-fighting duo's vast body of work. These guys have appeared in comics ranging from one-page gag strips to 40-page epics, half-hour Saturday morning cartoons, web-based flash animations, and of course, the age-old graphic adventure. The way we see it, the format doesn't change Sam & Max. Sam & Max change the format.

All six episodes are available now!

Yes, you can! Just visit this page for details.

Because GameTap wants Sam & Max. They love Sam & Max. More importantly, they respect Sam & Max. We talked to a bunch of potential partners and GameTap was by far the best fit. They're giving us the freedom to make the games Sam & Max deserve — story-driven, crazy, and fun.

Nope! We think GameTap is a great fit for Sam & Max, but we know that not everyone will subscribe. (Plus, right now GameTap isn't available in all parts of the world.) That's why every Sam & Max episode will be available on Telltale's website 15 days after its debut on GameTap.

Because GameTap has been very good to us. They're co-publishing the episodes, a deal that includes them putting up a lot of their hard-earned money so we can keep doing silly little things like eating and paying rent while we throw ourselves into production of Sam & Max: Season 1. We wanted to give them (and their subscribers) a little something special in return. Besides, since Sam & Max is sort of like a TV show—it was even called "gaming's first sitcom by 1UP")—it makes a lot of sense for each episode to have an initial "broadcast" release, followed by "syndication" on Telltale's site. And, you know, in the grand scheme of things, 15 days isn't that long, especially when you consider the roller-coaster ride Sam & Max fans have been on for the last 13 years.

No. Many of us worked on the cancelled Sam & Max: Freelance Police, but Telltale's Sam & Max games are all new.

The entire season is available now!

No. And Sam & Max won't be voiced by Harvey Atkin and Robert Tinkler from the animated series, either. Take a few minutes to stomp your feet and swear at us. We'll wait.

Okay, so we didn't get those guys. But we worked hard to choose voice actors who we and Steve Purcell think are true to the characters. We know it's a shock to hear new voices for characters who have been bantering in your head for the last 13 years, but we really think you'll get used to them.

More fun than sliding around on black ice. There will be people to knock out, crazy driving to do, jokes to giggle over, interrogations to conduct, and of course, more dog-and-lagomorph banter than you can shake a corndog at.

Nope. There will be one uber-story brewing behind the scenes all season, but the plot of each episode is self-contained.

Culture Shock starts out with Sam & Max in their office, bemoaning the fact that no one's been breaking the law lately and having a little too much fun with their guns. Suddenly the phone rings, and then some stuff happens that we don't want to give away, and it turns out these former child stars are vandalizing the neighborhood, and some more stuff happens, and there's a guy with bell-bottoms, and a big boxing glove that hits Sam on the head, and self-help video tapes, and creepy music, and psychoanalysis. And more!

If you bought your computer in the last five years, it'll probably run Sam & Max: Season 1. Make sure you have a 32MB video card that supports 3D graphics and hardware texture and lighting. And at least an 800MHz processor, and 512MB of RAM. (If your video card doesn't support hardware texture and lighting, your processor needs to be at least 1.5GHz.)

Well, you're in luck! The minimum specs are low, but the better your rig, the better the game will look (and play). Bump mapping, texture mapping, and scalable resolutions are just some of the perks that will have your computer cracking its knuckles and getting busy.

Not at first. We've put all our efforts into the PC release. But we're definitely interested in consoles, and are toying with the idea of an Xbox 360 or Wii version down the road. Stay tuned.

Bone is episodic, and Sam & Max will be episodic, but most of the similarities end there. We'll be using a different model with Sam & Max than we use with Bone. A Sam & Max game will be more self-contained than a Bone game — more like playing an episode of a sitcom than a chunk of a movie. Each Sam & Max episode will be shorter than, say, The Great Cow Race, but they'll also be released much closer together. And they'll be even easier on your wallet.

How does $8.95 per episode, or $34.95 for the whole season sound? If you preorder the season, you'll get access to every episode when it comes out on our site. We'll even throw in a CD version when the season ends — you just pay for shipping.

EDIT: As of November 5, 2007, the Season One price has been reduced to $29.95.

We know episodic gaming isn't everyone's cup of tea. Like Lost fans who wait and buy the whole season on DVD, or comic book fans who only buy trade paperbacks, there are plenty of people out there who want their gaming in large doses. If you'd rather play the whole season at once, no problem. Of course, you'll have to wait until we've actually finished the whole season. And you'll have to cover your ears and run out of the room whenever your friends start talking about the great Sam & Max episode they just played.

Well, maybe not the walking into a store part. We'll probably start by selling Season 1 CDs from our website, like we do with Bone. Anyway, walking into a store is overrated. There's way too much that can go wrong—stubbing your toe on the door-jamb, slicing your finger open with the edge of your dollar bills as you fish them out of your wallet. We're hoping to save you this pain and suffering by making the Season 1 CD available straight from our website. We're even giving you the chance to preorder so that when the season's done, the CD will show up on your doorstep like a strange baby in a basket, crying out for your attention. We might just stick some extra stuff on the disk, along with the six episodes of Season 1. Just because we can.

That's not a question, but okay. If episodes still seem weird to you, think about any website you visit on a regular basis. Really think about it. Homestar Runner, Happy Tree Friends? Red vs. Blue, Consolevania, Mega64? Penny Arcade, Diesel Sweeties, Dinosaur Comics, heck even the stuff they've got cooking at Valve? The Internet is a huge festival of episodic-ness. We've been at it for a year with Bone, and we're kicking it into overdrive with Sam & Max.