Telltale Talk Strongbad, Sam & Max

By Jorge Ba-oh 25.05.2008 3

TellTale recently discussed the upcoming Strongbad game for Wiiware, as well as Sam & Max.

Will the Strongbad game be running on the same engine as Sam & Max?

Yes, we use the same engine for all of our games. The core technology is the same, but we've added some functionality to the engine to allow us to create graphics that look more like the 2D style the Chapmans use in the Homestarrunner.com cartoons.

The first episode is expected to hit in June. When can we expect the second?

We're still working out the schedule. The goal is to have episodes coming out on a monthly basis, like we've done with the Sam & Max games, but since the game is coming out on WiiWare as well as PC, it's not entirely within our control. Right now we're working out the schedule with Nintendo, and when we've figured out exactly how the releases will be handled, we'll let everyone know.

The Strongbad series has often dipped it's wick in gaming references. Can we expect to see playable versions of games like Peasant's Quest or Secret Collect hidden inside the game world?

I don't know about playable versions of those games, but each episode will feature some kind of arcade-style game for you to play within the game. In the first episode, that game is Snake Boxer 5, a top-down boxing game that's reminiscent of old Atari titles. I'm not sure what else you'll be seeing, but I've heard the designers are working on a pretty bizarre "edutainment" title for one of the other episodes…

...

When word of Sam & Max possibly coming to the Wii hit last year, there was talk of it coming as downloadable episodic content. Can you tell us a little about why you chose to go with a retail disc instead?

The main reason is that even though we'd been keeping the episodes small so they'd be easy to download over the internet, they're still too big to meet WiiWare's requirements. We could have spent time trying to get them smaller but because the episodes were already complete and make for a pretty good "box set", and because people had been asking for a Sam & Max Wii product for such a long time, we decided it would be better to focus our energy on bringing them out as a retail product instead. That doesn't mean we'll never explore the possibility of Sam & Max games on WiiWare, but for now, retail made more sense.

What would you say Telltale learned from their experience trying to bring Sam & Max to WiiWare that helped when developing the Strong Bad game?

We actually started working on Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People before Sam & Max Wii. We knew from the beginning that we wanted SBCG4AP on WiiWare as well as PC, and this influenced some of the design decisions, one of the biggest considerations being download size. Since we knew WiiWare had a certain limit, the designers and programmers have had this at the front of their minds from the very beginning of SBCG4AP's development.

There are also interface decisions that were made because we thought they would work better on the Wii. For example, in Sam & Max, dialogue options are listed at the bottom of the screen through lines of text. In Strong Bad, dialogue options appear above the character's heads, and the topics are represented by pictures instead of text. Either way is fine on the PC, but the more visual approach works better on the Wii.

  • Be sure to check out the complete interview at The BBPS.
  • Box art for Strong Bad
    Developer

    Telltale

    Publisher

    Telltale

    Genre

    Adventure

    Players

    1

    C3 Score

    Rated $score out of 10  8/10

    Reader Score

    Rated $score out of 10  8/10 (3 Votes)

    European release date Out now   North America release date Out now   Japan release date None   Australian release date Out now   

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    Comments

    It will be interesting to see how long each episode is and what price they will be charging.

    XBL Gamertag: James2t3

    I hope Strong Bad comes to EU.

    Also, will each episode take up a slot on the Wii Menu? That would be bloody stupid.

    Twitter | C3 Writer/Moderator | Backloggery

    Just delete the previous episode?

    XBL Gamertag: James2t3

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